Starting about mid-November, gloomy weather and the prospect of family holidays can make us depressed. All those old family arguments around the dinner table… or maybe we’re not even invited. Which is worse? Our minds fill up with resentments and—whoa! Stop that. It’s not healthy.

What to do? Occupy your mind with cheerier, more useful thoughts:

1. Recite a mantra like Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha, or maybe turn it into a song. Recite or sing it while you’re driving.

2. Read Dion Fortune’s The Mystical Qabalah and learn the names and meanings of the ten sephiroth: Kether, Chokmah, Binah, Chesed, Geburah, Tiphareth, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malkuth. Learn to recite them up and down the Tree of Life.

3. Sing Deena Metzger’s goddess chant: Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.

If you’re working on remembering which sephira goes where or which goddess comes next, you won’t have time to be depressed. Cheer up!