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Children of the Moon
by Jessica Murray
Reprinted from in The Twelfth House, Sept 2003
The recent
black-out in New York City got me thinking about how rarely we get to experience
a pure, velvety black night sky, studded with Moon
and stars, shimmering with information. These days we city dwellers may
even forget the Moon is there, unless we catch a glimpse of her as she
rises between buildings, her magical luminosity not quite drowned out by
the city’s electric lights.
Though
the Moon is a universal icon, ubiquitous in our romantic language, in our
psychology, literature and popular song, millions of us never actually
see her. But there was a time when the Moon was humanity’s primary religious
and temporal reference point, as comforting as a child’s nightlight, mysterious
as a sovereign goddess.
Here in
the urbanized Western world it is hard to imagine how intimately connected
the ancients were with the visual dome of the sky. For millions of years
before the invention of modern clocks, people simply tilted their heads
back and looked up. Astronomy and astrology (there was no distinction between
the two until relatively recently in human history) did not used to be
the province of specialists: everyday folks checked the sky as we check
our wristwatches.
Familiar
and visually accessible, the Moon was the first celestial body to be the
focus of an astrological calendar. Waxing or waning -- approaching fullness
or receding into her hidden phase -- she informed the sky gazer whether
the month was building towards culmination or had already reached its crest.
Nomads who traveled after sunset needed to know how much moonlight they
could count on to see by, as did hunters following nocturnal prey. But
the Moon’s phases communicated to ancient peoples many layers of meaning
beyond practical utility.
Watching
the Moon gave our ancestors an immediate sense of cosmic connection. The
Moon was seen throughout the ancient world as a divine Mother: her regular
changes were expressions of the reliable growth/diminution cycles of an
ordered and benevolent universe. As predictable as the ocean tides, as
inevitable as birth and death, the Moon was not just a timing device or
a light to see by. She was a steadying. nurturing power in a chaotic world;
her rhythms providing early humans with a coherent symbolic logic with
which to order their lives.
These
days students of celestial cycles are less likely to sit in moonlight and
take in the Moon’s power directly; which is a shame, for we need that magic
more than ever. But the meanings of the Moon’s various phases have been
retained, and are still the best-known aspect of popular astrology. The
fact that lunar phases are often marked even on non-astrological calendars
is evidence that the Moon’s cycle is more than an esoteric theory of narrow
interest: it is a natural rhythm deeply imbedded in the human psyche, and
it still works. Keeping track of where the Moon is, on the page or in the
sky, grounds us emotionally, as it did our ancestors; and enables us to
more fully join in the dance of the universe.
The monthly
cycle starts at the New Moon, which therefore symbolizes new beginnings
in general. Circle it on your calendar: tradition has it that this is the
most auspicious time to initiate projects of any kind -- a new job, a new
relationship, a new way of looking at things. On or just after the New
Moon, the energy is ready and available to get something going. This is
the most hands-on part of the lunar cycle: now is the time to pro-actively
set an intention. Try to identify what it is that is being inaugurated.
That in itself is enough to honor the New Moon; but if you wish to give
the process a nudge, do what the ancients did: make up a ritual to celebrate
your intention to whole-heartedly welcome in the new beginning. Write down
your intention on a slip of paper and put it on your altar; light a candle
at dinner and pronounce aloud your wish for the month ahead. The most ordinary
acts become rituals when motivated by an understanding of the symbolism
involved. Straighten up your desktop; put a plant cutting into soil; put
air in your tires and get ready to roll. We are often intuitively driven
to undertake such activities on a New Moon anyway; we usually do them without
thinking about the timing. But when we add that extra ingredient of awareness
-- deliberately trying to match the moment with an apt metaphorical gesture--
then we are working magic. To paraphrase Carolyn Casey: You can sweep the
floor and just have a clean floor; or you can do a floor-sweeping ritual
and thereby cast a spell.
The next
major phase, a week later, is the First Quarter. Whatever you began at
the New Moon comes to a kind of crossroads: your undertaking meets its
first obstacle. This may be an obvious event, such as a glitch that arises
with the software you installed a week earlier; or it may be a more subtle
development, such as getting a reality check about a new infatuation. Whatever
form it takes, at the First Quarter your initial premise is tested. Again,
the first thing you can do to honor this phase is to notice it: your undertaking
has turned a corner. The second thing you can do is to make adjustments
if necessary.
The Full
Moon, which follows a week after that, is the culmination of the cycle.
Now things come to a head, and you can clearly see what it is you set in
motion two weeks before. This may not be what you thought you were setting
in motion. The Full Moon exposes the soul meaning of the period
you are in. It is no wonder that this point in the cycle has always been
associated with great drama: the Full Moon is like a bright light turned
on in a shadowy room.
On the
literal level, new information may suddenly become available; on the psychic
level, you may get a revelation about the underlying point of the whole
process. Full Moons are expository, full of the potential for breakthroughs
in understanding. Sometimes what is revealed is welcome, sometimes it is
not. Full Moons are a markedly subjective experience, associated for millennia
with both enlightenment and madness. They are often accompanied by extreme
events, designed to make us see things we have not yet seen. The period
a couple of days on either side of the exact Full Moon may pulse with heightened
energy.
The waning half of the cycle should be spent assimilating the vision received
when the Moon was full. These final two weeks of the lunar month are a
devolution, as natural as leaves turning color in the autumn. At the Last
Quarter, the process begun three weeks earlier runs into its final wistful
crossroads. Again we must regroup, and face the reality of bringing the
whole operation to a graceful close.
The last
few days before the next New Moon are a mysterious and uncertain time,
when the old process clearly has lost its vitality but a new process is
not yet ready to take its place. During this Dark of the Moon period, we
are meant to let go of something. It is not a time to try to make things
happen; attempts to initiate are not likely to work. It is a time to release
what has been happening. Now is the time to look back over our recent projects,
while gently putting our tools and equipment away.
It was
when the Moon was dark but not yet new that ancient peoples conducted their
most sacred rites of healing and meditation, with a spirit not of ambition
but of acceptance. They knew, better than we do, that all endings prepared
the way for new beginnings, like leaves that fall and decay in order to
fertilize the soil for the new growth yet to come.
There
is a natural arc to the timing of the month, a pattern that we are born
in synch with, as surely as other living things are who dwell upon the
Earth. This is why watching the Moon, either actually or astrologically,
can make us feel more at home in the cosmos. Tracking her inexorable changes,
week after week and month after month, we start to see the Moon not as
an inanimate rock that unaccountably looks different every time we look
up; but as a living, numinous entity whose various faces take on meaning
only when seen as a pieces of a unified whole.
This is
the key to lunar astrology, a science of analogies and parallels. By honoring
each of her phases with respect to its place in the overall cycle, we see
ourselves in the cosmic mirror. Instinctively, organically, like a duckling
following its mother into the water, we start to understand that our own
unfolding fluctuations match those of the Moon.
And everything
starts to make more sense.
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