In a five minute telling, what has been happening for me over this past month, this past year, perhaps, really two? I have been quite insular and in some moments utterly lonely. But today as I write three pages in my fresh journal about what it is I would like to release with the power of this full moon, the last one of this year, the cold moon as it is known—though I am blessed to be sitting in a warm kitchen with wood-burning stove—I do note, I am grateful for the expanded knowing born of this isolation.
I am hard pressed to find exact words for the way in which I would like to release ties to old ways of being, but that is the beauty of writing, circling and not quite landing, and trusting in, this circular movement a seeing that comes from many different vantage points. This is work to please no one, without anyone, but ourselves to get in the way of our seeing, “…no, not quite, but closer, yes,…” and trusting that through these scribblings around and around what wants to surface will come into view. Refinement during next months’ full-moon ritual will occur, so no need to fret over getting all just right.
Full moons pull tides in bodies of water (including our own) and call for letting go and being pushed and pulled, making space for future opening and spreading, helped along by flexible intentions and actions and often enough, not doing is the action when it comes to ingrained, rigid habits.
The moon has pulled from me my monthly blood and all that I can do is submit to the release, or so I have thought, but one can move even further into by helping along a process by making something holy in simple measure, marking, or noticing, the natural passing that brings us to new vistas.
Ritual in our world appears to be disappearing—at least the kind tied to spiritual rather than material--and this has been the case even before the worldwide pandemic. There are fewer ever attending religious services of all forms, church, groups, clubs, and the growing political body tells us some ways of being, believing and behaving are exclusionary and/or hurtful to others, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater!
We are by nature, also natural beings with ties to the tides, seasons, the moon, the stars and the sun and for me a Christ Consciousness too. So on this full moon, I light three candles, I write freely for three pages, I smudge with cedar, smoking my space counter-clockwise to dispel the old, I draw three angel cards in reference to three facets of my life, I pray before and after. I will set out a dish of water to catch any moonbeams that make it through the clouds and will use this water to wash my third eye throughout the coming month, reminding myself each time of what I’d felt prudent to let go of so that I might be carried more easily by spiritual tides. I find what needs release by making my way through the writing the three pages and jotting down specifics of flotsam I may not yet be entirely able to identify, light with a candle to burn these impressions as I say them aloud with the fast flame at the sink in hope to be more in a state of I (EYE) AM.