This week of shelter-in-place has been harder for me than those previous, I suppose because we’ve officially passed one month here in Austin since the order was given and at bare minimum there are two more coming, though who knows? At this rate the tiny army of depressingly privileged idiot white people protesting against saving the lives of people who do labor for them might get their way, and they’ll have regained the freedom to force poorer people to cut their hair and paint their nails and bring them the Red Blooded ‘Murcan Platter at TGIFriday’s or whatever so stock prices can go up-up-up and human beings can be cut down-down-down.
Anyway.
As you can probably tell, the whole situation is taking a toll on me, as I’m sure it is on you too. The world has already worn out my Last Good Nerve and I’m down to basically the Bottom of the Dollar Store Bin Nerve. Thank god for meditation, medication, and masturbation, am I right?
(I may cut that line, or I may just bask in its ridiculous glory for all the internet to see.)
At any rate, I didn’t come here to rant and rave like a lunatic, I actually came to talk like a Lunatic about the Dark Moon, the New Moon, and the early Waxing phase in the lunar cycle.
In my experience a lot of people of a mystical/magical bent lump the Dark and New Moons together in terms of their spiritual and magical significance. You certainly could do that; after a time of waning energy, of divesting Herself of her glowing raiment one shoulder at a time, the Moon vanishes from the sky for a moment and we’re left in a period of vast, star-flecked potential.
Over time however I’ve come to recognize a subtle but important difference in the energy of the Dark Moon (where there is no Moon visible at all) and the New Moon (when a sliver of light appears, the leading edge of Diana’s bow), as well as how those two periods relate to the rest of the waxing phase.
When the Moon is completely dark I feel more of an urge to go inward than to cast magic or energy outward. I want to curl up in the roots of a tree and stare up through her leaves at the stars. It’s a moment of pause, like the actual event of death, the breath ceasing, the brain stilling. The month to be hasn’t drawn in its breath quite yet. Everything is balanced, waiting, empty. It’s the kind of darkness that can hold your dreams as well as your nightmares; it’s all in which shadows you peer into.
The Dark Moon is the time to dream. To plan. To make your lists, or just to take your desires and hopes to the Source and figure out where you’ll go next. Deep contemplation is needed here; the time for banishing work and decrease is done but it’s not quite time to get a move on.
As soon as that fingernail of light appears, the energy shifts. Time begins to move forward again with a relieved inhalation. That is the time to begin. Gather your jars, your candles; gather up your desires and toss them in big glittery handfuls to the wind, cast them into water, set them alight. As the Moon’s light waxes, the energy builds, starting with a few baby steps and, by the time the Moon is full, running full tilt, bare naked over the hills.
I think a lot of people gloss over the need to observe the Dark Moon. Going within, as many people are being forced to do right now, is hard for most of us. We’re afraid of the quiet, the dark – but nighttime holds up half the sky, and to jump from dusk to dawn is to miss a huge opportunity to explore our own interior landscape and just…sit still and shut up for a minute.
Sitting there in the dark (which is never fully dark, even on a cloudy night some light remains, just as in the brightest day something is casting a shadow) we can pick out our seeds and make sure we have the soil to plant them in. When the New Moon rises we can stick our fingers in the dirt and get those babies growing. Water will come; it always comes to the Moon.
If we try to think of our quarantime as its own sort of Dark Moon, the potential for change becomes clearer. I’m talking on a micro scale, on an individual basis, for those of us who have the time and privilege to tap into that potential rather than, say, spending 16 hour days on our feet in a hospital or working ourselves into tatters to keep house, teach children, police children, feed our families, work an 8 hour day in a chaotic house, and hopefully sleep in there somewhere. Not everyone has the luxury of choosing how to spend these weeks, but if you do, I highly recommend meditating on the spaces inside that mirror the spaces overhead.
Let’s see where this next cycle takes us.