Читать книгу Woman Most Wild - Danielle Dulsky - Страница 12
ОглавлениеThe Holy Moon and Your Witch Consciousness
Every living aspect of our natural world embodies the masculine and the feminine, including you, my Sister-Witch. The philosophy of Tantra teaches us that both the masculine and feminine energies are divine, with the feminine being immanent within all things. The sun and moon are the celestial reflections of these two polarities, with the sun as the pulsating, ever-burning masculine and the moon as the mysterious, ever-spiraling, and oh-so-cool feminine. By day the sun feeds our hunger for action and clear vision. By night the moon quenches our thirst for intuitive foresight and shortly lived cycles of birth, fullness, and emptiness. Both the solar and lunar rhythms of this world are cyclical, and we, as human beings, are fed by each of these Earth-sustaining bodies; the masculine is our spicy sustenance, and the feminine is our chill mineral water. We eat of the sun and drink of the moon; both nourish our bones and our blood.
In this chapter I will share with you the clean essence of the moon’s cycles as they live within your wild nature, but the most critical piece of information is this: Just as the moon is an alchemical celestial body that, to our Earthly perspective, is always in a state of change, so, too, is the Witch a creature of ever-spiraling transformation. You have no one way to be, and this chapter offers you glimpses of a woman’s cyclical nature. You may read a certain passage and wonder if the image I present of a woman weeping in the dark could possibly be lived out by the same woman who was dancing by a fire in the woods on previous pages; I say yes. By all that is blessed and holy, yes. We take for granted the ways of the moon, but we understand the symbiotic relationship between the bright fullness of fruition and the nail-thin silver sliver of near-nothingness as a perfect metaphor for how changeable we are. To be in flux is the feminine’s nature, and such is the way of lunar life. You must give yourself permission to change constantly, every sleep a restful sort of moonlit labor during which you give birth to a new version of yourself just as the sun rises.
Your Witch consciousness is very much bound to the rhythm of Mother Moon. Intuitively, you have known the promise of the waxing lunar cycle, like a well-built wood stack crackling just after the kindling is lit. The height of the flames, like so much unbridled energy and surging heat, you have known as the full moon essence, with the dying fire akin to the waning lunar cycle. After the fire has completely fizzled and there is naught but smoking ash, you are in dark moon time. Each of these four phases is framed within the enduring boundaries of the twenty-nine-day period, and each of these four phases is mirrored within your energetic womb.
Your age matters not. These moon beats live inside you regardless of your stage of life or status in the world, as do the archetypes of the sensual Maiden, creative Mother, and wise Crone. Know these time-worn concepts of the Triple Goddess nature not as successive life phases, for such predictability is the stuff of linear time. You can liken your inner Maiden to your rawest sexuality and fluid emotionality, your inner Mother to generative work and high-fire creativity, and your inner Crone to your deep intuitive, receptive nature. Even a young girl embodies Crone, just as a wise elder holds much sensuality. Women are the spiral dance, and our time does not move in straight lines.
Living in alignment with lunar changes will serve you so much more than living in accordance with any calendar. Your soul will be nourished every time you invoke the essence of a lunar phase, harnessing the warrior-woman energy of a new moon, the sheer, electric force of a full moon, the release and acceptance that comes with the waning phase, and the oh-so-potent thick void of a dark moon. These rhythms are already internalized within you, Woman. You need only acknowledge them as part of your truest self, allow them to inform your movements through the world, and learn what they have to teach you.
Before you continue reading this chapter, take a moment to recall your childhood memories of the moon. Remember the intrigue of that changeable gray-white celestial body with the mystery-laden face and soft blue halo. Remember the moon before you learned to take it for granted. Just in this moment, be that restless little girl again who cannot sleep and looks longingly out her window, wondering how she knows this maternal light so intimately.
DRINKING MOON MILK: A LUNAR MEDITATION
As you read this now, flip your palms skyward and tilt your head back just a bit. Lift your gaze, and sense the energy around you. Visualize the perfect moon above you, regardless of whether you know its current phase. Sense the celestial body’s steady path around the Earth, and know this moon as the essence of the primal, ancient feminine. Envision the lunar energy field as vibrating with a soft diamond-white glow and, now, with every inhale, pull the moon’s essence into you. Down, down, down the moonlight descends, entering your third-eye center, the intuitive space between and above your brows, with every inhale. As you exhale, let this diamond-light get more vibrant. Inhaling, draw the moon essence deep into your being, slowly being filled with these vibrations all the way down to your roots. Exhaling as the moon milk fills your sweet, soft body, let the brilliant energy glow brighter, and brighter, and brighter still. Inhaling and exhaling. Breathing in the moon and letting the moon breathe you.
Drink in this moon milk with all that you are. Surrender to lunar replenishment. You glow now with Goddess light, with all the divinity of the cosmos. Woman, what an amazing beauty you are! Let the lunar light nourish every cell, bone, muscle, and organ in your body. Let Her burn away your insecurities, your guilt, your shame, your fears. Just for now, just in this very moment, let the moon have its way with you.
Swallow this moon milk and feel your inner Witch revel inside your ribs. You are bringing the juice back into her veins now, and she tells you this: There you are, Woman! I have been waiting for so long! Let me show you the Old Ways. I will remind you of sacred sensuality and the soul-food of a night spent wild. I will deepen every experience with my womb-wise intelligence, and I will tell you of your power. Remember who you are, a Woman Most Wild, a Witch liberated, and the Goddess embodied. Stay fed and full, my Sister, for this is only the beginning. Your inner Witch is wide awake now. Let’s learn of your sacred rhythms and make her dance!
A woman craves practical knowledge of her soulful cycles, for she intuitively understands that she will not open her eyes tomorrow morning as the same woman she was today. Many of our bumpiest scars stem from our neglect of our cyclical nature; such patterning, when combined with the pervasive social rejection of our changeable nature, has dug a deep chasm into our self-awareness. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, in her treatise on the wild woman archetype, Women Who Run with the Wolves, emphasizes the importance of women’s cycles, arguing against the notion of women’s entire lives being compartmentalized into three seasons of girl, woman, and elder: “We cannot allow ourselves to sleepwalk wrapped in this flimsy and unobservant fabrication, for it causes women to deviate from their natural and soulful cycles.” A bone-deep fear of change runs rampant in our patriarchal society, dear Sister, and you may have noticed even those who truly love you act out a desire to keep you static. Honor your cycles, knowing they are far more complex than those described here. Accept your righteously alchemical nature. Drink the lunar nectar, and reclaim your nature as a mother-loving shape-shifter, and hear me when I tell you that you were born to be ever-changing.
LET THE WITCH SPEAK!Hearing Her Womb-Voice under the Moon
The Witch thinks, speaks, and prays with Her whole body. Sense the location of your thoughts now, my love. Do they live just at the crown of your head? Perhaps a few inches lower? Feel where your thinking mind is centered, and now begin to pull your thinking mind down to your third eye, that space of reception where your most authentic vision lives, and then lower to your throat center. Here is the place of truth, story, and voice. Pull your thinking mind down even deeper to your heart, where you will sense the energy of compassion and gratitude, then even farther to your solar plexus, where your very ego and identity reside, surrounded by the fire of your will and self-esteem. Finally, let your thinking mind drop down to your sacral center, between your hip bones. Here you are at the source of your womb-wisdom and your Witch voice.
Ask of your sacral center only one question now, and let it be this: What do I need to know right at this moment, under this moon? Let the answer bubble up from that sacred, sacral space and climb through your energy centers to your throat. The voice that whispers from your lips now is your womb-voice. Even if you do not have a physical uterus, your energetic wise womb remains and has much to say. Do not let this womb-voice startle you, Woman, for it may say things that both shock and inspire. Can you hear the tone in which your womb-voice is speaking? Can you hear it echo from your pelvic bowl as if the Goddess herself were howling from inside an ancient cave temple? Let her speak. Give her permission — not that she needs it — to tell you of your wild worth.
Learning to hear this holy voice, your truest voice, is a vital skill that will serve you well, my love; it is the very technology of feminine guidance. Once your inner Witch knows you are listening, she will speak louder and more often. She will offer you guidance when you need it, though not necessarily when you are looking for it, and she will teach you her language. Know that she may not speak in words you know; she may speak through energetic pulses in your body, sudden glimpses of images in your wild psyche, or subtle feelings that could easily be ignored, were you less still and aware. Find just enough presence every night to hone the ways of deep listening, trusting this practice is part of your holy birthright and devoting a small part of yourself to hearing your inner voices as the moon waxes and wanes.
THE NEW MOON’S SPARKYour Lunar Dawn
The new moon bubbles in your blood as if your very body were a cauldron of skin-framed, magickal brew. The earliest days of the new moon phase are marked by a subtle sense that your creativity and sensuality have been somehow heightened. An awareness of a slow build both within and outside you can render even the wisest woman anxious and hypervigilant; being aware of this lunar phase is therefore vital to your identity as a creatrix. Artist you are, Woman, regardless of whether you are birthing new life in your womb, carefully shaping a bit of clay, cooking up some hearty soup, or decorating your hearth for a holiday. All this, and every infinitesimal act on the creative spectrum, is the hallmark of new moon fire.
The subtle and blatant bursts of creativity you feel as the moon waxes are a sort of internal spring, if we were to liken this lunar energy to a solar season. New growth stirs underground in late winter and erupts from Gaia’s mud at the vernal equinox. The new moon is a mini-spring every month, with the warrior-woman energy writhing within you like so many red fire serpents. Honor this time as an energetic growth period. Do not cage your inner warrior, for she needs to be set loose now and then.
I hear you, my Sister, when you say desire can seem unladylike. I understand you when you say that you are no warrior, but I am telling you that this lunar dawn is a fertile time for starting all things new. As the moon waxes, you may become so full with creative energy, your prana Shakti, that you feel you may well explode like a violent volcano. Be the Maiden Goddess at this time and honor your sensuality by feeling, tasting, smelling, hearing, and seeing everything. Your wild woman spirit is inextricably bound to your sacred sexuality, and the new moon holds the very essence of well-purposed passion.
Painting the Wild New Moon: A Creative Dive
Gather these materials, Woman: a blank canvas and bright paint mixed from nontoxic natural elements. Put on no music; hear the night. Drink no wine; taste the iron of passion’s fire. Burn no sacred herbs; smell the rawness of your unwashed artist’s passion. This void of a canvas calls you to dive deeply into the inferno of the creatrix. Do it now!
Muster your creative mania and slather the vibrant thick color on your fingers. Pull, poke, and pinken that canvas in motions that no artist has ever made before. This is your masterpiece. Do not overthink it. Just paint as if you were the Goddess coloring the world for the first time. Every line, however unbeauteous seeming, is pure in its right to be there. Stomp and spit on the thing if it feels right, my love. You can do no wrong here, and those hands of yours know exactly how to move. Forget the outcome, though it may hang on your walls as a beacon of your rawest and most unbridled creativity. For now, there is nothing except you and this work. Paint yourself to life and then to death, and do it over and over again.
The new moon calls you to break down barriers and fight your way, sword drawn, through crowds of naysayers, even if these obstacles exist only in the confines of your psyche. If you find yourself assessing or judging your work, stop painting and recenter. Let yourself be fed by the waxing lunar energy until you can consume no more, and then collapse onto the floor with a tired, paint-splattered body and an invigorated soul. You have colored the wild new moon brightly, my love. Now rest, high on the passion of the Priestess who has reclaimed her art.
For Your Consideration: As the Moon Grows . . .
Consider this: The waxing moonlight casts a milky glow on your soul’s path, illuminating your next steps. Ask yourself these pertinent questions, and be sure to listen deeply to your inner Witch. She is concerned, above all else, with your soul’s wandering path, for she wants your wildness to be fuel for purpose and fulfillment. Human beings across gender lines are told that discipline and control are the stuff of true success, but consider your wild liberation as the sharpest knife, positioned to slash through all that tethers and confines your greatest potential. Furthermore, consider the ebbs and flows of your many cycles as clues to your purpose in this sacred community of ours; if an area of your life is always waning when another is always waxing, what does this tell you of your path? If we are always unlearning limiting beliefs while gaining layers of knowledge that support our freedom, then what does your inner Witch have to say about uncovering the soul beneath the ego? Ask yourself these questions in a quiet space, and listen not for the loudest inner voice; listen to the soft whisper of the womb-heart as she answers.
1. What area of your life is waxing right now? Financial abundance? Sensuality and self-care? Sacred work? Love? Voice? Creativity? Spirituality?
2. What area of your life is in a period of fullness? You’ll feel this fullness as pure power. This is an area of your life in which you feel you are a formidable force of nature, unstoppable even in the face of adversity.
3. What area of your life is waning, forcing you to let go of something? This letting-go part of the cycle demands acceptance and grace, even when the thing you are releasing weighed on your freedom.
4. Now, and this may be challenging, my Sister, what area of your life is in a dark moon phase right now? You are no longer letting go but rather sinking into a void of sorts. The dark moon period tends to be marked by fear that this thing that is gone may never return, that the black of midnight will endure forever, but this, dear Witch, is not the case.
5. Finally, choose the area of your life that seems most pertinent to your soul’s purpose right now, regardless of which cyclical phase that area may be in. Harvest your memories, seeing if you can trace a cycle of waxing, fullness, waning, and darkness. Have you lived through a full cycle yet? If so, how many months or years did the phases last? Can you predict any future phases, and, if so, what can you do to prepare for this transformation?
Women often have an undernourished need to take stock of the deep self, and, when they do, such assessments can be unwittingly bound to supposed-tos and can result in the automatic scrawling of angry to-do lists that overburden and severely demotivate. Your wild woman spirituality serves you well in these soul-centered evaluations, for the voice of judgment is quieted by the songs of the feminine divine. How can you be so wrong or off the mark if you are the essence of the cosmos? The moon does not berate herself as she wanes, digging her lunar claws into the past, weeping for how beautiful she was when she was full. The natural fallow times are just as honorable as your phases of abundance, my love, and your inner Witch and wild woman know this well. Be patient, and know that all is coming.
THE FULL MOON’S FRUITIONYour Lunar Summer
Ah, the bright full moon! You have felt this lunar phase more strongly than all the other moon seasons. The full moon powers the waters of this Earth, and the land-to-water ratio on our great planet nearly mirrors that inside your own body. Your woman’s tidal rhythms beat the loudest when the moon is full, and it is at this time when your creative sensual power and the divine feminine energy of relationship is the strongest. The full moon is summer returning every month, even in the dead of the solar winter season, and harnessing the magick of this fullness is your feminine birthright.
The energy of the full moon can be fearsome, truth be told, and cognizance of this phase is integral to your life as a Woman Most Wild. The full moon will call you out of the broom closet with a siren song so eerily serene that you cannot help but answer. This lunar phase is one of completion and fruition, when the fragile new you have been so carefully nurturing begins to ripen toward birth. The full moon will not always act in ways you perceive as favorable; She is following Her own program, after all. These so-bright moons will put you back on your soul’s path if you have lost your way, often dragging into the light what has been kept in the shadows.
Mystery and magick vibrate palpably in a night lit so blindingly by the full moon. Spellwork is at its most effective, and the call to wild sisterhood may be strong. You will feel a deeply seated internal need for balance during the full moon, as your woman’s waters succumb to the moon’s pull. I say, let the full moon take you. Any emotions that surface, any desires that seem irrational, any feminine impulse that bites at you from the inside: Do not fight these forces under the full moon. Allow the magick to surge through you. Bathe in moonlight, and sense the wholeness of your so-illumined heart.
Learning to harness full moon energy to infuse sacred work and meaningful relationships is an integral component of the wild woman’s curriculum. The full moon does not exist to serve you, my love, no more than you exist to serve it. The relationship between the Witch and the moon, be it full or at any other cyclical point, is one of mutual reverence and energetic connection. The greatest lesson the full moon teaches us every month is this: Your sensuality and creativity are holy, and there is as much divinity in the erotic as there is in any prayer. The wild woman is tasked with a great unlearning, for she must untangle the knotted twine formed from millennia of profound distrust and strategic suppression of her sexual and generative power. She must unbind wrappings on her sex and spirit, if only to see what lies beneath the tethers others have placed on her.
Moonbathing with the Maiden: The Full Moon and Erotic Innocence
A woman seeking to embody sacred sensuality is challenged to undo not only her own sexual woundings but also those sourced from thousands of years of collective feminine subjugation. Your path toward sensual wholeness is different from mine, my Sister, and I am not so arrogant as to prescribe a specific regimen for you. Erotic innocence is not a goal but a practice, and a necessary one at that. We live in a pivotal age of transformation in which the mysteries of women’s subtle and heavy bodies are being brought to light; and yet, these positive shifts are contextualized within a shadowy soup of media-supported body shaming.
Go into the night now, as a Witch most sensual. Seek out a darkened place underneath the shield of trees if you must, but look for places where the full moon casts its milk-gray glow on a space, however small. If you cannot be outdoors, go into your home’s wild sanctuary and attune to the lunar energy around you. Sit in the moonlight now, Priestess. Let the light penetrate your deepest sacral wound, be it scarred over or still bleeding. Give permission to the lunar light to seep into the voids within your would-be sensual wholeness, and invite the moonlight to electrify the Maiden within. Be who you were born to be, as if you were raised within the Red Tent, a place of historic menstrual support, where all the mothers and grandmothers of this world encircle you and validate your feminine blood as holy. Place both palms flat on your womb-center and affirm thrice: I am Maiden, and I am whole. Whatever your woundings, my love, you are flawless in your soul, body, mind, and spirit. You are not broken. You are not incomplete. You are the wild perfection of all things on and beyond this great Earth of ours. Even if you do not have a physical womb, that fertile space of life, death, and creative power remains inside you, in all its energetic glory.
The womb-wounds of women are often the best-kept secrets. In circles of women where the space is safely held, stories of lost pregnancies, infertility, hysterectomies, and, most commonly, abuse in its myriad forms are often unleashed in an eruption of long-dammed pain. There comes a time, I believe, in every woman’s life when a harvesting of these truths must come. If verbally sharing your story is too painful or would only cause a deeper wounding, write it down, shunning perfection and shame, then burn the pages. Seek out professional support and safe, healing spaces. The act of lifting these experiences out of their sacral depths raises their vibration, permits them to be less manifest as a binding agent to your soul, and brings them into the light. Women who share their sexual stories often begin by believing their story means little, and then in the sharing begin to know the weight of their past and the extent to which it has kept them immobile. A great release comes from the telling, as if a heavy, dreadful something was keeping a critical part of their soul static until their voice could be heard.
Know that you have been infallible in every decision you have made. You are blameless and perfect as you are, in this moment, and you always have been so. There can be no misstep when you are sacred and whole, and, my love, you are both of these, forever and always.
Verses of the Holy Feminine
A Full Moon Prayer of Gratitude and Surrender
For all I am about to receive on this blessed, holy night, I am truly thankful. Hear my open-hearted and open-legged prayer to the silver moon, Great Mystery, for this child of the universe is wide awake. I will not turn away from the fertile wild, for I have found my true worth. I have tasted the blissful sweetness of river water and rose petals, and I have cut myself on the thorns of raw, red, running beauty. My blood is my war paint, and I am going to battle for you.
Thank you for the scent of fresh snow, new blooms, hot rain, and leaf rot. Thank you for all tastes, for my tongue has licked the hearty roots of soul, the cool mint of spirit, and everything in between. Thank you for my strong bones and my belly fire. Thank you for my sensual divinity and holy sexuality. My cup runneth over with the raw emerald-green heart light of empathic connection and feminine generosity. I am giving it all to you, Mystery; take me, I am yours.
I am surrendering the wisdom of the cosmos, but I am affirming my sacred role in the Great Turning. I hold all the magick of this wounded world within my womb, and I have sunk my teeth deeply into the burning bone marrow of human transformation. I have swum against the tide for a time, and now I feel the current shifting, sucking the ancient sands of stagnant shame away from under my bare feet. I am finding new ground, and for this I am eternally thankful. From the bottom of my wild heart, all blessings be.
Weaning the Creatrix-Mother: The Guilt of Completion
Much of the fear pervading the full moon phase of the cycle stems from the guilt of completion. Recall, my love, a time in your life when you were creatrix, birthing something into being for which you cared dearly. As your creation neared fruition, you likely experienced a fair amount of trepidation. The end was finally in sight, and now you were poised to be released from your role as Creatrix-Mother. Depending on how closely you identified with this role, you may have needed to reorder your very identity.
The task of the full moon phase of the cycle is to be as fully and unapologetically present as possible. When an intense generative fire burns in a woman’s belly, she does well to create solely for creation’s sake. In What We Ache For, Oriah Mountain Dreamer tasks the artist with trusting the process as wholly as she or he can: “We must be faithful — full of faith that the process of creating will be enough to feed us and the world.” The trust of the Creatrix-Mother comes from the understanding that, though the inevitable letting go is coming, the cyclical nature of all things is ever-turning.
The full moon begs us to balance the guilt of completion, the sense that maybe we have somehow misstepped or wronged our creation, with a cyclical view of time. Feminine time is circular but specifically spiral and certainly not linear. You may well be facing the letting-go phase of some majestic thing now, but the essence of what you so lovingly mothered will be reborn into another incarnation soon. So, my Witch, revel in this phase of fullness and fruition, for it is the height of your creative, life-giving power.
THE WANING MOON’S EVE OF ACCEPTANCEYour Lunar Autumn
Every Witch is different, but I find the happiest wild women are those who relish the opportunity to let entire phases of their lives die out, like flowers withering under the first frost. The waning moon is a space maker, a field clearer, and a massive, high-powered declutterer; it calls you to accept the loss of what is already leaving you as preparation for the dark moon void.
Your lunar autumn is a time of release and boundary creation. You must honor the earlier aspects of the lunar cycle for how they served you, birthing what needed to be birthed and then dancing in celebration of completion, but this is not where the challenge lies. You must then death-doula yourself through the process of accepting loss. As the moon wanes, the natural world experiences a sense of imminent darkness, a darkness that we have been conditioned to fear.
Look to the waning moon, Wild One, as a great organizer. The energy of Mother Moon ebbing toward darkness is much like that of the destructive Goddesses, such as Kali in the Hindu tradition or the Cailleach in Celtic wisdom; She clears the fields to make space for what will come. Swallow the changes lit by the waning moon as necessary progressions toward your soul’s destiny. Use this time to learn how to see in the dark, and open your third eye wide.
Women are taught to resist these phases of letting go and the empty void. In a culture that fervently emphasizes productivity over nonaction, we are socialized to dig our metaphoric fangs deeply into anything that is in the process of leaving us. We want it all, but we deserve space as much as we deserve the abundance of having. What if we are always letting go of something in order to make space for the new? What if, in the balance, we are perfectly supported by the great swell and the great purge at any given point in our lives?
Women need and deserve the fallow time. Go into the dark regularly and fearlessly, holding steadfast in the knowledge that you are not meant to be the ever-generative Creatrix-Mother at all times. Permit yourself to be reborn in the dark; relinquish roles, practices, and relationships that no longer serve. Embrace sweet solitude as a means of evaluation. We see ourselves far more clearly in the dark than we do in the light, Sister, and you know this to be true.
The Witch in the Dark: Psychic Shielding for Wild Women
The waning lunar phase is a pivotal time for psychic development and honing your subtle-energy sight. As close to midnight as possible, and in a room where you will not be disturbed, sit quietly in the shadowy silence, with your eyes wide open. Draw a slow spiral in both of your palms with a fingertip, and feel your palm chakras open wide. Now, psychic Witch, place your hands together in front of you, slowly moving them away from one another and then back toward each other until you feel just the smallest bit of resistance between your palms. Look at your hands with soft vision, a sacred gaze, a drishti. Do you see it? A foggy blue-white glow emanates from your hands now; you are seeing your body’s very life-force. You are witnessing your own prana in action, your electricity, the very juice of your aura.
You have been told, dear Witch, from the time you were young, that such subtle energies are not real, and you have unlearned seeing them out of social necessity. Not wanting to be ostracized, you unconsciously denied that this sea of energy exists all around us. Here, in this soft, glowing soup, you can learn to see angels, guides, and spirits. Here you will break down the patterns of vision you have learned, dismantling years of conditioning. Here you will truly begin to see in the dark.
Close your eyes now, my Sister-Witch. Become aware of that same glowing energy field you witnessed around your hands. Know it now as vibrating all around you, extending away from you several feet in all directions. Envision this now: On the outermost edge of this aura of yours is a hard, quartz-crystal shell. This shield is permeable only in one direction; you can send energy out, if you wish, but nothing can enter your aura from the outside. Nest in the safety of your psychic shield now, great armored Priestess, and use this protective skill whenever you are feeling vulnerable to psychic or emotional attack. Strong boundaries are a Witch’s best friend, and you will learn to use them well, my love.
Psychic shielding is a practice that will support you not only in your Craft but also in day-to-day living. Many women are awakening to the burden of the empath in our society. Empathy, on the one hand, is a much needed quality of the Wild Healer Archetype, with feelings being absorbed and assimilated by one human from another. Anodea Judith defines empathy in The Global Heart Awakens as the “building block of compassion. . . .Here we drop all judgment and preoccupation with our own dramas.” On the other hand, overly empathic individuals of all genders may feel regularly consumed by the emotional energies of others, much to their own psychological confusion and physiological depletion. When you hone your skills in boundary creation, you do yourself a formidable service in protecting your sacred self against both malicious and unwitting trespassers. A woman who nurtures herself so nurtures every woman in the world. So may it be for you, and so may it be for every one of us.
THE DARK MOON AND NESTING IN NOTHINGNESS
Closely associated with the aspects of the feminine that have been most feared, most condemned throughout time, the dark moon phase is marked by a lunar void. This phase, my brave Witch, is your lunar winter. Here you are a seed resting in the deep soil, waiting for the spark of life to ignite an inevitable stir in your heart. The dark of the moon is a time of seeming finality and death, and it is associated with your inner Wise Woman, an all-knowing Witch consciousness that lives in quiet solitude and perfect stillness.
At the dark of the moon, my love, it is best to work no manifestation magick unless you feel called loudly to work. Now is the time for clear seeing, divine reception, and surrender. Rituals and self-designed ceremonies marking transitions, validating cyclical conclusions, or supporting feminine intuition are ideal for this psychically fertile phase of the moon. Sink into the void with all that you are, and relish this time of thick, psychic energy and nourishing rest. Take time to be alone during those nights when the moon seems to be abandoning the world. Consider what you may be grieving for. Ask yourself: What has been released from your life during this past lunar month? Have you truly accepted this change?
The Witch of the Dark Moon embodies a subtle reverence for nothingness and stillness. She looks neither ahead nor behind her. She resists the urge to plan and perfect, and, in that empty space, she becomes a receptor for tiny pinpoints of light, divine nudges, and infinitesimal hints that she collects in a psychic knapsack. She does not try to order this information or make too much sense of it; she simply gathers, giving herself permission to feel her way through the dark by the power of her keenest senses.
The Nine of Swords: A Dark Moon Ritual
The levels of grief are both complex and personal. As women we are often taught to suppress our emotions for fear of being perceived as weak, and depression, we learn, is unforgivable. Women’s deep dive into periods of sadness, lethargy, and complete surrender is often a necessary time of respite. Something is not working in your life, be it physically, emotionally, or spiritually, and depression groundswells from your feminine roots in an effort to pull you down into urgently needed contemplation. Here, in your dark night of the Witch’s soul, you give yourself permission to feel it all. You will weep and let the tears have their way with you.
The nine of swords in a Tarot deck marks a woman in pain; very often she is affected by quintessential wounds of the feminine. Ponder this, love: If you were asked to be the creatrix of a ritual, a self-designed ceremony of letting go, what would you dedicate this ritual to? In the darkness of this moon, design a sacred ceremony of release and transition that will give you time and space both to acknowledge loss and to welcome transformation.
Light a white candle and burn sage and sweetgrass. Whisper now the intention for this ritual: Tonight, I am marking the end/death/release/conclusion of ___________. I offer gratitude for how I was served by this powerful force when it was in my life, but now I am letting it go. I accept this change and give myself permission to feel the emotions deep in my womb. Let these feelings bloom and bubble from within you in whatever way seems fitting, for as long as you have. You will know when the ritual is complete, my love, for you will feel a tingle of rebirth; you will find a small bit of space into which you can nestle, one that was not there at the ceremony’s inception.
Snuff out the candle and sink into an unburdened sleep, waking just as the new moon dawns. Do not try too hard to label your emotions, positive or negative, for our language very often has no words for the complexity of our feelings. In this dark moon space, simply acknowledge that a change has occurred, feel supported by the gift of ground beneath you, and breathe. Know that just enough psychic clutter has been cleared to offer you a window through which you can look, wielding the fierce foresight of a mother hawk.
The wild woman is adept at quieting the urge to label and quantify the changes occurring both within and outside her being. You may not feel immediate shifts following rituals and magick work, but you must know in your bones that you have done all you can. Though we have nothing to call this particular transformation, this small bit of space making you have done, the insufficiency of our language does not diminish the weight of your work. I find that when I have no names for how I feel after a ritual, the greatest shifts are just on the horizon.
Contemplating True Vision: Wild Divination
The restlessness of the dark moon phase can be remedied by practices of divination. Go into nature, wild woman that you are, and gather small objects that speak to your soul; these might be seeds, twigs, shells, bones, rocks, eggshells, or anything else that you can hold in your hand. Place each of these in a bag, box, or other container that seems magickal. Find a place outdoors where you will not be disturbed, or go into your home’s wild sanctuary, ideally at night when the moon is dark.
Now, sacred Sister, ask your inner Witch to speak to you of a crucial area in your life right now. Is it your work? Your relationship? She will answer you, my love. Give her a moment. Focusing on that life area with a laser-point intention, cast your wild objects in front of you. Perhaps it feels right to pour them onto the ground in a spiral motion, or to throw them into the distance. Whatever seems right, do it. Now look. What are these unlabeled runes telling you? What is your initial response to how these things are arranged? What object stands out the most? How are the objects connected, if at all? What does this wild spread tell you of your life?
Use wild divination as a bucket to draw from the deep well of your intuition. Consider that you already know everything you are meant to know at any given moment, but there are so many demands on our attention that we do not often look inward. Our animal brains are designed to protect us first from physical threats; the subtle becomes suppressed by the heavy and the physical. Focusing on whatever vehicle you use for the purposes of divining does not gift you with anything you do not already know; it simply clarifies, pulling from the shadows and making visible what otherwise would be easily ignored. A wild woman can divine as easily from a sink full of dirty dishes or a bit of sidewalk gum as she can from a gold-embossed oracle deck. See magick in the mundane, and know yourself as Witch.
THE SACRED MARRIAGE OF THE FEMININE MOON AND THE MASCULINE SUN
You may liken lunar wisdom to that of a wise grandmother. The moon is maternal and offers you hearty but subtle nourishment. By contrast, solar energies are paternal, heated, and active. The marriage of the moon and sun sustains the whole of your being as a daughter of the cosmos. Know that I use these parental terms less to refer to gender and more to refer to the feminine and masculine aspects within our human psyches. You, child of the moon and stars, must honor your alignment with both the fertile darkness of the night and the vibrant light of day. You are everything. Everything is you. Awaken your lunar memory, and embrace your birthright. Claim the sign of the multiphased moon as a symbol of wild womanhood, and plant that symbol deep in your Maiden’s sensual womb, your Mother’s creative belly, and your Crone’s intuitive third eye. My Sister, they will not see you coming, for you are truly and madly a Woman Most Wild.
