Welcome to 2020!
It’s only the 10th day of this decade and an entire continent is on fire, a serial rapist whose name we refuse to utter won Best Actor in a Drama for hauling himself up a flight of courthouse steps while his lawyer carries his walker, we came thisclose to war with Iran because the U.S. president is a human-shaped pile of rotting carrot peelings, and I’m seriously questioning my decision to have a dry January.
Thankfully for our mental health, today is the Wolf Moon – so named because wolves often howl at this time of year (according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac). Things that have been building since the new moon on Dec 25/26 will start to wane, and soon it will be time for another round of fresh beginnings on the 24th.
To be quite honest, I’ve never been a woman who was unduly influenced by the phases of the moon. My cycle never synced up, and I’ve always been more attuned to the changing of the seasons and available daylight. I love the long, breezy days of summer and the crisp mornings of fall. I am an evening person, so I acknowledge the moon’s presence in the still-lit sky, but the infamous craziness of full moons has never really penetrated my own sphere. Now that I’ve been casting spells and sending wishes into the universe, though, I find myself attracted to the phases of the moon to measure time in a way that is unconnected to the work week, religious holidays, or the Gregorian calendar in general. I am a messy soul who wishes in my heart of hearts that I could be a Flylady or a Marie Kondo apprentice. I grew up in an extremely religious household, and while I long ago rejected the misogynistic proscriptions of the Christian faith, I still find myself seeking order in my practice. Something to tell me what to do, and when.
Ordering my witchcraft by the phases of the moon is not only historically appropriate (love that) but also allows me a reasonable amount of time to assess how a thing works for me. If I start a new ritual with a particular phase of the moon, I have time to move through the very human cycle of initial excitement, disappointment when it’s not immediately perfect, persistence, and absorption.
This morning I was wondering what I could possibly have to say about the first full moon in a year that promises to be full of challenges and change; one that is going to strain our ability to cope and our mechanisms for surviving gaslighting on a national scale. It turns out, I don’t have a huge amount to say about this particular moon except that I have a lot of Feelings about everything right now, and as a type-A witch I’m looking for a way to channel them into some semblance of reason and order. The fact that “reason” and “order” are not traditionally associate with the moon does not escape me, but I remain undaunted in the face of convention!
One of the practices I am testing out this year is to pull a card every morning and consider how its meaning could be pertinent to my day. This morning – for the first time ever – I drew the High Priestess: embodiment of the receptive principles of wisdom and connectedness. As with before, perhaps wisdom is not necessarily something one would expect during a full moon, but as a woman who is wiser than I am told me today, “the full moon is not an excuse to behave like an idiot.”
Putting it all together, I’ve decided that the wisest choice for this evening is to skip any planned Friday shenanigans and instead go home to FaceTime with one of my favorite people, have a mocktail, and maybe take the cats out onto the balcony to do some honest-to-goodness howling at the moon.
What are your plans?