The new Moon of June is creeping closer.
In an attempt to not be a tired, depressed, grumpy, and unproductive lump during new moons, for about the last year I have instead been meeting with some Wiccans of the Reclaiming Tradition to scry. The idea was that if the Moon was going to be in a phase that is supposed to be secret and regenerative, one might as well try to work with it and try to connect to the subtle influences for instruction or revelation. Those mystic crystal visions aren’t going to come on their own.
The tradition is that the Moon’s final crescent signifies the endings of processes, either of the previous twenty-eight days or of the year. The moment when the dark Moon is between the Sun and the Earth is a time when unconscious processes become secretly energized and rejuvenated (and not tired and grumpy at all). And the very first sliver of a new Moon is the time to set intentions for the month or for new beginnings. Extra interpretive points if you add in seasonal flavors: a new Moon at October’s end would indicate that the veils between the worlds are extra sheer. We typically cast a ritual circle and then meditate on a dark blue glass sphere before dismissing the circle.
I do find myself sometimes wishing we were dancing in a larger group instead of five or six of us sitting around a collapsible table draped with fabrics decorated with mystic symbols and set up with ritual tools and beeswax candles at the world’s four corners surrounding a blue glass sphere. I do find myself sometimes feeling like this is an exercise in applied pareidolia or daydream interpretation. And in more practical moments I notice that I’m not producing something like Jung’s Red Book (which, now that I think of it, counts as a kind of Book of Shadows), or applying ritual means to political, physical, or personal ends. At least I’m not peering into the future to try to divine winning Lotto numbers.
However, there are enough surprising or startling phenomena to justify the continued practice—like that one time I looked into the sphere and instantly saw a miniature scene of someone with a backpack standing on a corner sidewalk with a rotunda in the distance, next to a kind of bike rack on one side and glowing, illegible letters on the other, and above, a figure in a draped cowl looked down from a portal of lunar fire. It was like seeing a completely new tarot card (which was cool, and I still haven’t figured out what it meant). The monthly practice is improving ritual technique; the discovered formula—“be whirling earth / be wheeling stars / be billowing veils / between the worlds”—works well to invoke the protective ritual circle. And there is an attempt to commune with the natural and spiritual world, to celebrate the moment of the new Moon and Earth cycles, and to transform through subtle wits and senses.
What I’ve learned:
- It can be useful to use tarot cards as an auxiliary meditation focus when the only thing I see in the blue glass orb is my inverted silhouette or reflected candles.
- Having a specific question or situation in mind is helpful; if you aim at nothing, you hit nothing.
- Old Dion Fortune was onto something when she wrote about rising above illusion when mentally traveling to the Sphere of the Moon (social media, I’m looking at you).
- Sometimes you’re just going to feel tired and grumpy instead of rejuvenated and mystic.
