A Full Moon's Day

A Full Moon's Day

• Thursday, August 10, 2017

Vicia spirit gourd, blessed by a fullmoon hidden behind smoke

It was a battle moon this time, one made of smoke and worry.  There's a million battles being fought all around me and I've chosen mine.  Right now, my battle is in finding my balance.  This Moon's Day hosted a full moon during a time of fire.  It was a moon of rage, a moon of heat and forging.  It was a perfect time to think deeply about the imbalances that seem to have taken the fire and fight out of me.  It was a moon to cleanse myself and my house, to eat differently and move my body.   

Have you ever been so terribly upset about something that you responded by simply refusing to entertain it?  It's empowering isn't it?  To give so little power to any situation or person who is harming you by not engaging.  It isn't running, it isn't shutting down, it isn't denial.  It's peace.  It's looking past trying to entertain people's miseries and being disinterested in playing the game.  You start to see how much suffering around us is self inflicted and how much we don't have to participate in the cycles around us.  There are a lot of people trapped in negative cycles in my life, I don't get involved or interact with it.  

It's a toxic magic they're practicing.  When people put their intentions to nothing but bile and hate, or revenge and hypocrisy, or even just to insecurity, those intentions manifest in all aspects of their lives.  We create these waves of suffering that dominate our work lives, friendships and more.  The worst is the impact it can have on you spiritually, how much it can affect your work with the spirits.  I don't like these cycles, I prefer to wander around in my empathy and leave everyone else to their own devices.  Sometimes that's the best way to love people and the world, is to let them be and go your own way.  I've enjoyed my time away from people; I'm sculpting again, I'm back on track with my health and I'm gaining no grudges by indulging no misery.  I respect compassion and individuality above all other qualities, and those are my intentions, and what magic is made of that will be reflected.

Purification takes a lot of forms.  I was waiting until the full moon because I needed to clear my head before filling a gourd with of binding love. There were offerings to the spirits, and homemade rosewater cascarilla laid down.  I placed the gourd on a bed of vetch flower on a wax healing tablet and prayed.  When I read for myself, I saw exactly what was binding me, and when I threw the pearwood healing runes, there was a map of tension and misery laid out for me to trace my way out.  Labyrinth magic is sometimes just following the clues out of the maze of your own mind.

 It's been isolating and solitary, but then, that's every summer.  It's just not my time of year.  This year is a tad harder than the last few have been.   I don't do well with family and friend emotional baggage.  It's hard for me to keep up with all these social interactions and expectations.  I don't do well under social pressure, I much prefer to just be on my own and in my own space, and I don't think much about how anyone around me feels about it.  I wish I could indulge it, but I know better.  Never let people change you just because they're desperate to connect to you; not everyone needs to connect the same way, maybe for some people the silence is more deeply connecting than the chatter.

When it all becomes too intense, when there's too many feelings and emotions coming my way from the outside, I recede deep into my work and the woods.  The balance of silence and distance is where I thrive creatively, emotionally and spiritually.  When autumn comes, I'll again be thrust back into the constant miasma of other humans, but while the sun is high in the summer sky, I get peace.

High Summer has come and past and next the harvest season brings the browning and redding of everything.  Things once green wither to blackness, pods twist and snap in the heat, the berries rot on the vine and fall.  I was born in Autumn, right after the Autumnal Equinox, and I've always felt affectionate for the colors and tastes of the season.  There's corn husk cigars to roll and oat cakes and to make and blackberry ale to check on; there's tall yellowed grass to get lost in and all those delicious smells.  

It's time to go collect dried galls and fresh acorns, and time to cut roses and smoke long into the afternoon.  It's golden out, even with the smoke wafting down from British Columbia, and so so warm, it's almost like being back in Los Angeles, among the smog and smoke and dry air.  Sometimes, through the stresses of life, you just have to stop moving so much and be still, listen, lick your wounds or whatever, just take the time to keep up that which animates you... your spirit.