Witches Worship the Moon
A tiny slice from "A Confluence of Witches"
August is a loaded month for me. It’s my birth month, which packs it full of wonder and pressure and review. August is also a month of turning. The blooms mature into seed, the garden needs to be pruned, weeded, and reset for the impending Fall. The seasons are shifting, having reached a peak exuberance, saturation, swell. Summer’s cup overflows. We begin to step back, sun-dazed and weary about what tasks Virgo season has in store for us.
In the midst of all the feelings, there are some glorious things happening this Fall that I’d be remiss not to share. Our community of witches is gathering again, at the Witches Confluence, both online and in San Francisco on November 2nd. Will I see you there? I hope so!
This event is a homecoming, a celebration, a spell. It’s no small feat to bring a community of witches together, and it is work that is rewarded by the many radical spells that will ripple through our connection. In addition to this event, the release of my anthology, “A Confluence of Witches” is on October 7th! My aim was to illuminate the richly diverse and truly radical craft of modern practitioners casting big revolutionary spells with this collection, with the hopes that it inspires each of us to be daring and brilliant in our own special ways. Pre-order your copy and support this community of spells.
Of course, the only luminary to aptly highlight this work is the Moon. Enjoy this short excerpt from the anthology, from my introduction to the first chapter titled, “Witches Worship the Moon.”
Witchcraft is a lunar practice. Like the Moon, witchcraft flourishes in the darkness. It is ever evolving in its shape and quality of light; it is ancient, primal, ever present. Like the Moon, witchcraft is an essential and mysterious part of our human existence. One could say that the Moon is the first cosmic teacher of all witches. Throughout time witchcraft has taken on many shapes, a constellation of beliefs, myths, and practices. Though these spiritual practices have been ever present throughout history, our perspectives and relationship to witchcraft, just as our relationship to our silver satellite, have shape shifted over time.
My first magical encounter with the Moon was when I was seven years old. Being driven home from a social gathering late one July night, I trained my eyes on the shimmering silver orb, tracing the lace of blacked out pine trees whirling past. Once home and in bed, I couldn’t sleep. The light of the Full Moon had flooded my bedroom, filling my body with a new type of wonder. I stayed up most of the night, staring out of my bedroom window, feeling the magnetic pur of the Moon, calling out my name. This was the night I first knew I was a witch.
It wouldn’t be until many winding years later when I would formally discover the practice of “drawing down the Moon,” a meditation technique in which we call forth the Moon’s insights and wisdom, inviting in this lunar intelligence and effectively embodying lunar power. When drawing down the Moon, we become aware of how we hold lunar light within us. The Moon can charge our bodies, our spirits, and our psyches in ways that empower the intuitive, silvery, psychic currents within us.
As witches, the Moon is our collaborator, our teacher, our source of power. The ways in which we engage with and create relationships with the Moon affirm how we are in relationship with our own bodies, each other's bodies, and our essential grasp of natural cycles – death, birth, and renewal. As the Moon changes phase and level of illumination, we too can assess the texture and stories of our own natural cycles of growth and release, emptiness and fullness. When we draw down the Moon and hold her in our bodies, we affirm a basic understanding that all humans are influenced by the Moon. Just like the tides are pulled and pushed by the Moon, so is the water and blood within our bodies.
Enacting a lunar practice is basic and it is revolutionary. Moving through the world with an awareness of lunar phases is a simple act that can change the fabric of your life – both your waking life and your inner worlds. Not only is working with the Moon a personal spiritual practice – it is also a political act.
In astrology, the Moon represents our emotions, our bodies, and people – the collective experience of all of us – the people. The Moon is not only encouraging quiet contemplation and introspection, no, it is encouraging us to recognize how we’re all intimately connected on Earth, under our one precious Moon. The Moon pulls on the waters of my body just as it creates the tides, just as it pulls on the blood of your cycle. The Moon inspires intuitive action. With its soft silvery brilliance we are all called on by the Moon – just as we all have the capacity to practice witchcraft. We are all lunar beings with lunar needs, just like we all have the capacity for intuitive knowing. What would happen if we collectively attuned to those intuitive/lunar needs? May the following offerings support you in deepening your lunar practice, through ritual and mythological frameworks.
Thank you for your support! Can’t wait for you to receive your copies.