Mother Moon

 O Lady Moon, your horns point toward the east:

Shine, be increased.

O Lady Moon, your horns point toward the west:

Wane, be at rest.

--Christina Rosetti

The Full Moon last week was so bright, as it flooded my bedroom, that it was like trying to sleep with the lights on. After a few hours, it became like one of those techniques used to elicit information from reluctant informants. Lunatic with sleeplessness, I began to imagine this celestial orb as Mother Moon, asking me the tough questions: Just where is your life heading? What have you done to save the planet? When was the last time you worked for social change? When will you steam clean the oven?

 Why should this Queen of the Night be interested in my humble doings? The answer may lie in her dark phase, when she disappears completely for several days. Humanity has always had myths about this dark time, when mysteries abound and secret rites are performed. Not least, those nights when Mother Moon hides her splendor are times when the individual psyche dives deep into its own pool and comes up, snorting and gasping, with pearls with which to adorn our lives, if we are willing. And if we are not, the questions, the urges, the inner promptings will wait until the next dark moon and the next and the next.

 In her Full Moon phase, she is known as the Red Moon, filled with life-blood, abundant, and fiercely protective of all she loves and creates. Traditionally she rules over Summer, supporting, nourishing and sustaining fertility and productivity. So I suppose that the questions she asks are a kind of harvest of psyche; an inner richness brought to the ego’s threshing floor by the sickle of the waning moon. There, as the mind winnows and grinds, nourishment for the soul is produced and the chaff blows away.

We are invited into this cyclical process every single month of our lives. The Moon, queenly in her cloud-skirted splendor, sails on, imperious. We can make of her gifts what we will. She is the boat upon the dark waters of our becoming and her voyage is eternal – as is our own.