EcoBliss: Howling at the Moon

RosieCat looking a lot less devil-ish than she actually is!

Listening to: Not my favorite Audrey movie (that would be Funny Face) but an appropriate song for today.

Today's Bliss Formula: Oh, it is getting a bit warmer than my blissful self likes, but I keep reminding myself that the tomatoes and the kiwis and the grapes and the apple...they all adore the heat and will pay me with their yummy goodness. Besides there are strawberries to be picked and organic chocolate ice cream in the freezer. A good life, this.

Today is the 8th day of the Blessing Moon.

I don't remember exactly when I started tracking the moon so closely, but I do this in my journal, like I track the weather.

I don't usually write a date or day of the week, as I am trying to become more in tune with the rhythms of nature rather than the artificially imposed rhythms of man. I also don't wear a watch. I try to "sense" the time and am quite good at it, thanks to those circadian rhythms we all have access to.

But the moon.

Of course, the moon is a large part of most feminine based spiritualities, and as someone who has investigated just about every single tradition on the planet (that is not hyperbole), and as someone who gleans and collects bits and pieces from here and there, the moon stuff has stuck.

I guess you could say I am moonstruck.

Even a man who is pure in heart
and says his prayers by night
can become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
and the moon shines bright.

--Trad. English Folk Song

The love of the moon, though, comes from a childhood fascination with the night sky in general. Thanks to a wonderful partner, I now own a beautiful telescope. Yet, I love to lay on the grass and just gaze with naked eye.

Every month, I race to see the new crescent, trying to see her earlier and earlier. We live on flatland, but alas, not flat enough. The youngest moon ever seen (and recorded) was a mere 18 hours old and was seen from the English Moors, a very flat place indeed.

(Bits of moon information taken from The Moon Watcher's Companion by Donna Henes.)

Each month, too, I select the name by which I will call that moon, and there are so many from which to select.

This month is called the Blessing Moon by my Llewellyn calendar, but it is also referred to as the Hungry Ghost Moon by the Chinese and the Crane Moon by some Native American traditions. You can find a wonderful name list here.

And to track the moon very precisely, you can go here.

For more moon stories and poems, you could get the Henes book or go here, for one example.

The love of the moon has led to a more general love of nature. I am a city girl, after all, and I had to learn to pay attention to the details.

It is in the love of the details -- what tree is that? what song does that bird sing? what color is the lake on a stormy day, in the fall, after a rain? -- it is in these details that we find our sense of stewardship naturally increasing.

It is not the negative facts that will moves us to action, I find, but love.

Love of self, then love of other. That is what makes us want to be better -- better companions, better friends, to human, animal, plant, and planet alike.

Many solemn nights
Blond Moon, we stand and marvel...
Sleeping our noons away.

--Matsunaga Teikoku
17th Century Japan

Love of the moon, too, as an adult has led me back to the natural belief in magic and mystery that a child easily carries in the same space as her belief in the concrete. Magic and reality easily sit side by side in a child's heart, and thanks to the moon, they grow increasingly companionable in my own consciousness.

For a little help with moon magic of your own making, check out this delightful store. (I will have an interview with the owners sometime in the near future.)

Still Life

on a too warm
early spring
day -- the tulips
open to bees and bright --
a half moon floats
in a blazing
afternoon sky.

a half moon floats
half hidden
in brush stroke thin
clouds and a summer hot
sun sweats my skin
and the wind chimes
are silent.

the wind chimes
chime not even
a whisper
but birds fill that space
and a hardly breeze
lightly breathes
over my skin.

a hardly breeze
barely tickles
my bare feet
barely moves
the branches of a light
willow tree
as the half moon floats higher.

--christine c. reed