To me, today’s moon is one of the most beautiful of the year because of the amazing and gentle psychological understanding it provides. As humans, we are empowered and strong on one hand, but on another, we are but frail, simple little things completely at the mercy of our emotions.
Such is life. I suppose it is telling that via typo, I first wrote “suck is life.”
Although we want to be wise and discerning and controled and collected all of the time, every now and then, we get caught off guard by those feelings and doubts that tug at our hearts and worry our minds.
Each year, when we manifest a new life at harvest by way of the changes we manifest in our lives, balance demands that we also let go of something(s). The laws of existentialism have always set will with me as basic life laws. We cannot have everything at once. We cannot have everything successively, one right after the next. All choices are bittersweet because in choosing a thing, we give up another thing.
If we manifest a new job, we give up our old job. If we manifest a new home, we give up our old home. There is something to be said for the familiar and for history. When it goes away, even in the context of growth and positive evolution, we miss it. It might just be certain aspects of what we released in order to gain that we miss, but invariably, we will start to feel the tug of the past and start looking over our shoulders at what we left behind a couple of weeks past Samhain.
The other aspect of Harvest that can be challenging to process is the old adage of, “God always answers prayer. Sometimes, the answer is no.” Although it is difficult to explain and even more difficult to understand (Lord knows I don’t have a handle on it and anyone who pretends to is speculating), there is a force in the Universe that helps us to get out of our own way a good bit of the time and propels us ever forward toward our own greatest good, despite our best efforts to the contrary sometimes. Times come, and not every year and usually not even every other year, where either what we planted does not manifest or does not manifest the way we expected. Sometimes, we are sitting all alone in our carefully cultivated and tended field and what we planted did not come up.
Usually what happens is that an alternative plan presents itself at the time of harvest. Sometimes, as we look back, we can see that we were being redirected back at Imbolc and we chose not to pay attention because it was not what we wanted to hear. Disappointments at Harvest are not frequent, but they do happen and the Mourning Moon allows us to let go of what we hoped to manifest and release it to come at another time, by another means or in a better form. Always, always, these are amazing learning opportunities to refine our craft skills and our focus.
The Mourning Moon comes a couple or more week after Samhain to give us plenty of time for the honeymoon to wear off of our newly Harvested life and for the reality of what we have created to set in. With the flurry of Harvest activity behind us, we are not free to process the changes we have put in motion and to begin to lament what did not harvest or what we had to release. At this Full Moon, we honor what has left our lives or did not come and release our attachment to it in order to allow us to flourish in our new life. It is a purely self-indulgent, honesty-based time to acknowledge any adjustment challenges and disappointments and longings for the past way of being in the world and then to let it go and move forward.
The first deliberate, grown-up Witchy spell I ever learned was to burn a will. Writing out my desires onto paper and then burning it, watching the smoke carry my wants up to the ether, was particularly satisfying for me and the pyro in me still likes to burn stuff. I feel a distinct release when the energy of the spell is expressed by the fire and there is also the divinatory process of evaluating how the burning proceeded. Often, that indicates how the actualization of the spell will unfold. (Did it burn quickly? Thoughtfully? Did it stop at some point?)
All that being said, we burned the fields at Samhain and, in theory, walked away knowing our job was well done. Like Lot’s wife, we look back over our shoulders at the smouldering ruins during the Mourning Moon, so a little more burning seems to be in order. Write out what you miss about what you let go, what you regret did not manifest or whatever is burdening you at this time and burn it under the Mourning Moon.
Another fun and rather ethereal way to release our attachment to something is by blowing bubbles under the Full Moon. Take a deep breath in and as you release your breath into the soap on the bubble wand, imagine that you are blowing out your residual attachment. Watch the bubbles waft about and as they pop, more of your attachment is released. Sit there and blow bubbles for as long as you need to in order to feel that you have fully let go. You might need the big gallon jug if you’re feeling particularly pissy.
Remember that overall, this is still a happy, joyful time of celebration and plenty. Don’t let the bummies get you completely and overshadow your other successes and the abundance you have received. Having this time to release our longings clears the way for us to fully enjoy the bounty the Harvest has provided. It is indeed rare that we get nothing at all, so if something did not manifest exactly as we envisioned, we must not let it prevent us from reveling in what we WERE given.
As a small footnote, sometimes The Universe can have quite a sense of humor about our manifestation attempts. My son was once doing some spell work to attract in a new girlfriend and he carefully made a list of the qualities he wanted in a new partner and placed it on his altar under a pink candle that he would regularly burn. He called me one week and said, “Mom, I forgot to say, ‘Not mentally unbalanced.’” So he added it to the list. He called me the next week and said, “Mom, I forgot to say, ‘Not already married.’” He called me the next week and said, “Mom, I forgot to say, ‘Not a lesbian.” Finally, he just wadded up the list and asked that the woman who was the perfect match for him be sent. They have now been together for almost a decade.
As my gal-friend, Kathy so wisely says, “God is efficient.”
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