The Dark Moon
The last three days of the lunar cycle are the dark moon period. This marks the end of a lunation. At this time, the moon is not visible to us on earth. Even the moon needs to hide away sometimes.
During the dark moon, the Great Mother creator archetype of the full moon morphs into the Dark Mother destroyer. Intense, insubordinate, mysterious, and difficult to define, the energy of the dark moon slithers out of any hands that try to grab her. Some of the most powerful goddess deities and archetypes in the pantheon that possess a dark moon quality—Hecate, Medusa, Inanna, Baba Yaga, Ixchel, Lilith, the archetype of the Witch—have morphed from all-powerful, self-actualized wise ones to deities who inspire fear. Many of us are now interrogating those narratives, reclaiming these goddesses, and tapping into these aspects in ourselves. In doing so, the liminal beauty and power of the dark moon is also reclaimed.
The dark moon assures us that periods of depression, rest, illness, rage, grief, sorrow, withdrawal, rebellion, and unbridled creativity are completely natural. Often, finding our own unique ways to stay with and transform these intense experiences into visionary meaning is what heals us. To embrace the unknown or mysterious aspects of who we are is to enter the portal of the void. If the full moon is the wild known, the dark moon is the wild unknown. The dark moon helps us destroy, vision, reawaken, and go beyond.
The dark moon is the most mysterious phase of the lunar cycle. Because we cannot see it, our imaginations make up all kinds of quixotic possibilities. It is where desire and liberation wave to us through the other side of the mirror. It is where we are forced to reckon with that which has held us down, and decide to wriggle out of its knots. The dark moon is a site of liberation.
For so long, we have been taught to ignore or repress dark moon aspects of ourselves and our lives: the divine feminine, queerness, death, sex, kinks, subversion, rage, power, transmutation, intuition, and dreaming. The more we resurrect and explore these themes, the more we understand the treasures buried within them.
The dark moon is the waning moon amplified. Finality and endings coincide with this time period. This is the end of the end. The shadow’s source. Rock bottoms and breakthroughs. Destruction is enacted in order to create. After the loss is thrown in the fire, new life stirs in the smoldering ashes. Our inner North Star magnetizes us to rise up into different realities. In this way, the dark moon is about envisioning far-away futures.
If one has been working through an entire lunar cycle, the dark moon is the period in which the main themes of the cycle may come back around again. If this occurs, release and integration work is imperative. Clear whatever debts, past life patterns, and long-standing emotional wounds that are associated with the themes of this specific lunation. Take accountability, express gratitude, then decide to move on for good. Vow to step into a different time line that is now activated with your clear intentions and actions.
Dark moon energy is seeding energy. During this time we begin to conjure the qualities of the seeds that will be planted at the upcoming new moon. When we garden, we are often dismayed when a plant has gone to seed. (This state is also referred to as “bolting.”) The plant no longer yields fruit. Its energy has switched to the creation of seeds. The original plant has to die in order to offer up new life: a transformation must take place. Seeds gestate and grow in the dark. All of creation begins in the dark.
The dark moon is a wildly generative space.
It is where we make friends with the unknown.
It is where we make friends with our unknown.
When we revel in the beauty of the dark, we access our own spiritual secrets.
Within the dark moon are the seeds of a new world.
DARK MOON TIMING
The dark moon rises around 3 a.m. and sets around sunrise. The moon follows the sun closely at this part of its orbit. The length of time the moon appears dark to us, however, varies from one and a half days to three and a half days.1
There are a number of ways to observe the timing of the dark moon. One way is to observe the dark moon during the time of the technical “new” moon—as we cannot see the moon, it is “dark.” The “new” moon is then observed when one can see the first shimmer of light on her face, technically at the waxing crescent stage. A lot of folks observe the dark moon time period as being the three days just before the astrological/astronomical “new” moon.
How you wish to observe the dark moon is up to you and how you feel. Experiment with honoring the three days before the new moon as the dark moon time, the next cycle try honoring the dark moon period during the “official” new moon. If it’s the “new” moon and you feel full of rage or exhausted and you don’t know why, the “new” moon may be your “dark” moon. Over time, you will figure out when your own dark moon time tends to fall.
Similar to the new moon, your dark moon may consist of different actions for each day. On the first day of the dark moon, you may wish to touch base on what is coming up for you and journal. On the second day, you could try casting a spell or holding a ritual around that information. On the third day, you may wish to rest or do any activities that would best prepare you for the upcoming new moon.
IF A DARK MOON IS HARD FOR YOU
It is no wonder that the dark moon period and energies are challenging for some—intangibilities, endings, death, and unknowns are grueling to navigate regardless of where we are in our lives. If dark moons are especially taxing for you, you may have been born during a full or new moon phase—or you might be in a waxing or full moon phase: resonating very deeply with building, with growth. Resting or getting mystical can seem beside the point. If that is the case, your dark moon work is simply to pause. Take stock of all you have accomplished so far.
If you are someone who has a lot of ego work to do, it may be difficult to soften here. The unbalanced ego has a pathological need to protect itself, and that need comes with a lot of constrictions. Examine why you need to feel safe even when it comes at a cost, to feel protected even when it blocks opportunities. Can you accept that often you do not have the control you would like to have? Can you accept that everything always comes to an end, in some way?
If a dark moon is difficult for you, it could be because your relationship with the shadows is already very intimate. Once we’ve lived through tragic situations and survived, there can be a very understandable fear that anything negative that surfaces again will take us under. Those of us who have mended destructive patterns and recovered from trauma tend to be preoccupied with peace, quiet, and calmness (for good reason). If this is the case, you can double down on your coping skills or prioritize pleasure. One way to define healing is an ability to get through intense challenges and still love ourselves. Even when the weather outside is stormy, we can still treat ourselves with compassion, still be our own safe container.
The dark moon is the time to touch base with our inherent power. With power comes accountability and responsibility. Cutting ourselves off from our own power, or denying that we have any power whatsoever, is a behavior we enact to avoid ego death. Manufacturing chaos, procrastinating, overscheduling, engaging in numbing or escapist behavior, being passive-aggressive, having loose or leaky boundaries, engaging in dramatic relationships, waiting for permission from others or for outside validation to do or try something meaningful to us: these are just some of the ways in which we abdicate personal power. All of us engage in some of these types of behaviors at certain times in our lives. But if many of these behaviors seem to be your default, it might be time to use this part of the process to eradicate any over-attachments to serious energy distractions—energetic and literal—you create.
When we confront these complicated aspects of self and attempt to transform them into fertile landscapes of possibilities, we are supported by our own dark moon energy. The act of conscious destruction facilitates growth. Pain made into meaning shows us the lessons of loss. Within the dark moon lies the knowledge that we can do the hardest things. It is a symbol of our survivorship and resilience, which is also our power and self-actualization. The gifts gleaned from the diamond depths offer up the widest possibilities.
WHEN YOU ARE IN A DARK MOON PERIOD
If you are in a dark moon period you may want to get rid of everything you own. Feelings rush in quicksilver hot; you want to rage, to burn it all down. You may experience uncontrollable pangs of sadness, hold a deep longing to grieve—but not know exactly what it is you are mourning. There could be the inclination to rise, phoenix-like, into another brilliant and glittering phase. Incredible visions and huge bursts of creativity may rattle around in your aura, potent psychic downloads may be your loudest conversations. This time is intense, itchy, inspiring—any shedding cycle is.
The experience of living through a dark moon period could be described as undergoing a profound spiritual awakening and transformation. Otherwise known as a spiritual crisis, a healing crisis, or an identity crisis. This process is disorienting and also isolating. It is beyond language, more immense than mere words. How to explain a death that is also an awakening? There is no going back. Once we’ve gone through a dark moon period we are irrevocably transformed. There are now greater inclinations toward the service of humanity. The personal becomes collective.
If you are in a dark moon period, you might not know what your style is anymore. You might be in between identities. Take the time to get to know who it is you are becoming. You will find yourself positively allergic to pettiness, trifling situations, and other time wasters. You want the truth. You want depth. Good-byes will be necessary. Not every person is meant to be invited into your next chapter.
When you are in a dark moon phase, you’ve met many makers and many masters. Mountains have been scaled, nightmares have been survived, and these encounters have shaped your evolution. Titles, approval, and the trappings of the material world become drastically less important. You’ve gone beyond false constructs in order to create a world where your true self and spirituality will blossom.
THE DARK MOON IS WHERE WE JOURNEY IN THE UNDERWORLD
The waning moon is where we begin to pull inward into the descent. The dark moon is the active journey in the underworld. In many ancient cultures, the afterworld was the underworld—not heaven. Folks would travel down into caves and caverns for ceremony and shamanic journeying, pantomiming an approach toward death. Obsolete aspects of self were left there in the underworld so as to return to an awakened life more whole, more holy.
Underworld travel requires bravery and an interest in excavation. The descent is into the vast interior; our own personal fairy-tale realm where we must slay our own dragons and dance with our own demons. Who we have become when we return from these depths will be different than who we were when we initially set off. The future self is the destination.
The descent myth of Inanna, the ancient Sumerian goddess, offers us insight into the healing opportunities of the dark moon descent. Before there was Persephone, before there was Isis, before there was Aphrodite, there was Inanna, the “Queen of Heaven.” She was the goddess of sex, fertility, justice, and war. She was also known as “the First Daughter of the Moon.”2
Inanna descends into the underworld to visit her sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of Death. Unhappy about her sister’s visit, Ereshkigal tries to keep her out. Inanna, at first lavishly adorned in her finest garb, must pass through seven gates, or challenges, where she finally ends up completely naked at her sister’s throne. Ereshkigal orders her death and has her skewered onto a meat hook for three days. With the help from her adviser, two genderless beings, and her father, Inanna is resurrected and rescued. When she returns to her throne, she finds her husband on it. Instead of mourning her he has taken over her kingdom. She banishes him. After so much hardship, Inanna returns to her life more whole and more powerful than ever. She has known rejection, betrayal, and death. She has been stripped in every sense of the word. She has surrendered completely. Inanna now becomes Queen of Heaven and Earth.3
The myth of Inanna predates any masculine god’s descent tale. In this myth, women are the central figures. In many myths where goddesses enter the underworld, they are dragged or pulled against their will—usually by a masculine figure (see Hades and Persephone, or any number of other Greek myths involving non-consent). Inanna willingly travels down into the underworld, curious and ready to experience her shadow self.
Inanna dies for three days and three nights. The experiences of her own dark moon period are initiated by a yearning to visit the mysterious underworld. In the process, various relationships are completely changed—most important, the one with herself. Once she is so naked as to lose her skin, her death rebirths her.
This myth can act as a guide for our own descents. Inanna passes through seven gates, removing an item of clothing at each one. This can serve as a metaphor for our own journeying. Habits and beliefs form layers of distractions that hinder us from living authentically. What falsities do we cling to as if they were real? What has been distracting us from important work? What stories keep us ensnared in the trance of unworthiness?4
This myth also illustrates how much honesty and vulnerability is required in order to facilitate growth and healing. At the dark moon, dare yourself to get honest about who you really are. Admit how incredibly strong, brilliant, and genius you are. Believe that you possess the courage to meet your own demons and dragons in order to transcend them. Envision what will be possible when you connect with your own personal power completely.
Descent is either a willing or unwilling initiation. A willing process often begins when we are called to make an enormous change. If we can parse out how we are ready to expand, we first pay attention to all that blocks us and clear those blocks away. The healing process around an old wound may commence. We are ready to unite once again with our intuition through subconscious or dream world exploration. We are Inanna, paying a visit to the underworld to meet our sister self. We know that she might be angry, resentful of our intrusion. Underworld selves prefer to rule unbothered, perched on their jagged thrones from deep inside our psyches.
Willing descent requires a commitment to interior work. Therapy, support groups, journaling, meditation, dialogues, forgiveness work, unabashed self-observation, nervous system healing, facing hard truths.
Often, we are dragged into the descent unwillingly. Depression, illness, profound loss, breakups, addictions, uncomfortable revelations, and other deeply painful situations will often initiate a descent. If this is the case, the number-one rule is to give ourselves oceans of compassion. So often, we blame ourselves. Almost always, though, we are doing the best we can. All of the ways humankind grapples with the unfairness of life will surface. Unfortunately, gentle reader, life is not balanced; bad things happen to wonderful people. If possible, seek outside help in as many forms as you can. Dress your wounds and give yourself buckets of compassion. In time, try to identify what this situation is teaching you.
Think about what resources the situation is asking you to tap into. What does this challenge want you to get clear about? What are your coping skills? Is there a way to make this situation an ally? Reflect on how this hardship has helped you focus in on what is most important to you. This descent has scraped away all that is frivolous; in time, this will be a gift. Make an action plan about what must be done differently, moving forward. Be clear about what must be done now.
Enlightenment occurs through the journey into the different areas of the psyche, from the subconscious to dream states to the ego to the conscious to imagination to super-consciousness. There is much light to be found in the underworld, we need only learn how to look. The visions collected in the dark will bring forth future revelations.
THE DARK MOON IS THE TIME TO DEAL WITH THE HARD STUFF
Suffering is too often accompanied by shame; shame is often the instigator of much suffering. Shame can be found virtually everywhere: in the media, advertising, in our family of origin’s beliefs and patterns, in our workplaces, in the spiritual community, as well as in the world at large. The consorts of shame are humiliation, silence, and self-hatred. The accomplices of shame are racism, fat-phobia, classism, transphobia, capitalism, and sexism. The ropes keeping shame upright are guilt, blame, embarrassment, and paralysis. The enforcers of shame are perfectionism and competition. Shame also often takes the shape of “shamers”—other people who enforce your feelings of unworthiness. Sometimes we are the shamers, whether or not we know it.
Shame is one of the most pervasive emotions there is. Shame could stop you from moving forward on your dreams. Shame silences us and leads us to believe that whatever abuse we experienced was our fault. Shame renders us powerless no matter how high we climb.
Shame is a hex that takes hold in both apparent and intangible ways. It is a hex that, if left to fester, will feed on itself. There are ways out of the curse of shame. Vulnerability and connection are antidotes to shame. Silence is shame fertilizer; voice your truth and watch shame wither. Laughter, humor, fun, silliness, and joy make shame run away. Focusing on all you have until your heart feels warm and glowing snuffs the flame of shame. Connections to your own unique creative expression or spiritual practice alleviate shame, as does surrounding yourself with a positive support network.
Separate your actions from your intrinsic value. Yes, maybe you made a mistake. Maybe it was truly horrible and hurt others or yourself. Maybe it was just slightly uncool. But that doesn’t make you any less awesome, or any less valuable. If you need to take accountability, take accountability. Apologize, make amends, and understand how not to repeat the mistake. Take action around your misstep. Realize that others might not be ready to accept apologies or be quick to forget. Move on with the wisdom you’ve gained.
I have found that shame in my life tends to pop up when I am about to get more expansive, when I’m ready to take up more space. Because my background has abuse in it, my subconscious and my ego have told me that to stay small is to stay safe. I have found that it is when I am about to level up in some fashion that shame and doubt will actually sting and stick around. My subconscious is looking for proof that I’m meant to hide, that I’m unworthy or undeserving of my hard work, and it comes out in shame spirals. Be mindful of how and when shame turns up for you. Use it as information, not as a reason to quit.
During the dark moon time, as part of your moon mapping, you may wish to check in and see if shame is holding you back. Where do themes of shame pop up in your life? Where do you weaponize shame, to punish yourself, or others? What are some recurring limiting thought patterns related to shame that hold you back? Reflect during the quiet of this time in order to gain a different perspective or more information around how shame may pop up, or hold you back.
Forgiveness Is a Gift You Give Yourself5
Forgiveness is a worthwhile practice when dealing with the hard stuff. Sometimes, if you’ve done a lot of other work, tried a lot of different things, and something still seems stuck, it could be that forgiveness is in order.
Some folks think forgiveness is the same as welcoming someone who wronged you back into your life. It isn’t. It is about dropping a burden you may not have even realized you were carrying.
Some of us are waiting for an apology that will never come. With all fibers of our being we believe that we are owed this—and truly, we do deserve one. But it never comes. So resentment grows like mold on our insides. Underneath the resentment are complicated emotions. Longing. Abandonment. Anger. We need to direct our attention to those subsurface emotions and be open to feeling them and giving them love. This awareness serves as an indicator of where we can alleviate the stress we’ve put ourselves under.
The power of forgiveness is such that it releases energetic cords and brings more tenderness and compassion into one’s heart. Rather than remain stagnant in the past, the act of forgiveness places us into the present.
We slip into patterns of being our harshest critic. We hold so much against ourselves. Usually no one is harder on ourselves than us. Even if you can’t quite name or place why you might have to forgive yourself, it is important to have a consistent self-forgiveness practice. Sitting down once a month and having a longer forgiveness meditation around the waning or dark moon is a fruitful habit to practice. Forgive your past self. Forgive your present self. Whisper, “I forgive you. I love you,” and set those parts of yourself free. Let go of what is no longer yours to carry. It most likely was never yours to drag around in the first place.
Another related piece of healing work is to not forgive, but accept. Compulsory forgiveness may feel activating, and isn’t always appropriate. If there was abuse or violence, or horrific mistreatment, maybe that isn’t even an option, nor should it be. Maybe being able to tap into anger and own it feels empowering to you, which is in itself a gift. The point of forgiveness is to reclaim precious energy. Another way of doing this is to try acceptance. Acceptance is not approval. It is not condoning awful behavior, it is acknowledging it. It is understanding and accepting what happened, or understanding and accepting what kind of person someone is, in order to make the decision to untangle one’s energy and to move on. Acceptance is a powerful healer. As Lily Tomlin said, in reference to forgiveness, it is giving up all hope of a better past.
THE DARK MOON IS WHERE WE DEAL WITH DEATH
There are levels and layers to death. There are subtle deaths: when a phase of inquiry or interest ends. There are deaths that leave you numb: processing the particular wound will unfold over time. There are deaths that are exuberant: orgasms, bonfires burning pages and pages of “no mores” and “see you nevers!” There are deaths that are a long time coming: a pronoun change, a name change, the end of a toxic relationship, the release of an identity that no longer fits.
Part of what makes these types of more metaphorical deaths so incredibly anxiety-producing in real time is that we truly do not know what awaits us on the other side. Our consciousness may react to our circumstances in a defensive way. Figuring out how to soften while these metaphoric deaths occur helps us rewire our systems. When we stay present with ourselves through shock, this supports our ability to be flexible. We bend instead of break.
There is the literal death most of us recognize as primary: the end of life, the permanent cessation of an organism’s being. It is my belief, based on visitations by clients’ loved ones and my own, that the consciousness of a human goes on after their body ceases to function. Our bodies return to the earth from where we began, back to the source, while consciousness lives on in different forms in different realms.
Energy cannot be destroyed. Energy can only be transformed. Death is not the end of a person’s legacy. It is not the end so long as we have people who remember us, and those people have others that remember them. If you are grieving a person, this means that you have been blessed by someone’s love. We create legacies that live long after our bodies have passed on. We live on through the acts of love we undertake, in the inventions we offer, in recipes we share, and through the families—biological and chosen—we create. All the more reason to be careful and exacting with your intentions, your words, and the energy you bring to a space.
In her monumental book Women Who Run with the Wolves, the scholar Clarissa Pinkola Estés presents the concept of Life/Death/Life.6 This is the idea that time continues on: nothing living ever really dies. States of being are transmuted constantly. Matter is transformed. Our periods of dormancy, of death morph into life. The moon dies each month so she can be reborn.
If metaphoric deaths are painful for you, it might be useful to meditate on the idea of life, of rebirth. What new life will this death dissolve into? Remember all the times that when something left, another way of loving came along. Life/Death/Life is a circle, not a straight line.
We weave in and out of death and life, out and in. Sometimes with others, never quite alone. Even in death, we are not alone. We enter the realm of the ancestors. The remembrance of our actions weaves into the loving memories of those we have influenced. As long as there is love, no one ever dies.
Our Harmful Ego Must Die So We Can Be Reborn
The dark moon energy is one that facilitates ego death. Everyone has an ego and everyone needs an ego—a healthy one. Unfortunately, not a lot of us were taught what a healthy ego looks like. A lot of us weren’t given tools to feel safe and so our ego stepped in to become a shield, a defense mechanism, leading to an unhealthy ego that acts as a separation device. Not being controlled and constrained by the harmful parts of our ego is a struggle for many.
Try to locate what your ego “feels like” in your body and when it tends to flare up, becoming protective at the cost of openness and growth. It could be around money stuff, it could be around criticism, it could be around being acknowledged. (Most of us have multiple ego activation points.) Usually, the only way the ego knows how to keep us safe is through avoidance, defensiveness, or denial.
For trauma survivors, for folks whose agency has been taken away from them on repeated occasions, change can often feel like ego death. For those of us who have been abused, once we’ve broken free from harm and gained agency, we sometimes wish to reinforce the boundaries of all our choices. Saying no, sticking to routines and the known, is a reclamation. Doing so reinforces our autonomy and safety. I am in no way suggesting that folks who need safe and secure arenas threaten that. If you feel called to rebirth, there is something that must die in order to facilitate that. The gentle suggestion is to seek out changes in small, safe-feeling increments. Change up the order of your daily routines. Change up what you do for fun. Change up how you meditate. Meditate on change.
One way we must actively seek death is through the death of fixed identities. We are always changing, always growing into multiple identities at all times. All of the ways in which an ego is tested—embarrassment, disruption, humiliation, vulnerability, rejection—threaten to strip off the masks we have constructed. The walls we have painstakingly built—to keep us separate, keep us isolated, keep us safe—come tumbling down when we face a death of any kind. During these times, we are reminded that safety is not a given. The illusion of safety can prohibit our growth. One reward of dissolving our over-attachment to a constrictive identity is the sense that we can be anyone, we can become whatever we would like.
The death of unhealthy aspects of the ego promises us an experience of self that is far greater, enduring, and more meaningful than if we had kept our defenses erected. The essence of who we are—our core consciousness—has space to chime in. With our authentic selves laid bare, we get real. When we get as real as we can, we name and focus on what is most important for our reinvention. Another self emerges. And then another. The death and rebirth, Life/Death/Life cycle goes on as long as we do.
Grief Is a Part of All Our Ongoing Life and Death Processes
Grief is not something to be fixed or ignored. Grief is to be worked with, listened to, and allowed to take up space. Grief is to be engaged with, another teacher in the classroom of life.
All of us sit and converse with grief at some point. We grieve those we lose. We grieve the past, whether through nostalgia, or if stolen from us by cruelties. We grieve our ancestors’ pasts—what they had to go through to get us here. We grieve violence, injustice, and needless suffering. We grieve for whole peoples, mistreated and exploited. We grieve for the earth and her flora and fauna, polluted and ravaged.
We grieve what we never had. We grieve what no one gave us. Who we were told we were. We grieve the fear and scarcity that were dumped on us by society, or by our families.
Grief can also be existential. It can feel both vague and nameless, and yet also deeply entrenched in bone and blood. If you come from a group of people who have experienced persecution, remnants of grief are passed down through your DNA.7 If you are part of a diaspora, there is grief that comes from that deep grief accompanying people who have been colonized, with all of the violence and erasure that it includes.
Once grief sets in, it will not go away until we acknowledge it. Grief is bitter molasses, there is no rushing through it. Grief is an ongoing process, and we must treat it as such. Expecting that we will wake up one day finished with the feelings that keep company with loss only sets us up for more pain. Only when we accept that grieving will be an ongoing part of our existence will our pain transmute into deeper healing.
Grief shows up in unexpected ways. Sometimes after experiencing a great success, we may find ourselves numb or sad in some way. The time line of grief is not logical. Witnessing and working with the timelessness of moontime, the timelessness of magic can help us embrace this. We can return to a painful scenario, reframe it, and leave certain attachments behind. We can still include our loved ones in our lives even if they have passed. Speak to them, write them letters, and share our lives with them. Remember that many of our ancestors, blood or not, want us to carry on and create lives that are a testament to the lessons they’ve taught us.
Grieve what you need to and when you need to. There is no grief hierarchy and no grief handbook that will be completely tailored to you. (The books of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross are a start, as is The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise by Martín Prechtel, and Bluets by Maggie Nelson.) Grieving is a somatic process: it must be experienced through the body. It must make its way through your nervous system and out of your tear ducts. It must be experienced viscerally; do not hold back from expressing emotions. Do not force yourself to “get out there” or be the same person you were before the traumatic event. Let grief hold you as it needs to hold you. Let yourself be in a relationship with your grief until you are holding it. This helps loosen its grip. Eventually, the holding moves into integration, and the integration gives us more insights and a more spacious quality of life.
Looking to archetypes of grief—symbols of sadness, sorrow, and rage—can help us better understand or empathize with our pain. There are the Harpies: those wailing winged soul-snatching creatures of stormy winds. There is Lilith, the original grief-stricken woman, her pure expression rejected by her husband, punished by god, losing thousands of children a day, all alone in an empty world. Hecate glides over the expanses of the liminal world and the underworld, her black cloak gliding over headstones, her hounds gnashing their teeth, her torches lighthouses in the night. She is a solace to those who exist in between worlds. Indeed, over time, Hecate was demoted from being the ruler of all worlds, to the ruler of Hell, to a sub-deity forced to roam; she expresses a particular form of feminist grief—the grieving of a power repressed, stolen, and shunned.
These images of pain-ravaged femininity present to us the ways that pain literally mutates us. Made out of claws, teeth, monstrous parts, and too many heads, grief transforms us into surrealistic pain bodies. These archetypes speak to how we are physically and psychically augmented by grief and trauma. Look to tales and stories from your own culture and background to see if there are any teachings in your ancestor’s archetypes of feminist grief. Listen to various examples of grief personified through art: the music of Nina Simone, Alice Coltrane, Nick Cave.
Pay attention to how grief comes up for you and what it needs you to know. Let your grief inform your life. Let it change you. Let it break you open. Let it pull you through. May your suffering make you softer and stronger. May your grief inspire you to demand justice, connect to others, and help you to protect your joy.
THE DARK MOON IS THE ENERGY OF THE VOID
Death is scary to us because it lies outside the limits of our imagination. Beyond death, there is what we truly cannot conceptualize. This is the void. The void is infinite.
Where there is the infinite, there is joy. “There is no joy in the finite,” the Chandogya Upanishad reminds us.8 The finite can be controlled; the finite is exact and thus is limited. The finite does not acknowledge the endless beyond from which our consciousness springs. The infinite is chaotic, the infinite is messy. There are only possibilities, beyond laws, beyond money, beyond linear time.
In much of Eastern thought, the 0 is a strong symbol: it cannot be destroyed, it is a stand-alone. It is the numeral between the positive and negative; it is a balanced base. Zero is the tunnel, the portal, that cosmic spiral that occurs in nature: the earth, the orbits, the moon. The void is a fruitful place.
Nothingness is like the nothingness of space, which is actually everything.
Magic Loves a Void
Even though embracing the void can run counter to our impulses, doing so will completely enhance our magic. The most potent magic takes place in the void. In the liminal space.
Non-attachment can stimulate growth. Detachment from a very specific outcome in our magical workings gives the energy more opportunities to flourish. Clear the mind of concrete expectations and even more fantastic results will occur.
Generally, we avoid the void. Humans really like space to be filled in, schedules to be packed, and goals to be stacked five miles high. The machine of capitalism tells us this is the path to success: this is what success is, what worthiness is. That spell gets broken when we accept that we must float in the land of the unknown for periods of time. Embody the unknown in order to create imaginative groundbreaking art, ideas, and liturgy.
New combinations are activated in the unknown. When we don’t know what is next, or even what we wish to be next, clearing out space and time, and allowing ourselves to get comfortable in the void is some of the most important work we can do.
Build a bridge from a finite place to an infinite space. Restructure our mindset so that we are in a relationship with our desires, not controlled by them. Radically accept where we are: the pain, the chronic illness, the disappointment, the avoidance. Whatever the block is, it is also the information that leads us into a more generous space. A place of no-thingness. A place to begin.
When we practice having healthy detachment, our spiritual and magical life tends to grow. Our magic is more alluring when we meet the universe halfway, not when we are chasing her down with a butterfly net. Treat your magic as you would like to be treated. Give your desires the space they need to take. Let the shapes they make best teach you the lessons you need to learn along your path of infinity.
Make time for play. Play is anything that is enjoyable and doesn’t rely on an outcome to be worthwhile. Anything that doesn’t have a “should,” “have to,” or due date attached to it. Activities that are solely for pleasure, connection, and expression. Make a list of those activities. Do more of them.
Create something, then destroy it. Do some things that are invisible to everyone but you, every day for many weeks. Remember a time when many things were unknown to you. What came out of that phase? What is mysterious about yourself, to yourself?
In the void, we discover what works for us and us alone. What that is will not be the same thing as it is for anyone else. It may not even be the same as what worked for you a year ago. But it will be exactly what you need to take with you on the next leg of your journey. In the void, we learn to float. We meet our future crone, our wisest self—and listen carefully to what they want to impart.
Every path is unknown. Even the ones that appear tried and true have a destination we cannot fully know. Even if we get the “good” job, even if we do what is expected of us, even if we make the “right” choices, life will continue to throw us cosmic curveballs. Even when we try to play it safe, things fall apart. This is why it is important to work with the energy of the dark moon to ask the important questions.
What do I want to accomplish, spiritually, before I die? What do I wish to accomplish, creatively, before I die? What am I healing? What are the most important things in my life? What are my emotional, physical, and spiritual needs? How can my unique gifts flow through me? What wisdom am I searching for in this lifetime?
When we can answer a few of those questions truthfully, we’ve gained real intimacy with the self. There’s a bedrock of trust and understanding. To enact the lessons of the dark moon is to follow our own wisdom, to apply all we have learned, while leaving some space for some unexpected wonder.
The dark moon is the part of the lunar cycle where we step into our own authority. There is meaning to be made of the accumulation of patterns, time, and dreams. Within this authority is power. This power is built on trust. As we complete and close our own circles we come home to ourselves.
Little Activities and Rituals to Try During a Dark Moon Time
Learn to see in the dark. If the outside is safe for you, find someplace very quiet, and go outside in the dark alone. Sit in the darkness and stare at the stars. Lose yourself in poetry, in fairy tales, in children’s stories. Hold a funeral for your self-hatred. Write down one thing you need out of your life by next dark moon on paper and watch it dissolve in a glass of vinegar. Eradicate the word sorry from your vocabulary. Focus on what is most important more often than you focus on what is not important at all. Make a list of activities that consistently drain your energy and eliminate at least one of them forever by the last day of the dark moon. Turn your phone off: for hours, or days. Go on a detox: from all that you think you know, from all that you think you are. Meditate on nothingness. Connect to the various elders and wise ones of the cosmic pantheon—or the ones in your neighborhood or family. Connect with your inner crone. Connect with your outer crone. Encourage yourself to vision in the void.
