The recurring cycle of The Phases of the Moon is surely a thing that has been observed by our kind since our earliest predecessors first turned their eyes upward toward the night sky in wonder. For endless ages before there was a torch to dispel the darkness, it was only by the shining of the moon that we could find our way through the terrifying blackness that followed every setting of the sun. Her comings and her goings then were nothing less than the difference between life and death, for the dangers that lurked around us in the darkness were as often as not far more than our fearful imaginings.
For hundreds of thousands of years our relationship with the moon was like that, and those times have left an indelible imprint upon us at the very core of our being. Is it really any wonder that the comings and goings of the moon exert powerful primal influences upon our Psyche even now? (Below: The Phases of The Moon. The moon circles the Earth once every 29.53 days. In the central part of the diagram you are looking down upon the earth and moon from above the northern pole, with the Sun in the direction indicated. The outer-most figures illustrate how the moon appears from the earth's surface at each particular point in the moon's orbit. When the moon is waxing (growing) it is ALWAYS lit on its right side. When it is waning (becoming smaller) it is ALWAYS lit on its left. "Gibbous", by the way, is from a Middle English word meaning "humped". The Gibbous Moon is the hump-backed moon.)
In a somewhat less
distant timeCbut a time still so long ago that it is almost
beyond our ability to grasp how longCanother
mysterious connection was noted: The feminine cycle of blood and
fertility closely
corresponded
to the cycle of the moon. Few things can be imagined that might
have had a more powerful effect upon the minds of our distant
ancestors than that simple observation. To this day, strong
unconscious associations linger between the moon and the power
and mystery of feminine sexuality. The extent to which such
associations are generally thought of as being "dark"
most likely bears direct relationship to the degree to which the
culture in question is patriarchal in its orientation. (To the
right: the so-called Venus of Willendorf. An object made by the
hand of an unknown artist, who lived some 30,000 years before the
Common Era.)
For those who necessarily depended upon the lives of the animals around them for all that made their own lives possible, the correspondence between the cycles of the moon and the turning of the seasons was undoubtedly something of tremendous importance. If you followed the wooly mammoth with a spear in your hand, if you followed the herds of elk or reindeer wearing their skins to keep your body warm, you tallied the full moons to know the times of their calvings and the times of their migrations. You watched the moon to know when winter was coming.
The swifter cycle of the sun, of course, has always been the most immediate time-marker in our world, and the one closest to our intuitive understanding. One might knot a bit of cord or notch a bit of antler to mark the passage of the days. Without some system of counting more sophisticated than comparing knots or notches to the number of our fingers, however, this was quite useless in telling you anything important about the turning of the seasons. Nor was the lengthy annual migration of the sun to the north, then back to the south again, a thing so readily observed or kept track of. The waxings and wanings of the moon were the time-marker that really mattered.
We can easily imagine a scene from our remote past, some 30,000 years
distant in time from the present moment: It is a cold, clear night, perhaps on a
grassy hillside near the edge of a forest. A small troop of Paleolithic hunters
are encamped thereCmen, women,
and children, huddled together for warmth and
light and safety
around a wind-blown fire. One of the men is busy with a sharp
splinter of flint, using it to carefully incise another small
circle into the bit of polished bone he carries for his
tribe. The keeping of it is a great honor, and understanding its meaning is a
thing worthy of great respect. The fire pops and orange sparks swirl up
against the darkness. The man's eyes follow them upward, to the
place in the sky where the full moon is shining... (To the right, a photograph of a bit of bone, found in present-day France at the site of a
Paleolithic encampment. Radio-carbon dating reveals it to be between
20,000 and 30,000 years old. The inscriptions appear to be a record of the
appearance of the moon, over a period of two complete lunar
cycles.)
Later, after the passage of many more thousands of yearsCduring which you had at last learned that planted seeds would grow into good things you could eatCyou continued to watch the moon. You watched to know when to plant those precious seeds, to know how much time would pass before the life-giving rains would come, to know when the time for harvest was approaching. Some had settled now in places where the soil and pastures were good, ending at last their lives of ceaseless wandering. Now there came to be the seasonal festivals and celebrations of planting and harvest. For the most part, those special times were kept by the cycle of the moon, and many of the holidays we keep in modern time have those ancient festival days at their root.
It must have been altogether obvious to the hunter and the herdsman and the farmer that the moon was a thing of surpassing mystery and power. In our own day, though, that is something not so readily seen. We live now in an age that has largely disconnected itself from the rhythms of the natural world. Our master is the watch that we wear upon our wrist. We live much our lives by artificial light. The majority of people whom you know, if asked, most likely could not begin to tell you what face the moon is presently showing.
A magical journey is an ongoing process of discovery. A traveler on such a journey is almost always seeking to discover connections, for it is an abiding belief in the reality of unseen connections that is at the very heart of the magical view of the world.
There is an underlying premise here that I have elsewhere alluded to; it is a sort of First Principal of magic, and this is probably as good place as any to come right out and state it plainly:
There is nothing in this Universe to which you are not in some way connected.
This simple assertionCthough far from obvious on its first considerationCis actually meant to be taken quite literally.
It is the commonly held view, of course, that we live in a world of distinct and isolated physical things. We like to draw hard, sharply defined boundaries between what we think of as ourselves and what we think of as other than ourselves. We see ourselves as being in our individual bodies, looking out upon a world of other things that are not us. If anything seems perfectly obvious, it is surely that.
What this perfectly obvious, self-evident truth actually is, however, is nothing more than an assumption, that results from our most usual mode of perception.
There is an alternative mode of perceptionCthe magical mode, if I may call so call itCthat opens for the traveler a vastly broader and brighter view of the world than would ever otherwise be possible. One need not abandon the conventional modality in order to experience that alternative mode. (Indeed, one should not want to.) What one should do is only make room for it. In doing so, what will happen will not be that you will become somehow divided, or crowded with two confusing and conflicting perceptions of reality. Quite the contrary. If you take in the new mode carefully and slowly, with balance and thought, what will happen is that you will expand, and become more than you were before.
So... What is this magical mode of perception?
Simply stated, it is what comes from shifting the focus of one's mind slightly away from the things of the world, and making an effort to seeCinstead of all the individual thingsCthe connections between them.
The word "see" may here be slightly misleading, though the act of seeing with one's eyes in occasionally novel ways is certainly a part of what we're trying to get at. Perhaps "understand" might be a better choice, though that word too falls short of the mark. What we are speaking of here has more the quality of a direct and clear apprehending than the word "understand" most usually implies.
Let us suppose for a moment that you are standing on the edge of a corn field on a crisp autumn day. It is bright and sunny, with a remarkably blue sky filled with drifting white clouds that remind you a bit of a flock of sheep. Now let 's suppose that as you are standing there looking upCthinking how suddenly it is that you feel a chill as a fluffy little cloud passes before the sunCthree crows fly close over your head. One tilts his head, takes note of you standing on the ground below, and there is a brief exchange of "cawing" as the three flap away.
If one is operating entirely in the "normal" mode of perception, what has happened is simple: "I was standing on the edge of a field, three crows flew over, saw me, and made some crow noises as they passed."
If one is operating on the fringes of the magical mode of perception, however, what you experienced might have been quite another thing: "I was looking up at a cloud passing before the sun when three crows flew over. For a moment, I was a human being on the ground, they were three crow beings in the air, and we were together in that moment. One spoke in acknowledgment of our meeting. Then the others spoke, and they continued on their way."
This is same event, but a slightly different interpretation. Clearly, one telling suggests a greater depth to the experience. That is the one which acknowledges a perception of some sort of connection, greater than the simple fact of oneself and three other creatures happening to be in the same place at the same time.
Suppose now that you are a bit farther along on the road of the magical journey, able sometimes to stand within the outer edges of what we are calling the magical mode of perception. How might you have experienced this same little incident then?
Here is one possible scenario: "I was looking up at a cloud passing before the sun when three crows flew over. For a moment, I was a human being on the ground, then for an instant I was a crow in flight seeing a human being on the ground. I looked very small from up there! The crows spoke to me in acknowledgement of our meeting, though I did not fully understand their words, then they flew away."
Now, this is surely something completely different from the first experience, though the outward events would appear identical to anyone who happened to be watching from across the field. In this last example, not only have you perceived one of the invisible connection between yourself and another being who shares your worldCyou also have moved out along that connection, and momentarily become one with a crow in flight.
One accustomed only to the "normal" mode of perception would most likely comment that such a thing is but a matter of the imagination, and probably an over-active one at that. Indeed, for a person long-accustomed to (and most comfortable with) the prevailing materialistic view of reality (which in my own estimation, by the way, is far too flat and pale a thing to be seriously thought of as being in any way entire and complete) to have had such an experience unexpectedly might well prove deeply unsettling.
If your world-view is sufficiently rigid and materialistic that it has no place whatsoever for such things, you might even find it a bit threatening to consider that apparently sane and well-balanced people do sometimes have such experiences, without any evident need for immediate psychiatric intervention. If that happens to be the the case, I would suggest to you that you have likely wandered into an altogether inappropriate website. On the other hand, if that is the case, I hardly think you would have read quite so far as this, so I've probably made an altogether unnecessary digression.
Even for the traveler on the long road that is the magical journey, experiences such as the one we have described above may initially be more than a little disorienting. We should not expect it to be otherwise. Such occurrences, after all, mark a point where the world begins to reveal itself as something quite different from what we had always thought it to be. In attempting to integrate strikingly novel perceptions of the world around us into our familiar and long-established model of reality, we should not be surprised that the pieces at first don't quite seem to fit. They won't seem to fit, until you begin to expand your model.
What I recommend is a gradual, thoughtful, balanced expansion.
Please read the foregoing as a well-intentioned word of caution. If you don't feel completely comfortable on the deep end of the pool (and believe me, if you're new to the water, you shouldn't) you've most certainly got no business wildly diving in there. Trying to do that is as ill-conceived a notion in matters of consciousness expansion (which is very much a part of the magical journey) as it is in learning to swim.
Wade into the shallow end, and become accustomed to the water a little bit at a time. Like learning to swim, the magical journey should be a gradual, thoughtful, balanced process. One measure of any true path will always be that you will become a more thoughtful, balanced, and loving person as you progress along it. If that isn't happening, you'd better get your map out and take a long look at it. You've definitely taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Where, then, do the phases of the moon fit into all this? (By now you were probably beginning to think that I was never going to get back to that, weren't you?)
We've talked a bit about invisible connections. About how they are at the very heart of the magical view of the world, and about how a central theme of the magical journey is learning to "see" them.
There is nothing in this Universe to which you are not in some way connected.
The unending cycle of the moon is one of the most fundamental and readily observable rhythms of the natural world. It is a grand, pervasive rhythm, that all the creatures of the world have evolved with, and that all the creatures of the world together share. It penetrates our very physical being, and touches us on emotional, and even spiritual levels.
I would suggest to you, then, that the moon is much more than a predictably recurring light in the darkness of the night.
It is a beacon that summons, and it is a path that you can follow, in a gradual, thoughtful, and balancing way.
It is a gentle way to rediscover lost connections.
There is nothing difficult to be done. All one need do is be aware.
Watch the comings and goings of the moon, as those who have come before you have always done. Know what face she is showing, and which is soon to come. Be conscious of these things, as you look out at the world around you, and inward upon yourself.
Do only this, and it won't be long before an awareness of forgotten connections begins to emerge.
I believe you will find it well worth your time.
© 1999 G S Hargrave (Yopo)
"A New Moon rises with the Sun,
Her waxing half at midday shows,
The Full Moon climbs at sunset hour,
And waning half, the midnight knows."
(from The Witches' Almanac)