Happy Cancer New Moon, y’all! For my first post, I’m writing about humanity’s energetic relationship with the Moon, all across its different phases.
The moon, in my opinion, is one of the most accessible magical things in our world. Even if someone is not completely sold on astrology - it’s hard not to love the moon. Makes you want to say, wow, look, that big thing in the sky is so pretty and visible to all! Let’s throw a party and maybe build some calendars around it.
If we’re talking about the moon, let’s check out its counterpart for a moment - the sun. The sun is constant. It is bright, warm, but also unrelenting. Relationally, we are the ones who obit it, and that’s very clear - life on Earth entirely depends on the Sun, and it doesn’t need us for shit. Our planet rotates towards it every morning; it comes in and gets us up, moving, and energized (wakey wakey!); and then we rotate away and take a break. If the Earth exploded tomorrow, the Sun would be completely unaffected. In a way, humans have had a parasocial relationship with the sun since before the term was even invented. We cannot even look directly at it; for our own safety, we are forced to avert our gaze.
By contrast, the Moon orbits the Earth, which gives us more of a give-and-take relationship with it. It appears to us in a fluid cycle, constantly wavering. Sometimes, it is so full and bright it completely illuminates our nights; sometimes, it disappears completely, leaving us to sit alone with our darkest moments and only exit them, anew, with the break of dawn. The moon flows with us - and us with it. Just because we might not always be present or conscious of it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening! After all, one of the most uncontrollable and strong, fearsome forces on our planet - the ocean - has been shown to be directly affected by the Moon’s gravitational pull. And we’re supposed to think we as individual people are somehow more powerful or less likely to be affected than the entire ocean? Sureeeee, dude.
The simplest and most accessible magic a person can do (“woowoo 101,” if you will) is to simply start paying attention to the timings of next full and new Moons. I say “magic” for this, but in my opinion, it’s the same kind of “magic” as gratitude journaling, meditation, or visualization - the innate spirituality and rhythm of life known of for centuries that modern physics and psychology are now finally catching up to. Essentially, all we’re going to do is catch the natural rhythm of some forces much bigger than us and use it to help us coast towards what we want. It’s a very similar process to dropping in on a wave in surfing (really similar, actually, if you start to think about how the Moon is the one making those waves in the first place…)
When the Moon is new, it is a wonderful time to sit down and call in the energies or things in life you want to have come in for you. Then, each night as you see the Moon start to come in, so do all your wishes! If you’re sitting outside with it, feel free to remind it about what you asked for; it won’t mind. It’s not like you can rush it - it’s the Moon.
Inversely, the full Moon is a time of letting go. Think about what energies or things you want to finally release from your life, ones that maybe were needed or good for you at one point but aren’t anymore. Then, you can watch the Moon grow smaller and fade away as those same things you let go of begin to take their leave as well - until the new Moon comes once again, and you get to start again with a clean slate.
Frankly, I don’t exactly know how or why the Moon does its thing, but that’s okay because I am not the Moon, so I don’t have to. Here is what I suspect, though. The Moon orbits the Earth, and I propose that it does so because it loves the Earth. What if we interpret orbiting as a behavior of love? Have you never seen someone so in love with someone else that they will follow them from room to room, even in the most mundane of moments, even if no words are exchanged between them, just because they enjoy being around them?
If we can accept that the Moon does love the Earth, then it likely follows that it loves Earth’s creatures as well. So I’m confident it does not mind much if, when it passes by, we hang a few wishes on its back before it goes off to do what it was going to do anyways.
As a final note/tip - if you want to add even more seasoning to your Moon wishes, look up what zodiac sign the Moon will be in for its next event. Each zodiac sign can be thought of as a bundle of energies - a little package of lore, character and personality archetypes, desires, and energetic strengths and weaknesses. If you know your birth time, locating which natal chart house you have that zodiac sign in can point you to a domain of your life that might invite special attention or focus at this time.
If you got here, thank you very much for reading my first blog post on The Luckiest Acorn. :) If you do some vibing with the moon after this, I would love to hear how it goes. If you read this more just for food for thought, I hope I made your brain full! Talk to you soon.