A "month" is a fascinating thing.
The etymology of the word is directly tied to The Moon, revealing The Moon's impact on our understanding and marking of time, change, and our own cyclical nature.
There are 12 months in a calendar year, because there are about 12 lunations in a calendar year, meaning the moon goes through it's synodic period 12 times. Lunation, and synodic period are names for the familiar waxing and waning cycle that The Moon moves through, as seen from Earth.
What we are seeing as the phases of The Moon,
is the shifting between Lunar day and night.
It takes The Moon 29.5 Earth days to complete one Lunar day, and this is what we use to base our calendar month off of. You will notice immediately, that there are not exactly 29.5 days in each of our calendar months, and in fact, when you add up 12 Lunar days (AKA months), it is closer to 354 Earth days, as opposed to the 365 Earth days in our Solar year. The complexities of the temporal and spatial alignments of the rhythms and cycles of the celestial bodies is a mind-boggling and humbling topic, rich with human history, math, mythology, and astrophysics. This topic will be addressed in a later post.
Today, is for the Black Moon.
We are currently stepping into the 2nd Dark Moon (also known as New Moon) of the month. The Dark Moon is analogous to the depth of night on The Moon. Just as our nighttime on Earth is the time where we rest, go within, and dream...
...the energy of the Dark Moon is a time for us all to turn within,
to rest and dream,
in the nighttime of the month.
Most months only have one Dark Moon, and one Full Moon. However, because our calendar does not line up perfectly with the lunar patterns, as mentioned above, it sometimes comes to pass that there are two Full Moons within the span of a month, or, as is the case today, two Dark Moons within a month.
This twice in a month Moon is a relatively rare occurrence. If there are two Full Moons in a month, it is known as a Blue Moon, and the rarity conveyed in the phrase "once in a Blue Moon" colloquially refers to what is more precisely about every 33 months, or 2-3 years. When there are two Dark Moons in a month, this is known as a Black Moon.
This Black Moon, on December 30th, 2024,
occurs just after the Winter Solstice, on December 21st, 2024,
and just before the end and new beginning of our calendar year, on January 1st, 2024.
The Winter Solstice, carries a similar absolute depth of nighttime energy, this time at the rate of a cycle that spans an entire year. When phases of different cycles line up, it creates what is known as positive interference. The depth of the Winter Solstice deepens by the Dark Moons that are bookending it, within the same calendar month of December.
Both The Moon and The Sun, are inviting us to go deep.
The invitation is to release our striving. Release our ambitions to achieve, and to gain, or prove. We are held in the quiet rest of the infinite void, in the absolute darkest depth of quiet.
To support you on this journey into the abyss, here are some practices you may enjoy:
Reflect upon what is passing.
Notice what energies have been coming up this month, or these past few months, that are releasing from you.
Notice if you've had any resistance to their passage, and as you breathe, allow the energies of the Black Moon and the Winter Solstice to assist you in letting go of all mandate for outcome.
You are entitled to your labor, but not the fruits of your labor, is wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita that is worth remembering this time of year, and this time of month.
And it is also worth remembering that even your work, while you are still entitled to it, you may even set down for now. You are entitled to rest.
Practice resting.
Resting is your birthright.
To everything there is a season, is wisdom from The Bible that reminds us that there IS a time for rising, each morning, and there is also a time for rest.
This is as true at the cyclical rate of a day, as it is for a month. Now is the time of the month to rest. It is as true at the cyclical rate of a month, as it is for a year. Now is the time of the year to rest.
If only for a moment, let yourself release into the feeling that you are completely held. Let yourself trust that feeling as actually true. It is.
Let yourself be carried for a moment, setting down all expectations, demands, and ideas. And begin to witness what emerges in their absence.
Enter the void.
You are, as all things are, simply energy in vibration.
You have known yourself, all year, all your life, as a distinct individual. And while from some perspectives, this is true, and it is wonderful. From another perspective, you are truly continuous with absolutely everything.
As your breathe, feel as through your breath is moving in and out through your whole perimeter. Inhaling, exhaling, rising and falling, cycling, with the air around you, with the Earth and all her beings, and with the very source of it all.
Let this interconnectivity sustain you, and move you, in it's constantly exchanging ebb and flow.
On your exhale, feel all that has been releasing.
Everything rises and falls, and rises again. Now is the time to align into the call towards the deep rest of the tomb, all forms releasing into the unification of death, wherein absolutely anything can be reborn from the womb. Rest in the quiet, safe, all-encompassing pre-made universe that you are, at the end of every exhale.
Tantric breathwork.
Breathe out for a longer during than you inhale, drawing your mind's attention to this release phase of your breath cycle.
Exhaling is the nighttime of the breath cycle. As we are aligning with the nighttime of the year that is Winter, and the nighttime of the month that is the Dark Moon, let us align with the nighttime of the breath that is the exhale.
Go through several breath cycles where your exhale is longer than your inhale. Let the breath be easy. There is no need to work, there is no need to effort here.
How much can you give away in each exhale? How much could be washed away from you and be forever released in that outbreath? Someday it will be.
Breathe out completely, and this time, hold the breath out on the exhale. Let your lungs be empty. Let your cycling, living self, rest for a moment, in the experience of death that the Winter Solstice and the Black Moon offer.
Breathe in, and let out another long exhale, your perfect prayer of peace from the unity that you are, and hold out the breath again, to feel into that deep and tranquil stillness.
Deep listening.
From this place of absolute quiet that contains anything that could ever be. Let your consciousness open.
Let your senses blend, as they do in gamma brain waves states, as they do in flow states, where you are so immersed in a task that you forget all time.
Deepen and increase the rate of your breath slightly, allowing for literal inspiration as you breathe in, listen inwardly, to that which arises from within, with no judgement, no censoring, and absolutely no need for what is arising to make any sense to, or be of any value to, your ego, your mind, the self you left behind on the threshold of this portal of the void that you have entered.
You are off map now. And you are ok. You are in the unknown now. And you are safe. Your old compass will only ever take you to exactly where you've been before. Take the chance to trust this unusually gentle emergence instead.
Automatic writing.
Staying in this breathing, amniotic, blissful state of completely supported flow, pick up a pen and paper. Let your hands do it, they know how.
Continue just listening within, drinking what arises as though it is nectar, ambrosia, umbilical ichor. Listen as though you are drinking in love, and let that be your fully engrossed purpose for this moment.
Let your hands write what is flowing into you, and leave your mind out of it. It may not be language, and that's ok. If words come, that's ok too. You are here to lovingly drink, not to interpret, not to judge, and certainly not to edit.
Keep writing, just as you keep breathing, keep the pen moving, and keep lovingly drinking and dynamically listening within, until you feel complete.
Plant seeds for the year and month ahead.
This year, you've given yourself a possibility of a new map, a new road ahead, and a new compass to guide you there.
What you have written may not make sense to you, it may not be legible, it may not even be language, and you may have experienced some resistance or judgement along the way. That's ok.
There is something in this process that has already set the seeds for the New Year, and the new month ahead. Remember, we are entitled to our process, but not to what it yields. Let us not mistake what we have written down, for what we have done.
What we have done, is honor what has been coming up to be released. We have practiced resting into quietude, allowing ourselves to be held, and in that space of deep dissolution, we followed our breath through the journey of expiration into inspiration.
Your breath is your birthright. You release and are reborn in each breathing moment.
What you have written may not be the same thing as a cogent new years resolution, in the conventional sense. The conventional sense only MAKES sense to the ego, who makes it.
What you have instead is a personal experience of journeying to the underworld, and drawing up from the depths your own inspiration.
Let this experience be the seed that finds fertile ground this month, and this year, and may we lovingly nurture it as it grows, unencumbered by our expectations. May we continue to drink from and give life to this emerging inspiration as is rises as we rise, to greet the new day, the new month, and the new year.
Enjoy the profound magic of this Black Moon
&
Happy New Year
For more winter meditations, check out A Winter Solstice Meditation
And join me at 7 Notes Natural Health, tonight Dec 28 at 7pm,
for a facilitated Dark Moon ceremony
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