The Daily: 14 August 2024

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I did my graduate work amid people who studied bits of foreign places like comets, exploded planets, asteroids, and moons. I have held pieces of our satellite moon in my hand and looked at the structure of its minerals through powerful lenses. My own work was focused on the flow of materials from mantle to crust and back again. I still carry bits of the mantle around with me through life. Its dense and dark mineralogy calls to me with something more than gravity and memory. It feels like understanding, clarity, entanglement.

I have felt the same looking at a full moon rising above a level horizon. The Moon pulls on me and I pull back. So I was not at all surprised to see the same minerals, the same rocky structures that make up the majority of volume and mass on Earth in the bits of moon-rock in my hand and under the microscope. The Moon is a part of this Earth, bound in a continual dance with the Earth itself and all the beings that make their lives here. The Moon pulls on the tides, but it also pulls on us.

We are compelled by the Moon. When the Moon is a crescent following the Sun into the western horizon, we feel lighter, as though locked doors are opening and new paths are unfurling at our feet. When the Moon is full, we feel fulfilled and powerful. Sometimes that feeling is too much and we do stupid things and cast blame into the night skies.

There is a ritual among the NeoPagans that calls up this feeling. It is named Drawing Down the Moon though it is really drawing up emotions and bodily energies that we as humans seem to hold in common. It is accessible to anyone, not only a priestess in flowing robes and crystals, though theatre does help evoke the Moon into the senses. It can be done in any of the Moon’s phases, though the bright darkness of a full Moon high overhead at midnight also makes for stimulating theatrics.

I have been in this ritual as part of a circle and on my own, and it is breath-taking either way. You suddenly swell with potential. You feel connections. You are struck by insight. But the most astonishing aspect is how a circle of women will share exactly the same internal experience in this moment. I have seen it happen. I have also read more than one account of people attempting to control group-think by conducting the ritual in silence, having each member write down her experience immediately afterwards, hand off the written accounts to another person, and only then share what turns out to be the same story all around the circle. I’ve never done that, but I have read those accounts and can say they describe what I feel also.

I have no explanation for this phenomenon other than we don’t know what we don’t know. The Moon is part of the body of this Earth exactly as we are. And some rituals, some psychological tools, are very good at reminding us of this essential connection that we can’t explain, can’t even name. The feelings drawn up by the Moon are similarly difficult to put into words. I suspect that in that vast well of things that lie outside language are all the reasons rituals work, all the biophysics of magic and love, all the incomprehensible weight of what we don’t understand but yet can feel.

I don’t understand the Moon’s gravity, but I feel it and respond to it nonetheless. I rather think all humans have that potential and capacity. So go out next Monday and watch the Moon rise. If you can, greet the Moon at her full zenith at midnight. Stand with your hands upraised, gazing into the light. Breathe in the night air, taking it fully into your lungs and releasing each breath slowly and mindfully, feeling the connection to all the green lives about you. Feel the bones of the Earth beneath your feet and know that the body of the Moon above shares those same bones. Feel them drawing on each other, stone to stone, like to like, with your own body as the grounding center. Remain passive, allowing whatever is in that connection to flow through you and fill you up. Do not try to direct your thoughts but allow them to float freely.

At some point your body will tell you that it is done. Like the Moon, we can’t remain in that state of peak fullness for long. When you feel that time has passed beyond the full, focus once more on your breathing body. Lower your arms if they are still raised. Do not worry if you find that they have already dropped. Do not be concerned if you find yourself in a completely different position than when you started with no memory of that movement. Just breathe and slowly draw your awareness back into the realm of words and will.

Some people feel compelled to write down what they think they have experienced immediately afterwards, while that wordless sense is still fresh. I’m not very good at that, though I have created some astonishingly beautiful music and poetry in that liminal space. I think if I tried to rationalize it, it would pass through my words like moonlight through leaves. The senses we can’t name are too fluid to be contained by words… hence we can’t name them. I also think attempting to capture such things in words tends to shape my memory, reducing the experience to what can be named within it. Music works better. Poetry is also not bad because the words in a poem are protean, flowing about and shifting meaning, sometimes meaning nothing more — nor less — than the sound of the voice uttering them.

But mostly I take the experience unanalyzed and raw off to bed and let my dreams dwell in it. It’s surprising what sorts of things occur to me in the light of the following morning. Already formed and clear and “goodness! why didn’t I see that before!” comprehensible. Quite possibly why people think I am so strange… but I’m a happy oddball. And I suspect those who call me odd do not know that sort of happiness in their own lives. So I’ll take it. And I wish it for you as well.

You may never hold a piece of the Moon in your hand, but you can always take in the light and feel the visceral connection between all these bodies. It is as simple as gazing up at the Full Moon.

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Wednesday Word

for 14 August 2024

assumption

If you choose … you can respond in the comments below or go visit the All Poetry contest for August. Your response can be anything made from words. I love poetry, but anything can be poetic and you needn’t even be limited to poetics. An observation, a story, a thought. Might even be an image — however, I am not a visual person, so it has to work harder to convey meaning. In the spirit of word prompts, it’s best if you use the word; but I’m not even a stickler about that. Especially if you can convey the meaning without ever touching the word.

Even if you don’t choose to scribble, at least I’ve made you think about… assumption.

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©Elizabeth Anker 2024