A Mourning Full Moon

On caretaking through grief, the shifting ground beneath our feet & preparing a haven within.

A lunation is a mirror, as the moon reflects the sun. The moon reveals our inner worlds, our emotional waters, and often illuminates to humankind what is moving through our subconscious and collective conscious. For me, this is why working with the moon has proven to be such potent work giving insight into ourselves and others to support us on this journey on Earth the through the Cosmos. And even if, you don’t believe in astrology wholeheartedly, pausing every new or full moon to take notice, inventory, a pause, a time to reflect is such a useful tool in our hurried world.

This is a moon to sing our sorrows to. As autumn slides into winter, our animal bodies want to rest, to go to sleep with the sun, but the rush of our modern built worlds do not accommodate these visceral needs. The honoring the cyclical nature of the moon gifts the opportunity to carve out this space to tend to our innermost flame with ritual and care. This full moon in Taurus is an exhale, a release, nestled within a Scorpio season which has felt like an unraveling is here to illuminate all that keeps us from our aliveness.

This moon is an invitation to commune with the Earth beneath our feet, to honor the cycles of birth, life, and death, and how life happens in the soil. When conceptualize the ground beneath your feet, the assumption is it is solid ground, but in reality it is breathing, teaming with life, moving, shifting. This is the same soil from which we grow, build, and to which all living beings metaphorically return to one day. How do we ground amidst the shifts?

Entering the Darkest Days.

The Algonquin peoples living from New England to Lake Superior traditionally referred to this November full moon as the Beaver moon, also known as the Mourning moon or Darkest Depths moon. This lunation currently sits beside Uranus in Taurus, which can feel shocking, provoking, earthshaking, and I think we’ve all felt the collective shock waves, hitting the shores of our being over and over again. Every presidential election season here in the United States is held in Scorpio season innately imbuing these days with even more intensity and this year’s outcome has unveiled what lives beneath the surface of the American psyche. Laid bare, on display for the world to see, for better or worse. At least, now we know this is the ground we are standing on and what we are working with, as we let this inform our preparations from here on out. Behold the madness. The masks are off, veils and illusions continue to shed. Do we need to amend the soil, start fresh, and what can be built from here and who is on board?

This Scorpio season has felt like an excavation before a build, an unearthing that leaves gaping holes in the Earth. The knowing something will take its place, nearly unfathomable. The ancestors voices on the wind “have some faith” We must continue to try and dream up new