Nox Amicus

On Thursday afternoon at 1:55pm the Moon was New. Later in that afternoon, Jupiter went Retrograde. It is said that Jupiter retrograde calls us to review or Release something and can be a time of personal growth.

Timely for Jupiter’s turn, last month’s focus was on Release. In my Initiation ritual I was called to let go of my over-thinking and put more trust in my intuition. I have begun to trust that intuition more in the past three years than I used to – I always believed in it, but I would always second-guess myself. Now I find I’m saying “yes” more when I am moved to. If there needs to be damage control on the other side, so be it – but I would much rather work to make amends to someone else as a result of being true to myself, than live with the regret of not having lived this life to the fullest.

At the end of last cycle’s post, I said something that had stuck with me: “there is beauty in Silence”. Some months ago I was walking with a trusted soul, and through our conversation I thought to examine why I often feel the need to fill spaces with words. Was the comment I was considering going to further the discussion? Or was it just there to take up space?

This brought me to recall something I bring to music quite often – “rests are notes too”. Just as important as the things we sing or play are the spaces between them. Why then did I so often feel the need to speak?

What I realized on that walk was a convoluted bit of thinking – early on, my life had taken on the responsibility of crafting an environment that was “okay” – stress-free, palatable, and potentially entertaining. If I was unable to diffuse the cause of someone being upset, then I was fundamentally unlovable. When I found a place where I was undeniably accepted while being quiet – it turned that paradigm on its proverbial ear.

It is not up to me to right the world’s wrongs and make sure no one is upset. As I learned from another trusted soul – everyone is creative, resourceful, and whole. It doesn’t mean that we don’t pitch in and help – we are called to serve our communities – but rarely does success or failure rest solely on only one of us.

So the focus for this cycle is Silence. The Witch’s Pyramid is made of the phrases: ‘to know’, ‘to will’, ‘to dare’, and ‘to keep silent’. If you want to manifest something, do the work – but then be quiet. Don’t draw attention to the thing you want, or to your work – and never let hubris call you to pontificate about it.

Some monks take vows of Silence, and there are specific “silent meditation” retreats. In Silence we can discern our own thoughts, and focus on our own intuition.

At 10:52pm on June 28th the Moon was new again, and today at 2:38pm the Blessing Moon (or Meadow Moon, or Buck Moon) was full.

I am not “late” for this intention, but there were some things to move through before I could be sure what the focus was actually going to be.

The last cycle saw me looking into empowerment and something I chose to call “compassionate assertiveness”. This is something I feel I’ll be working through for a while – as with so many lessons – I had some of the “assertiveness” down, but can find places I fell short on compassion. Still, using a recently found voice is going to come with some rough patches, so in many ways some of the compassion I need to exercise is also with myself.

This past Saturday was a long-awaited ritual with my spiritual community. These particular rites tend to focus on leaving behind an aspect of ourselves that might be holding us back. I had finished the work for this particular transition in the summer of 2019 (about the time I was in Australia), and it was first scheduled for April 25, 2020 – so I have been moving in this direction for the better part of three years now. Still – the ritual was beautiful and profound, and reinforced my desire to focus and rely on my intuition rather than over-thinking.

There were a lot of things I’d planned to say for this cycle, but there is beauty in silence, so in keeping with this cycle’s focus on Release, I will Release the conscious thought and just let the spirit speak for itself.

I am normally not a fan of chants, but I am also not one to decline a gift from synchronicity.