Current Moon Phase

CURRENT MOON

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The World

December 21, 2009.  The winter solstice.  Out with the encroaching dark - in with the burgeoning light.  This nearly naked lady is creating her own solstice ritual, as she dances through the Christmas wreath.  Twirling batons as she comes.  She just happens to have forgotten her Majorette hat and boots.  (And if you missed that decade....it's OK!)

But really, consider the timing here, the synchronicity.  I didn't plan on writing my last Major Arcana blog about a woman dancing through a mythic portal on the last winter solstice of the first decade of the new millenium.  It just happened that way.  Sometimes we're just tools in the great cosmic blogosphere.

The two wands she stands between are white, meaning that their potential has been expended.  The die have been cast for the new day, new year...(new age?)  They are two double flames. She has figured out how to transmute matter into light. Also, how to put on a marvelous show, even if she did forget her baton-twirling costume. (These details!)  Unlike the ying/yang-binary-black/white towers of the high priestess, the symmetry of the wands indicates a perfect resolution.  Indicates that the voluptuous yet weightless woman is sensitive to the vibrations around her. At the same time, if she needs to, she is can kung fu the dark away with her light sabers.

Notice that wreath removes her from the beastly forces of the mundane world, as glorious as they might be. The stubborn, powerful ox.  The noble lion.  The eagle who sees all.  The sexy, princely dude.  The winds of change.

She has been there, baby, yes, and done that.  She began the journey as the fool, who was leaping from a cliff, ready to fly.  His black staff had yet to spill its many colors.  He has evolved into She. The divine feminine.  (God is a woman after all!)  She is in the world, but wears it very lightly indeed, as she simply glides through the final threshold with no effort or hubris, no fear posing as courage. 

She owns it, now, having earned it.

The World

Judgement

This angel means business.  He's making a fearsome noise with his horn. It's the great call that Cannot Be Ignored.  It's a call to look at ourselves naked in the full-lenth mirror, and then, to shrug, and maybe give a Buddah-belly-laugh.


Muslims answer a call to prayer in the evening.  Tibetan monks make tremulous bleats on conch shells - another tool for waking up.  Sonny Rollins played his sax on the Brooklyn bridge alone for two years - because he had to.  The Irish used to pay women to keen at wakes, to mourn out in high-register, inarticulate moans. Ella Fitzgerald scats all crazy, but - guess what - we get it!  We get it in the way we get poetry, which bends language to a new purpose - and slows time, stops thinking, opens our hearts.

That trumpet is the connection between heaven and earth, between the ephemeral unseen and what can be seen, heard, felt: a manifestation of pure Knowing, of higher vibrations.  The souls are being attuned by the great blast.  They know now that they always were.  Got no more axes to grind, no more shyness, no more regrets. They are so ready. They are done crying. They are as dumbfounded as new babies.

We don't have to wait until we are dead to be called.  Besides, death and rebirth are partners in a life-long process. You're being called every day. Put down your I-Phone, log off of Facebook, pull out your earphones and listen. Just lie down on the floor and listen, for Crissake! Be glad for your fake Persian rug, all cozy with cat hair, or your kitchen linoleum, all cool and non-judgemental. Close your eyes, feel the floor and your breath. What do you really Really want? How do you want the universe to make use of you? What did you tell your third grade teacher you wanted to be?

I want you all to go to your window right now and call out -"I'm glad as hell, and I'm not really sure why. But  that's OK!"

The Sun

The child is carried on the pony's back,
his own back to the sunflowers
that now tilt at noon.

The kid has ripped the heads
off posies for his crown,
has seized on them like Goliath
in a garden.  Otherwise, like the beast,
he's clothed in skin alone.

The pony knows the way:
first go round
then round.
Then go round again.








Everything is peaked
and perfect.  Two nipples and a navel:
simple fulcrum, unmounded skin.

The boy sprouts a red feather,
like a practice erection. His open arms
size up the universe.
The sunflowers yearn toward the blonde head
that holds no notion but now.

And the Sun beams golden S's
that echo the ripples in the toy flag.


                                                         

The Moon

I'd be lying if I said this card hasn't always creeped me out a little. Maybe it's the expression on the moon's face, like someone conjuring negative energy.  And the spikes that indicate the moon's rays - as if the moon's intention is to goad you, prod you, get under your skin.  And the net of moon-drops cast beneath it suggest her work is done surreptitiously (yes, the moon's a Her) by osmosis, by intention. The air is suffused with moon-essence. It's all so nebulous.

Check out those darkling towers.  I imagine hooded gollum-type creatures splitting 12 hour shifts in a land of perpetual night, keeping watch for....what?!  See? That's my anxiety with this card!  Where's the hope, piping in a tree? Where's the payoff, the sure thing? 

The two dogs here are absolutely wired. They don't know what gives, but they hear the call of the wild.  I gave birth during a full moon.  I get up to drink hot milk and read archaic novels during the full moon, hoping for sleep to return.  Sometimes she is beautiful to me, spilling silver on the sea, or defining a tree's thousand leaves. And unlike the sun, you can look upon the moon without fear of having your retina burned out. She is generous like that.

What's interesting is that the lowest creature in the card - both graphically and evolution-wise - is the one that's bound for glory.  While the people in the towers nod and start, while the dogs drool and sound menacing and run in circles, the crayfish silently feels its way out of the water.  This crustacean is setting out upon the good gold road.  It's not a straight road...it curves every few yards, winding up and down hillocks.  But eventually it weaves its way to the top of the mountain peak in the distance.  The one we can barely see.  The one the crayfish only senses is there, urged on by her negative capability.

Speaking of Moons....http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/samrockwelloscar. Petition for Sam Rockwell to be nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for Moon -

The Star

No, I'm not talking about Liam Neeson or Colin Farrell. Not Javier Bardem or Gael Garcia Barnel either.

Writing about stars for me is like writing love poems: you're inviting literary disaster.  As a creative writing teacher, I forbade them.  So, you're warned. 

There is sunlight without which we would literally die.  There is moonlight, which, everyone knows, causes babies to be born in threes, insomniacs to lie awake all night, lovers to remember why they had to have it to begin with (not to mention pole-vaulting cows). All great stuff.  But starlight?

Starlight cuts through light years of dark, winking in the velvet, timed with our pulse and breath. We are honor-bound to wish upon the brightest one.  Sailors - the good ones - steer by them still.  They are equated with diamonds in nursery rhymes - that adamant stone that will cut glass, and turn the fiercest bridezilla into a salamander as she gazes at her left hand. "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art!" Go ahead, Google Keat's poem right now. You won't be sorry.

My grandmother told my sisters and me to 'follow our star' - to go for that wild dream.  She mailed me - Queens Village to Wellsville, NY - the most beautiful statue of the Virgin Mary, with a blue velvet sari, and a halo of stars on a tin frame.

Why is the star-lady naked?  Because she's protected, and therefore, unafraid.  Not brave - a trait that requires some kind of threat to elicit.  She's simply serene.  She knows she is good - all parts of her.  A little like Jesus, she's resting one foot on the water - utterly supported, because she believes.  One pitcher spills into the earth, the other replenishes the waters.  She is the Water Bearer of the sign of Aquarius.  Although that's an air sign, the overlay of water on the quality of wind (relationships) urges an awakening to the fact that all beings are made of the same big soul.  What Whitman called the "me myself." While you're at it, open that anthology from high school to "Leaves of Grass."  It's a tear-jerker, I tell ya!

When I was twelve, my family had moved to a ginormous old house on the top of a hill in a new city.  We had left our friends behind.  I was beyond lonely, not helped by the fact I had a ginormous bedroom all to myself.  More space to be lost in.  One night, in my pajamas, I walked to the window.  It was deep winter, but a clear night, too cold for snow. I rested one hand on a tile of leaded window, feeling the leak of cold air.  The snow on the ground was star-encrusted.  But when I looked up, one bright star mimed to me that everything was alright.  And the star saw itself reflected in my tears.

Look at the bird atop the tree.  OK, I won't even send you searching.  Here: 

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254 Emily Dickinson "Hope" is the thing with feathers— That perches in the soul— And sings the tune without the words— And never stops—at all— And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard— And sore must be the storm— That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm— I've heard it in the chillest land— And on the strangest Sea— Yet, never, in Extremity, It asked a crumb—of Me.

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