Following the Moon: A Final Test

Being a Verb, Drozda, ink on Bristol

Since last October we’ve been exploring the quieting and calm that can be practiced for six Moon/Month cycles of each year. Now we come to the culmination and closure of that primarily inward time.

Here, at the close of the Natural Year we will do well to review, reflect and release anything that may still linger as a negativity built up since last spring. In the Purity cycle we can forgive the world.

During the Purity segment of the Natural Year we can make a conscious choice. Each of us is born with an inner support system. Joseph Campbell refers to these archetypal energies as Helping Hands. These unseen forces are also called Mighty Companions, Angelic Forces, Muses and the spontaneous occurrence of  Synchronicity.  Leaning into this level of support provides assistance when the Art/Life feels like it is on the floor, knocked out for the count. This is when, here…at this point on the wheel… we can get in touch with the Alchemical Shamanic Artist Within. We can engage in shape shifting the direction of the Art/Life so that it feels more and more like a true fit.

When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it – a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand – as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it’s bad art.
                                                                                                                                         Marc Chagall

Today, February 27, we’re moving through the Crescent Phase. The 3.5 days of the Crescent Phase provides time for struggling. Every Moon/Month gives us this allotted time to push into our vision for the cycle. The primary creative activity for this cycle is dreaming. To be the Dreamer is like holding a seed in the hollow of your hand just before you tuck it into the earth. You know what you’re planting. You therefore know what you’ll see sprout and grow. And naturally, since we don’t have a crystal ball, we assume only that as the growth occurs there will also be challenges and problems to address…all making us stronger and more capable.

On Wednesday, February 29…Happy Leap Year…and the First Quarter Phase of this ‘Purity’ Moon cycle opens. The First Quarter Phase of each Moon/Month produces action as a result of the tension that pushing into our vision creates. Cause/affect. My favorite reminder for this point each cycle is that “to affect the quality of the day is the highest of arts.” Thanks Henry David.

I love this one too for the Purity Moon/Month…from Buckminster Fuller in I Seem To Be a Verb:

I live on earth at present,
and I don’t know what I am.
I know that I am not a category.
I am not a thing-a noun.
I seem to be a verb,
an evolutionary process-
an integral function of the universe.

So here we are just days away, literally, from the Natural Year and its beginning at the Equinox on March 20. Isn’t it grand that we can look back over the past Natural Year and see, sense and feel the expansion of the Art/Life that has occurred and at the same time reflect upon the quieting time that entered in at the Equinox of September. That quieting time ushered in the opportunity to begin the 6 Moon/Months of descent into the roots of our being.  In our root zone we can uncover and rediscover our purity, innocence, integrity and transparency.

Each year it’s a natural process to visit our roots in the Under World (not a negative zone when used for replenishment and regeneration). We take time out to breathe and rest and savor and imagine. Soon we’ll emerge into the Topside World and begin the active and accelerated movement that the extended days urge us toward. The Topside World will be providing us with six Moon/Months for experience, expression, creating and contribution.

This  week we’re spanning the Crescent Phase with its ‘struggle to sprout our vision’ moving to the First Quarter Phase where we ‘take action upon the awareness that the struggle brings’. All in preparation for the birth that fast approaches.

I leave you with this fitting reminder, again from Buckminster Fuller:

The most important fact about Spaceship Earth: An instruction book didn’t come with it.

I hope that you enjoy this time of celebrating your goodness, decency, wholesomeness while honoring your never to be repeated Art/Life…
as you Dream your Art/Life Dream.

It's Raining, Drozda, Acrylic/mixed media/canvas

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See you next Monday, March 5 for the Gibbous Phase of the Purity Moon

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