Full House in Capricorn: New Moon and Winter Solstice, December 21, 2014

Elsa P. my favorite astrologer writes, "The new moon in Capricorn takes place Sunday evening in the US.  Even a novice astrology can look at that stellium and see it’s profound.

 

With the five bodies [Moon, Sun, Pluto, Venus, Mercury ] so tightly conjunct, chances are, the entire stellium will fall in one house in your chart." Read Elsa's entire post for suggestions for setting your intentions for the new moon cycle.

I left this comment on Elsa's post:

"The New Moon will be in my 12th [House] along with my Natal Moon. Dig deep to release and be ‘with the bones’, my essential nature; call on the Ancestors to hold the light; be willing to hold that light as they pass the torch to me; be a participating adult.

Esoteric, invisible energy powerfully packed on the back of the Goat. Wheww!"

 

"Yule Goat" by John Baer

Our relationship with Mahina the Moon has deepened over time. My husband is governed by the Moon as a Cancer-born man he is conscious of the heavenly body, the goddess. I am drawn to her because I am a Scorpio-born woman and seek Mahina's mysteries. Attending to, or counting on the moon has made our lives more meaningful. It all became very real seven winters ago when we began our life living from our Subaru. That was the start of knowing what it was like to truly Count on the Moon. The link will take you to the on-line workshop we conducted in 2011 focused on the study and practice with the Hawaiian Moon Calendar.

We have learned as my ancestors the Kanaka (Hawaiian) learned about Mahina by observing and noticing what happens when the moon rises and sets; what plants or creatures are doing at different phases; the weather and temperature on different moon times; and the tidal conditions generated as a result of the moon's position. Our home in the Tall Ones the wooded trees that stand a hundred and fifty feet from forest floor to tip are thick and often prevent us from seeing Herself. If we are lucky on a winter night there is a leak of her shape that catches our eyes. But. The truth of it is the moon, Herself, is present not only during the dark of night. The first fifteen moon phases she rises during the day and sets at night. The second fifteen moon phases she rises at night and sets during the day.

The New Moon on Sunday, December 21, 2014 according to our Whidbey Island tide, sun and moon charts tells me:

Sunrise and sunset is: 7:57 am - 4:19 pm
Moonrise and moonset is: 7:13am  - 4:36 pm

So ... on New Moon and Winter Solstice this year Mahina, Herself, prevails as Goddess of the Sky occupying the Heavens longer than the Sun. We have an auspicious opportunity to make use of our Earthly (grounded position) to count on the moon. New Moon is a time to set intention(s) for the next month. Winter Solstice is a time for celebrating the end of long and dark nights with a promise of more light to come. Pete and I have had many deeply moving and meaningful conversations this winter. Among the latest dialogues I remember telling him "We are in the community we wished for. We are where we wanted to be." With the long picture rewound and stories about our past shared during the gloaming my partner and I reflect on the journey. We have been together for twenty years. Come together at the peak of adulthood, not yet o'o (fully matured) but individually we were primed to challenge and hone the definitions of partnership and character. Honing ourselves and our preferences means we have juggled, dodged, dredged and meddled in the business and the mystery of being human. The dark sides and the lit ones have made the journey incredible.

Not at all separate our experiences have made us ever more connected to each other and the collective/whole. When we lived in our car the essentials bared themselves; we learned to discern what and who was/is important. I in particular watched others in their treatment of the 'disposed and homeless.' Vulnerability is not a bad word though it's not something most of us would choose as a personal description. In 2008 I wrote the tale of Sam and Sally (The first of my medicine stories, though I would not tag them 'medicine' they were part of the original remedies)

"... Things and people have been left behind time and again. Like land turtles Sally and Sam found that only what they could carry mattered. People –friends, family and society in the main have had to decide whether the things that matter to their multiple chemical sensitive friends mattered to them. For half a year our two elder dears slept in their car and parked their mobile bedroom in beach parking lots, driveways and lawns of friends and family. Living public lives with an illness unknown or misunderstood isolates, and that is what it was like. Public yet invisible, illness and homelessness are conditions that our society denies. Political mumble is just so much dank air. The sky is falling on thousands of us every day and every night. Life after dark is a time when the goblins of entitlement and gentrification screen out and isolate the fragile and the sick."

 

Each night during these times we parked between the lines marked in parking lots. It was the in between hours; it was possible to be part of the collective, invisible, yet part of it. Like a blur from a fast moving car on the freeway. When one of the invisibles spots another there is a silent acknowledgement. Silent because it is not safe to be vulnerable together; there is no pay-off, no power in vulnerability together. We had money to buy our hot meal or cold drink. Money was not the problem. We were homeless but Grace and Herself (Mahina) were making her strength known to us. Day and night. Night and day. We were not sure, but we were learning to count of the moon and trust. 

 

Time and adventures have marked us with lines very different than the yellow ones that made space for SUVs, trucks and hybrid vehicles on asphalt. What has happened shows itself in the lines and creases that etch landscapes across our faces. Our bones bend and creak like the limbs of the Tall Ones who have given us a place beneath their canopy. Our hair has thinned, turned a color somewhere between yellow and white. The texture of my once ink black hair is wild, the cowlicks have joined and become a setting for storm fronts to meet. The high and low pressure systems tattoo themselves to me and the only way through a storm is to weather it, say your prayers, prepare as best you can, and accept the reality: 'vulnerable' applies to us all. And, when I go to my Hawaiian Dictionary to see how 'vulnerable' translates in Hawaiian, there is no exact equivalent. Instead, I dig for the value that says I (as human) know my place is no more nor less than all and I remain ha'a ha'a humble. Interesting ...

 

As the Solstice and New Moon approach and new intentions and letting go of what is no longer working for me, "I pray to embrace life in my community, humbled and grateful to share from the rim of darkness the light we know is true. Your stories are medicine. Pass them on."

 

Blessed Solstice and New Moon to all our readers and our 'ohana,

 

Mokihana, Pete and Jots

 

 



 

Making the most of it, seeing the story between the jagged edges

We've had our first snow. Early in the morning when I woke and walked the short distance between the vardo steps and the Quonset door the first of the white and frosty snow had topped the iron table and dressed the Huckleberry branches. Spider webs dangled and blew in a gentle breeze, like filigreed  earrings fragile in appearance tougher than they look. The year is coming close to an end, Winter Solstice is close; the promise of more light and longer days. In the meantime the daylight ends around four o'clock. Snow is as foreign to our chickens as it was to me at twenty-five years. This is the chickens' first snow and they found it too foreign for their pronged feet, and took flight from their coop steps thinking their wings would take them to familiar ground. Not today, or at least not yet.

I'm in the middle of writing the third of what I'm called my medicine stories. Hatched from the need to make sense of life and the twists and switch backs that occur -- the ones that show me how attached to one sort of journey, and not the possibilities of lots others, I am finding great joy and the efficient magic of common things. A few choices and my consistent and insistent habit of writing have led me along the way of an artful life:

• Learn from example. My mother was an artful being. She was fun and she was generous. She was also very good at making do with what she had. Safety Pins. Bake my own birthday cake. "Don't dwell on the past." "people come to visit me, not my things." The first medicine story "The Safety Pin Cafe" is my mythic memoir with my mother's memory at the core of things.
• Notice the big and small things. I've always been observant, and secretive. For most of my early years I observed silently, being called shy. I continue to be observant, and not so much secretive as selective or discerning. The condition I live with makes it necessary to be alone a lot. In a very real way I suppose, my condition has come from my astrology: I have a Capricorn Moon. To nurture and nourish a Capricorn Moon time alone is essential.
• Magic and tale telling is good. Before there was Disney, there were stories. Before there was television there was radio. Before radio there was talkstory, the everyday and common magic of stories told Island style, Hawaii kine. I was born to story tellers, and through my father's and mother's examples I listened to many tales. In the years since those story were first told, and the subsequent years of forgetting the details, I have not forgotten how I felt when I heard the story. Maya Angelo said “At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” That's what I hope to leave people with when I write; and especially hope that is true when they read the medicine stories. I hope I leave people feeling the magic.
• Practice, practice, practice.  When I retired from the corporate whirl and the community classrooms I thought my career could morph from those structured years of working for the man. I held to that belief far too long. Trying to replicate old habits, I simply created old habits. Life, Akua, and the Spirits of Life have taken me (sometimes kicking and screaming) to this new practice. Makua O'o and the blogging practice that has unfurled from the practice of training to be an elder is a funny life. All and everything before counts, and, it makes no never mind. Both and everything, all and nothing matters. Mostly, I just show up and write. Practice. Write. Mend. Practice. Write. Mend ...

This newest medicine story is about a magician and a juggler, brothers. And is tentatively being called "Mend, meddle, magic." These brothers are given a responsibility, with instructions from the characters Pale (the border witch) and the Silver-haired Raven the principle characters from The Safety Pin Cafe. The question is: how practiced are these brothers with instructions? I'll end this pre-solstice ramble by telling you that the two photos above, taken while I was on one of my Artist's Dates, was inspiration enough to put something down for the new story. I have to give many thanks to my on-line writers' group Prime the Pump for the space and the artistic mirrors (my writing friends) who encourage me to keep at it week after week. THANKS, you know who you are!!!

Here's a tiny bit to read from the medicine story in progress "Mend, meddle, magic." See how those two pieces of pencil inspired some magic.

"It might have been a spell or perhaps the gap that happens quickly, like the snap of a pencil broken in two. Jagged where the once whole instrument colored bright yellow allowed a thought to etch itself onto paper, the pencil shorter now. Yet one has a point, an original purpose. The other?

"Have we been that bright yellow pencil, snapped in two?" Alex wondered to himself, wishing there was an answer he might have over looked.

The Magician held the spinning egg only so long as his brother allowed it. It was always that way. Magic worked, really worked, when it was allowed. Once upon a time, a long, long, long time ago the two brothers were one pencil. They worked as one they may as well have been the same. Waiting for the egg to stop moving Alexander Santiago remembered the beginning. Time waited..."

Happy Solstice,
Mokihana

The second part of the journey and medicine story begun with "The Safety Pin Cafe", will be ready for readers on January 1st, 2014. Link here to find out about it, and buy it.