Full moon, new moon, shadowy Moon, waning Moon, harvest Moon, blood Moon – so many names, but behind each of them lies hidden the same mysterious heavenly body. One either loves the Moon and its phases, or does not. Changeability, coolness and mystery mark the Moon; it gives light by night, is sometimes near enough to touch and at other times at an alien distance, and may be a radiant disc or a sickle barely glimpsed… While the electric Sun revels in light and, as the symbol of reason, pours forth its creative, magical might, the magnetic Moon bears the mysterious power of beingness, shrouds itself, even in its brightness, in mystic twilight, and calls to man with an intuitive pull.
I receive your mystic power into myself!
The Moon governs the reckoning of time, and four times seven days make one lunar month, pulsing between the extremes of Full Moon and New Moon… In one season – that is, three months – usually only three full moons greet us, but when a season holds as many as four, the third of them is called the blue moon, and the fourth, in Europe, the rose moon or flower moon, while Native Americans call it the strawberry moon. The Moon stirs the seas and makes women fruitful, and suffuses the plants with the sweet sap of life.
I receive your nourishing power into myself!
Full Moon – do not see only the spots on the full moon! The Full Moon is a light in the dark sky, the mysterious eye of God, opened upon the world through the night… At evening, too, the Full Moon paints the eastern horizon gold, and, surprisingly, the rising disc of the moon looks just as large as the rising disc of the sun. The light of the Full Moon fills the sky with radiance, and beside it the stars hide… But slowly the Full Moon begins to wane, dwindling day by day, until it hides almost wholly in the gloom and only a sliver of it palely adorns the sky. Beside the enigmatic sickle the disc can barely be made out, but to the attentive eye it shows itself. Then this fateful waning turns round, and the sickle of the New Moon begins, beautifully, to grow. A Moon waxing anew follows the darkest night. The ancients held that the Moon fattens on the souls that reach it, and dwindles with those that return from it to the Earth.
I receive your power of love into myself!
The full moon near the autumn equinox, at the end of September, is also called the gathering moon, or harvest moon. Everyone reaps the fruits of his labour, and it is to be hoped that good people, too, may gather the blessed yield of their sacrifice, not for their own good but above all for the good of others.
Inspirer of lovers, companion of night wanderers, Full Moon… If you were to meet the Moon, what would you ask of it? Put your thoughts into words – this is meditation, this is meditation, this is prayer, a veritable poem. The Moon itself is a poet when, though full, its pale disc barely glimmers in the eastern sky, or when it emerges from the clouds, or when on cold winter nights it shows its vast halo. It is a surreal poem, though, when in the night sky it draws a rainbow around itself in the dark! This is a true mystery, when light and dark meet: the black sky, the white disc of the moon and the many-coloured arc of the rainbow. Wherever the Moon goes, there my thought goes too, for the full moon pours out its blessing rays, and shines even into the courtyard of the sinner…