Category Archives: Inspiration

Once in a Blue Moon

Blue Moon © Josephine Wall

Blue Moon © Josephine Wall

For those of you who have been too busy with the Holidays to pay attention to the celestial cycles, I want you know that there’s a full moon tomorrow night and it’s very special. Because it’s the second one this month, it’s a BLUE MOON! But that’s not all . . . it’s also the last full moon of the decade and it falls on New Year’s Eve for the first time in twenty years.

Astrologer extraordinaire, Jonathan Cainer, tells us that there’s something about this particular confluence of heavenly events that loosens our inhibitions, and he advises that this is a good time to think ‘outside the box’. “Imagine what you wouldn’t normally dare to imagine. Hope for what might usually seem way too far-fetched.”

Donna Henes, urban shaman, ceremonialist, and author of The Moon Watcher’s Companion, proposes that we welcome the new decade with a lunar ritual: “A True Blue Ceremony in the Spirit of Universal Beneficence.” As with the breathing in the moon ritual, Henes tells us to close our eyes, sit very still and breath in great draghts of air. If we sigh deeply and open our hearts, we can perhaps feel the presence and the power of something bigger than ourselves and begin to remember our connection not only to the moon and her cycles but to every living thing on the planet.

Whether you choose to celebrate New Year’s Eve with the traditional champagne and fireworks or with a new ritual, may we all enter this next decade together with greater awareness as responsible, empowered participants in what Henes calls the connective universal plan. And yes, Jonathan, it’s time to think outside the box and dare to hope for and imagine a decade of peace.

 

Great Expectations

“Man cannot discover new oceans until he has courage to lose sight of the shore.” – unknown

Delphi ©2007 Leonidtsvetkov

Delphi ©2007 Leonidtsvetkov

In anticipation of my departure, I’ve been experiencing a myriad of emotions, mostly fear and sadness. The fear no doubt is related to that chat I had with Source a while ago about being tested on this journey. And my clairvoyant friend Angelika warned me when this trip was just a fantasy that I could make all the plans all I wanted, but Spirit would have final say in the way things would unfold. And the sadness? Well, I have a premonition that nothing will be the same when I return.

But according to writer, teacher, travel leader, and documentary filmmaker Phil Cousineau who has been on the road all his life, this is exactly what can be expected when one sets out on a soulful journey. In his book, The Art of Pilgrimage, he recounts innumerable stories about pilgrims, sojourners and explorers who have traversed the globe throughout the millennia.

Siting Muriel Rukeyser’s essay, The Life of Poetry, Cousineau compares the fear of soulful travel to resistance to modern poetry. “A poem invites you to feel. More than that: it invites you to respond. And better than that: a poem invites a total response. So too with powerful and soulful travel. It seizes your imagination, but the way through to the sacred moment can also be through deep anxiety about the unknown. The possibility produces fear in many travelers, even at the threshold of their own door before leaving home.”

What am I expecting to find at Delphi? If given the choice, I would wish for a transformative experience analogous to that of Henry Miller, who was so moved by his travels through Greece that the account of his journey, The Colossus of Maroussi, “streamed from the heavens” straight into his soul. I couldn’t ask for anything more than that.

So, I am off at last. I leave today unfettered and untethered, so you won’t see anything from me until I return mid-October. In the meantime, don’t forget to look for the Harvest Moon this weekend. God willing, I will be viewing it rising above the Acropolis.