Blue moon is the name used for the second of two full moons in the same month.

Esbat is a traditional word in secular and religious versions of neopaganism and other neomedicine wheel practices. It means lunar celebration or ritual.

A seasonal esbat for example is lunar Beltane, the full moon that passed on May 1. Beltane is a cross quarter sabbat (sabbats mean seasonal celebrations or rituals) that marks mid-Spring. This year the traditional sabbat and the esbat aligned! A beneficent time of power indeed. Some people mark the solar seasonal rites, some the lunar, some both and some not at all.

When the moon comes full while in the sun sign of Taurus, that is the seasonal esbat for mid-Spring. (Note these applications are for the North of the equator).

This Blue moon, if you follow the esbat way, is a moon between two seasonal sabbats. It’s the moon between seasonal esbat of Lunar Beltane and the sabbat of Mabon or Summer Solstice. It’s a spare or “dangling” moon.

And in my younger times when first learning among the sharing of stories with various moon ladies I picked up a folk telling: full moon between two seasonal sabbats is bad moon.

Bad Moons

Consider perhaps the most basic and ancient archetypal symbols: the Sun as Light of Consciousness, and the Moon as Wisdom and Power of the Unconscious.

In depth psychology we apply the practice Psyche is Everything.

Unconsciousness is literally everything in the world beyond the spectrum of what the individual is thinking and feeling. In other words, it is not limited merely to the individual’s psychological processes as contained in their subjective experience, it includes everything else simultaneously happening now or that has ever happened. Some would even say it also includes what is yet to happen.

Full moon as an alchemical experience is the process of the light of conscious awareness being brought into not just what is Unconscious–hence insights and all sorts of synchronicities–but as well activating what is shadowed for us.

Shadowed means the parts repressed under our day to day personas, masks, dynamics or code switches. We say that inner work is a process of making the unseen seen. This is specific to shadow work.

Full moon rising over the loblollies this week

Full moons alchemize an experience of Timing, Insight, and Exalt. They have a magnetic quality that energizes and holds. This could be the psyche’s alchemical process, or simply the circadian experience of more sunlight in the middle of the night.

Exalt means heightened emotional and spiritual or religious connection to new awareness or insight.

Exalt can be understood as Illumination. So to my way of walking a wisdom Way, it seems to me that these spare moons following a major esbat like the seasonal momentum shift we just had into mid-spring can feel like a tumbling down, too much shadow material or simply new insights and awarenesses to integrate.

As sunlight is stored more and more and the sugar dance of photosynthesis is the main show, this moon will highlight how and if those insights are processed and integrated.

In the depth work there is a saying what you don’t work out you act out and that’s the idea here.

So what matters in soul work is intent.

Intent relies on one’s capacity to access an internal connection to hope that has a correlation to how you perceive the world outside you. Intent is about having a faith intact regardless of if it’s religious. These principles of emotional/psychological states are in fact what awoke my original interest in both trauma work and embodiment in the first place, and certainly what has led me to understand applied spiritual alchemy.

Bc hope joy and love are physically impossible to access in a meaningful, personal way when a person’s nervous system has their body constricted and their psyche hyper-focused (hyper vigilance) in a rigid, black and white way. Making access to faith and hope, love and joy a factor in if the moon goes “bad”.

Don’t fret dear friends! As you know we are all about the alchemy here and the best place to start is always exactly where you are at. Because intent can start with love and softness and acceptance towards yourself which is what I especially encourage under a spare or extra moon like tonight’s Blue Moon.

Let’s seize the opportunity of a second moon to work softness and acceptance with exactly where we are. Let’s imagine this is a rare opportunity (really, it’s not, you can start this approach with yourself ANY TIME and begin it again and again as often as you need!) BUT FOR THE SAKE OF INTENT, which is everything

Because intent aligns us with Will

Let’s imagine tonight is the Rare Moment that the Cosmos is calling for you to LOVE YOU the way you deserve to be deeply, unconditionally loved and accepted.

Allow yourself, especially if you identify right now with having no faith or dwindling hope, to believe in it from deep within your own soul, your own psyche, your spirit.

To believe or to just be open to the idea that it is indeed what you deserve and indeed available for you.

Allow yourself to magnetize this intent under tonight’s Full Moon, or any time these next few evenings of moonlight. Get out there and bask in that sweet love light.

You deserve it, you really do~

The upcoming harvest will thank you 😉

DON’T LET THEM TAME YOU!