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The full moon in Sagittarius falls on June 18th, and the best evening for ritual is the night before, June 17 (Tuesday).
This moon’s theme is the Search of the Restless Heart.
The essential issue of the Sagittarius Moon is reconciling the desire for exploration with the comfort of knowledge and information. To grow, we must step beyond the easy thoughts and ideas of the Gemini Sun, and reach out into unfamiliar territory, where things are not so easily analyzed.
The energies of a Sagittarius moon are thus both intellectual and spiritual, and at this time, Venus’s continued close contact with the Sun emphasizes the emotional qualities of this Moon as well. We’ve been looking over the options, trying to find our true desire and how it reinforces our life purpose, but now our attention swings outward, into the unexplored adventures that await us in the larger landscape of the world. There is an attraction to new ideas and the people who represent those ideas for us. The heart yearns for something new, some stimulation that will help us learn.
Use this Full Moon to add energy to your spiritual and geographical excursions. Welcome the new!
Affirmations for this Moon:
There is freedom in motion.
Excitement lies ahead.
Old questions give birth to newquestions.
To discover, I must explore.
Ritual planning is nothing more than preparation, an act of imagination. The reality is what happens when the ritual is actually performed. When the time comes and the ritual begins, the plan is secondary. The most important thing now is the frame of mind of the person or persons leading the ritual.
In some ways, leading ritual is similar to acting on stage. Not in the sense of being a performer trying to entertain an audience, or trying to project a fictional character who is not yourself, but rather in the sense of putting aside the stress and jitters and entering the flow of the present moment.
The primary role of the ritual leaders is not to follow the plan or make sure that nothing goes wrong. Rather it is to manage the energy of the ritual and the participants. The leaders must not project tension, desire to control, or irritability. They must project love, flexibility, confidence, and genuiness.
If you lead ritual with feelings of warmth and respect for the participants, the ritual will become a collaborative project, and glitches and departures from the plan will not bring down the group feeling and the positive focus. This is especially easy to do for a group that has worked together for some time, with different people assuming leadership roles; everyone understands how to support the energy and love of the circle.
In public rituals or with looser groups, there is more of a challenge. Leaders must be sensitive to the presence of participants who are confused or intimidated, whose energy is flagging, or who are caught up in private thoughts. If the ritual is well planned to begin with, addressing these problems should not require major changes to the ritual plan. More likely, they can be taken care of by a shift in your own attitude or focus, which may manifest as a bit of spontaneous humor, an increase or decrease in the level of drama you are projecting, or just reshaping the energy flow slightly by will.
It’s been said that leading ritual and teaching kindergarten require basically the same set of skills and attitudes. There’s a lot of truth in that. As people learn the ways of adult life, their basic nature doesn’t change, they just learn to match external behavioral expectations. We may still get bored and cranky like we did at 4 years old, but we’ve learned to stand and wait patiently instead of throwing fingerpaint at the teacher. But in a ritual context, it is not enough that participants behave well. They must also be well.
If the personal energies of the participants are flowing as they should, then the collective energy becomes available for achieving the ritual purpose. In a magical context, the energy is strong and palpable and is directed like a luminous fluid into the work. For less intense rituals, the energies are more diffuse and less kinetic, but still very real. And the desired result is the same: the collective will of the group becomes focused on the ritual purpose and moves to achieving with clarity and force.
The term “synchronicity”, coined by Carl Jung, is a key idea that applies across all different systems of divination. A synchronicity is a meaningful correlation between our inner thoughts and an event in the external world.
Some examples:
Thinking of an old song and then walking into a store where it happens to be playing.
Contemplating a change of career, then being phoned by a friend in a distant city who is starting a new company and looking for a partner.
Feeling a great need for peace, then having a dove settle onto the fence in front of your house.
Synchronicities are different from coincidences because (1) they connect the inner and outer worlds, and (2) we find them meaningful, full of significance. Two external events that happen at the same time, no matter how unlikely they may be, are just a coincidence, not a synchronicity. (For example, if two people both get flat tires on their cars on the same day.)
Most divination techniques might be thought of as ways to encourage synchronicity to happen. If you draw a tarot card while thinking about an important question, for example, you are setting up the possibility of a meaningful correlation between your question and the card. Since the tarot symbols are designed to be provocative, stimulating, and meaningful, they lend themselves readily to this kind of thing.
But as ancient people knew very well, unplanned external events can also convey meaning, to those who are open to finding it. Once our minds become accustomed to seeing things symbolically, then the whole world becomes a treasure trove of potential meaning.
One of the most basic forms of divination, therefore, is simply being open to synchronicity and noting any events that speak meaningfully to you about the matter on your mind. No special tools are required, although a notebook might be helpful. This is a kind of divination you can do for yourself, anywhere, any time!
Dark Moon in Gemini, June 3, 1:24 pm
Best evening for ritual: June 2 (Monday) or June 3 (Tuesday)
Theme: Know Yourself to Show Yourself
The Moon, Sun, Venus and Mercury are all in conjunction during this Dark Moon in Gemini. This presents a great opportunity for looking yourself over, up and down, back and front. What do you know about yourself? How do you feel about yourself? Are you the person you believe you are? Are you the person you want to be? Mars is in Leo, in a close sextile with the Solar-Lunar entourage. He is ready to express himself, to go to battle on your behalf, to be your personal hero bringing in fame, fortune and admiration. But he needs to know who he is fighting for, and that is the task this Moon presents.
Questions for this Moon:
Are there two sides to my nature?
Am I wise?
Am I beautiful?
What side of me needs to be seen?
powered by magic
Starweaver's Corner 