Tuning In Moon Report:
Underworld Moon
(Oct 29 – Nov 28 2016)
Integrating Your Shadow Side
The Underworld Moon
cycle is the darkest time of the year. Technically, the December and January
moons might have more darkness hours, but this is the last cycle where the world
is actively going into the dark. Once December hits, we begin preparing
energetically for Winter Solstice – celebrated world-wide as some sort of light
festival with the rebirth of the sun (or son. . . ). With this preparation,
seasonal energies begin to lift.
So November is the peak (uh, anti-peak?) of the seasonal
downwards energy. Following the thinness of the veil between worlds at
Halloween, where we connect easily with the spirit world, November is a time to commune with our shadow side, inner demons, and
hidden aspects of our lives. It’s a great time for personal retreat and
quiet downtime, so forgive yourself if
you’ve been feeling unmotivated (I have, and I will).
There is a pagan model of the Wheel of the Year, with the
seasons as the lifecycle of the God and Goddess (the 2 halves of the Great Spirit
in its binary, polarized form). The Earth Goddess is undying (though in her
Lunar form she has a monthly death), but the Sun God, born at Winter Solstice,
grows through the spring, courting the Maiden Goddess at Beltane (May Day),
reaching the peak of his power in late summer, and sacrificing himself to the
Earth for the Harvests in Fall, and spending November in the Underworld, where
his crone wife communes with him before his rebirth.
There are many variations on the details, but whatever way
you look at it, this is a time of symbolic death, and coming to terms with
loss. The loss of light symbolizes
whatever personal losses we have to cope with. While the darkness them
makes it less than cheerful, this phase of the year is important and powerful for integrating all aspects of life into a
cohesive whole.
FOUNDATION OF INNER POWER
Many of our greatest
strengths are rooted in our wounds and failures. Integrating your dark side
helps build a foundation for your power
to develop.
So this month, give yourself some unstructured time to
daydream, sink into memories, and let
yourself process whatever you’ve been through. Take some time to put
yourself back together if it’s been a tough year, or just integrate whatever
changes have come.
As you do this,
notice your inner power showing its face. As you make time and space for
stillness, notice how your true self grows stronger, and knows itself better. You have exactly the tools you need to deal
with whatever life has thrown at you, so dig around in your soul till you find
where you’ve stored them.
FIRST QUARTER MOON (November 7)
At the crisis point of the First Quarter Moon (sun and moon at a tense square) the intensity
of the upcoming Super Moon is half-way built, and you may feel a whole lot of
tension between action and inaction. Action because this is the point in
the cycle where we are pulled to make a move towards what we want to accomplish.
Inaction because this cycle is all about laying low, processing, and accepting.
Focus on what’s important, and take some subtle action in line with your inner truth (this is
generally the thing to do at the First Quarter Moon). Keep it low key, but make
that call your gut is nudging you to make, or take an exploratory step in a
direction you feel pulled.
FULL SUPERMOON (November 14)
This Full Moon is the closest
to Earth a Full Moon has been since 1948. That makes the Full Moon Energy
hyper-intensified.
If you are out of
alignment with your true self, expect
your Crazy to show. If you’re not in the flow of life, agitation, discomfort and emotional instability dominate when the
Sun, Earth and Moon align.
Actually these things are likely even if you are going with
the flow, following your heart, and getting the real work done. Because this
intense moon energy pushes us to integrate our shadows with our higher self
with our ordinary self, you may find
yourself compelled to act on your truth—regardless of how this might expose
your awkwardness, craziness, weakness, ugliness, confusion, and whatever
else you’d prefer to keep private.
To deal with this, surround
yourself with people you trust this full moon, and allow yourself to open up. Messiness may ensue, but opportunities may
also arise as you allow yourself to expand, through integration, into a more
powerful version of yourself. Or, keep to yourself, as much as you need to,
allowing the inner work to happen.
If November 14 is
your birthday, the year to come will carry the energy of this Super Moon.
This makes it an intense and significant year for expanding into your personal
power, through a process of facing inner demons and integrating all aspects of
yourself.
LOOKING AHEAD
This month is our big releasing for the year, or rather,
processing what we’ve already released. So
as you integrate all you’ve been and done, look ahead, just a little, to
the year to come, and begin to envision
who you want to become in 2017.
