Friends, soul writers, mystics, and lovers of prayer,

We are in a sacred moment. But it’s one you might not automatically recognize. The Lunar Year that began last April 11 is coming to a close next Friday, April 1 at 2:24 am Eastern.

This is a perfect time to pause and look back at all that has happened in this Lunar Year. And oh so much has happened!

If you’ve ever been in my annual The Lotus and The Lily prayer intensive, you know the power and surprise that comes when you look back, really look back, at all that happened in the previous 12 months.  It’s an annual ritual I cherish.

But December is not the only time to look back.

Because it’s not the only calendar. It’s not even a real calendar. It’s an artificial construct created by the Catholic Church when the church had dominion over much of the world. So that linear, boxy, square calendar—that relentless drumbeat of workdays and weekends—was created by the dominant patriarchal force as a tool to control and manage production and wealth.

A far more useful calendar and a far far more ancient one is the Moon.

Since humans appeared, we have looked up at the ever-changing moon for guidance on life and the passage of time. Her lunar cycle assured us of the endlessly fertile cycle of life-death-rebirth. Her shifting placement in the sky told our ancestors when to plant and when to harvest, when to travel and when to be still.

Pre-literate peoples with no almanacs or written instructions, survived thanks to watching for and listening to the reliable guidance of their Mother, the Moon.

So the Moon is my primary calendar.

I track my life, my creative experiences, my energy, my prayer intensives, my big AHAs, my sleep—really everything—on the circular Moon calendar April McMurty creates on The Moon is My Calendar.

Before Emma Kupu Mitchell told me about April’s calendars, I used a simple one-page printout modeled on Demetra George’s oval replica of the Moon cycle. I have a folder full of those. So all together, the Moon has been my primary calendar for over five years.

Slowly, day by day, tracking my life in a circle in alignment with the phases of the Moon, has rearranged my brain.

Every morning as I settle in for soul writing, I pick up April’s Moon calendar and ask myself, “What happened yesterday” and jot down whatever wants to be remembered. Sometimes I know it’s a big deal. But often, it’s just something that surfaces, maybe a book I started to read, or an idea I heard in the night, or a feeling evoked by a dream.

It’s only when the lunar cycle ends, that I begin to see a pattern. At the end of a cycle, before I turn the page to the next, I always take time to look back: what did happen this lunar cycle.

It’s always a surprise.

When I have a sense for a pattern that emerged in that lunar cycle, I write a sentence or two or maybe draw a picture that captures the essence of that lunar cycle at the bottom of the page and then I’m ready to welcome the next cycle.

So, when Lotus and Lily rolls around in December, my primary tool to look back at the whole year is my Moon calendar. That’s where the magic waits for me to see the bigger patterns unfolding in my life. Those patterns feel like the dance of my soul—the dance of my soul’s story in this lifetime.

So before this Lunar Year ends, I sat down to look back at all that has unfolded since last April 11. To help me recognize any patterns, I slowly reread the mystical Chandra for the dark moon at Aries 22⁰ 25’ on April 11 that ushered in this lunar year.

The Chandra, read as Aries 23, is from Inside Degrees by Ellias Lonsdale.

When I read it last April 11, I couldn’t visual what it meant. The symbol, “A bottle labeled drink me,” certainly evoked Alice in Wonderland, which felt both a tad ominous and maybe kinda fun. But it’s only now rereading it in the light of a year of intense creativity for me amid global power shifts, a third year of pandemic, and the sudden arrival of war, that I see stunning patterns emerging.

The Chandra for Aries 23

Read this slowly, and after you’ve read it, you might like to sit down and review what has happened in your life and the world since last April before you read my own rather startling list.

A bottle labeled drink me

The force of events sweeps away who we thought we were and plunges us to a deeper place beyond the known. The sheer immediacy, the sudden clarity shifts mountains of intent into another octave altogether. Being taken by storm is the most direct path from here to there. And when cosmic worlds are urgently coming through, the only smart thing is to step aside and make a huge amount of room for unexpected guests, at event you could never have arranged in your wildest dreams.

My Lunar Vow Prayer

To help me stay open to and welcome the wisdom of the lunar year, I always write a short prayer inspired by the Chandra and say it every day (along with my solar vow prayer) when I start my soul writing. My lunar vow prayer for this past lunar year has been:

I water the seeds of my mystic witch life
And the seeds of my mystic witch life water me

When I wrote that prayer, I had no idea what it would invite into my life. But oh am I grateful. My life truly has been and continues to be watered by the magical elixir in that “bottle labeled drink me!”

So what happened this lunar year?
What unexpected guests arrived?
What events I could never imagine happened?

Turns out a lot! Just not anything I expected.

Here’s a bit of the list that emerged in soul writing when I wrote those questions. Every one of these was and continues to be a surprise. (Alice would so understand.)

• The Return of the Witches Pilgrimage, which gave birth to Hyldemoer of Wyrd, my new job as the producer and director in the Theatre of the Miraculous, my assignment form Joan of Arc to declare the female trinity, and the sudden arrival of the name of my mystic family: Woman Speak Truth
• I learned what the Theatre of the Miraculous is and why it’s so miraculous. It’s now the only way I present my events
• During the pilgrimage Kahu Lahela received guidance from her spirit guides to offer a brand new form of Ho'oponopono. I was thrilled to host her inaugural intensive for Hana I Ka Pono
• Thanks to the mind-altering book When We Cease to Understand the World, I realized everything—everything is a living moving sphere vibrating in space, right down to individual prayers
• I realized I am called to redefine “motherhood” and “matriarchy” in addition to prayer and witch
• A year working with the dead with Perdita Finn ushered in a radically different perspective on life and death and the new intensive that just opened The Long Story of Our Souls that just opened (see below)
• I rewrote the 8 days of creation when God the Mother creates the world (coming soon)
• When bell hooks died, I embraced her call to ask to become “a sacrament of love”
• I created A Witches Rosary Circle (just opened on Mondays on The Way of the Rose) and was floored by the response
• I received the seeds for the largest undertaking of my life: a 12-lunar cycle witch mystery school inspired by the launch of the James Webb Telescope that can see billions of years back in time (coming in June)

What do you see when you look back?

Does what happened in your life and in the life of the planet somehow “make sense” in light of that Chandra?

Next week I’ll share the Chandra for the new Lunar Year. Until then enjoy the sacred practice of looking back. There's magic waiting for you there. 

Janet

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PS: Want to take a big swig out of that bottle labeled drink me? Join Perdita and me in

The Long Story of Our Souls 

More goodies:

You can read and share all my Notes from the Field from the blog section on my website.

Come hear me (and Hyldemoer) read Notes from the Field on YouTube.

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