It is the first day of December. Last night, in the waxing moonlight, the stars were a reflection of the snow-sparkle on the ground, and I was held between in the clear and silent cold as I walked up the hill to my home. I didn’t want to be anywhere else, just there, breathing in the cold air and hearing only the crunch of my steps, dizzy from tipping my head back to feel the sky. I’m slightly off my moon cycle blog writing schedule, but today feels like a good day to give you the download from last Tuesday’s New Moon in Sagittarius.

Sagittarius is a fiery sign, the image of a centaur letting an arrow fly, Chiron, or the son of Pan, Crotus, who invented archery. Both of these images represent someone taking action, and this is what my download was about. I saw myself taking action on my desires, and thinking about how to become more skilled at doing this.

Taking action has never really been my strong point. I sat on my dissertation for a long time. I enjoy the feeling of having lots of time and not having to take action. I like putting things off to the point that I have sometimes missed opportunities. I can over identify with the feminine energies of allowing, of being passive and responsive instead of assertive, so I know I need to bring some balance to this aspect of myself. Maybe it is also how I define myself that keeps me from being active. I was programmed to see myself as a woman, learned early on how to identify as a victim, and spent much of my early adult life putting myself in dangerous situations which allowed me to learn that I needed to protect myself. On my bulletin board there is a card I have travelled with for a while, the image of a princess waiting, fragile and sore. The romantic ideal relies on this idea of a passive female figure. To my credit, as much as I have identified with this version of the feminine, I have also always loved mythological female figures that are active, daring and dynamic. Diana hunts, Athena wages war and commands the intellect, Medusa turns you into stone with her eyes. Yet it is hard sometimes to forget the negative perception of active female energy, best summarized in our western ideology by the story of Eve and the apple. My experience has taught me as much. How many times have my actions resulted in rejection, in coming across as too much, in being misunderstood? And though I love envisioning female desire as active, it is often easier to sit back and not take action. I feel safer that way, and when I want to take action, a lot of fear comes up. So I’ve often gone back and forth between these two extremes, conscious of when I accepted being passive, then revolting against it. A lot of my intellectual work as revolved around thinking about love and working out how to imagine both sides of the love equation as active. Maybe part of the problem is the polarity of this thinking: I’m either doing or not doing. Maybe there is a middle ground, and if there is one, I think it is located in the seed of my desires.

My desires, especially my deepest ones, do not want to be given short shrift or left in the closet of my consciousness. Lately I have been paying attention to them, unearthing them and accepting them. My desires are powerful, they are keys to creation, and if I want to improve the world, I need my will, however refused or demeaned it has been. I think it is important though to be able to define true desires versus false or imposed desires. My material needs are met, so I need to be wary of wanting more, in a superficial way. And it is important to know why we have certain desires. Are they coming from the right place? Do I want something or someone because I need reassurance or attention, or is my desire the reflection of a deeper need, a universal imperative for the good of all? Lately I seek to identify which of my desires deserve to be held up to the light of manifestation. Which ones are false projections and which ones are true?

Which leads me to action. Which desires do I want to take action on? Will my actions harm anyone or anything around me? It seems to me that the desires that come from a true place within me are easy to take action on, whereas those that are superficial feel harder to act on, sometimes come from a place of fear, and have the potential for negative fallout. But if I can first identify my true desire, I can then work on right action. This all feels very hypothetical to me at the moment. Let me see if I can give you an example, related to my work with the plant world:

When I started my business, it came from a place of wanting to share my gifts with the world in a way that would improve the situation of the Earth and her inhabitants. Taking action at first came easily, and still does, when I listen to the plants. They remind me of our interconnection, and point me in the right direction. They help me see my true desires. Mugwort reminds me I want to see clearly through my dreams, so I need to write them down in the morning. White Pine has lately been reminding me I want to stay healthy through the winter, I want to feel grounded and safe, and if I tune into these desires, I know which actions to take on a day to day basis: drink lots of water, spend time outdoors. Lemon Verbena reminds me to relax, and leads me to using her salve in certain ways. Somehow, listening to the plants helps me identify my true desires and be able to activate my will in a way that will not harm and will help myself and others. Sometimes it is hard to listen to this outer voice of my desire, but I find that if I listen from a place of connection, I can stay in the flow of my action and I will not cause harm . This leaves me in a place of gratefulness and right relationship. Listening to the plants brings me home.

This reminds me of an Aleutian story I learned this summer, Fox Woman, and how, after many trials, her running steps planted stars. I wonder how you integrate and contemplate your desires, and how they lead to your actions. If you would like to talk to me about how to feel more interconnected and how to take action based on this feeling, make an appointment with me here! I would love to talk to you about how to activate more heart-centered actions, and this dark time is a good time to unearth some forgotten desires. I’d love to hear what the plants have to say about yours, and help you listen in yourself.

Here is to all your pointed arrows that reach their destinations and arrive, shining brightly and leading you home.

Lots of still and frosty love,

Amy

This morning’s Full Moon in Taurus held beautiful energy, and this evening I finished the article I have been writing for the last few weeks. I got so absorbed in it, in my notes and books, in ideas I’ve been thinking about for a long time, that I couldn’t focus on anything else. It was hard to get my ideas out, and hard to share. All of my insecurities came up. I missed my New Moon post, and I can’t even find my notes of what I wanted to share with you. But today I managed finish my that overdue article, right with the Full Moon. Full Moons are about completion, so this felt right, and Mercury was transiting the Sun, giving my ideas words and my words power. Did you bring something to completion? How do you handle those tasks that make you feel most vulnerable and bare?

It is very cold, dark and snowy out, and I’m sitting in my little house tending the fire. This morning I did ritual to honor the Full Moon, with a focus on pleasure, since that is what Taurus likes. While meditating with the Moon, the words sensual and bare came to me, and that fit well. With Scorpio season, things fall away, the trees get bare and I feel I come into the skeleton of myself. I become aware of things I don’t usually see, as if I’m lifting veils. The veils are thin, and I think about death. The leaves have fallen and the trees are naked. The once full forests are transparent. Now the snow is there, a layer, but a clear cover, a layer that reveals. A layer to interpret. Integumentum. I am bare to myself. What veils have lifted on your vision of yourself?

I have remembered these last few weeks that, though I don’t currently work at a university, I am a scholar. I love languages and learning. I love the struggle to find the right words. I love to spend time with books. I love to learn and I love to share learning. I feel a burning to follow this, to persist, as other women in the past have, as my grandmothers and great grandmothers couldn’t. I have been especially aware lately that I am doing it for them. Listening in, I hear them proud of me and I do carry their devotion with me. I do it for them. I’m not sure where it is leading to, and for the moment I don’t get paid for it, but the world needs more heart-centered scholars and I will continue to do it as I can. I think the challenge of it is also something that is positive for me. Though it was a struggle to face the ways that I don’t feel good enough to do that work, it was good to see my struggles clearly these last weeks and to push through, to decide, everyday, this is the work I have to do. This is the work I want to do, though it isn’t as easy as other things I could do. It felt potent, like being in a cauldron. I stirred myself.

So now that we are bare, let us be sensual. The life of the mind can feel so separate from the body, but I think I am also here to bring them back together. The time of that separation is coming to an end. I can be in my mind in an embodied way. I can be embodied and use my mind. Medieval people were more whole and connected, though they talked about the split and in many ways orchestrated it for us down the line. One of the things I love in medieval literature is how, in metaphor, writers combine the body and the mind. Augustine explains how it is that a tongue can be a pen, how many languages can make a single truth that you carry in your heart. I feel inspired by the way medieval people wrote about being human. I want to do that too. We are not body and mind, but whole organisms, universes even, complex and beautiful. So the mind can be sensual and the body can be intellectual, and we can mix it all up, as we do.

My plant work lately has been working with the White Pine that fell behind my house, almost on my house. Each day I drink a tea of the needles and pungent branch ends and meditate on its lessons. I have been doing this for a week so far, and the messages have been about clarity and joy, support and safety. I put pine needles in my bath salts and in vinegar and I will make an oil, and the tree, split, stares at me from behind the house, covered in snow, wanting me to use it, an immense and abundant gift. I will go to stand by it and see, when the snow stops, what else it has to say to me. I will continue this journey with it. White Pine has been on my mind since earlier this year when I learned it was a tree sacred to the Abenaki who have lived longest on this land in Vermont. I wonder at the silence of the woods here, so wild and strange, and used to another type of human. I would like to be more of that type of human that it wants me to be. I will keep listening to see what that could be. Looking for a picture of White Pine, I just found this blog of someone sharing local native people’s land based wisdom. I think that’s another gift from White Pine.

It comes to me that White Pine is sensual and bare, standing there, giving me life. And I realize again what good models our plant friends are, if only we could follow in their stead. How giving they are, and supportive, and protective, and strong. I think, it is enough to learn from them. I feel connected to my ancestors in this way too. I know that my Scottish grandmothers read the land and heard the land and knew the ways to use the plants for health and wisdom. Sometimes I feel that I am only following in their footsteps too. Then I remember that the trees told me they are our ancestors too. So I am following in footsteps of footsteps. This feels good, and I feel less alone, and I can do the work I came here to do, whatever this is in the moment.

As you become bare to yourself, what do you see that you came here to do? Would you like more plant guidance? Book a free exploratory session with me and we can talk about the work we could do and what they might be wanting to say to you. Do you have a book to write or art to make or a song to sing? I am sure you do. I can help you establish the discipline to do it, through ritual and connection to your cycles and those of the Earth. I am taking on new clients for this deep soul work with the plants at this time, so don’t hesitate to ask me about it! I’d love to talk to you. You can schedule a time on my website under creative coaching.

My next projects feel many and varied. I have more writing promises to finish, my Patreon page to update, and a free gift for my patrons and for you coming soon! A Concise Guide to Plant Communication. We can practice while the roots are sleeping under white and the wind is blowing.

Blessings to you on this Beaver Moon and may we not be intimidated by all the work we were called here to do. My love to you.

Stars Are Arrows that Arrive: Taking Action With the New Moon in Sagittarius

The Full Moon in Taurus and White Pine: Sensual and Bare