Cup of the Moon

Cup of the moon, filling, filling, shinning in the night

Cup of the moon, spilling, spilling, spilling out her light
We dance in the light, in the silvery light, when the moon is at her fill
And when the cup of the moon is empty, we wait here listening and still
Chant from “Rainbows in my Mind,” by Carole & Bren

It’s 27 degrees here in southern Maine tonight—27 cold crisp degrees.  The sky is crystal clear and the full moon is so brilliant that it is easy to find my way as Taliesin and I walk the land.  I’m relatively new to life in this part of the world—at least in this lifetime—and if you had told me a few years ago that I would find myself wandering outside at night in the cold I might have wondered what you were smoking.  But in the past several months, I have increasingly found myself drawn to nighttime walking.

We sit by the empty fire pit and gaze at the moon, sinking into deep meditation.  I’m a Moon Child—a Cancer—so I have always had a special relationship with the moon.  Indeed, some of my earliest memories are of seeing the moon outside my bedroom window.  But the full moon in the humid night skies of Florida, where I was raised, never looks like this—so sharply bright that I feel I could use the edge of the moon to scrape candle wax off my altar.  I sit and gaze and it feels as if the very cells of my body begin to vibrate at a higher level.  Perhaps this is the essence of lunacy.

My first few years in Maine, we had over a foot of snow on the ground from Thanksgiving on and walking in the fields at night was not really feasible.  But this year the ground is still clear in January and I find I relish every additional day I have to wander in the dark, cold night—to feel the differences in the air--to catch the occasional shimmer of Faerie light--to watch the delicate tracery of the trees against the night sky—to study the stars, feeling the expansion brought by Jupiter and the loving caress of Venus.

I feel I can no longer sit still—I must dance in the moonlight, and so I do.  My feet find their own way, following perhaps the paths the Faeries have danced on this land for millennia.  My body sways—dips—turns—my ears cannot hear the rhythm to which my body is responding, but that barely matters.   I join the Faeries in their dance to celebrate the beauty of the full moon.    

The little grey dog winks in and out of visibility as she pursues her own dance through the night.  Sometimes the shadows envelop her and her chimes are our only clue to her location.  And sometimes she races into the moonlight, hot in pursuit of some unknown scent--glowing with her own energy and that of the shinning moon.

Tonight we are drawn to our little piece of forest.  I’ve never walked in a moonlit forest and am grateful for Taliesin’s presence as I open myself to this new experience.  The patches of light woven in amongst the towering shadows of the tree trunks are absolutely magical.  We move into a clearing and look at the sky.  The moon glows behind a subtle interlacing of pine needles creating an image so lovely my heart yearns to find some way to capture it so I can experience it again and again. 

After almost an hour of wandering—dancing—exploring—we are driven inside by cold hands and feet.  One more night of fullness and then the moon will begin to wane again—rising later every night until it seems to disappear—then three nights of darkness before, magically, it begins to wax into fullness again.  It is a rhythm etched into my soul—a dance of time, space, spirit and light that blesses my life as it blessed the life of my ancestors reaching back into the depths of time.  As I take one last look at the numinous beauty of fullness, I touch the souls of the other women and men, who tonight dance by the light of the silvery moon, as we humans have done since the beginning of time.  Blessed Be.