Moon Shit
Some folks say that history moves in cycles.
William Strauss and Neil Howe do a fantastic job of analyzing this concept from a sociological lens in The Fourth Turning, noting the apparent cycles that occur over generations. It's a useful theory that meshes well with a lot of woo-woo hippie shit that I appreciate. I highly recommend it if you haven't read the book or at least watched a few YouTube videos that summarize the subject.
According to Strauss and Howe, historical periods can be understood as falling into one of four categories, or "turnings."
The High – a period of social unity and prosperity
The Awakening – a period in which society's flaws become evident and individuals rebel against the norms
The Unraveling – a period of disorder; individuals distrust institutions and retreat into individualism
The Crisis – a period of massive upheaval, resulting in a revolution of some kind.
Once the Crisis is resolved, society returns to the High, and the cycle resumes. Each "turning" lasts about 20 years, and a century is about the length of an entire cycle. This is by no means a complete summary, but it is functional for our purposes here.
This lens mirrors many things, but we'll look at Joseph Campbell's monomyth. Writers and middle school students often know it as the "Hero's Journey." If you're unfamiliar, the theory suggests that the great myths of every culture at every time—be it the Popul Vuh, Journey to the West, Star Wars, the Bhagavad Gita, or the Epic of Gilgamesh—follow a particular pattern indicative of something which resonates deeply with the human condition. In it, the hero leaves their home to embark upon a journey that takes them into great darkness and returns victorious. While there are approximately twelve parts to the Hero's Journey, these are the four key points:
Call to Adventure - The hero is invited to leave their home and embark on a quest.
Trials and Challenges - The hero encounters obstacles they must overcome.
The Great Ordeal - The hero enters a literal or metaphorical Hell and battles supreme evil.
The Road Back - The hero returns to their home with a reward.
If we line up these two simplified four-part cycles, twisting them slightly, they are near-perfect matches.
A society is called to adventure during the Awakening, faces trials and challenges during the Unraveling, must overcome its greatest darkness during the Crisis, and experiences prosperity on the road back—during the High. Stick around after the credits for the sequel teaser.
This cyclical interpretation of the world is essential to the way human beings think about time. We are creatures of narrative; Yuval Noah Harari has even suggested that narrative construction defines humanity. Our experience as a species depends on how we filter reality through a narrative sieve. Historians use these tools to understand the shape of humanity's grand narrative, but we can apply them to inspect its microcosms. Within our everyday lives—within a year, a month, a week, or even a day—it can be useful to view our experience using this framework.
That's where Moon Shit comes in.
For those looking for a way to inject structure into the chaos of their experience, plotting one's life with the moon's phases is as good as any. The Maiden-Matron-Crone archetypes associated with the phases can give order to the sometimes soupy narrative of life. That structure offers empowerment.
Rituals
The easiest way I've found to utilize these narrative patterns is through rituals connecting symbolic action to symbolic time. Whether or not I believe the full moon has power is irrelevant to the experiment and, at the time, up for debate. It's a functional device that allows me to gird myself for upcoming challenges or release tiresome baggage, and timing these rituals to the moon's cadence ensures the work gets done.
I know I have to plan for a period of high productivity because the New Moon is coming up. During those two weeks, I dedicate myself to a particular goal (or "intention") that I designed in my ceremony. Once the Full Moon rolls around, it's time to reflect on what worked and what didn't, change the approach, and let go of the strategies, thought patterns, or behaviors that don't serve my goal. Sometimes, that reflection leads to an entirely new intention.
It's like a hippie woo-woo version of the SMART goal framework. It feels less corporate, at least.
Why bother with the rituals?
Cyclical narratives are part of human nature, which is evident in Campbell's research on the monomyth. For millennia, humans have used ceremony and ritual to demarcate phases of experience. Marriages, graduations, birthdays, holidays; symbolic action marks noteworthy points in our lives like the dog-eared pages of a well-loved book. They inject meaning. They generate significance, and the superstitious midpoint between our lizard and primate brains craves significance. Ritual is a way to leverage it. Connecting that schedule to a natural phenomenon gives it more weight and creates a sense of place in the universe.
Moon shit is the closest I get to church. I utilize these rituals the same way that one might use a New Year's resolution or a Sunday trip to confession. The vessel is only as important as its utility.
Moon Protocols
As far as woo-woo hippie shit goes, my rituals are pretty standard. While New Moon and Full Moon have different purposes (New Moon to start things, Full Moon to let things go), the bullet points are the same:
Turn off the lights
Play music
Light candles and incense
Meditate
Pull tarot cards and journal
Sigilwork
If you read the first three and thought it sounded like the beginning of a date night, consider how such simple changes to the ambiance create drastic changes in mental states. With an altered environment deployed as a trigger, slipping into an altered state of consciousness is easier. Meditation deepens this state.
Once coaxed into the desired state of receptivity, tarot is my favorite way to converse with myself. I lay out a spread for contemplation and then journal about my interpretation. This process is similar to Jungian active imagination exercises. I use the cards to map my thoughts and make them more transparent. When a card meaning clicks with a question, I know that's how I think about the situation. When I'm confused about a card's placement, I can draw more until the constellation of ideas aligns into something useful. If drawing more cards doesn't help, I know my thoughts and feelings regarding the question are complex and require more exploration. In this way, tarot is a valuable prop for self-examination.
Sigils are a way to focus attention. By consolidating an idea into an abstract icon, the superstitious mind has permission to work symbolically. The subconscious calls upon the sigil the same way it does with the Nike Swoosh, and creating it in the altered state of consciousness built up throughout the ritual until this point buries it deeper, changing behavior incrementally in favor of the desired outcome.
My wife had the idea of experimenting with henna tattoos as a part of moon shit, and I've taken to it wholeheartedly as a part of New Moon sigilwork. I like drawing them on my body as a symbolic commitment to the goal. Full Moon sigils, being representative of things I wish to discard, get burned. I scatter the ashes in my garden.
The Road Back from Xibalba
The lens of linear history, while useful in some cases, isn't as forgiving to the individual as a cyclical interpretation. It forces the individual to carry the baggage of every second that ever passed without a clear place to drop it all off. What's refreshing about a cycle is that it allows an individual to acknowledge the past without requiring it to be kept.
The Sun's death is my favorite idea from Aztec myth. The Sun perishes when it descends below the horizon only to be reborn the next day. Egyptian myths regarding Ra contain the same idea. Rebirth is critical, suggestive of letting go, starting over, and trying again. What I love about moon shit is how conducive it is to the idea of trying again. It is empowering to know that I don't have to be perfect, that I am allowed to reassess, and that I can try again. Rituals provide a framework to grow; they let the superstitious mind do the work of cleaning the clutter and create an altar to sacrifice the undesired parts of oneself so that the World Tree can flourish from the wound.
What rituals do you incorporate into your life? How do they feel? More importantly, how do they help? I'd love to know. Drop a comment or shoot me an email. In the meantime, go outside and enjoy the moon.