A Might-Do List for the Full Moon

Having written a might-do series for the sabbats, I thought it time to make one for the esbats. A "might-do list" is a no-pressure, full of inspiration guide to magickal practice where you are encouraged to do or not do whatever speaks to you for a particular celebration. An esbat is a (typically, though not exclusively) lunar-focused celebration practiced by some magickal folk in some contemporary traditions of Paganism (most notably Wicca) and witchcraft. Sometimes esbat refers to all celebrations of a coven or an individual outside of sabbat rituals. The term "esbat" was adopted into Wicca by the spiritual magpie Gerald Gardner via the work of Margaret Murray who described the esbat as a time for celebration, rites to aid coven members, and times of music, dancing, and "sheer enjoyment."¹ While modern Pagan traditions like Wicca have their own formalized and beautiful rituals and practices for the esbats, I'll be making suggestions for Full Moon celebrations that aren't tied to any specific tradition. 

The Full Moon is a time of gathered energy, ripe and ready for magick. During the Full Moon there can be a feeling of abundance and openness in the air, of expansion and possibility. Under the light of the Full Moon we can feel untethered from what is "normal" and expected as the night becomes brightly illuminated - not quite day, but not quite the feeling of night either, marking a space between the known and unknown.

How we mark time - by fixed calendar, lunar calendar, seasonal changes, personal rhythms, and so on - can create or contract space for the type of healing work and magickal practice we hope to experience, which is why time is such an interesting thing to explore in our lives. When I talk about magickal practice to my students, I always encourage them to begin observing lunar cycles as a way to not only connect back to ancestral rhythms of measuring time, but to begin to connect with time in a way that feels supportive of magickal practice - something cyclical, open to change, and able to hold space for all of our complexities.

So if you're curious about developing a Full Moon practice, here's a list of nine things you might-do for your esbat celebrations.

image via @whileimout

Reorient Your Compass

The Full Moon creates an opportunity for us to pause and reorient. Our lives are busy and filled with all sorts of decisions that need to be made, things that need to be done, and tasks to be tackled. It is easy to forget where we are and where we want to be living our life from. With Her bright light illuminating hidden spaces, the Full Moon is a wonderful time to reconnect to our inner compass of values and visions, of healing and lineage, of purpose and dreaming, so we can feel more connected to our centered self as another lunar cycle unfolds before us. This can be done in all sorts of ways through ritual and actions of care, but one simple ritual is to write down your values and guiding principles in a way that feels simple enough to recite and empowering to say. An example might be:

I am, {Name},
I call in beauty and mirth,
compassion and patience,
kindness and wonder,
that I may be in right relationship
with my beloved community
the land I live with
and the vision of a vibrant, joyful planet

I also think singing simple chants are a beautiful way to realign energy and help us to center ourselves in our values. Let's say you're a peace activist and abolitionist - maybe you sing the Circle Chant by Linda Hirschhorn, which was originally written in support of the 1982 janitor's strike of UA movie theaters, and sings of circling for freedom and peace.² A song like the Circle Chant, or anything from the song collective Beautiful Chorus, or the vast archive of old and modern Pagan chants, can be an easy, joyful way to feel strengthened in our purpose and calling.

Gather Energy

Under the Full Moon, energy is pulled up from deep in the earth, gathering in swirling pools and rushing lines across the land. It is a time when we can walk the land and call that energy into ourselves or summon the light of the Moon wherever we might be on a Full Moon night. It is also traditional to leave items that we want to be charged up under the light of the Full Moon, including tools of divination, stones, and jewelry, being sure to bring them back inside before the Sun rises. 

Connect With the Cosmic Coven

While I'm using the word "coven" I am really referring to the form of community that you are most called to connect with. As a young witch who had limited access to the greater Pagan community, the idea that at every Full Moon there were other witch folk and Pagans creating magick under Her light was completely enchanting and filled me with a sense of belonging as I sat at my bedroom altar. Working with the cycles of the Moon is not just a personal preference for me and an act of liberation from static solar, patriarchal measurements of time, but a way to connect to ancestral traditions, living communities of the present, and helping to make a path of Moon magick for generations to come. If you have a working magickal group, but are practicing solo for the Full Moon, it can be lovely to coordinate rituals or keep an item on an altar that connects you to the rest of your circle. But if you're still seeking a group or don't have an interest in group practice but want to feel connected to the wider magickal community, you might take a moment to visualize and breathe into the web of community that runs through us all. If you're looking for further inspiration, a few years ago I wrote about how every Full Moon you have a coven.

You may have noticed that I've been emphasizing connecting with people, as opposed to land or spirits or divinities, because I think that making time to call in and be called to community that feels good and nourishing to you is an important regular practice. We live in times where the spell of fracturedness is run amok and we feel more separated and lonely than ever. Creating a monthly practice focused on cultivating community with other people is one that I think we need more than ever and calling in community under the light of the Full Moon is an especially magickal way of helping to do that.

image via @joannakosinska

Develop Your Psychic Gifts

With the energy stirred up under the Full Moon, why not channel that into the development of your psychic gifts? I think a playful approach to getting in touch with our intuition is particularly appropriate for Full Moon celebrations and even better with friends. There are all sorts of ways to develop your psychic gifts, but I wrote about how you can use a tarot deck to help you out. You can also work with plant allies like Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca), Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis), and Sage (Salvia officinalis) to help support your psychic energy.

Dream Magick

Speaking of developing psychic gifts, performing dream magick at the time of the Full Moon is particularly auspicious. Here is where you can have fun seeking out traditional and modern dream rituals and spellwork, but a very simple ritual is to call in a dream for a situation you're seeking insight on. Using a stone or plant bundle as a point to anchor your magick, hold it under the Full Moon light while chanting:

Full Moon, O Full Moon
Send me a dream
Illuminate for me 
What remains unseen

Visualize the situation you are seeking insight on as you draw the light of the Full Moon down into your magickal item. Keep your item beside or under your bed to help pull the dream towards you sometime over the next few nights. While you might not remember the dream, you may wake up with a sudden knowing or experience a flash of insight over the next few days to help you with your quandary.

A general tip for all kinds of dreamwork: while there are culturally specific traditions for calling in dreams, I find that performing a dream spell in a dreamlike way can be helpful. So wear that piece of dreamy clothing while dancing around a circle of chalk marked onto the earth, your stone held aloft in the Full Moon light, candles burning, familiars purring…

Connect with the Elements

Within western esoteric tradition, each Full Moon is charged by the energy of one of the four elements of earth, air, fire or water. If you do any sort of elemental-based work in your practice, the Full Moon can be a time to immerse yourself in the elemental energy. A Water Full Moon might be a time to do a lunar bath, dream work, and water-based remedies for the cycle ahead while a Fire Full Moon might be spent before an altar full of candles, working fire magick, and dancing up energy. The element of each Full Moon is determined by the sign it is in:

• Earth Moons happen when the Moon is in Taurus, Virgo, or Capricorn.

• Air Moons happen when the Moon is in Gemini, Libra, or Aquarius.

• Fire Moons happen when the Moon is in Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius.

• Water Moons happen when the Moon is in Cancer, Scorpio, or Pisces.

The four elements are central to the traditional western herbalism philosophy of healing and if you're curious you can learn more about that here.

image via @joeehu

Make Moon Water

I've found that making Moon water is an activity that many a new-to-magick practitioner performs early on in their practice - which makes a lot of sense! It's an accessible, inexpensive, and powerfully simple way of connecting with lunar energy that leaves you with a tangible object that you can use after a night of Full Moon festivities. Setting out a bowl of water under the Full Moon light, maybe with herbs and stones added or a silver coin, feels like an old sort of magick. Moon water is versatile - you can use it in lunar baths and in spellwork, for watering plants, cleaning and blessing your home, and on and on. Some witchfolk even make their flower essences under the light of the Full Moon, carrying the magick of Moon and herb with them in tiny bottles of enchantment to use whenever they need extra emotional support.

Learn or Create Your Own Full Moon Chant

One aspect of modern Pagan culture that I love is the preservation and sharing of knowledge through simple chants, sung or spoken. There are circle-casting chants, chants for healing, chants to raise and banish energy, chants to celebrate rites of passage, and chants to pass on wisdom teachings. There are plenty of Full Moon chants and songs out there - Libana's Full Moonlight Dance is a classic, sung by Full Moon circles around the world, but there are plenty more. You can also draw from your own cultural traditions for lunar chants or create your own. When sung or spoken under a Full Moon month after month, a chant has the power to help us move into a state of reverence and flow, of creativity and magick, with little effort. 

Zone Out

While this post is about things you might-do to celebrate a Full Moon esbat, you also don't need to do anything. It is an act of rebellious magick within the overculture of over-productivity and burnout to choose a nonproductive state of being and to bathe in the waters of un-busyness. If you are able to lie down under the light of the Full Moon with no plan in place, just presence in mind, that is a ritual of zoning out of the normal modes of consciousness and tuning into something else. What that something else is is for you to discover. 

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If you're looking for more inspiration, how about a Full Moon tarot spread and healing ritual for your esbat celebrating? You can also find the rest of my might-do lists for the lunar esbats below:

• A Might-do List for the Dark Moon

• A Might-do List for the New Moon

• A Might-do List for the Quarter Moons

I also have a collection of over 120 lunar-centered rituals and recipes - The Moonfolk Book of Shadows - that you can access for free as a member of my newsletter community. 

Friends, I hope that wherever and however you gather 'neath the Full Moon's light that you are held by the dreams of a thousand generations of magick-makers holding fast the circle of love and possibility.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

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Footnotes

1. Margaret Murray, Witch Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology (Oxford: Oxford Press 1921), 113.

2. Organizations like Rise Up & Sing are excellent resources for finding inspirational chants and songs.

Creating a Lunar Healing Practice That Actually Works for You

If you've found yourself here, reading these words, it is likely that you're interested in some sort of Moon-based practice. Maybe you've always wanted to hold Full Moon rituals every month or want to explore the ebb and flow of time from a more lunar perspective. Perhaps you've heard about the benefits of working with the Moon when it comes to creating healing and wellness in your life or you've tried to have a lunar practice before and got bored or overwhelmed or some other stumbling block appeared on your path. Whatever has drawn you here, I hope to spend some time with you helping you explore your unique needs for a lunar practice and ways to create one that you'll actually show up to on a regular basis (whatever "regular" means to you). 

I'll start by suggesting some self-inquiry practices (i.e. asking you a question that you can write about or meditate on), help you figure out the structure that'll best support your practice, and then share some tools that I think are useful when it comes to supporting a lunar practice.

Ready? Let's start with the all important why.

The Desire for a Lunar Healing Practice

Before we're even able to start a new practice, an important first step is to know your "why" for wanting to make an effort to show up in the first place. Defining your desire for a practice helps you to recognize what needs are most present in your life as well as help you to connect with dreams and visions of your own becoming. Knowing our desire helps to motivate us to show up for our practice but it also helps us to shape what our practice might look like.

Now, some of you might be getting ready to scroll away or skip over this section because you feel like you know your why already and don't need to define it again or you want to get to the good stuff. But I'm going to encourage you to keep on reading and to spend some time answering the one question I propose about finding your why. 

​​I'll be honest with you - when I have taken courses and come across writing prompts or questions to consider during meditation I have found myself on more than one occasion hesitating to do them. I would tell myself that I wanted to get to the easy-to-measure practical stuff or I've asked myself a question like that before so I didn't need to do it again. 

However, I've never regretted actually making time to practice self-inquiry, especially through writing, and the one thing that helped me show up to the practice was making it into a special ritual. I make myself a cozy cup of tea, I grab something nourishing to eat, and light a candle. Sometimes I pull out a collection of colorful pens, but usually rely on a trusted favorite black ink pen as a favorite tool. Often I like to hold a stone in my hand for a few quiet moments, something that helps ground me and connect me to my edges, calling myself back home again to this moment and this place. Doing these things in a ritual manner starts to wake up the curious part of me that's interested in being asked questions and answering them in turn.

So I hope you'll stick with me and take time either now or later to participate in the lunar magick that is self inquiry.

Deck shown is Lilifer Tarot by Marion Constentin

Everybody's why is going to be different, though there are certainly similar needs that show up again and again when we're talking about Moon magick and healing work. I've gone ahead and listed out examples of desires underlying a need for lunar practice below to help inspire your own self inquiry.

• I want to connect more deeply with lunar time as a way to break out of habits of overwork.

• I want to awaken my intuitive gifts.

• I hope to feel connected again to ancestral practices through connecting with the lunar calendar.

• I want to dedicate time each month just for me and my spiritual practice.

• I want to explore my inner world through shadow work guided by the Moon.

• I feel called to develop my skills as a healer and I feel that a lunar practice would help me.

• I feel called to the Moon and I want to understand why.

• I want to gather together with my magickal friends for a Moon ritual each month.

• I am working on creating feelings of wholeness in my life and the Moon feels like an appropriate symbol to help guide me.

Ready to explore your own why? You might have some very clear reasons or they may be more vague feelings, but wherever you're at in defining your desire, I encourage you to go ahead and answer the following question, whether spoken aloud, considered in meditation, or written down:

Why do I want a lunar healing practice?

Remember, no one is going to read or hear your answer to the above question unless you choose to share it (and you really don't need to share it unless you're called to share it with someone you love and trust). It's time to be honest with yourself and try to move out of the place, as much as you can, of comparison and performing-for-others-first space that has been hypercharged in our culture through social media, including amongst magickal practitioners. Get inspired by the magickal world, but don't get lost in the smoke and mirrors of the online world. In fact, being intentional and (at least initially) private about our desires around a lunar healing practice is in itself lunar healing work.

Working with the Moon is, in part, a process of understanding of our consciousness and subconscious realms beyond expectations of culture and peers, of trends and institutions in order to be able to show up to ourselves and in community as our ever-whole, ever-changing lunar self.

Once you have your why, let's talk about creating a structure that'll honor the rhythm of your needs, the ebb and flow of your magick.

Deck shown is The Morgan-Greer Tarot by Bill F. Greer

The Circle That Supports Us

Within the magickal communities that I belong to, the most often used symbol of magickal space is the circle. Never-ending and all encompassing, at the beginning of rituals and gatherings, special care and attention is placed on creating (or really, recognizing) the holiness of the time and space we're in. Sometimes these circle preparations are longer than the actual ritual itself, which is a good indication for how a successful magickal practice, including a lunar healing one, might be structured. 

Being intentional and following our desires when it comes to creating a circle or structure for your practice to thrive in is important if you want to develop one that is long-term and sustainable. Below I've listed some questions to help you to define a structure for your practice that'll best support you. There are broad and general questions, but you can use many of them as starting points for deeper inquiries (i.e. you don't have a lot of time for a lunar practice as your life is right now, but you want to make big changes to your life to make more time, and want to ask yourself what sort of effort that'll take).

• When you imagine a lunar healing practice, what does it look like to you? How does it make you feel?

• What do you imagine achieving, realizing, releasing or other experience through a lunar healing practice?

• How much time can you, reasonably and without hardship, make for your practice right now?

• Where do you want to practice and what sort of physical space do you have for your practice?

• What lunar phase do you feel called to work with? Learn more about the healing energies of the Dark Moon, New Moon, Waxing Quarter Moon, Full Moon, and Waning Quarter Moon phases.

• What tools do you feel called to incorporate into your lunar healing practice, such as plant allies, a divination practice or devotional work with deity?

Let's start to put this all together by imagining that our friend, Magnolia, is excited about starting their own lunar healing practice. They are feeling called to this practice because they really want to develop their intuition after years of feeling like they kinda understand it, but are now interested in being intentional in their explorations. They feel like their intuition was dismissed a lot as a child and young adult which has led them to not listen to their intuition as much as they would like to. Magnolia wants to incorporate tarot into their lunar healing practice because they've been reading the cards for about a year and want to be able to rely less on their tarot books and more on their intuition when it comes to interpretations. 

Magnolia is called to work with the Full Moon during a monthly ritual. They made space in their bedroom for a little altar that they have already started meditating at in the mornings. When they were doing research on Moon rituals, they came across an old book by Margot Adler called Drawing Down the Moon and the cover inspired them so they've added a picture of it to their altar. (1) Magnolia decides to start with a simple structure for their monthly Full Moon ritual:

• A simple ritual to create sacred space based traditions from their African and Irish heritage. 

• A short meditation to awaken their intuition.

• A simple tarot spread where they won't read from their tarot book at all, but only interpret the cards intuitively. They are thinking of doing a tarot spread based on the sign the Moon is in (i.e. a Aries spread for an Aries Full Moon and so on), but they're going to be flexible about it and not stress too much over finding the "right" spread.

• Practice one psychic development game with the tarot.

• A few minutes to journal about their experiences.

• Closing up the space.

Through stating their desire and considering what it is that they hope to experience (re-awakening their intuition), Magnolia has created a very sweet and simple lunar practice. There are no fancy tools, just the items that they already have. They dream of being able to perform their Full Moon ritual on a beach like the image from Drawing Down the Moon, but that is something that they hope to draw towards them as they work with the Moon each month. There is plenty of space for them to innovate, add to or subtract from their practice as time and energy allows and mostly they feel inspired. Having a Moon altar in their room means that they get to see and be reminded of their intention every day, creating a path of connection between one Full Moon to the next. 

Magnolia is not trying to observe all the Moon phases every month (which would be every night because the Moon is always changing into a new phase) or trying to practice a multi-hour long ritual every New and Full Moon complete with an herbal bath consisting of dozens of herbs, three tarot spreads, thirteen candles that they hand-dip themselves each fortnight, and an elaborate ritual that includes a interpretative dance and costume change halfway through. Now, I'm not saying that this is not going to be the way that some of you want to practice, but for most of us this sort of effort is not sustainable for the long run and part of being in practice is being able to maintain a practice. Remember, a personal lunar practice is about being able to show up, not show off or be beholden to the expectations of others. (2) Good questions to ask yourself when you're developing your outline are:

• Is this useful?

• Will I be able to show up for this practice with as little hindrance as possible?

• Do I actually want to do what I'm proposing?

What would the outline of your lunar healing practice look like? Go ahead and take some time to write it down now. If you like you can start with your most elaborate dreams of a lunar practice and then distill that into something that is much more achievable for you in this time and space. But like Magnolia, with their picture of Drawing Down the Moon on the altar, you can incorporate affirming and aspirational images to your practice space to help you feel inspired.

To help spark your inspiration and imagination, I've listed types of lunar healing practices that you might want to try or make your own below:

• Cast a tarot spread each month during the Moon phase of your choice. I've created tarot spreads for the Dark, New, Waxing Quarter, Full, and Waning Quarter Moon phases.

• Take a monthly bath during the Moon phase of your choice each month, perhaps incorporating sea salt and/or lunar herbs into the water.

• Perform simple rituals of healing.

• Observe your monthly lunar return in a special way.

• Commit to learning a particular magickal skill at a certain lunar phase each month (i.e. crystal divination, trancework, charm making, psychic development and so on).

• Dance, howl, and sing under the Moonlight.

• Learn about and engage with lunar deities.

• Moon bathe (i.e. get outside under the light of the Moon, preferably with some bare skin exposed) as often as you can and are called to do.

Hopefully at this point you're starting to form a clearer idea of what it is your lunar practice might look like and feel like. Next, I want to introduce you to a few useful tools to support your practice.

Deck shown is The Natural Ink Tarot by Martha Miller

Useful Tools for Your Lunar Practice

Writing down your lunar practice plans - whether in a planner, on a calendar, in your journal or book of shadows, or on a note stuck somewhere you'll see it all the time - is one obvious, simple, and useful way to show up for your practice. You can even choose to have a special notebook reserved for writing down reflections, tarot spreads, dreams, and rituals all relating to your lunar healing practice, but you can also just use what you have available (like a current journal - use a different color ink to help you easily find entries about your lunar healing practice - or a notes app on your phone).

Find a way to keep track of the phases of the Moon. The cheapest, (often) easiest, and most ancient way is to look outside up at the sky to see what phase the Moon is in. Now, light pollution and limited access to safe spaces to Moongaze might restrict your ability to do this, but actually being able to observe the Moon in the sky whenever you can (or being under Moon light and dark whether or not you're able to physically see the Moon), helps us to connect with the very old parts of ourselves and our species that have been watching the Moon for millenia. Of course, there are apps and websites that help us learn even more about the lunar phases, signs, and mansions that the Moon is in and these are a useful addition to physical observation. Astroseek provides a free and comprehensive Moon calendar and there are plenty of other apps that you can find for your devices. For my own practice, I like to use the We'Moon planner for helping me track lunar and celestial rhythms. 

For those of you trying to find your way back into practice after a fallow period or who are struggling to reconnect with your magick, might I suggest some pageantry? I know I warned against performing-for-the-other, but we can still perform for ourselves. Sometimes we don't feel able to show up to a practice because we're struggling to connect with someone we were before or we can't yet imagine what we're becoming. Perhaps we're struggling with feeling worthy of our magick or what the meaning of having a lunar or any sort of practice is. I feel you. Here is where we can practice a bit of ancient and effective magick: faking it til you make it. Get dressed up, create a soundtrack for your ritual, step into the role of a confident healer / witch / priest/ess, and perform. Stir your tea mug as if you're the Great Goddess Herself stirring the cauldron of life and death and rebirth. Swirl your skirt, draw sigils on your jeans, pretend to be an old hag of the wood who is deeply enamored with their own sense of curmudgeonly self. Speak your whole ritual in "ye olden english" and let a character of your own creation show up to the ritual first. It can be silly, but all ritual is silly and strange to some degree, and if it helps you to show up to a practice that you really want to show up to, it's not just silly but a very effective form of magick.

Here are a final few questions to help you discover the desire of your practice:

• Who do I hope to become and/or feel through my lunar practice?

• What do I hope to call home to myself through my lunar practice?

• Where do I want to go with my lunar practice?

I hope you're feeling inspired and like you have some tools and ways of thinking about your lunar healing practice that'll help you show up to your practice. Through working with the Moon I hope you are able to know yourself as always whole and always changing and that you're able to set up practices in your life that make space for all of you to show up however you want and need to.

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Discovering your monthly lunar return can be a very sweet way of starting a lunar healing practice. Or you might spend a year observing the lunar sabbats. If you're interested in learning more ways of including tarot in your healing practice, come this way.

There are so many ways to create a lunar healing practice that is all your own. For those of you called to learn more about your unique gifts as a healer through lunar-based rhythms and rituals, you're invited to join me in The Lunar Apothecary.

Wherever your journey with the Moon takes you I hope that helps you spiral home again and again to your own wild wisdom and the ways you are deeply interconnected with your community.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

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Footnotes

(1) For my beloved readers who have balked at the thought of Drawing Down the Moon considered an "old" book by the current generation of young magickal folk, it was first published in 1979 which is 43 years ago and is sort of the equivalent of reading Dion Fortune's books in the 1990s (which were considered "old" books at the time by school age witches like myself). Seeing the new books I read as a young witch being touted as "vintage" by the younger generation is the main way that I recognize that I am becoming increasingly (thankfully) old. 

(2) Public ritual performances, on the other hand, can be a great time to show off! 

Fruiting: Full Moon Ritual & Healing Practices

Living in a space shared with several fruit trees, the various seasons of fruiting means that I’m daily visiting with the tree spirits, to touch, smell, and listen to their journey of maturation. Buds grow thick skin and stretch outward filling up with the sweet food within. It always seems that fruit is hard until it is not - all of a sudden it is soft and ripe. For me, that sudden softness of fruit come to ripeness is the energy of the Full Moon. While there is always variety in how it plays out because of the unique flavors of whatever sign the Moon is in, the culminating energy of the Full Moon is one that follows a pattern of focus and tension that suddenly falls back into softness, openness, and possibility. With the Full Moon the altar is overflowing with fruit and abundance, and we can feast with hearts open and souls ready for nourishment.

Let’s explore together the magick of the Full Moon, calling in plants as teachers and bringing simple ritual and divination practice into our lives. At the height of the Moon cycle the Moon is at its fullest and most mature, casting its brightest light and acting as the mirror to the energies felt at the Dark Moon. What was in shadow is revealed and understood anew. Expansion, release, openness are all key energies of the Full Moon, and the days surrounding this time are ripe with possibility of celebration, fertile opportunity, and completion of a phase.

image via @anniespratt

Herbal Traditions

In Traditional Western Herbalism, the Full Moon is considered a time of cold and dry herbs. If we were to think of the Moon phase as a cycle of building a sacred structure, we would be at the point of the process of cooling and maintaining dryness to allow for a more sturdy and structurally sound building to stand (this coming after the after the heating and drying energies of the Waxing Quarter Moon that helped us to build the walls of our temple). At the Full Moon a temple space is ready to be lived and loved and held in. Or to bring us further into the garden with our metaphor, the compost of the Moon cycle has cooled and dried out enough to be used throughout the garden.

There are many ways to approach a Moon, though, and I encourage you to be guided by your studies, your cultural stories, and your intuition. Think about plants which help you feel open, soft, and at ease. Plants that are exuberant in their flowers, greenery, and/or fruiting plants - all hold Full Moon qualities. Plant allies that help you feel alive and connected with the world are wonderful, too. As you work with plants and the Moon cycle, always prize creativity and curiousity in re-membering yourself back into relationship with our plant teachers and guides.

Examples of Full Moon Herbs: Rose (Rosa spp.), Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis), Jasmine (Jasminum officinale), Sage (Salvia officinalis).

Rose (Rosa spp)

Rose is an ancestor plant with fossils found across Europe, North America, and Asia dating back from as early as the Miocene period (7 - 26 million years ago). This is a plant which has observed our development as a species and it isn't surprising that Rose is often associated with gentle parenting and mothering energies and deities. Call on Rose when you need a surrogate parent in your life - when you need to be held and protected to help you get in touch with your vulnerability. Rose is a beautiful ally in learning to treat yourself (and others) with ease and gentleness.

As a plant of Venus, Rose brings harmony to any situation as well as assists in harmonizing the energies of herbal preparations and those who use them. I love to use the flowers and hips in teas and tinctures, herbal oils and especially as a hydrosol or floral water. Rose has an incredible quality of helping us to become comfortable with the skin we’re in, working on phsyical and energetic levels to help us come home to our physical selves. Since it is a thorn plant we also know that it has protective qualities - adding Rose into your daily beauty blends can help to strengthen your psychic boundaries from unwanted energetic intrusions (I’m looking at you, microaggressions).

Connecting with the Traditional Western Herbalism correspondence of cool and dry herbs for the Full Moon, Rose fits both of those profiles. Rose is an excellent remedy for various forms of inflammation (bringing cooling qualities to overheated conditions) and as an astringent it acts as a plant which tones damp states in the body (such as excess oil production on the skin) bringing us into a state of balance. Hildegard von Bingen - herbalist, mystic, language creator, composer, and philosopher - writes of Rose's cooling and drying qualities recommending that one place Rose petals on the eyes in the morning to refresh them and draw out any imbalance in the bodily humours. The use of Rose medicinally is vast, so spend some time with your favorite plant books to learn more.

What I love about using Rose in Full Moon magick is that it helps to reassure our selves on a soul level that "I might not know everything, but I know enough to experience the abundant magick of this moment." It helps us to value mystery as something not to be solved, but experienced, which in turns helps us to settle into our joy and the appreciation of what we (and our community) has accomplished so far. Let's apply this Rose magick to recent events. So we all know that 2020 was a year and we're not out of it yet. The magick of Rose with its many-petaled wisdom helps us to recognize the layers of 2020 - there was extraordinary pain and suffering alongside the largest, most diverse, and most intergenerational global movement for a more kind and more just world that there has ever been in our recorded history as a species. Real change is already happening and the momentum of these movements is only going to keep rolling as we move beyond this pandemic. And the world we’re dreaming of can also feel so very, very far away. Rose helps us to hold all of these realities and get deep into the abundance of hope without having to write a thesis in our minds on why this hope will or will not fail us or why we deserve this hope in the first place. Rose just says "open up, be soft, settle in'' because we can have this moment (and better it be when the Moon is full*) without having to know what comes next or even what exactly has gone before.

I've written about Rose a lot, here is one of my favorite Rose recipes, and if you're an empath or highly sensitive person, Rose might be a good ally for you to work with.

image via @abigailducote

Altars + Rituals 

Decorate your altar with round and soft objects, things which help you to soften in turn. Unbind your hair. Wear soft and/or loose clothing. Practice rituals of celebrating our inner child and supporting the process of re-parenting. Water and cauldron spells, spells featuring song, rituals of abundance, hope, and self-worth. As an offering, consider the ways that you can create ease in the lives of others from home-cooked meal, a donation of time or money, small gifts which you know will bring someone laughter and a moment of levity. Learn about the sign that the Moon is in for more specific ideas and recommendations.

A Simple Full Moon Ritual

To help you open up to the possibility of your own becoming

Begin by creating sacred space in whatever way is meaningful for you.

On your altar place a bowl of Rose petals, whole flowers, and/or hips. Next to the bowl of Roses, place a bowl of salt water representing the ocean from which all life emerged. If you can charge this bowl of water before your rite with Full Moon energy by holding it up to the light of the Moon. Alternatively, because light pollution, quarantine or physical inhibitions may not allow for charging your water directly with the light of the Moon, place a silver colored coin at the bottom of your water bowl to represent the Moon's light and power. Whether with the assistance of the tarot spread below or other reflective practice, come up with a simple phrase that expresses a part of you or your life that you want to soften and open up to. Keep it simple, affirmative and easy to recite (i.e. I open up to more healthy and authentic self-expression).

Take a few centering breaths and begin to focus on your intention for the ritual - opening up to the possibility of the moment. Pick up the bowl of Roses, taking a moment to smell them, notice their color and form, and consider the complexity of life that led them to come into being. Holding them at your heart, begin to visualize a Rose blooming into a wide, open, soft flower. Feel this same blooming from within your own heartbody and say:

As the Rose opens, I open
As the Rose blooms, I bloom
As the Rose knows, I know myself
And all my possibilities

Take a Rose bloom (or petal or hip) and dip it in the Moon water. Anoint your brow, your heart, and whatever part of you that you choose. It is ok to let the water run on your skin for a moment, paying attention to how water quickly adapts to the shape and curves of your body. Becoming soft in our own wisdom and possibility is an act of shifting shapes, perceptions, and expected form into a place that is more vulnerable, more curious, and more able to meet the moment exactly where one is at. Breathing deeper into your openness and rubbing the Rose and Moon water into your skin, an invisible charm to carry with you in the Moon cycle ahead, say:

As I open, I bloom
As I bloom, I know
As I know, I soften, I dream, I flow

Repeat this charm until you feel your own flow then speak the simple phrase of openness you've written for yourself. You might feel called to speak it, sing it, move with it several times - honor your flow. When you're ready give thanks to the water and Roses, making sure to hold on to this feeling of openness, knowing that you can revisit this state of flow at any time by connecting with Rose. Close the rite  and be sure to either offer your water and Roses to the land or use them in other appropriate and respectful ways. 

A Simple Full Moon Tarot Spread

To help you open up to the magick of nourishing softness.

You're encouraged to adapt the following spread in ways that make it more useful for you including using the questions for journaling or meditation instead of divination. I like to cast these cards or journal as at the start of my Full Moon ritual - the reading can help guide my ritual and how I open up. Or use this spread for whenever you need more insight into an area of tension in your life. For those of you who thrive with variety and multi-faceted storytelling feel free to pull cards from multiple tarot and oracle decks for each question.

Card 1 · Tension
What is a source of tension in my life that I should be paying attention to?

Card 2 · Softness
How can I soften this tension? What tools, skills, people, and/or places can help me in release this tension?

Card 3 · Openness
What is calling me to openness? When I become softer what am I able to open up to? 

Card 4 · Nourishment
What is a source of nourishment for me? How does softness and openness nourish me? 

Card 5 · Story
The overall message of the Full Moon in your life. If you are familiar with your birth chart and how to find the transiting Moon in your chart this card can help you to understand the message of the Full Moon in the context of where it lands in your chart.

So begins a new series on the magick of the lunar phases! The idea for this series of lunar magick and herbalism was requested by my patrons who support me in keeping the majority of the work that I do free and open to everyone. You can find the posts for the other phases here:

• Dark Moon

• New Moon

• Waxing Quarter Moon

• Waning Quarter Moon

There is plenty of lunar-oriented reading for you to enjoy within these pages, from a full years journey through the healing potential of the New Moons, Moon-inspired slow magick and a tea I thought was the worst but turned out not to be, a deep dive into what a lunar return is and how to find your own, and a course about your own Moon-centered magick.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

*I’m quoting a line from The Charge of the Goddess which is a piece of inspired prose that I and a many Pagans hold to be sacred. There are a few versions of it, but the one that I most often refer to is Starhawk’s adaptation of Doreen Valiente’s. It’s a beautiful text and you should check it out.