Wednesday, April 5th
Full Moon
in Libra 16°07'
9:34 pm PT

Move with Intention: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice
by Annika Hansteen-Izora

The April Full Moon welcomes us on Wednesday, April 5th at 9:34 pm PT. Arriving alongside the beginning blooms of spring, this time is shaped by abundant inspirations of emergence and initiation. If there ever was a time to move with intention, it is now. It is one matter to begin a journey; it is another to consciously and continually choose how we hold ourselves as we walk the path. The theme of April is moving authentically forward. What does it look like to move in alignment with our needs, values, and boundaries? What actions can we take to pull our individual and collective dreams into actuality? Here, creativity arrives as an ever-abundant elixir to navigating the unknowns that will inevitably arise as we shape-shift into new forms. This Full Moon asks us to soak into the deep reserves of the creative spirit that we are always surrounded by. We are reminded that we are vessels in which endless pastures of mystery, pleasure, and miracle bloom. 

I understand creativity as a practice of alchemizing spirit into a new form. What I relate to as spirit, you may understand as God, energy, the divine, chi, magic, or any other of its infinite names. All understandings are welcome, and I invite you to adapt my language to the form that holds you in alignment with your values. In what ways can creativity be a pathway to a deeper relationship with spirit? This Full Moon asks us to become intimate with our creativity and to get to know our relationship with our creative practices on a deeper, more intentional level. 

The heart of creativity is rooted in spirit, and as such, dances with mystery, non-linearity, and non-binary forms of being. Creativity is not as ignited by answers as it is by questions. In dancing with mystery, creativity may arrive in forms we don’t recognize at first. We need to expand our definition of creativity to make room for the endless waters of spirit that we contain. Creativity can be found in the most seemingly ordinary of moments, which may require a gentler and more patient gaze to witness. On any given day, my creativity may arrive as a poem or the way my heart swells when I hear a particular song, or the easeful trance I fall into as I slice a piece of fruit. To hold space for creativity, we may be asked to look in a way we haven’t before. What does it look like to trust that our creativity is always lovingly holding us? To know that scarcity is a word creativity refuses to accept? What does a relationship to our creativity that is shaped by expansive and transformational love look like? 

For much of my life as an artist, I understood creativity as a completed art piece. This meant that when I wasn’t producing, I was not only failing to be creative but that my creativity was lost too. I did not recognize other moments in my daily practices that were essential for my creative replenishment, such as rest, boundaries, and play. To hold creativity as an alchemy of spirit is to trust that it is always holding you with compassion, grace, and bravery. Creativity insists on our ever-available capacity to move like water, to slip definitions and patterns that don’t align us with love, and to break into new waves. 

To name creativity as a spiritual practice ignites a question that beckons our patience and bravery to answer: What does it look like to be in relationship with our creativity without capitalism’s language of consumerism, monetization, and productivity? There is no right way to be creative, yet the language and influence of capitalism drive us to believe otherwise. We witness this in the structural ways governments and institutions lack creativity in claiming their way is the only way, even when those structures are predicated on legacies of violence. We witness this in our own treatment of our creativity: We often judge or doubt our creativity if it doesn’t arrive in a form or on a schedule that we can control. To be creative is to choose process over perfection and wonder over certainty. This Full Moon, we are asked to ground ourselves in our relationship with our creative practices, and to create a language for our creativity that domination could not begin to articulate. 

— Excerpt from the 2023 Many Moons Lunar Planner. To read Annika Hansteen-Izora's exclusive, magical ritual exercises for this Libra Full Moon, get your copy of Many Moons 2023. The benefit edition is here. The digital edition is here. 

Annika Hansteen-Izora (they, she, he) is a writer and multimedia artist that explores praxis of tenderness, dreaming, and queer Black imagination. They are the author of Tenderness: An Honoring of my Queer Black Joy and Rage, a meditation, critical inquiry, and invitation to explore anger and tenderness as agents of individual and collective change. You can find more of their work on @annika.izora as well as www.annikaizora.com