Wednesday, August 1st
Supermoon
in Aquarius 9°15'
11:31 am PT

Magic as Life Design
By Sarah Faith Gottesdiener

Happy Full Moon!

This Full Moon, a Supermoon, coincides with the time of the first harvest: there are some subtle, or not-so-subtle, materializations of what you’ve focused on for the first three seasons of this year. The good news is: if there hasn’t yet been a chance to really hold this year in your hands, it can begin now. This is the first Full Moon of two this month: whenever that happens, the month tends to be extra ripe for pivots and headway.  This Full Moon also offers up a softer container to receive the gifts of some of the current astrology: Venus is retrograde in Leo, begging us to heal our hearts, Mercury is pleased in Virgo, excited to help us refine our inner and outer communication, and Mars is also in Virgo, asking that our actions be in service and our energy be aligned with purpose. Pay attention to what contains both heart and meaning in your life right now. That will offer both salve and solution.

Where in your life are you ready to explore a different paradigm?

In order to alter your reality, you’ve got to loosen your grip on how you define it.

This is absolutely a Full Moon for magic, and a lunation to explore different ways of seeing, thinking about, and practicing magic. You might want to expand how you think of magic itself, or your magical skillsets.  This is an opportunity to see yourself as magic, to understand that magic is real because you are.

Expand your vision out past your limits.

This Full Moon will help you stretch and innovate.

Let yourself move toward what you think you cannot reach.

We all have a few things we don’t think we are allowed to have, that we don’t even try for. 

As you expand your vision, reconfigure your beliefs.

Our beliefs create the blueprints of what we do, which influences what our life resembles years from now. If you think you can, you will. If you think you can’t, then you won’t. Perhaps a truce can be found, somewhere in a middle place that hasn’t been fully explored. Give yourself the grace of more sight and different perspectives. Give yourself the gift of listening to your true nature—it’s been trying to talk to you, warn you, lead you, this whole time. Be open to healing, seeing, experiencing, and connecting to more. Bring all possibilities out, under the illumination of mind, body, intuition, emotions, and memory that only Full Moons can offer. This is big “feel it to heal it” energy.

Once the ocean of emotions subsides a bit, the following days will also help to rethink the systems and structures that can help you make moves—work backward through the actions, habits, and behaviors that will help you reinvent. Maybe the path is closer than you think. When one stays quiet for long enough, the stars above will share their secrets.

The stars, Sun, Moon, and planets are not happening “to us.” They aren’t necessarily happening “for us” either. They are happening with us. Together, we make up part of a larger universe: not separate, not opposed, but part of the same energetic field, in conversation, however we decide. As a relationship, a dialogue, a collaboration. Make this relationship whatever you want: an opening, a softening, a permission slip.

As your interpretations of the cosmos change, so can you. As you change, so can their meanings. Use the tools available to you for innovation and inspiration.

Magic is life design. Over time, bit by bit, when we approach the various sectors of our lives energetically, magically, creatively, through aligned actions, with shadow work, ancestrally—and with support from the other realms, our spiritual helpers, and the cosmos—all aspects of our lives transform. This is a proactive process.

When we are designing our lives, we are getting clear about what we most want, ultimately. We are not held hostage by knee-jerk reactions, trends, what we see on the internet, what our family or partners want, what we see as a problem today that might not even matter in two weeks, or what we think will make us happy or make us whole. We have to be vulnerable enough to go there in our spell work, to cut to the chase, and we have to be vulnerable enough to go there—right to the heart of what we want and who we’d like to be— in our lives.

So, what do you want right now?

Be honest. Get down to the root: the core, the energy underneath it. Then zoom out. How would it look to let that energy ripple out through the larger shape of your life?

What new spell could you cast to get what you want more quickly?

— Excerpt from the 2023 Many Moons Lunar Planner. To read the rest of Sarah's exclusive essay and Supermoon journaling prompts, get your copy of Many Moons. The benefit edition is here. The digital edition is here. 

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