Wednesday, August 30th
Supermoon
in Pisces 7°25'
6:35 pm PT

Mixtape Moon
By Gala Mukomolova
 

Tonight, under the influence of a Supermoon in Pisces, I’m thinking about R.E.M.’s “Man on the Moon.” For one thing, Michael Stipe was born under the Moon in Pisces, and, for another, I can’t help it. Mutable, the song invites us into a conditional refrain. It reminds us that who we are and what we know is conditional too.

“Here’s a little agit for the never-believer 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Here’s a little ghost for the offering 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

If you believed they put a man on the moon

Man on the moon

If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve

Then nothing is cool”

We all have them, don’t we? Songs that worm their way into our subconscious, songs that resurface every so often with heavy rain. Music is magic, after all, a portal. Think of blowing the shofar, the ram’s horn, through all the days of Elul, or Sappho’s poetry. Even the silliest sound or vibration, the smallest fragment of a lyric, is capable of doing serious work—like helping us tune into the present moment, move forward, or heal a broken heart. For deaf and hard-of-hearing folks, it might be an excerpt from a poem, a favorite painting. The way your heart lights up when you think of a favorite memory, or quickens when you conjure an upcoming moment.

There are portals all around us, presently, because a Pisces Full Moon is full of magic because she is nostalgic. But just because this Full Moon feels her way through the past doesn’t mean she’s stuck in it. Transcendent and untethered, our Moon knows that the past is a part of us—not the other way around. The Sun in Virgo submits to Mercury retrograde by collecting sounds and vibrations, perceiving their resonance. The Pisces Full Moon reflects Virgo’s relentless inventory and makes of it an emotional archive–she illuminates the way through a boundless expanse. Hanging around with Saturn, this Pisces Full Moon has time to kill and a penchant for putting things in order, even if it’s an order only she can understand, resonant and non-linear. Why not spend the night with them by making a magical mixtape for the Moon?

Saturn’s influence might have you looking for a framework—a disciplined approach—and if you seek rules you will find them, like the best way to kick things off or the number of seconds between each track. The truth is, like all art forms, mixtapes are subjective. Mixtapes mean one thing to the creator and another to the receiver. In high school, I had a crush on a girl whose bobbed hair hid her face, save for her perfect pink neon lips which matched her pink pumps. She made me a mixtape of 80s songs and in the cassette tape, on the back of the liner notes, she delineated Joy Division’s transformation into New Order. I listened to the whole tape but, decades later, only two things have stayed with me: the note, still gently engraved with her fine green pen, and Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)”*

In creating a mixtape, one earnestly sets out to create a beautiful offering, a structured gesture, and ultimately surrenders to a higher power—like god, or like a crush.

In the spirit of this memory and this invitation, I offer you prompts but not parameters...

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

Gala Mukomolova is a Moscow-born, Brooklyn-raised poet and essayist. Her full-length book, Without Protection, is available through Coffee House Press. Gala currently writes astrology articles for Refinery29, co-hosts Big Dyke Energy Podcast, and is one of the creators of QueerHealers.com. She is a founder and part of The Cheburashka Collective. Find her at galacticrabbit.com