Sunday, February 19th
New Moon
in Pisces 1°21'
11:05 pm PT

February Dark Moon: The Art of Dream Embodiment
by Sarah Faith Gottesdiener

“Be like water making its way through cracks . . . If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water.” — Bruce Lee

“There was something formless yet complete, That existed before heaven and earth.”  — Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching

This is the last lunar cycle of winter, the last gasp before spring. It’s a time that reverberates with the unknown. Mysteries and poems remind us that we do not always need to know, but we do always need to feel. To be incomplete, to be in progress is not a bad thing. Emptiness precedes answers. There’s a huge difference between casting aside all your agency, and understanding that patience and rest are vital aspects of every redirection.

The emergent spirit needs the gift of the cocoon, a gestational womb. A place to be liberatingly ugly, a breathtaking mess, tear-stained, snarled, tangled up enough to need to regroup. In time, there is the call to reweave our existence into the next tapestry. This new blueprint is woven together with some of the same threads as before, combined with mysterious gossamer from a future web. The past decides to begin a flirtation with the moments ahead.

Imaginal cells live inside the caterpillar, beckoning them to become butterflies. At first, the imaginal cells are fought off by the creature’s immune system, as the caterpillar dissolves. But eventually, they cluster together, tiny constellations constructing iridescent wings. 

Imaginal cells are within us all. In the soup of chaos and dissolution, they need time and space to rearrange the ethereal into the material. For these cells to create new patterns, we must allow new patterns to form from the abyss. Think with the heart. Feel with your inner eyes.

Dark Moons tend to stir the unrealized, unseen dreams we all yearn for. This New Moon will sprinkle starry-eyed insights upon us, so long as we remain courageous enough to float in the sea of our imaginations, unafraid to widen out past confines. Non-attachment untethers us from urgency or labels. Through the unknown of your dream life, dive into the pleasure and intrigue that float about as symbols and sensations in the nets of the psyche. This lunation, think with your heart. Feel with your inner eyes

The imaginal connects us to the etheric, which is also the energy behind all existence. In dream states we rearrange reality.

 — Excerpt from the Many Moons 2023 Lunar Planner. Get your copy to read the rest: the benefit edition is here and the digital edition is here. Or, download the February Guide.