“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” —Rumi

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, on Monday, January 8th, the Moon lands in the Last Quarter. We are eight days to a New Moon. The newness of the year is still with us. The revelry of the Full Moon New Year might have shifted into a more sober tone, to match the darker days.

Technically any time after the Full Moon occurs, the Moon is in her “waning” phase, but I personally begin feeling the familiar energies of the Waning Moon heighten within me around the Last Quarter. You might as well. Hollow feelings may surface. We might be feeling itchy or irritated, sad and empty for no foreseeable reason. Our energy may be drained to match the grey, hazy days and frigid, snowy nights. Traditionally, from a Lunar witch perspective, this is not a favored time to launch anything, amplify anything, or energetically undertake anything challenging. This is a favored time for letting go of old patterns and burying old demons. The crops, weeds, and brush that farmers cut back during this time take longer to come back, or go away forever.

A favored activity during the last two weeks of a Moon cycle is to rest and recalibrate. Double down on sleep, soaks, and simple nourishing necessities. Give yourself the space and time to reconsider action plans of the moment and goals for your future weeks and months. Process through any new inspirations or knowledge that might have popped up in and around the last week.

This is also a fantastic time to go even deeper within, tending to behind-the-scenes sundries with intuition-building exercises, divining, scrying, or connecting with ancestors and the spirit realm. If the Moon is a popular archetype of the subconscious, then the Waning to Balsamic to the Dark Moon phases are the glimmering gifts that the subconscious offers—the nuggets of herkimer diamonds, silver, and strawberries that have gotten bogged down in the murk of the monkey mind. This is a wonderful time to dive deep down to the bottom of the lake of our inner consciousness and endless subconscious. There’s less light in the sky to distract us. The surface of the cobalt lake may lie more still. In the introduction of the book, we talked about comparing the energy of the Waning Moon with Winter, so we are in the Winter Moon phase in the actual Winter time. How might you find your inner sustenance and your inner seeker during this time?

If I’ve cast a spell during the Waxing or Full Moon, for the Waning Moon I like to put my focus on the part of the work—whether that be spiritual, practical, and magical—that has to do with examining and moving past the blocks and fears surrounding the desires of my ask at the Full Moon. The prompt for the Full Moon was all about self-love. During this time, we can let go of limiting beliefs and thought patterns that have to do with the ways in which we block ourselves from experiencing a full range of self-love and care.

Think about letting go of where you don’t love yourself—of gently ignoring the cruel conversations you let run rampant in your mind. We can begin to view the harmful scripts our brains follow as no longer concrete laws. We can begin to view the scripts as an autopilot automaton. These patterns are the unthinking groove in a skipping record, repeating itself until it no longer makes sense. The same story has now become annoying and exhausting to experience. We walk over to the record player, gently remove the needle, and put the record away.

Maybe we throw it away, as it is no longer useful to us. We think about what record we really want to listen to in our collection. One that makes us feel happy, fulfilled, excited, or calm. At this time, remember you have a choice in selecting the soundtrack from your mind’s record collection. Maybe it is time to create a new anthems made from new combinations of thoughts and beliefs. We are no longer our old songs. We are making up our new one now, consciously and intentionally.

At this time, examine your core beliefs around what you were told you were and what you might achieve. These beliefs could be from your family, your early surroundings, the larger community, or the media. Most likely, you will be able to come up with a few key sentences that stem from a specific way you were treated in the past. You may wish to examine one or two of these at a time. Are they really true? What do you gain from holding on to these harmful beliefs about yourself? What would you move towards if you thought of replacing just one of these unloving core beliefs?

Remember: your process will not look the same as another’s. Self-judgment may bubble up or slap you in the face if you choose to face this process. Try to move those harsh impulses through you, and view yourself as a child. View yourself as your own best friend. Most likely, you would only hold empathy for your best friend if they were vulnerable enough to share their most damaging internal narratives with you.

During the next week, be mindful of the subconscious blueprints you return to around your core beliefs about yourself and your worth. Question where the materials of the structure of your identity came from. Is it time to rebuild the structure?

—Excerpt from Many Moons 2018 Vol 1.

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