Thursday begins the Dark Moon of the lunar cycle: kicking off the 11th lunar cycle of the year. (We have 13 New Moons this year.)

Do you feel called and ready to connect to mysteries this season?Ask yourself if you wish to go beyond the veil. We can easily descend into different levels of awareness during this liminal time.

You may wish to set up an ancestor altar, and meditate on your lineage. Get out all your favorite poetry books and read them out loud. Light tea lights and intentionally be in the darkness each night.  This is a time of deep reflection and connections: leading to even deeper engagement with different layers and levels of intuition.

You could be feeling extra heightened, extra alive.

You could be feeling extra ready to weed, to clear, in order to set down new roots, plant new seeds.

This October New Moon is around the corner. The New Moon period starts on Sunday, and goes to about Tuesday. Any intentional New Moon magical work can be done then.

In my Moonbeaming classes, I speak about not worrying about what the sign that the Moon is in when we first begin developing our lunar intelligence. I'm not an astrologer: I'm a psychic Moon witch. One of my biggest goals is to guide folks into their own intuition and into their own relationship with the Moon. When we do this, we step into their most realized, most empowered self. Our relationship with the moon becomes truly collaborative.

I find that when we first begin working with a particular energy, we need to deeply connect with it for ourselves. We need to establish a direct line of communication with that energy, so that we are directly able to receive the guidance that comes forth.

Lunar intuition is all about feelings.

I don't mean emotions. I mean tactile feelings: the weather, sensations, subconscious flashes of information, what texture of clothes you need to feel against your skin, specific insights, what temperature you need to eat your food at, how the ancient wisdom from your ancestors lives in your bones.

I mean where the messages reside in your body, and how they wish to come through. I mean the particular rhythms and relationships every unique individual has during each particular progression of each lunar phase.

Astrology is wonderful for storytelling, for healing. It can be a great tool. But sometimes the interpretations of what dominant culture think about a certain sign—and the Moon in a particular sign—can take away from our own innate connection with ourselves, our own personal magic and healing. It can act as a barrier, not a bolster, to us experiencing ourselves: our magic. It can stop us from having a direct, intimate relationship with the Moon and with ourselves.

What we need to listen to at this time of year comes from the inside. The beyond. The whispers, the inklings.

And so, the rituals and spells and activities we must embark on must be personal, and informed by what our heart feels called to heal.

Maybe your New Moon ritual is silent meditation in nature: finding new ways to listen to the leaves that don't necessarily include sound or your ears.

Maybe you need to sit with yourself for long moments each day, with you hand over your heart. Allow whatever messages, or grief, or sweetness that needs to bubble up, bubble up from deep within.

Let it surprise you.

Let all the ways that you are learning to listen inform your magic.

This could be a New Moon of no agenda, other than to watch the sky shift from grey to black.

This could be a New Moon of true transformation. The first step is paying attention to where this lies in your body, to what relationships are highlighting your shadow.

This could be a New Moon of trusting the mystery. Your spell could even sing in the key of mystery. Find yourself trying something different, that you feel called to try. Cast a spell for a particular quality—courage, devotion, resilience—that your intuition tells you that you must cultivate if you are to begin walking on a more meaningful path.

Don't tell anyone what you are doing.

Let the experience belong to you and the Moon.

Get comfortable and sink into your intuition under this New Moon.

Above is a Tarot spread about trusting mystery and clarifying about where your energy and magic needs to go at this time.

Happy New Moon, Moonbeams.