Outmoded Ideas of the Self: Changing Your Mind

Our Last Quarter Moon, the only one of September, arrives today, Tuesday, September 12th. The Moon, if visible to your naked eye in the evening sky, should appear about half lit up, the light coming from the left side. The Full Moon of the month was one week ago. If any messages came through, now might feel like the natural time to distill them, write them down, work with them. If any huge emotions came up for your sweet self during the Full Moon on the 6th or around that time, it might be time to analyze them, parse them out, look for patterns that can aid you moving forward. After today the light ebbs off the Moon as it orbits counterclockwise away from us, closer to the Sun. We are a little over one week away from the next New Moon.

The Major Arcana card in the Tarot that corresponds with Gemini is The Lovers. Yes, of course, on one level this card is about love, desire, and cosmic unity—sometimes with another, but on a core level it is with self, the merging of dualities or disparate facets of the self on the inside. Close your eyes. Do you see anything? Is there a universe inside of this body you inhabit? What does it feel like, look like, what images or messages pop into your head? Is it yours and yours alone, or is it meant to be shared—each interior speck of stardust a flashlight for the other lovers, each secret a new song to be belted out in front of an audience? Right now in your life, what is on the inside that needs to come out and where is it time to process certain external situations on the inside?

The Lovers card, to me, is also about choice and life’s path. About what happens, what decisions get made, what actions activated, after being presented with the truth. In the traditional deck, behind the man is the Tree of Life, behind the woman is the Tree of Knowledge. A loaded message, or temptation, delivered by the slithering serpent, that maligned archetype of dangerous influence.

Consider the snake, shedding its skin. The average snake sheds its skin two to four times a year. Serpents’ skins don’t grow with them, like other animals’ skins do. They cast off their exterior periodically to allow for growth and to remove parasites that might have attached themselves.

When we are working with magick and manifestation, we must take a holistic approach and examine our blocks and fears, the scarcities that circle back around, that craggy claw pressing the tops of our panic buttons in the middle of the night. Some of these patterns are old identities we’ve clung to that have been programmed into us so long ago we might not have even been aware they were forming; some have been programmed even before we were born! To step 
forward into the new, to conjure up healthier ways, sustenance, and sustainability, requires bidding farewell to old identities—and with them, the parasites of bogged-down thought forms, limiting self-talk, and the stagnation that accompanies them.

At this time, think about and examine any conscious or unconscious ideas around your own identity, personality traits, or behavior that might have be stopping you from working your best magick. You might ask yourself where this narrative is coming from. Is it even true? Did anyone ever even say it out loud to you?

We must transmute fear into love.
Consider the snake, shedding its skin: its dead, disintegrated cells from a past self, unrecognizable. All in the name of growing, getting larger and stronger.

Are you ready to work through uncomfortable feelings and no longer block your own paths to change?

During the Balsamic period of this September, a week before the New Moon, what old cells are going to be sloughed off? What useless titles, adjectives are you no longer willing to put up with? Are you ready to be in the void? Are you ready to say goodbye, once and for all, to situations not in alignment with your dreams and goals?

What is draining your focus?

Your mental energy?

Where are you scattered?
Where are you bored, and what needs spicing up?

Are you ready to make new choices?

What stories about yourself are you ready to stop telling, once and for all?

Excerpt from Many Moons. Buy here or here.

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