Earlier this year, I explored how moon phase, when you’re born, and the phenomenon known as “out of bounds moon” can affect your experience of being human; then this topic started to organically inform me of another thread of exploration. I was delving into a very personal topic around attachment and my relationship with my own mother as an infant and then later in my life, continuing after her death, since which she has continued to be so pivotally important to me and often in my thoughts. In short, I feel very close to my mother for all she is no longer there and yet, to start with, she was not the hands-on parent that I might have hoped for and there are ways this has impacted my health and my very “wiring” as a human being. For more on this, I refer you to my recent post Held on living whole in which I explore how attachment issues can have some very real, biological consequences that affect our core health and sensitivities for the whole of our lifetime…or, potentially for that long if we don’t notice how they came about and work with this at the deeper layers (and I’ll come back to that later).
One of the biggest health challenges, for me, is my hypersensitivity to everything, including that I am electrosensitive. I mentioned in that post how it was almost as though, in the absence of a very tactile parent, the kind that would cradle and rock me as an infant (mine was a wonderful parent but, combined with having three other children of an awkward age and a sickly husband to deal with, her lack of demonstration meant I have very few recollections of close physical contact with her…) it was as though I formed a close relationship with everything else in my sensory environment. Of course, there is nothing with more impact in that sensory zone than the moon, which speaks to our every cell in ways that we hardly think about but which impact all of our rhythms and those of the planet, the tides, the weather systems… I found myself almost laughing out loud as the concept came to me that the moon, which was out of bounds when I was born, must have appeared in my radar just a few days later as it became both closer and fuller…MUCH fuller, as it was a super moon that month…and I might very well have embraced it, with all my energetic sensors, and declared “Mummy, you’re here at last!” In fact, I was born in a run of three super full moons, one just before I was born, two just after (we begin our energetic relationships during gestation so I would certainly have felt that first super moon communicating with me from within the womb) but then the moon was out of bounds and a mere waxing crescent when I was born; so what a contrast, so much coming and going again. Yes, I laughed and then I stopped in my tracks as though a nugget of truth in this hit home to me. Let me try to explain.
Imagine, if you will, that when you are born there is a gathering of sorts; all the family members that are going to be meaningful to you are collected around the cradle. But there’s one absentee…a key player…who isn’t there and you are on the look out for her since you were told to expect her. Perhaps she had to pop out of the room for some reason but you know she’s not at your cribside, she’s misisng or perhaps she’s late. So, imagine how, when she finally arrives, though the room is full of other people, all your attention goes to her…you’re fixated, can’t take your eyes off her, ever watchful in case she leaves again. She instantly becomes the most important person in your world. Like the wayward couldn’t-care-less brother (I had one of those too) or prodigal son, we somehow love them more, celebrate them most vehemently when they return…and weep the deepest oceans when they leave us again. And even in their returning, there is always that deep knowing that they will inevitably go, over and over; like tides washing up on the beach…
That’s how I was with my mother…and its, in a sense, how I have always been with the moon.
Because, though we weren’t close to begin with, my mother and I became extraordinarily close in later years; before she “left”. In the years between, it was like she ebbed and flowed on a tide. When my siblings or father were around, there wasn’t a chance I could get near her; but when they dispersed, or I was unwell, I had all her attention. During my teen years, my father demanded her full attendance as he was retired and had a lot going on with his health (and had his own mother-issues to work out). It was after he died that I had the most extraordinary relationship with my mother; and then she suddenly got cancer and died. It was as though, the fuller she became, the more I seemed to expect that it would tear me apart when she left again. So there was both longing and dread in every coming and going; round and around in circles of fullness and depletion.
Was this the relationship, in prototype, that I have had since (and even had before) with the moon? Far fetched as that sounds, we all have some sort of prototype relationship “held” for us by the moon because we were all born during one of its phases; and the moon speaks to our every cell. The way our moon phase and, that rare thing, the out-of-bounds moon, impact our relationship with that moon….and determine traits about us that influence the whole of our life trajectory…is explored thoroughly in Stephen Forrest’s “Book of the Moon”, which is one of the most impactful things I have ever read. Of course, not everyone has an out of bounds moon; in fact they are pretty rare…but then the fact that you don’t have an out of bounds moon speaks equal voumes about your relationship with the moon (and with self and others); as does your phase of the moon (and all very much in the context of where the sun and other planets were at the time of your birth). They are like ingredients in a pot but, in my view, the moon is the one that can alter the flavour more than many others; at least when it comes to relationships.
So do all people born under an out of bounds moon have this strangely intense emotional response to abandonments of sorts, whenever they play out in life (like they are wired to half-expect them to occur, like a wound held in potential)? Perhaps this mostly happens when life itself mirrors this same inner-theme of what is so fulsome, obvious and bright in your life periodically leaving again, triggering an intensified reaction because it seems to confirm some worst fear. If this becomes a repeat occurence, who knows how the theme could take on weight; becoming a “thing”that starts to influence the psyche in ways that have long-lasting effect. Perhaps it can go the other way; to make the person fiercely independent, a loner at all costs. To be honest, I can relate to both of these responses, and yet they both have light and shadow sides which, in order to work with them, I have wanted to expose and to pick apart in myself…which getting to know “my” moon better has allowed me to do.
To convey all this in simpler terms, I feel I should explain more about what an out of bounds moon is. If you imagine the sun as a giant “torch beam” which points towards our planet; only our planet is on a tilt so where that direct beam lands varies according to the time of year, which is what creates the seasons. In other words the sun’s direct “torch beam” does not track the equator but goes just over 23° off-track, north and south of that mid line which is known as the ecliptic. The moon, however, circles the planet on its own wiggy path and there are times when it reaches maximum declination, that particular year, at just 18°; other years when it matches the sun’s 23° range and then other years still, on an 18.6 year cycle, when it goes outside of that 23° range by another 5°, to a total of just over 28° declination (measured off the ecliptic). Another way of saying this is that the moon sometimes goes “where the sun don’t shine”, in a manner of speaking. In other words, it goes out of the sun’s declination range, or “off-limits”, perhaps a little off our sensory radar as sentient beings, too…so that, on returning like the prodigal, its a case of, “surprise, I’m back”. If you are born under such an “absent” phase, this has to have an impact; and it does. The list of characters who, over history, were born under an out of bounds moon speaks for itself and makes very interesting, and insightful, reading; as though it explains quite a lot about their particular and quite exceptional traits. A great many creative types and forward thinkers, people who pushed the boundaries of science and art or who were mavericks and loners seem to come from amongst its number.
So, to take one very extreme example, Hitler was almost born under an out of bounds moon (he was just half a degree short) and this has been taken, by astrologers including Steven Forrest, to be of significance as “enough” to explain why he had certain out-of-control traits, as he clearly did. With my new theory, I would take that further to say that, in a sense, being born on the threshold of an out of bounds, or absentee, moon could be more impactful, in some cases, than having a moon that was fully out of bounds when you were born. Under the right (or should I say, wrong!) circumstances, where similar themes were playing out in your domestic life, having a mother-moon that was standing on the threshold of the doorway, threatening to abandon you at birth, could be extremely unsettling for the psyche of a young child and, even, an adult who has failed to address all their inner child issues. I had no idea what Hitler’s relationship with his mother was like so I just looked that up; he was clearly very attached to her and she died a long-painful death from cancer under his care when he was still a young man. The doctor apparently reported “He had never seen anyone so overcome with grief as Adolf Hitler at the loss of his mother” (source), which came at the time he was starting to formulate many of his ideas about poverty, politics and race; in fact he plunged into destitution and poverty himself right after she “abandoned” him. Do you see what I mean? How his psyche could have been set up for deep wounds that influenced the trajectory of the world by the placement of the moon at his birth is a very real consideration (though, of course, not an excuse).
In my case, my moon was very out-of-bounds and so, in a sense, this guaranteed a high degree of independence from “mother” which I did, in fact, dsiplay…putting this down to too many siblings and a mother who was preoccupied. Instead, I placed all my attention on father, my personal sun (he was born under a super full moon)…until all that changed, with a lot of hurt feelings. Perhaps my relationship with him imprinted me with some preconceptions about that relationship also (my sensitivity to the sun, which is also such an accurate mirror of my tendency to have very sudden burst of inspiration and my huge inner fire, is a long running theme in my health; perhaps, as with my father, we are too similar to always get on). It was much later that I returned to mother, but as friends, compatriots…not so much what you would classically expect of a mother-daughter relationship and yet it ran very deep. And, as above, the sense of abandonment wasn’t any less when, at the tender age of 28, I lost her to cancer and was left “all alone”. Yet this was the wake-up call of my spiritual journey; because, in a sense, I went off in search of mother and, having practiced with the moon all my life, there were no limits to how far I would travel to find her “out there”. Caught up in grief, I stepped out of my more-material preoccupations to plunge into the realms of what couldn’t be seen, could only be felt, in order to try and find her “out there”. So began the adventures that led to me discovering my spiritual self; in ways so extraordinary that I now regard my mother’s death as “by design” so I could (and would) dare to go wherever my journey happened to lead me, which was very far. This, in a sense, is what relationship with an out of bounds moon can do (and has clearly done for so many creatives and genius over the whole of history); it offers you this “nothing out of bounds or off-limits” view of, well, everything since this planet’s narrow perspective of what is in and out of range no longer applies. You can go literally anywhere in your explorations!
And if this all sounds completely mad then perhaps that’s appropriate since those who engage in open relationships with the moon have long been considered so; but then, that’s really all of us, whether we admit to it or no. Do you have liquid in your veins and water in all your cells? Then you are in relationship with the moon, like it or not; but it’s how much you notice and allow yourself to feel it that makes all the difference, the same as anything else. In my case, I feel the moon very much; oh how I feel it and its rhythms, the build up to fullness which can be so impactful on my sensations that I can’t wait for it to “leave” again and then the not so slow demise which can feel wrenching…and yet, somewhere just the other side of that dark moon, I find my place. Like fecund earth, full of sensory potential, this dark waxing moon is where I find myself, cycle after moon cycle; and, like the moon, I am always ready to begin again….never tiring of the repeat. These are things the moon taught me and made me acutely aware of, in that babyhood phase of “speaking” to one another across the long nights in the language of electricity, when my senses reached out across the dark spaces to feel the moon’s embrace; my surrogate mother or the true one? A bit of both is how it feels to me, for the moon is indeed, in many ways, the mother energy embodied and held for us all there, deny her as we might.
This is such an ancient and “given” idea that to divert into the “moon as mother” topic feels unnecessary so, instead, I will touch upon its very opposite; how I felt the day it was suggested to me by Anni Sennov, in her book “Golden Age, Golden Earth”, that the moon was now out-moded on this planet, the symbol of capricious, childlike, whimsical energy, or a desire to lead a solitary life and of “soul”, thus no longer valid or in vogue, post our current stage of evolution into the crystal energies. She likes to divide people as either sun or moon people and is obviously quite disparaging of the latter, believing them to be of a type that are no longer supported on this planet. In fact she goes as far as to say the moon became permananetly attached to another solar system after the arrival of the indigo energies from the mid ’80s and that it “no longer belongs here”; those connected to it being in the process of either migrating to another place or struggling to continue living here as demonstrated by a range of physical ailments and even death. She goes on:
“in 2014 as I write this book, the connection between the Moon and all life on Earth has finally been shut down, so there is no longer any consciousness support or possible upgrades to download on the soul level for anyone on Planet Earth. The only way to get an experience of the Moon in the future is to look in the sky at night, or by physically travelling there.”
Although I enjoyed her work on AuraTransformation, which I have explored for myself, I was so indignant to read this, the first time, that I almost threw the book out with a snort or derision at that point; which, I suppose, told me much more about my relationship with moon than I had previously realised. In fact, it led almost directly to me discovering Steven Forrest’s book, which feels so “by design” on my evolutionary path.
Yet…all these many months later, I kind-of see what she means at the level where it’s all to do with developing the kind of self-sufficiency that the crystal energies necessarily encompass. Part of this is to own what is yours and reattach it to your own energy field, not leaving it “out there” and separate; dangling, as it were, in the night sky doing to you whatever it chooses and us just the little children doing its bidding or bowing our consent. That includes reincporating all that the moon “is” to us, including this feminine aspect, which should be integrated as part of us, not left just hanging in the sky as some sort of pretty yet completely abstract bauble, with little or no practical application. We need to bring these things home to ourselves, and to make them real, as us and in our practical and fully manifest existence…not just left “out there”. This includes all of the “incredible” personal qualities that we see in other people, never daring to believe that the reason we are so attracted to them is that we are seeing aspects of ourselves, mirrored back so we can own them!
There has been such a stepping up process for me, at so many levels, this year, and part of that has been to do with this mother-daughter relationship (including mine with my own daughter, which has evolved hugely)…in fact, all relationships. Hard to summarise but its all to do with my personal wellbeing no longer being subjectified by my relationship with “other”; I don’t alter because of whom I am with. At last, I have learned how to remain steady in my own sense of wholeness, in spite of the comings and goings of all those other meaningful beings in my world, and I’ve also felt for myself just how intrinsic this is to the next stage of my evolution. I have also discovered that I want to sift out traces of co-dependency with, and subservience to, “other” wherever I have found it; which has been a new development for me, having previously allowed myself to land on such entanglements like they were a feather bed made for my own comfort and safety. This year, I have started to notice how they are really the pea under the mattress; that unspecified “thing” that makes me toss and turn with some unnamed discomfort even when I should be feeling wonderful with my arrangements, or so I used to tell myself. So I have worked to identify where these knots hide themselves and to actively shine light so they can disperse or recalibrate as part of my inner relationship…that all-important one that I have with myself (which is, likely, what they were acting as the poor substitute for anyway). Not to say I have found reason to dissolve many relationships but I have made them stronger than ever where I have ironed out the sense of me waiting for these beings to “arrive” and then fearing they might “leave” again, determining whether I am able to be happy, or not….allowing, instead, that I can appreciate both the comings and goings in equal part and still be, resoundingly, who I am all the same. No longer looking for fragmented parts of myself “out there”, I have realised that the strong points of my relationships tell me more about myself than I previously knew and so I reattach them to my sense of who I am, allowing them to fuel that all important self-love and appreciation (just as I notice any weaker points more than I once did, in order to heal what feels wounded or lacking on the inside). Like in my relationship with my own mother, I find that I have now become all the best parts of whatever me and another explored together; yes, having travelled so far to find her, she too is internalised as part of me, dwelling permanently inside my heart. I feel more whole these days than I ever have – you could almost say “more full”.
There have been so many layers to this new understanding of the moon as a relationship place-marker that I don’t want to dive any deeper in this post, for fear of muddying the waters rather than shining a clear light on the surface. Rather, I would prefer to throw this out there as is, perhaps as food for thought, something that will help stir something insightful up to the surface of your own relationship pool if you take that moonlight plunge yourself. Should you want to dive deeper into the moon phases and especially the out of bound aspect, I do heartily recommend Steven Forrest’s book, which continues to inspire my own inspiration on this vast, juicy topic.
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