Hermits are very much at home in the lunar realm, that path we’ve been walking since March 2nd. They’d be happy to continually commune with the moon, but there is a final step for them to fully live out their calling. Hermits must light their lantern and let it shine for others to see. 

At the new moon, we centered ourselves in our core values and visions to help us walk the Moon’s path of shifting light. In the new moon post, I called these our “guiding light,” and connected it to the creation myth found in the Kabbalah in which the light from the beginning of the universe that God placed in vessels to be contained shatters them. Each one of us humans then comes to hold a piece of the shattered light.

For this Hermit-guided, full moon, I am thinking about the inner light of the Quaker tradition. The founder of Quakerism, George Fox, preached in the 17th century that silence and stillness help worshipers to perceive “that of God in everyone.” In the 20th century Quaker teacher and activist Rufus Jones spoke of an inner light, “something of God” that could be found within every human soul. While Quaker tradition and organizations are guided by shared values such as simplicity, integrity, equality, community, and peace, each Quaker’s action is guided by their direct encounter with the Divine. At Quaker meetings, those gathered sit in silence until moved to speak. It is not unheard of to have a service in which there is no speaking at all. The silence is the ministry of those gathered given each to the other

Quakers are famously pacifists, but they are not passive. Though most Quakers did not serve in the military during World II, for example, they were active in rescue efforts, working in French internment camps, hiding Jewish children, and assisting thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees with immigration and resettlement. Today Quakers decry the war in Ukraine, but call for diplomatic not military solutions.

Quaker positions are often counter to popular opinion, especially on matters of social justice where they have been “early adapters” of the abolition of slavery, sufferege for women, civil rights, and the use of non-violent direct action to bring about change. The inner light that they have attuned to through silence and stillness compels them to act in the outer world on what they have learned from their inner encounter with the Divine.

We began this lunar cycle tuning into our inner light. In this full moon time, we now are invited to find in that light the inspiration for actions to take or gifts to offer that are uniquely ours to do or make. These actions and gifts that we manifest will be our Hermit’s lantern shining out into the world.

The action or gift may or may not be large. The Hermit is associated with the astrological sign of Virgo who is all about the details. The action or gift may or may not not align with popular opinion. Innovation and early stages of change are often controversial or at first rejected. The action or gift doesn’t even have to be counted as successful.

Size, popular opinion, and success are the measurements of the outer world made at a particular time. But times change. Collective understanding shifts. Sometimes seeds are dormant until the right conditions emerge for growth.

Appraise your offering instead from the soul level, look with the eyes of the Hermit. Consider how closely the offering aligned with your core values and vision. Look for if the offering brought joy to you and/or others. Ponder how the offering served the ancestors. Perhaps wait to make an appraisal at all until 10 years from now when you will see from a longer perspective. Or leave the appraisal to those descendants coming in 100 years and just offer to the best of your ability now, trusting the guidance of the inner light.

To encourage a revelation on these themes as we journey through this moonthly cycle, you are invited to one, some, or all of these practices:

~ Moon bathe by sitting or lying under a window or outside on the ground. Let go of your thoughts and soak in the light. To draw upon the power of the connection between The Moon and the Hermit, you may want to use your imaginal senses to breathe the light of the moon into your body and let it find and feed the place in your body that holds your inner light. Imagine your inner light growing in size and/or strength until it floats just a few feet out from your body. Perhaps this light is like shifting clouds that you watch in delight for a while. You could invite the shifting to come into a form, perhaps it is a symbol or animal or a wisdom figure. Let yourself be with what emerges. Finally breathe the form back into your body. Be open to a message coming to you about what action or gift to take in the weeks to come.

~ Take out any reading or your reflections from the new moon and look at them in a new light. How does your understanding of the cards shift now that time has passed and light has shifted? (If you haven’t done a reading yet, no problem, just do it now under the light of the full moon. You can try the one from the new moon.)

~ Bring out your Moon and Hermit cards from your Tarot deck and connect them to your new moon reading / reflections. You could place/imagine these cards on either side of your reading or above and below, and then look at how they add meaning into the story your original cards offered you.

~ Reflect on questions such as: How can I make space for solitude in my life? What light is uniquely mine to bring into the world? What gift can I bring out of this light? How am I being called to act? What vision can I make real? What is the next step to take to make that vision real? You could, of course, pull cards as responses to any of these questions. You may want to engage in Visio Divina to find the layers of wisdom within the cards.

When you are done, remember to offer gratitude for what you have received. Consider what gift you now want to return to the world. Pulling a card for guidance on the gift is always a fine thing to do. In the coming weeks and before the moon returns to dark during the last days of March. offer your gift to the world.

a 1909 card scanned by Holly Voley and retrieved from Sacred Texts. Deck available from US Games

The moon’s light invites us to a different kind of sight. Less distinct than the sun’s illumination, what is revealed in moonlight lacks clear edges. What is in the distance is indistinct. And what we think we see on a full moon fades when the dark moon comes. We are called to constantly adjust as we walk the path of the Moon.

Our adjustment happens between the two pillars of the Moon card. These could be the pillars of Certainty and Uncertainty. When we think we know for certain that we are right or know what is coming, it would be beneficial to test our assumptions. To gather different perspectives. Think about the repercussions of our actions. When we are confronted with uncertainty, we can meet the worry and fear that arises. Acknowledging the difficult emotions, we can use their energy to move forward but not be controlled by their flow. We can dare to be brave in the face of uncertainty.

Certainty and Uncertainty may be the forces pushing us forward in the lunar landscape, but they are not the “inner light” that keeps us true to our own soul’s path. That inner light comes from our core values flowing from a connection to the Greater Than Ourselves that we have forged through practice and commitment.

Our guide for tending that inner light on the Moon’s winding path this lunar cycle is The Knight of Cups. All knights are devoted to a cause that is greater than themselves. The Tarot’s knights serve and seek to expand the gifts of their element. The suit of Cups associated with the element of water offers us emotional range, creative connection, intuitive wisdom, and Love.

Yes, these knights are dreamers, but they also take the action necessary to make the dream real through creating art in the form of poems or dance or song; they offer healing practices to those in the stress of uncertainty; or facilitate meetings where all ideas and emotions are expressed, for example. Yes, they are lovers with a romantic streak, but their love is not limited to a romantic partner. Their watery, expansive selves feel the connection to even those they do not know. They do know that to love is to act for the good of the Whole—and they invite us to follow.

Where is the Knight leading us? If we are traveling through Major Arcana’s progression, we find the Knight leading us from the pillars of the Moon to the sunflowers of the Sun.

From The Gaian Tarot

As so many of us are learning this week, sunflowers are the national flower of Ukraine. In a video that has gone viral on social media and also carried in traditional media, an older woman confronts a Russian soldier in the street (quotes are from a transcript of the exchange);

“What the f*ck are you doing here?” You’re occupants, you’re fascists! What the f*ck are you doing on our land with all these guns?”

She then takes seeds from her pocket and says, “Take these seeds and put them in your pockets, so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here.”

The soldier replies: “Right now, our discussion will lead nowhere. Let’s not escalate this situation. Please.

She has the last word with: “You f***ing came here uninvited. Pieces of sh*t.”

I’m in awe of this powerful crone. Her weapons are seeds, her voice, and her commitment to her country. Her certainty here inspires. Looking with symbolic eyes she is calling for life to come from the death that is exploding her country. This is a fierce kind of Love, one possible to see only under the strange and mysterious light of the moon.

But along with my admiration from this woman, I also feel sorry for the soldier. He can’t answer why they are there. He seems not even to understand the enormity of the situation. In this exchange, he is bureaucratic more than brutal. I have read that so many of these Russian soldiers are 19 or 20 years old and barely know where they are and have no understanding of why. They have no vision or values to guide them. They are uncertain.

The shifting light of the Moon allows me to hold both of these figures and all of my complicated reactions at the same time. The solar yellow of the sunflowers calls me to imagine a future where flowers bloom.

Really… flowers? War rages in Ukraine, the window for addressing climate change is closing rapidly, and transgender youth are under attack from politicians trying to score political points  by playing with their lives. Is this really time to imagine flowers blooming? To imagine peace? To imagine what a world independant on Russia’s fossil fuels would look like? To imagine young people experiencing gender euphoria?

Yes, we must imagine these futures now or they will never come to be. 

I may have shared Poem by Muriel Rukeyser with you before. It is a touchstone poem for me ing times of great challenge so I’ll share it again. Remove the first and last lines and this is a poem written for this century.

I lived in the first century of world wars.

Most mornings I would be more or less insane,

The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,

The news would pour out of various devices

Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.

I would call my friends on other devices;

They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.

Slowly I would get to pen and paper,

Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.

In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,

Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,

Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.

As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,

We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,

To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile

Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,

Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means

To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,

To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

Muriel Rukeyser’s writing of this poem did not stop wars—she wrote it in the 1960s and the wars have kept coming—but it serves as a constant call for the renewal of our visions of peace, of love, and of reconciliation. The call still echoes today.

Today’s moon-washed day is the day in which the next vision is born.  We have no time to waste in imagining the next wave of renewal because waves begin far out in the ocean’s unseen depths. Once formed the wave travels below the surface for a long way before it breaks on the shore.

That the world we are in now seems far from what our Knight of Cups selves can imagine calls for a larger, not smaller, vision. This vision held within us of a better world can guide on the path between Certainty and Uncertainty. This vision challenges the narratives offered that we are certain to fail and shakes off the paralysis of uncertain times. Echoing Rukeyser, the vision calls to reach beyond ourselves and our limitations. To wake into the circle of our next becoming as individuals, communities, and a planet.

And when we wake, this is when the work begins. We won’t just make wishes like the Nine of Cups figure. We will work for what we want  to make real. 

And now we come full circle and return to the Nine of Cups where we began to look finally at the gift aspect of image through the Nine of Rivers, the Shining Tribe Tarot’s version of this card.

The meaning and message of the card derives from a creation myth found in the Kabbalah in which the light from the beginning of the universe that God placed in vessels to be contained shatters them. Each one of us humans then comes to hold a piece of the shattered light. When we shine forth this light what is known as “tikkun olam,” restoration of the world, occurs. Of this work deck creator Rachel Pollack writes:

Restoration requires that we help others by sharing our truth and action. For many contemporary Jews, Tikkun Olam has become a symbol for commitment to social change. The water is dark because we do not yet know what will come of it. We cannot predict the results of healing, either our own or the world around us. We need to act for the sake of a redemption that will be a mystery until it unfolds before us. 

READING OF THE MOONTH

CERTAINTY: What am I certain of that it would be beneficial to question to support my soul’s growth?

UNCERTAINTY: What can support me to navigate the uncertain times in which we live?

GUIDING LIGHT: What core value/vision can I center myself in to move through these times and contribute to the renewal of the world? 

I do offer this as an e-reading in my collaborative initiative format for $23.  Sign up with PayPal or email me about sending a check. When I receive notification, I’ll be in touch to let you know about when to expect to receive your reading by email. I generally have openings to do these readings on Mondays and Saturdays.

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Just as I was posting this I received an email from White Awake, an anti-racism organization working with white people to dismantle white supremacy—I’ve done a few of their trainings—with resources for widening perspectives on the narratives being offered on the war on Ukraine. This video by commentator Krystal Ball of Breaking Points examines how and posits why the war in Ukraine is being covered differently form the ones in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. I’ll post our resources as I take a look at them.