Every Monday in 2015 I made notes of my thoughts and feelings about the Moon in a notebook specially conceived for the purpose and covered in an old lunar calendar.
Monday is the Moon’s day in astrology. I was interested to track the ebb and flow of my responses to the Moon over a year. I had done a similarly durational work in my poetry work Taropoetics, where I dealt myself a tarot card reading every week and free-wrote my responses.
I have always been involved with esoteric practices, and have sought to combine them in my writing. The Moon and the lunar goddesses connected with Her are key in witchcraft, which I have practised for a long time. It made sense to me to make a piece of work based on that relationship.
The Moon, of course, has a natural ebb and flow in its continually changing aspect. Aligning ourselves with this changeability, and being aware of the peaks of troughs of energy in the natural world, is important to witches.
The Moon is also ruler of the astral realm, where we dream, and where we can create impressions that can then be brought through to the physical realm. For this reason, the Moon governs imagination and symbolism, the language of dreams and the unconscious.
At this time, my son was about four and he had been ill for quite a lot of his babyhood. I was still exhausted, lonely and perpetually worried about him, my marriage was fractured and I clung hard to writing and my spiritual practice. I found motherhood intensely hard, and, in retrospect, did have a tough time of it. By 2015, the worst was over and soon things would improve a little when he went to school, and I think it was at this point that I started to process what had happened in the years before.
In retrospect, I can see the grief and difficulty I was processing, and by meditating on the Moon I didn’t so much find comfort as I did a space in which to express how unhinged, exhausted and in need of support and comfort I was. I wish I could go back to this iteration of me and tell her that it would get better, eventually.
I structured the text into 13 poems, representing the 13 lunar months in a year. I avoided the temptation to name each month after the Ogham tree calendar or another set of names for the lunar months based on indigenous cultures, which wouldn’t have been appropriate. Instead, I named them for figures in my own imaginary landscape as a way of mapping a personal imaginal realm.
Monday is the Moon’s day in astrology. I was interested to track the ebb and flow of my responses to the Moon over a year. I had done a similarly durational work in my poetry work Taropoetics, where I dealt myself a tarot card reading every week and free-wrote my responses.
I have always been involved with esoteric practices, and have sought to combine them in my writing. The Moon and the lunar goddesses connected with Her are key in witchcraft, which I have practised for a long time. It made sense to me to make a piece of work based on that relationship.
The Moon, of course, has a natural ebb and flow in its continually changing aspect. Aligning ourselves with this changeability, and being aware of the peaks of troughs of energy in the natural world, is important to witches.
The Moon is also ruler of the astral realm, where we dream, and where we can create impressions that can then be brought through to the physical realm. For this reason, the Moon governs imagination and symbolism, the language of dreams and the unconscious.
At this time, my son was about four and he had been ill for quite a lot of his babyhood. I was still exhausted, lonely and perpetually worried about him, my marriage was fractured and I clung hard to writing and my spiritual practice. I found motherhood intensely hard, and, in retrospect, did have a tough time of it. By 2015, the worst was over and soon things would improve a little when he went to school, and I think it was at this point that I started to process what had happened in the years before.
In retrospect, I can see the grief and difficulty I was processing, and by meditating on the Moon I didn’t so much find comfort as I did a space in which to express how unhinged, exhausted and in need of support and comfort I was. I wish I could go back to this iteration of me and tell her that it would get better, eventually.
I structured the text into 13 poems, representing the 13 lunar months in a year. I avoided the temptation to name each month after the Ogham tree calendar or another set of names for the lunar months based on indigenous cultures, which wouldn’t have been appropriate. Instead, I named them for figures in my own imaginary landscape as a way of mapping a personal imaginal realm.
Used availability for Anna McKerrow's Lunations