Heroes Don't Refuse the Quarter's Call
by Dana Gerhardt

When my son Branden falls off his skateboard or has been startled from his bike by our leaping dog, if there’s a wound with even the slightest bit of blood, he’ll run to find me.  I’ll ask if he wants me to kiss and make it better.  But being eight going on nine, he catches himself.  Now, he mostly turns glumly away and says no.  He’s in transition.  Ready to trade up, he needs a fresh and stronger magic.  Only he hasn’t yet discovered what that is.

Child or adult, aware or not, we enter these transitions all the time.  The waxing moon brings them monthly.  At the first quarter moon, we’ve already been called to a new journey (occurring when the moon was new).  But it’s the body, our intuitive self, who senses it first.  The mind usually has little idea where we’re actually heading or how we’re going to manage it.  Given this confusion, it’s nothing less than a spiritual miracle that most of our growth goes this way. 

Much is made of the value of setting goals.  But in reality, our developing self often leaps beyond our conscious plans, pulling us away from comfort zones, into surprising unknowns.  This is the guiding wisdom of the monthly waxing cycle, which always begins in darkness and comes to light gradually.  I can tell that Branden still wants my kisses to heal his scraped elbows and knees.  But far ahead of him, out of conscious range, his future manhood calls.

The hero in us wants to go far, but terror of the unknown is a formidable foe.  Our fears haunt the waxing first quarter.  We haven’t truly committed ourselves.  We can still think of turning back.  In fact, many do.  The world is filled with stories of reluctant heroes, who come to this first threshold and refuse the call.  At each quarter moon, the sun and moon are in square, an aspect of tension:  should we stay or go forward? 

We should learn to mark this significant time.  The quarter moon appears high overhead in early evening and is half lit.  It’s a traveler’s beacon if we’d learn to use it that way.  Decisions at this phase determine, quite critically, how our future path unfolds.  We’re urged to move into a fresh and stronger magic, but nothing guarantees we will. 

I have a friend who’s been saying for the past six years that he hates his job and is going to quit.  How many opportunities did six years’ worth of moon cycles bring him?  The thresholds at the monthly cycle are often subtle, its tensions easier to shake off.  But they offer practice in stronger, more significant growth periods.  Individually, we may experience symbolic “quarter moons” via various astrology timers, including the movement of the progressed moon, which might hold us at this first quarter threshold for three or four years.* 

I find myself at such a threshold now.  It’s not the first time.  I had my first experience of the progressed first quarter moon almost thirty years ago.  I was graduating from college.  I was so scared of the future that I got married… and put off my developing adulthood until the marriage later ended at the progressed full moon.  The growth cycle is always forgiving, and so during the waning moon, I shed my fears and took myself far.  Now:  there’s a new future and new fears that beckon, almost the reverse of the first.

You haven’t heard me much on the Talking Circle.  I’ve been slow to answer emails.  It’s because I’m engaged in the dramatic tension of the progressed sun/moon square.  I’ve fallen in love with a man who lives six hundred miles away…  circumstances suggest I need to quit the well-paying job I’ve loved for the past sixteen years, sell the house of my dreams that I bought four years ago, and take my son to join him in Ashland with his children.  Of course I could stay in my comfortable, known life.  But since my first stand at this threshold, I’ve gained more courage and a greater love of the journey.  The swift unfolding of events draws me forward.  I put my house on the market and it sold in one day.  The adventure is on. 

There are plenty of rituals for new and full moons.  But I think we could also quite profitably invent some for the first quarter -- when courage is most necessary, celestial encouragement so desirable.  We should invoke the gods, let them know we’re game if they assist us.  Here’s a ritual I tried last night.  I lit a candle, said a prayer of gratitude, then got on my bed, and just as my eight year old does, I leaped and leaped.  I threw myself forward into the dizzying air and landed safely, again and again.  I closed my ritual with a bow to the heavens and laughter in my heart.  The adventure is on.

* If you want more explanation of the progressed moon cycle, and a calendar of your personal dates, you’ll find that in my Moonprints report.