A Silver Chalice in High Tide

The Moon's wisdom can't be thought out. It's a moment of clarity that flashes into your head from nowhere. It's the line in a book that suddenly grows two font sizes larger-just for you. It's your body refusing to leave the house even though you had four errands planned. And it's the advice your sister gives, which resonates all the way down to your toes. The work this season is to re-commit to your life, to honor its changing conditions, to re-make your home. But you must do this from an intuitive place. To help get you in the mood, below are two meditations my partner Pythia wrote for one of our first Mooncircles in Cancer. May they bring you closer to the Moon's way of knowing this season!

MEDITATIONS by Pythia Peay

Silver Chalice: To cultivate an inner, lunar receptivity to the Divine Light, imagine that an exquisite silver chalice of ancient origin sits within the altar of your heart. In reflecting upon this chalice, contemplate its emptiness and simplicity. Let this feeling of emptiness extend throughout your body and mind, until your whole being is void of the distractions of everyday life. Like the slender sliver of New Moon that receives the Sun into itself, imagine that brilliant beams of light are streaming into the chalice in your heart. With your breath, inhale light in and exhale light out. Feel your body become transparent light, until you have become a luminous vessel overflowing with radiance. This radiant light is not the same as the golden light of the sun; rather, it is silvery, cool light. Then, slowly, feel this light flowing out into the world around you, lighting up the darkness with wisdom and beauty. Soon, the chalice in your heart is empty once more - only waiting to be filled, yet again and again.

Ocean Rhythms: To experience the rhythms of the sea as they are shaped by the Moon, imagine that you are lying on a remote, sandy beach. It is dawn, and a silvery moon is descending into the horizon. The hushed roar of the ocean permeates the air, filling your ears with the sound of creation. The air is pungent with the smell of seaweed and saltwater. It is the gentle hour of the ebb tide, and as it seeps in beneath your body, you feel cradled in the loving arms of the ocean. Lifted up off the sand, your body rises and falls with the waves. Your breath becomes synchronized with the waves; you inhale and exhale in tune to the motion of the sea.

As the ebb tide recedes further and further from the periphery of land, you, too, are drawn away with it. Carried away from the coastline, you find that you have floated far into the trackless vastness of the ocean. Here, in contrast to the waves crashing on the beach, all is calm, still, and endlessly peaceful. For awhile, you float peacefully on the silver mirror of the sea. Imagine next that you are pulled down into the watery depths, where you become immersed in the ocean of life - the Mother of the Earthly world. Creatures teem about you in this aquamarine universe; fish of all shapes and sizes, plants and underwater mountain ranges. After your underwater sojourn, the ocean returns you to its surface, where the waves, pulled by an immense force, begin the long journey of returning you to land.

Now you find yourself riding the high tide towards the horizon. Above you, dusk has fallen, and the moon has risen above the horizon. On the fullness of the high tide, you are carried on the foamy, moonlit waves toward the beach. Thrown up on the sand like a shell or a piece of driftwood, you feel shaped smooth by the moon and ocean: made whole by the rhythms of the sea, and made wise by the knowledge that beneath the chaos and flux of everyday life, lies a deep, invisible intelligence.