New Moon Ritual: June 2024

Happy Pride Month, y’all! This month’s ritual experience was a mixed bag. I partly blame myself because things have been so hectic lately - I have a lot of transition happening in my personal life at the moment - that I didn’t properly prepare and get myself into the right headspace. I’m hopeful that over the next month or so I can reclaim some of my time and reestablish a more consistent personal practice.

I’m writing this morning feeling a mix of restless and well-rested. My jaw hurts from clenching it throughout the night. That’s probably because the message that came through was about fear and anxiety, and some of the way that manifested was through feeling these things very deeply at various points throughout the night.

I live in the United States, and we’re in a pretty scary moment right now. (Not to say other parts of the world aren’t, but I can’t and won’t speak to those experiences.) Reproductive freedom, bodily autonomy, privacy, voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights, safety for the disabled community - all of these are under assault in violent, cruel ways many of my generation or younger have not personally experienced in our lifetimes. The level of activism and advocacy required to hold the line, reclaim what was lost, and push for further progress requires a level of personal risk many of us have not had to consider previously.

And that can be downright terrifying.

But it is also necessary.

The message that came through with this ritual can best be summed up by the quote from author Ambrose Hollingworth Redmoon: Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The timid presume it is lack of fear that allows the brave to act when the timid do not. But to take action when one is not afraid is easy. To refrain when afraid is also easy. To take action regardless of fear is brave.

When we listen to our Ancestors they let us know they did the work of fighting for justice in spite of being afraid. We can do no less.