Imagine reliving a “greatest hits” of the times in your life when you felt most powerless. Sounds great, right? That is how the message of this ritual started. Admittedly, I was buckling up for a long night.

It was a bit of a scattered experience. At one point I woke up because it felt like someone was playing with my hair, which has never happened before in this house. I’m still on the fence if that is related to this ritual or something else entirely.

The way the moon presented to me was like I was starting into a cup of thick, viscous fluid somewhere between the color of oil and the dark crimson of blood from a deep wound. There was a physicality to this month’s divination ritual that made me think less about what the future holds and grounded me firmly in the present moment.

Will-o’-the-wisp. Corpse candle. Ignis fatuus.

My dreams for this new moon divination ritual were full of these ghost lights. In folklore these lights are often believed to toe the line between mischievous and malicious, luring travelers off of safe paths and into bogs, over cliffs, or into the realms of fairy.

I really waffled on whether to write something this month. Not because what I saw was scary or inappropriate, but mostly because I don’t really understand or remember a lot of what I saw. I thought “I shouldn’t share this since I don’t even know what to say”, and then realized so much of what is shared on social media creates false expectations of perfection or mastery.