Full Moon Ritual Musings

(This blog post is a bit different to what has come before. It is intended as a light-hearted, conversational piece that I only thought of putting together in the moment. I am not trying to persuade or dissuade here, merely just reacting to a novel experience I had at the weekend that I wanted to share. Hope you enjoy.)

About midway through October, it came to my attention that a full moon would fall on Halloween night, for the first time in something like 76 years. Not only that, my sister Méabh told me, but it would also be a blue moon - the second time in a calendar month that a full moon would occur. A few months back, I remembered Méabh talking about things like cosmic orderings and how she and her friends had done one, and she felt forces in her life work for the better in the aftermath. Now I for one am not about mysticism or astrology or any of that - there is certainly a bit of fun in it, for sure, but I would be skeptical about the validity of its claims. However, I do think that there is something nice and comforting about tapping into a presence or an aura greater than you, and actively making efforts to grow as a person and live a peaceful life.

So anyway, I said since Halloween is the last day of the month, and the season, it might be cool to do some sort of ritual to say goodbye to the old and to welcome the new. For those of you not aware, the Celts were the ones from whom we borrow our modern Halloween celebrations, originating around 600 BCE. This time of year, which they called Samhain, marked the end of summer and the start of winter, and they believed that on Halloween night the veil between the living and the dead became very thin, so thin in fact that spirits of the deceased could roam the earth again for just one night. While I do not share this belief, it did spark within me a renewed awareness of cycles of death and rebirth in my own life, an acknowledgment of bad habits and negative emotions I perpetuate, to my detriment, and what new qualities I could birth in order to move towards a more peaceful and harmonious existence. And before I go on, I just want to emphasise that I am not an astrology qween, or a mystic, or any of that. The idea of doing a ritual like this felt fun, different and a little outside my comfort zone, and if 2020 has taught me anything it’s that life is short, fear is futile, and we have to make each day some bit different from the last if we are to keep boredom at bay. And as long as a sacraficial goat wasn't involved, I was down.

So here I was, googling full moon rituals, feeling a bit mad altogether, and I managed to select one that seemed pretty straightforward, gathered as many bits as I could for it, and on Halloween night after the rugby I set up my space. Candles were lit, witchy music was playing through the Bluetooth speaker, and a ‘Do not disturb’ sign was hung on the door outside, more out of mortification of my family walking in on me than anything else, to be honest. Now I didn’t follow the steps in the ritual to the letter, but I stuck to most of them. Throughout the process I found it very difficult to concentrate, perhaps because the whole thing just seemed so odd and so unlike me. Reciting the mantras with the spooky music in the background did made me feel very witch-like, however, and with that a train of thought kicked into motion.

Back in the days of witch-hunting, the women accused of practising witchcraft were deemed by the community as unusual, aloof, suspect, not fitting with the stereotype of what it meant to be a woman at the time, which was that of a demure servant-wife who gave her life to the home and to God, never daring to step out of line. The ‘witches’ defied the status quo, either by being too rich or too poor, by having too many children or by not having any, and as such they were to be feared, to be thought of as being in allegiance with Satan. Their neighbours could focus on any quality or personality trait they liked in a woman and twist it in such a way as to make it seem ungodly and suspicious, with the hopes of snuffing her out like a candle. I think it goes without saying that there are still a few people who hold these archaic types of opinions about women, but that’s a whole other blog post. Halloween is safe from feminism for the meantime.

Much like the women that were accused at the time, it occured to me during the ritual that I feel I also do not fit neatly into people’s categories, that I defy the norm in terms of who I am and my behaviours, and in a way this realisation gave me a sense of power, of uniqueness, of bad-ass-bitch-ery, basically. It has taken me until this year to truly learn to accept all my quirks; when I was younger, feelings of being different to others only ever caused me pain, and shame. While people might dislike me or look unfavourably upon me for being who I am, I also do not need their approval, and this realisation in itself is so daunting yet so deeply powerful.

By taking the plunge and engaging in this full moon ritual, something I never thought I could pull off, I pushed the boat out a little. It felt strange, yes, but I could’ve just as quickly taken the easy way out and scrolled the feeds or binged a Netflix series for the night, never having opened myself up to a different and challenging experience, and tapping in to my inner witch in the process. Showing up for yourself is so important, and something off the beaten track like this was, for me, very cool and mind-opening. And, to conclude, no goats were harmed in the process.