I remember a clear night, celebrating the full moon Esbat with my coven in Oregon, when I sat quietly and considered the moon. The Circle had just ended; all of us were hot and panting from another enthusiastic Conor-led spiral dance. nbsp I wandered off alone, sitting in the midst of a nearby field while the rest of the coven talked and milled about. There, in the darkness, I gazed upon the face of Luna and wondered what my ancestors thought and felt when they gazed up at the same sky.
One by one, my coven-mates came and joined me and we talked about the past, about the legacy our ancestors had left us. Did they realize that the moon was a satellite that orbited the earth we live on? Or was it simply a constant companion whose light ebbed and flowed, setting the lunar month? We talked about what each of us would feel if, unfettered by the words of science, we stared up at the moon with a mystical awe.
It wasn't a book we were learning from, or even a physical teacher. We learned from the moon itself, from the magick that permeated the air from our Circle and spiral dance. It was the whispered voices of our ancestors that spoke to us, as our minds let go of the bonds of time and slipt back through the centuries to earlier rituals.
And for the first time, as we lay in the open field, gazing up at the light of the full moon, I didn't just know what the moon meant. I understood.
In Wicca, the moon is associated with the Goddess. The new moon symbolizes new beginnings; an appropriate time to perform magick that begins a new chapter of our lives or blesses a new undertaking. As the moon tiptoes just past new, waxing toward fullness, it represents the Goddess as Maiden. The Lunar month is new and fresh, the possibilities it holds are endless. Just as we grow and mature, so the moon waxes and grows full. In the full moon we find a time of bounty and fullness, the perfect time to charge ritual tools and stones with lunar energy. It is symbolizes the Goddess as Mother, fertile and full. As the lunar month continues, the moon begins to wane, the time of the Crone. Though the moon's light is fading, we are filled with the wisdom that we have gleaned since the moon was new, all through the lunar month. This is an appropriate time to cleanse ritual tools and stones in moonlight, leaving them on a window sill or under a tree, letting the waning moon take the old energy with it as it fades, leaving the items clean and fresh as the moon becomes new.