Image from WikipediaWhile Full Moon Esbats are fairly common, I don't see much talk about New Moon celebrations. It's a time of newness, the pause before the growth spurt, the death of the old moon, so many things. I used it this month to look at myself and make sort of a mini-resolution, something small but self-improving to work on for the next two weeks while the moon and magick both grow in power and strength.

I lit two candles, white for the goddess and red for the god. I'd have preferred black for the god but it wasn't available and red is a nice god-color. I didn't call any gods by name, just sat and thought about what I wanted to work on while the candles burned a bit and the incense filled the room. I did chat with Phil for a bit about the day, what I was doing, what it all meant to me and afterwards made some pine sawdust for an incense base while I listened to Clannad.

It was a good night, peaceful, relaxing. The last week has been pretty emotionally hectic and this was a good time to pause, let the sadness go for a bit and this morning I feel far more stable than I have this last seven days even though I know the worst is yet to come as I suffer from something similar to seasonal depression and that has a week or two left to cycle through my life. And yet, I feel like I want to accomplish something again, even though my energy reserves are low and I'm still not sleeping more than four to five hours at time.

I think the experience would have been even nicer if I owned a piece of furniture with a moonscape painted on it with glow-in-the-dark paint. Thinking about it, though, I don't think I'd actually want the furniture piece but rather a moon painted on my wall or ceiling or part of it on both. The room would've glowed beautifully with that and the candlelight.

My horoscope says to trust my intuition this week but I have to admit, depression is good at shaking a person's self-confidence and while I usually do trust my judgment, I know I've already made several pretty bad calls in recent days. (I'm not a big believer in horoscopes anyhow but sometimes they help remind me of things I've forgotten to pay attention to.) On the other hand, something told me that I needed to do this ritual last night, even though I was tired, groggy, feeling out-of-sorts so perhaps it's not so bad after all.