My sister-in-law tells a narrative in regards to the man her firm employed to comb the leaves outdoors their constructing. He spends most days dancing across the courtyard in a swish pas de deux along with his gas-powered leaf blower whereas recalcitrant leaves scurry round him. “He’s not very environment friendly,” she says, “However he appears to be having a fully fantastic time.”
Which is extra essential: outcomes, or course of? At this Full Moon, the Solar in Virgo argues for effectivity and outcomes. However throughout the zodiacal wheel, the absolutely illuminated Moon within the reverse signal, Pisces, makes the case for having fun with the method of life. For dancing with the leaves and having a fully fantastic time.
This Full Moon in Pisces (Sep. 17, 2024, 7:34 pm PDT), the closest to the autumnal equinox (this yr, the equinox falls on September 22), is known as the Harvest Moon. And this one is a Lunar Eclipse, which intensifies its message.
On the Harvest Moon there’s a just about seamless segue from sundown to moonrise, historically extending a farmer’s day simply when it was sorely wanted, at harvest time. It is a hard-working Moon of outcomes, of labor, of the tremendous Virgo satisfaction of filling bushel baskets with produce and silos with grain.
My father, a Capricorn farmer with a critical Moon in Virgo, would absolutely have made the a lot of the Harvest Moon. No swirling, aimless dances for him – baskets, I guarantee you, would have been stuffed. His youngsters would have been in mattress lengthy earlier than he trudged onto the again porch, soiled and drained and coated with mosquito bites.
He was a hard-working man, and gruff. However he had a candy aspect, as I discovered years later after I found some letters he wrote to my mom one summer season once they had been aside. “I miss you and the youngsters a lot,” he wrote – and people weren’t the type of issues he tended to say, a minimum of to not anybody apart from my mom. These letters let me think about a extra reflective aspect to my father. To think about him pausing on these lengthy summer season twilight evenings, trying west towards his little household visiting relations in far-away California, and resting his chin for a second on the steering wheel of the mix. I wonder if his hard-working coronary heart took word of the fireflies, and the crickets buzzing within the wheat. Whether or not the Harvest Full Moon referred to as to him with a longing melody, beckoning him to bop a number of furtive steps with the lengthy, waving rows of grain.
Most of us don’t spend our days within the fields. For a lot of, our work is sedentary and its outcomes intangible. But all of us appear to be so busy! Preoccupied with work and household, distracted by sensible telephones and dumb politicians, apprehensive and cross, not sleeping nicely, having fun with little of our ever-increasing productiveness. Years in the past, I wrote this essay about inviting the mysterious and unseen into our lives by making rituals of the calls for on our time. I stand by that recommendation; it presents a tremendous, lyrical strategy to the sensible affairs of every day life.
However there are moments when the soul calls for that we stop our labors and pause a bit. These are moments made for perching on the porch steps within the gathering twilight beneath the harvest moon, bidding farewell to a different summer season. Within the magical immediate between nightfall and darkish, it’s doable to glimpse a fascinating Oz the place we’re free from the calls for of every day life. A Virgo kind myself, I’ve at all times had a tough time greedy Pisces; however at a late summer season twilight, I nearly handle it. If I half-close my eyes, I can see the ghosts of hardworking farmers dancing throughout the fields, free finally from their labors and from the tyranny of their self-discipline.
At this Harvest Full Moon, as an alternative of wringing productiveness from the final hours of sunshine, why not pause your labors and have fun the bounty of what’s already been harvested? For the reason that Virgo New Moon two quick weeks in the past, you’ve in all probability finished sufficient work for a whole month. Your bushel baskets are already full to overflowing, and the winsome Full Moon is beckoning.
So to have fun this Pisces Full Moon, collect family and friends round for a hearty harvest supper of roasted greens and recent bread. And when the meal is completed, don’t rush to clear away the dishes. Simply push again the desk and chairs, hand somebody a guitar (or for that matter, a brush), and dance a little bit.
And have a fully fantastic time.
Writing and collages © 2013-2024 April Elliott Kent
