A waning moon illuminates the soft spoken loud message of the season. Skeletons decorate yards. The witches of the mythic fearsome ride brooms in the shadows of trees. Silhouettes of black cats stare at you from a window lit up by candles. Pumpkins on doorsteps not yet rotten. Dried leaves leave trees and land on sidewalks. I wish the LA gardeners wouldn’t come to blow them away soon. The moon is waning. The year is waning. The season of waning wonder is upon us.

We are moving deeper into Fall. Into the time when maturity transitions from ripeness to rot. Still new fruit arrives at the markets. Pear. Pomegranate. Persimmon. But the juicy vibe is replaced with something less colorful, and the flavor is one that calls your buds to work harder for love.

Less light in the night sky. The moon unravels and sheds last week’s fullness (check out the Full Moon message here). Lamenting in lunar language, wailing of a life undressed. It is eerie to the ear. Evocative and irresistible, unavoidable and terrifying. The phase of the moon faces demise. Morbid magnificence mingles with the magic of moment passing, a desire to grasp the ephemeral reality of existence, and the disappointment of having to let it fly away.

As the moon wanes and the year spins toward its release, sunlight softens, and the hours of the night stretch longer. We are invited into the shadows, to spark a loving relationship with all that sits in those spaces of the inbetween, with the creatures of the inner fears, with the beasts of imperfection, with the tangles of a life that tenderly whirls complexity through its branches, shaking the apples to fall to the ground and nourish a hungry soul. 

Flourish doesn’t happen without decay. Seeds must drop to the earth and be swallowed by darkness before anything can grow. Dried leaves are necessary for the soil to be healthy (can someone please tell that to the people that hire the LA gardeners with their leaf blowers?). Fruit must decay for new life to come through. 

This season offers a portal into a delicate, dangerous dance with death, into an empowering conversation with disappointments, with defeat, with grief, with failure, into the disconmfort of walking along the edges, calling the exiled parts to come home. 

This time of year is a brew of blessings and bummers. We can stand around the cauldron of our lives and stir in the gratitude along with the disappointment, to pour in the heartache and add the ecstatic, to throw in the broken pieces, the shredded sense of self, and to gently place a big piece of strength coated in the variety of experiences you’ve gathered and grown. Let it simmer. 

As the moon wanes it can assist you in the process. You are the process. Your life is the process. The lessons, the struggles, the gifts, the fuck-ups, the sadness, the madness, the meaning, the magic. This time of waning moon in a season of waning sunlight in a period of a waning year is a call to the cauldron. You don’t have to be a witch to hear the call. You are a gentle soul, and you can hear the tenderness that wants to be seen, and you can feel that along with the trees there are leaves you need to shed, and you know that the brew of your life needs you to exhale. This is a waning time. And that tear that sits there in the corner of your eye… yep! That one! It needs to flow down. Down you cheek and into that big pot.

Cook the soup of the season. With all the ingredients you’ve gathered this year. Stir well. Let it simmer. Taste. Add salt. That salty fucking experience – it brings out the flavorful of life. Don’t foget the pepper. Keep cooking. Waning moon. Waning season. The season of the soup. The season of integration.

You think of letting go, of shedding, of release as something that unburdens you and renews you. And it does. And it is. But the earth teaches us that that which falls must be reintegrated. And the process of composting doesn’t smell good. Decay is beautiful and gnarly. Your shedding is not without stench. Nourishment is never without toxicity. But nothing is a waste. It’s waning season for you. Compost season. Soup season. 

The feelings will be mixed. Mix them into the brew. The brew is you. The brew is for you. The brew is for more than you. We nourish one another with our willingness to go to the dark places, and hang out there in the tough corners of our innermost shadowy places. Not to stay there in the graveyard of broken dreams and unmet expectations, but to make sure that the skeletons and ghosts are not ignored. When someone else knows you have them too, they feel less horrified by their own brew. 

So stir and simmer and add and mix. Shed and weave. You don’t need to fix yourself. The moon is breaking off pieces of itself, slowly disappearing into darkness. Integrate your waning. You are beautiful and incomplete. 

Share this with someone who needs to read this. 

XOXO

Hagar