Between the Moon - 4. Wisdom from the Missing Half of the Moon Cycle with Astrologer Bronwyn Simons

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

There are so many gems in this conversation! Today's guest Bronwyn Simons shares her journey over many, many moons of coming to align her work and life with the Moon and astrological wisdom. In this episode Bronwyn walks us through the Eight "Lunar Keys" that she developed to connect with the eight main phases of the moon. These simple and profound inquiries offer a beautiful framework and insight to support the practice of self-study in relationship with cycles. You will also learn the benefits of committing to being in relationship with the Moon on a deeper and more personal level, as well as the mysteries and lessons of the missing half of the moon cycle. Enjoy!Bronwyn Simons is an award-winning predictive astrologer, psychic medium, dream traveller, mentor, and astrology teacher with a worldwide client base and a busy consulting practice. Her style is practical and embodied, with deep roots in the mystery of the Otherworld. After 40+ years of study and practice, she is truly a master of the esoteric arts.Connect with Bronwyn on Instagram @moon.wisdomVisit Astrology Goddess website to learn more about upcoming classes and offeringsSign up for Bronwyn's Newsletter and access your New Moon Playbook as a gift  Mentioned in the episode: Lunar Gestational CycleNew Moon Calendar Journal (free download of current cycle)Lunar Cycle QuestIf you like this episode, consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts so more people can hear about it! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themoonismycalendar.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome, dear listener, to Between the Moon, a podcast about self-study in relationship with cycles. I'm your host, April McMurtry, founder of the Moon is my calendar. In today's episode, I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Bronwynn, Simons. and Bronwyn is somebody who I crossed paths with many years ago as a part of the Fierce Grace Collective and Ann Aperna Living with Carrie Ann Moss. And I didn't really become aware of her work until more recently. And if you know Bronwyn or are on her newsletter, then you know that she's so deeply thoughtful and really communicates the language of astrology in our current context on Earth with so much wisdom and insight and making connections that just can be felt on a visceral level.

So Brunwin's an award-winning predictive astrologer. She's a psychic medium, a dream traveler, a mentor, and an astrologer. teacher. Her style is practical and embodied with deep roots in the mystery of the other world. And she has more than 40 years of study and practice and truly is a master of the esoteric arts. As you listen to this conversation, that will probably come across just how anchored and really sort of time tested. and lived all of what she shares is. So in this episode, we cover a lot of ground

and Bronwyn shares the eight lunar keys, questions for each of the eight main lunar phases. We talk about some of the overlapping cycles and how the moon really is an entry point or a gateway into understanding all the other planetary cycles. So learning about the moon can be a starting point to really open up a whole world of understanding. We talk about the lunar gestational cycle and there will be a link in the bio for that, or not the bio, the link in the show notes. And Bronwyn also shares the kind of incremental progress towards

living a more cyclical life and approaches up to really to success that can come from aligning with cyclical time. I just I love what she shares and for those of you who've worked with me or studied and learned with me a lot of what she shares and her her moon wisdom may sound familiar or in some way similar. And I feel like it's beautiful to have that direct connection with the moon and to have that really reinforced and sort of shared from another perspective on some of the familiar themes that exist in a lunar cycle. Once you really begin living in relationship with it, I hope. you are able to really gain some insights. There's a lot that's shared that may have some little light bulbs go off for you. I will also say that one of the things that Bronwyn

recommended for people to really deepen their relationship with the moon is spending a lunar cycle, really just connecting with each of the phases. And that's something that I practice the beginning of my working with the moon and I have a really beautiful and lovely offering that's going through its second or third iteration called the lunar cycle quest and I will link all of Bronwyn's information she's has several courses one on astrology and several on the moon and and also has, like I said, a beautiful newsletter that you can, you know, if you want to come closer into her orbit, it's a beautiful way to do that. Okay, enjoy the show. I begin with asking Brunwin sort of her connection and entry point into her work and how it's developed now and the ways that it's moved in a spiral path.

and we do talk about spirals a lot. So enjoy. Was it the moon that first called to you? What was the first kind of like? Yeah. She's been a common thread in all my work, which has traveled through many realms over the years. Very important to me, starting in my childhood,

I had a really unconventional childhood in rural Eastern Canada, daughter of a poet and artist. And we lived right on the Bay of Fundy, which you may know has the biggest tides in the world. And famously, my first words were tide, kapi up, tides coming up. So that connection with the lunar tides was just there, obviously, one of the most fascinating things to me from childhood. And the dark skies and my father's incredible education in mythology and Greek and Latin language meant that I had a direct line to those myths from a very early age. So it was all kind of baked in.

Mythology, the sky, the sky stories, being guided by the sky, connecting with the ocean and the moon and getting that connection of the moon moves things. And had my first astrology reading when I was 18, had learned the tarot by then, just was so entranced by this world and the possibilities of parting the curtains a little bit and understanding more than what the culture tells us we can understand. And I worked in my early 20s as an astrologer and terror reader until my first Saturn return. I had my daughter, went into another career in the arts, which I think most people would consider unconventional, but for me it was like leaping into the more conventional world.

and worked as a dancer, choreographer, and then later studio artist for really that whole period between childbirth and menopause. But the moon was always woven in because in my dance career, I worked intimately with women, led retreats, and really worked with women around body wisdom, and we always connected with the lunar cycles around that. And I can't say directly, about my artistic life, but there's something that's always there about following those cycles, no matter what I've done. You know, I mentioned that I'm a Gemini ascendant. So yeah, I've had, it's been a spiral journey. So in my late 40s, just really feeling the call to return to astrology and wonderful timing for it because there's such a remissance right now. And whereas in my early

20s, it was very difficult to think about, not that people didn't, but it was more rare than it is now more difficult to create a thriving career in livelihood. Suddenly that became possible. And it just seemed like the right time to immerse myself again in that. So it reignited my practice in my late 40s, early 50s. And here I am now facing into my second Saturn return. And it all just makes sense. I've come full circle.

It's interesting how it makes sense in hindsight. and with knowing intimately those the multiple cycles. Yeah, it's one of the greatest gifts of astrology and knowing your chart is there's such a message in our culture that life is a linear path of accomplishments. It's like that ideal upward arrow graph. And it isn't. And we shame ourselves for returning to the same places again and again. without realizing that that's exactly what we're meant to be doing is returning to the same places again and again. And of course, the moon teaches us that. And she draws, as you said,

she draws us into this world where we realize my whole life is that. And each of the benevolent planetary archetypes takes us on a different journey of return. And one of the ways we part the curtain as astrologers is having the benefit not only of seeing those cycles in hindsight, but actually be able to look ahead for them or see them when we're in them, even if it's just the first repetition. So I think that's one of the primary gifts for practicing the wisdom of astrology in one's own life, but also that's why I think everyone should have an astrologer to have a wise guide on your side who can help you to see.

And it gives us so much more self-compassion instead of this, oh, no, why am I here again? Well, you're here again because this is the path of life. Of course you're here again. It's a spiral path. Yeah. The way that you've just said that and lay that out with such clarity, something just released from my own system of like the ways that we shame ourselves when we come back around of here I am again facing this challenge.

And just what you said, and that's the way it's supposed to be. Yeah. That there is a polishing. Yeah. It is, you know, whether or not it's a softening, but there's this going over something and over and over. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I love that analogy of a softening or polishing.

And we can also, of course, think of the labyrinth and walking and just slowly noticing that you come to the same places, but your perspective has shifted just incrementally. But sometimes that incremental shift is enough to put something new on your horizon. something new in your line of sight. And those are the subtle transformations that happen when we come to that same place. It's the same place, but it isn't the same place. Exactly. And that's, you know, and this is something that I've learned in just creating a circular calendar. It appears that the starting point and the ending point that it comes back and that it meets up, right?

Like a circle that it meets up. And when it comes out into like dimensionally, it meets up, but it's like a layer above going into the next cycle or circle and then meeting up, but it's, you know. And it's so comforting to see that. I love that circular calendar format because you look at that on your wall. And there it is. And it just for me that that experience just kind of diffuses a low level anxiety that we have of like getting stuff done and meeting the deadline.

and then you look at that, oh, right, okay, it's all right. I have infinite time instead of looking at these little blocks. So even really subtle things like that that you can do for yourself, and that's, you know, just one of the many beauties of the work that you offer is that brings us into our daily life. So we get a daily visual reminder that this is the path that we're on. And it's okay to come back to where you started. In a slightly...

And when you get into the complexities of the lunar cycle, it like there yeah i think it's hard to put words around that but the way the the cycling through the zodiac and then the cycling through the phases the way they interlock but don't match up exactly kind of gives you that little leap from one spiral into the next yes that's the piece that's the kind of the kind of like pulling back the curtain i don't know if this has been your experience but when people come to work with the moon often there's an awareness of the full moon as the obvious like I see the moon and it's full and it's bright and then and then what happens and so I even wonder if there's this kind of progression you know I feel like something can be sequential without

being linear yeah right that's the concept a big one that would be an amazing shift just in consciousness and in all of our systems of education whatever it may be the shift into cyclical time on the one hand And it's easy to wrap your mind around the concept, but to start to live into that reality. It's then you really are living counter to the cultural current. And it's challenging, but also really relieving, really relieving. It's funny that you say that about the full moon because just before I came on the call, I was thinking about that, that when people are first, or the earliest memories of the moon, or often in workshops, I ask as an icebreaker question, what's one of your most important

memories of the moon because everyone has one and they're often associated with those lunar moments like gathering of family or first love or childhood comfort but it's almost always the full moon that people remember and then if you don't take that a little farther and really start to study her and track her it's just kind of this vague thing like well where is it what and it kind of doubles down on that cultural concept that this is what we're working towards. We're working from nothing to something and that full moon is the something. And then what happens? Well, we don't know. We just want to go back to the beginning and start something new. And of course we're skipping that whole important half of the cycle where we release and it's half. And there's so much pressure on us to build something,

release it and then boom, go back to the beginning and build something else. Why is everybody in burnout? out. Maybe it's because we're missing a whole half of the cycle. The new moon is really pretty. Everybody wants to look up in the sky and see that potential. The full moon is gorgeous. We really want to take in that manifestation. And the other phases we have to learn. Everybody loves, why is this, everybody loves the waxing crescent and not the waning crescent. They're visually almost exactly the same, except they're flipped. they're flipped. Energetically, they're very different. And people don't, generally, people

don't go out and talk about how gorgeous that waning crud. Well, for one thing, it's in the morning. So let less people see it. You have to commit. But it's also energetically so different because you're releasing and releasing is a challenge, especially when we don't have a cultural model for it. Yes. Not that we shouldn't love the full and new moons. They're easy to love. And I'd love to hear kind of spiraling back to that part of the conversation of talking about when you get in that groove with circular lunar time and when you're really living that, like the shifts that start to happen. And for me, when I just committed myself, I'm like, this is a relationship.

I don't understand how the moon works. Like, why do I only see her at certain points? Like, what's the inner workings? Yeah. What is the inner workings? And yes, in elementary school, kids, I mean, I have to. kids and when they studied the moon, it was like one week eating Oreo cookies. I was just going to say the Oreo cookies, right?

I know. Like, no, this is spiritual. This is like really profound stuff. So in this commitment, the first cycle when I first started the moon calendar was like every day, I'm just going to go out and I'm going to see the moon. I'll take a picture. I will whatever it takes and just kind of commune with that phase and see what's there and what's present.

The waning crescent. as you mentioned. So it's only visible right before sunrise, those last few days of the cycle. And what came up for me, sorrow, grief, realizing that my grandmothers were going to die one day and I never wanted them to leave me. A lot of things that could be maybe painful emotions or difficult or hard or the ones that often in this society, Western culture, that does not honor that grief or gives. space for that, that's what was coming up. Yeah. And to not feel those things, where are we as a result of that? And it's kind of a paradox, right, that that's the moon we see at dawn. As that sunlight is returning, we're going through that grieving process. The lunar key or the question for reflection that I have for that phase of the moon, the balsamic phase, is what is

essential because that's the time of the cycle when we are meant to be releasing everything that isn't essential so that we can start not releasing everything but releasing everything that isn't essential and that word balsamic people are always like oh like the vinegar yeah exactly like the vinegar because it's something that's distilled down to its richest essence over time and that i love to even think of that like a little bottle of essence that we're going to carry over into the new phase. We don't get to carry the whole big thing of baggage that we want or somehow feel compelled to carry with us. We just get to bring the distilled essence and that looking at that balsamic moon in the dawn sky brings all of that. I can't take all of it with me what I'm going to

take with me. And that's that's the dying process as well, right? What are we what's going to carry over? that's what we want to focus on. It's practicing for death, right? Just like we do in Buddhism. Thank you for presencing that and saying it all so clearly. And as you were speaking, I was like, it's, yeah, it is. It's the practice, it's a deaf practice. And so where is the examples that we can look for that practice?

And it's right there with the moon. I have to go far. She's so benevolent. Like it's right there. all the life wisdom, all the astrological wisdom, everything you need and such, simplicity and such profound depth. Yeah. Well, you mentioned the lunar keys.

Yeah. So if you'd be willing, so clearly connects with the phases of the moon and I think gives people a chance to reflect on these important life stages and questions. Yeah. Do you want to share a little bit about the lunar keys? Yeah, I would love to. So this is something that I developed as a lot of, a part of my teaching practice with the moon, but also for my own personal

lunar practice. And it's just a set of questions, a set of questions for self-reflection, connected to each of the, what we recognize as the eight major phases in Western astrology. And let me just put a sidebar there that you can measure the phases however you want. And many different cultures have measured them many different ways. We like to quarter things in this, in this Western tradition. So that's what we've done with the moon, we've applied that cross-up matter to that circle, we've quartered it and quartered it again, that gives us eight phases. You have the creative freedom and the, you know, cultural curiosity, you can go out and find any other way to measure these phases. This is a great

model, though. It works. It's one of many models that works. And it's what we learn, like both with the Oreos in grade school and also when we first get into astrology as a sort of mathematical concept, when we learn the aspects between the planets. And I really wanted to encourage myself and the people that work with me to embody each of those phases. You can understand that it's a dynamic relationship between the sun and the moon or between any two planets because you can apply this, as with all things lunar,

you can apply it to all planetary cycles because all the planets go through phases and in relation to each other. Okay. So there's a question for each of the eight major phases, and the questions are all put in the passive tense for a reason, because in a nutshell, it's to encourage collaboration with the things that we don't know, the things that the universe may be intending for us and the wisdom of the moon herself. Okay. So on the new moon, we can ask ourselves, what is being conceived? This is, there's simple questions, okay, but they should drop you into a space of contemplation.

And often with the new moon, there's a lot of encouragement to set intentions around the new moon, which I do, and I also encourage. But there's another piece available to us, which is just asking what's beginning in my life. Because just as for any of you who have conceived a child within your body, you know that often we're not aware of that moment of conception. And even if we are, we don't know who that is. is. We don't know them yet. It's the same with the things that are conceived in our lives on the new moon. We may be aware that something's being conceived, but if we name it too soon, we risk losing something. And I think with like really goal focused intention setting, I'm not saying don't do it. I do it myself and it's extremely powerful. But I usually give that a little bit of time until she takes a bit of light and right in that dark space of the new moon.

what is being conceived and just open yourself to whatever comes. So the next thing that we come to is that crescent. She gets a little bit fatter. We can see more light. And that's the time when I think it's great to set our goals and say, I want this, I want that during this lunation or for the next two and a half years. And the question for contemplation, the lunar key, what is emerging? Because that's like in pregnancy when we first start to show a little bit.

And other people can see. Like the conception, nobody knows. It's a beautiful secret. And when we first start to show like this first, I don't know, usually around four months, there's a little bump there. That's like the Crescent Moon. What is emerging so we can know a little bit more about it. Then we get to the quarters, so we know the quarters.

So you look up and see that quarter moon. It's the only time we see a sharp line on her face. And I always look up and I think of stone blade when I see that quarter moon. Both of the quarter moons, waxing and waning, ask us to do. some kind of cutting away. So you have that visual reminder. She's always giving us visual reminders of what we're supposed to do. So in the opening quarter, what needs adjustment? It's like when you've planted your garden, you put all the seeds in there. And then it comes to that terrible moment when you're like, some of these guys got to go. It's not all going to fit. It's not all going to fit. I'm still

so bad at that. I've got some poppies out in my garden right now that are all crowded together because I just didn't have the heart. That's me with my cancer moon. I'm like, I can't let any of you go. But really, we should. And that's the activity of the first quarter moon. What needs adjustment? So you brought something in. It's starting to grow. You see it starting to grow. You're like, okay, what can I do to adjust things so that I'm on course for the rest of this cycle? It's a one month cycle, but also a two and a half year cycle. Then Gibbis, that's the really urgently pregnant belly. And we look up and it's like, oh, the moon is full. Oh, no, she's not quite. There's just that little

shadow still remaining. What is ripening? So that's like the blossom just about to bloom. The full moon of what is being illuminated. It's pretty clear. It's an opposition. This is when we see, this is when some more of the solar light comes into nighttime consciousness. And even in the night, we start to see the edges of things, which is pretty magical. Usually the lunar time lunar consciousness is about boundarylessness and not seeing the edges of things. But in the full moon, suddenly the darkness is illuminated. So there's always something available to us that rises up at that time. If we're willing to look at it, which is why, again, that passive voice, what is being

illuminated? You might not want to see it. Then big exhale, we're on the out breath now. And as she starts to wane that next phase, is about release. So let's look at that word release because that that isn't just, that's called the disseminating moon, right? So think about that. It's like when the seed pod bursts and the seeds are released into the world. So this can be released like, oh, what a relief. I'm leaving that behind. It can also be released like, oh, I just published my book or I'm going to tell everybody

about this thing that I created. I'm having my art opening. It's that sense of release. like a press release. Like a press release, yeah. Or, yeah, press release, book release. We can think of that word and how it fits in many of those ways when a creative something, a piece of work comes out into the world.

I was thinking of that seed pod bursting. It means you have to let go of outcome. You have to let go of outcome because it's going out into the world and people are going to think what they think. They're going to receive your work the way that they do. It's done now, full moon, and you've got to let it go.

And this is another place where developmentally we can get stuck on that full moon, like, here's this perfect thing I've created. And we just sit with it because we don't want to be judged or we don't want to let go of it. So what is being released? Last quarter moon, that knife's edge. What is ending? So you release it out into the world. It goes out into the world.

Then it starts to take on a new life and you don't have creative control over it anymore. So you have to let go of that. What is ending? And then we talked about the balsamic already, what is essential. And then from what is essential to what is being conceived. I want to turn that back just to remind everybody this isn't a linear process. From what is essential to what is being conceived. Which actually is pretty neat.

I never thought of this before, but the actual biological process of conception requires two cells to get together that are just carrying what is essential about that. being. They are those little vials of essence that come together to create the new cycle. So we're doing that spiritually developmentally. As the balsamic moves into darkness moves into that sliver of a crescent of a new moon. Yeah. That's where it's at. Right. In that description of that journey, in the solar calendar, a month-ish, but we have that 29 and a half days, it's a lot to go through. for some people maybe early on in working with the moon. I don't know if you've come across that idea of, okay, if I'm going to plant seeds at the new moon,

then they're going to be like by the full moon. They're ripe. So you mentioned along the way, this is a lunar cycle and it's also a two and a half year cycle. Yeah, two and a half year lunar cycle. And these questions, these ideas, this developmental concept can be applied to any of our cycles.

So as I was talking about my own journey with astrology, I alluded to my personal Saturn cycle. Just for instance, we can take this to any of the planetary cycles. A lot of people are familiar with the Saturn cycle. So at your Saturn return, that's like the new moon, right? What is being conceived? Then seven years later, what needs adjustment? And then 14 years in, what is being illuminated and so on. So as we said at the beginning, we may have said this before we started recording,

but we were talking about slowly development, developing creative projects. You were talking about this podcast and how it's been a journey, sort of this attorney and journey for you, of creating something really slowly at its own pace. So different planets, different time frames. But with the lunar cycle itself, there's that longer two and a half year lunar gestational cycle. So of course, everything that we begin on any given new moon

isn't going to ripen and complete itself in that 29. point whatever days. Sometimes it will, like short-term projects, sure. But there's that logger cycle where each quarter takes nine months. So if we have, like we just had, I don't know when this is going to air, but as we're recording, there's just been a new mooning cancer. It's seven degrees of cancer. Nine months from now, there will be a first quarter moon around seven degrees of cancer. And then nine months from then, 18 months from now, there'll be a full moon around seven degrees of cancer and so on in that longer conveniently nine month gestational cycle so this is actually even if you're not an astrologer yet this is a super

powerful forecasting tool that you can use in your own life notice the things that happen in the week around the new moon especially if it takes a significant place in your natal chart because those things will develop over that two and a half your cycle and you can look for those developmental turning points at those nine-month increments. And you don't even need to know the degrees or have that part of the astrological language. Just remember that nine months that you get a first quarter, nine months in, a full at 18 months later, you get the last quarter, and then the cycle recedes. If you track on a full moon, what was beginning for you 18 months ago, It's super powerful and suddenly you realize the potential of that forecasting tool

because you will see things coming to fruit in your life that you planted 18 months ago. And thinking for people who have that practice or starting that practice of setting intentions on the new moon and tracking along the way and seeing which intentions come back around. I'll give an example for myself as one that I worked on for a really long time was just I'm arriving ready and on time, like prepared and ready for time, this, this relationship with time, which when we're working with the moon and with all of these cycles, there's a fundamental and underlying relationship with time. Am I ahead of time? I'm behind, am I right on time, all these kinds of things. And so I, and I was just having this conversation with my youngest child

in the car this morning about running late and when they were first starting school, only getting to school on time maybe once a week and all the other days were late. And now it's flipped. And maybe they're only late like once a semester or that has completely flipped. And yet there's times where that relationship just starts to rear its head and come back. Yeah. And it doesn't, it's not that it's always, that it's like resolved and done and goes away. Like it comes back up to the surface.

It's like, well, there's something here to work with again from that new perspective and vantage point. And in the times and this kind of lunar timing when we can look back and see, wow, how far have I come to, you know, in linear mode. there's these markers that maybe indicate success. And I wonder if you would be willing to speak to, how do we feel successful when it's all a spiral and it feels like it's never ending? I think it's how do we feel successful when there's an end point that we can never reach?

Not to just play with words, Gemini, But when I think of my own definition of success in my life, it really didn't start to come about until I started to match my behaviors with cyclical time and with lunar time. Otherwise, it's the carrot on the stick thing where you're holding the stick yourself and you're just always chasing it. And this is, we could have a big conversation about capitalism right now, but or corporate culture. But you guys know. I'm not actually anti-capitalist. I have four planets and Taurus, and I love earning money. I think that there needs to be integrity and beautiful sharing.

But anyway, that's a separate conversation. Success, it's not an either or. I think that we can live in cyclical time. And for those of us, I think for all of us, for those of us who are human beings, this gives us greater ease and activates our potential. in a way that makes reaching those outer success markers, those linear success markers, if that's what we want to do, it actually makes it easier. And I don't mean to bypass anything.

There's like I have been able to, through privilege that I haven't worked for and privilege that I have worked for, I have been able to build a life where I can now completely match my activities to a lunar cycle. And I do. And I know that that's not always available to everybody in any given moment, primarily for economic reasons because of the extraordinary inequities that we have in this culture. So I'm not saying, oh, just go out and align yourself with cyclical time and everything will be fine, because it won't, but we can make incremental progress towards that to give ourselves some ease and save ourselves from the potential of burnout, even if it's just doing it in tiny ways.

But I think the answer is an unexpected answer, which is that at least for myself, and I can't speak for others. When I started really walking my talk and honoring that time and really disconnecting myself a little bit from some instilled beliefs about how we create success, I actually created more success. And I mean success both in the conventional sense of growth. greater financial security, more creative control over my work, more. And in, I think, perhaps more meaningful way of just feeling a sense of equanimity and ease in my life. I'll give you an example because that all sounds sort of abstract, but I launched this practice, my most recent iteration of my business.

I've been self-employed since I was in my 20s, but my astrology practice about six years ago. And I really have sort of followed conventional timing, working more or less a 40 hour week along an industrial time work week kind of model. And then gradually starting to allow myself to walk my talk. First of all, by doing the planetary days. And then by allowing myself to take, and that's, there's a seven days of the week

belongs to a planet. So I scheduled the activities of that planet for that day, including Monday, no, calls on Monday because it's moon day time to go inwards. So did that business got better. Just this last year, I took a really big step, which I really thought I couldn't do because it would affect my livelihood.

Balsamic week, I don't see anybody. I'm working, I'm doing some creative work. I'm working on what is essential. But I just thought, what would happen if I really respected that balsamic week? that last week of the cycle. And I did what my body and soul want to do during that week, which is go inwards, turn off all the lights,

turn off the computer, turn off the Zoom, don't interact. It's more extreme for me. I'm neurodivergent and I have four planets in the 12th house. So this is like a real need for me. It's gonna vary for different people. All of the kinds of success have followed on that. I was so scared, I'm giving this example not because everybody's going to be able to take a week to themselves.

So it's not. I am so fortunate. And again, part of that is privileged that I didn't work for. Part of it's privilege that I have worked for. It's extraordinary and I appreciate it. But we can practice this in small ways. And I think the point of the story is that that fear that you can't align with cyclical time because it's going to mess up. your conventional life. If you go to an extreme, that's true, it will. But if you gradually incrementally start to add these lunar practices in real time into your life, I think what you'll find is that they actually enhance your conventional life as well. Do you see the edge I'm trying to walk? Because we can't throw it all away. We all need to live these conventional lives and we We need money and we need to be there when people are expecting us to be there.

We need to get our kids to school on time and we need to pay our taxes. And trust me, in my long life, I have tried to opt out of all of that stuff and it doesn't work. It's not healthy. So I have achieved a balance, which is that I am living my life according to the rhythms that feel natural to me and I'm doing it in a way that, through hard work and lots of contemplation and lots of experimentation, actually does work with my conventional existence. It can be done. It's not easy.

You can't do it all at once or you will screw up your life. This I know from practice, from actual experience. If you just throw it all out, it's not, that doesn't work. I'm just in awe and inspired in listening to you talk about that journey. Yeah. and the approach of almost like easing into it. Yeah. And meeting those places of fear of what's going to happen if I take a whole week

and I'm not like working and doing the hard work. What's going to happen? And just to have that kind of proof in the pudding or however to describe the and it's working and it's even better. Yeah. Yeah. And it is a slow, Torrean process. Like I could not have done that.

the first year or two or even three years of my business because there's hustle that's necessary and that's that's part of our lunar process as well there is a hustle time in that waxing but it is possible to build these releasing times into our lives maybe not to the extreme that I have it's not only possible it's essential for all of us and I think part of it is just making that mental adjustment that it's not a failure to need rest that it's not a failure to release things that that it's not a failure to not to want to show up and be with people all the time. There's such an emphasis towards extroversion and manifestation and accomplishment. Those are all great things, but we also need the other half.

Introversion, rest, non-efforting, the other half. So I'm not denigrating that waxing half. We need it, we love it. We live in this culture, so we're all really good at it by now. So how about give some time to that other part of it that we're not so good at yet and practice that. Because that's the neglected half. Yeah, the neglected half. That's when I think about what a world would look like if we truly honored cycles. Yeah.

In this description of the way that you have worked towards that. And the more of us that can anchor that reality of it's not like a fantasy or it's not a impossibility and the suffering and damage that comes from not honoring the other half and just being in the productive mode and to keep up. And so it is when I hear you describing as these like foot in these worlds of like needing to participate in this late stage, like, extractive capitalism that's like. self-destructing and doing your creative work. So that in this description of like, how would a world where we could have that honoring of getting back to what's essential before beginning again, of really living cyclical, not just like begin and make the thing

and then, you know, what you're described. Right to the next beginning. Maybe like have a cocktail and. and take a nap and then be ready to start again. No, that's not going to cut it. You need more waning. You need more waiting time. But I also want to emphasize that it's not a utopia.

It's like I really want to again share my own experience of like my very young life and kind of having this ideal. Like if we all just opted out and lived cyclically and lived close to nature, everything would be great. Nobody would ever be in conflict. like there wouldn't be any wars. It's just that maybe, but that's not where we are. That's not where we are in this world. And it's not what we'll accomplish in this lifetime. And it's really important to balance both halves.

We do, I have come to this through hard striving to just reject. That was my own path. And I love the wisdom of probably younger people, maybe Pluto and Scorpio people, who are like, No, you old hippie, that's not a thing. We need to deal with the reality and go deep and be in our creative practice and in our spiritual practice and in the world and striving and fighting and hustling sometimes and also resting.

So, yeah, I've lived all of that and it's been hard one wisdom where I am right now. Thank you for sharing this moon wisdom in the very lived and practical sense. And in a way that that offers possibly a path of what are the small things that I can do. And I don't know if there's something that for you can come to mind of just sharing like for someone who's like, okay, I'm not going to turn my life upside down and try to like all of a sudden rearrange everything. but some of those steps in entering into more lunar realms that maybe weren't a part of our upbringing or wisdom that was like just a way of life as it was for most all of our ancestors at different points in different places on the planet a kind of reclaiming in a modern time where things are collapsing simultaneously.

Obviously, yeah. With building new ways of, yeah. Yeah, that right there is balsamic moon talk, hey. You already said it. I think there's no better practice than just going to the source, to the moon herself, and creating that practice that you created for yourself at the very beginning of your lunar journey, which is committing to finding her in the sky every day. Even you don't even have to like don't download an app.

Don't do the book learning. Just go to her first and then you can add that in. Just have the mystery of trying to figure out where she is in the sky every day. Commit to it for a month. This is, you know, around the new moon is a great time to start. But also it's a cycle. It's a circle. You could start wherever.

You can start any time to start today. Go out. It may be in the day. It may be in the night. You don't know. So go out and find her and commit to finding her every day. Honestly, it's so amazing. The results of that simple practice are so profound,

even if that's all you ever do with your moon wisdom. That's all you ever really need to do. The rest is just sort of explication and icing on the cake. It really is about going out and having that one-on-one relationship with that mysterious force that she is. So that's it. Go out every day and try to figure out where she is and have a little conversation with her.

Hello, Moon. What's up? What do you have to teach me today? Or you don't even formalize it like that. Just say, hey, what's the wisdom that you're carrying today? It's a transformative process. It sounds like a really simple thing. But you know, it's absolutely. Absolutely life-changing.

It's creating a kind of a groove that then can help to enter into that circular, cyclical way of being that exists simultaneously with this grid. And you can do that without having any particular social philosophy or changing your daily life in any way. Just go out and find the moon. That's everything. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. well, this feels like the beginning of another conversation

of entering into almost in some ways where we've begun with that what's possible within learning astrology. You're teaching a course for that purpose to help people to learn this language and speak a language and both learning from the hindsight of cycles and also this anticipation of user cycles at play whether or not we know this language or believe, you know, believe it's happening or not. It is. Yeah, I wonder if there's anything you'd like to share just about what you hope in offering this course for others to learn

that we can put to practice. And if there's anything, too, of like any myths that you'd like to dispel around astrology, especially where it's like, do you have to have a certain belief system or like kind of what goes along with maybe any kind of, not barriers necessarily, but just myths that might be there that in your own teaching. I think the primary myth that I would like to dispel, there's a lot of them, but the primary one is that astrology is a personality typing tool, but it's something like a fancy cosmic Myers-Briggs. Oddly enough, Myers-Briggs is by a circuitous path derived from astrology, but that's beside the point.

It's astrology isn't, it is a way to understand ourselves more deeply. That's sort of a side effect. Primarily what it is is a tool for understanding time because we're so good in our culture at quantifying time. We can measure milliseconds. but we do not understand the quality of time. Astrology measures the quality of any given moment in time. If it can talk about a personality,

it is because you were born into the essence of a moment and you bear that stamp of the quality of the time that you were born. But primarily, it's an art that is about understanding time in a much more profound way than we understand. understand time in our culture, the quality of time, the essence of time. That's what it is. It's a mystery school in the study of time, which incidentally you can use to learn about yourself.

So that's the primary myth I would like to dispel. So I teach two moon courses and one major astrology fundamentals program. And what distinguishes is what distinguishes is, distinguishes my fundamentals program from other ones is again that astrology is a really complex language and it's so full of information and things that we can learn and oftentimes that's the part that we get caught up in and stay in is like the information that in for it's just there's so much and we forget that as well as being this complex science with you know so much literature going back 3,000 years and so many little details and techniques to learn that it is,

as I said, a mystery school and that the study of astrology involves our whole being. It involves awakening our intuition and what some people refer to as our psychic or clairvoyant abilities. I wish there was a better word in English for that, are other ways of knowing that are beyond the rational. And it involves and meshing ourselves more deeply with nature and her cycles. So again, talking about the missing half. That's the missing half.

And that's the half that I bring to my teaching as well as giving you really strong. I'm a Javanai. I can, you know, info dump forever. I'll bring you the information that you need really neatly organized in a Torian way. But also this other half, which is how do I enter into this mystery school, into this hermetic art with my full being? How does it give me a greater understanding of nature and of myself? and how does it awaken my relationship with the energetic realms? So we do all of that in this immersive six-month program.

I have two smaller courses on moon wisdom. Light of the moon and mood of the moon takes you in real time through the lunar cycle, from new moon to full moon back to new moon again, and then the other one from Aries to Pisces and back to Ares again. So those are my teaching offerings, among many, but those are the ones that focus on the moon. Thank you for asking about that. Thank you, Brahman, for this.

Thank you so much. What a wonderful conversation. I hope we can connect again in some capacity. Until then. Okay. Bye. Bye. Thank you for being here.

Your presence is a gift. If you like this podcast, please subscribe, leave a review, share it with a friend, all the things to help it reach more people who will benefit in some meaningful way. I'm April, and I'll be with you next time on Between the Moon.