Full Strawberry Moon – June

Sorry this is late guys – it’s been a jam packed busy week concluding with an amazing Summer Solstice celebration yesterday afternoon that lasted into the night….Hope you are all enjoying your Solstice celebrations and the Super Moon! Here are some additional links for this year’s Full Moon:

“Summer Solstice and Full Super Moon 2013: Heart, Soul, and Summer Flowers” by Aepril Schaile.

“Full Moon in Capricorn – June 23rd, 2013” by Dipali Desai.

“Feeling the Fear, Reclaiming Authority – Tonight’s Super Full Moon in Capricorn” by Emily.

“The Wheel Turns: Solstice” by Dana Gerhardt.

“Capricorn Full Moon: The Business of Taking Care” by April Elliott Kent.

“Full Strawberry Moon” by Robert McDowell.

“3-Minute Moon Ritual” by Dana Gerhardt.

Journeying to the Goddess

The Farmer’s Almanac tells us that June’s full moon is known as the Strawberry Moon.  This name was universal to every Algonquin tribe. However, in Europe they called it the Rose Moon. Also because the relatively short season for harvesting strawberries comes each year during the month of June . . . so the full Moon that occurs during that month was christened for the strawberry!

According to the Wise Witches Society, this moon is known as the Mead Moon.  During late June and most of July the meadows were mowed for hay.

“June’s moon is also known as Mead Moon, Strawberry Moon, Honey Moon and Flower Moon. This moon is the moon of summer, and we can start looking forward to the warm nights to come. This is also the time for lovers. Before the height of summer use this time to strengthen your weaknesses. The zodiac association is Gemini

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Woodspriestess: Summer Solstice

Loved this!!!

WoodsPriestess

Hot nature.
Humid thickness
of life
breath
and passion.

Sticky spirit
melting senses
sleepy mind
moving through
watery air.

Mosquitoes whine
ticks lurk
Summer is here.

She’s heavy
weighty
watery
thick
green.

Summer has come to the woods
Summer has bitten my thigh
Summer whines in my ear
Summer waits
for my ideas to bear fruit
rich, juicy, sweet.

(6/11/13)

The Summer Solstice issue of The Oracle is out and contains a slightly revised version of my Womanenergy post:

Womenergy moved humanity across continents, birthed civilization, invented agriculture, conceived of art and writing, pottery, sculpture, and drumming, painted cave walls, raised sacred stones and built Goddess temples. It rises anew during ritual, sacred song, and drumming together. It says She Is Here. I Am Here. You Are Here and We Can Do This. It speaks through women’s hands, bodies, and heartsongs. Felt in hope, in tears, in blood, and in…

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Fire, Her Bright Spirit by Deanne Quarrie

“This is the time when the fullness of the Mother is evident in the lushness of growth around us. It is when the crops are ripening in the sun; the time the honey bee gathers in sweetness. We celebrate this season with dance, bonfires, and yes, sexual pleasure. This is the revelry of Midsummer and the Dance of Fire…” ~ Deanne Quarrie

In Celtic Tradition our world is composed of Three Realms, those of Land, Sea, and Sky. In the midst of these Realms we find the Sacred Grove, the place of flowing together. There the Sacred Fire burns, by the Well of Wisdom, beneath the World Tree. Sacred Fire is that which weaves itself throughout the Three Realms.  It connects us and all of life to the Realms as well as to our gods and goddesses.  Fire is Sacred Spirit, Sacred Inspiration, without which life would have no meaning.

Fire is the spark, the flame, the heat of passion.  It is what ignites our creativity, fuels our passion and fires our hearts to love.  It is the Dance of Life, the joy found in movement, sexual energy and the warmth that germinates new life in seeds. It is the warmth of sunlight on our skin and the ecstatic pleasure of orgasm.

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Sulis, Celtic Sun Goddess of Healing and Prophecy by Judith Shaw

It was hard for me to wrap my head around a Sun Goddess after having it instilled since starting out on my Path that the sun was masculine and the moon was feminine – especially as my interests were piqued by the Germanic and Norse hearth cultures. The idea that Sól or Sunna, a Goddess of the sun, was so strange – and stranger yet, Máni, brother of Sól, the moon personified! But as Carol P. Christ commented on this post, “As we reclaim our female selves, we need to know that we are not restricted to the dark, the unconscious, or the unformed. All of life, light and dark, conscious and unconscious, formed, forming, and unformed were once imagined to be female. We affirm all of these as parts of ourselves, parts of all selves.”

Lest we not forget the different Goddesses found throughout the world in other cultures that have solar associations “List of Sun Goddesses“.

As we approach the summer solstice, the longest day of the the year, I find myself reflecting on my love of the long, hot days of summer.  The bliss of lying on a beach caressed by the kisses of sun and breeze, with the promise of the cool inviting embrace of the sea by my side, is one of my most favorite forms of relaxation.  Though the ozone layer has thinned and I can only indulge this desire in small doses now, I still love the feeling of the sun on my skin as She paints colored visions in my mind’s eye.

She –  how can I personify the sun as She when from across the world we hear only of Sun Gods and Moon Goddesses?  Yet hidden deep in mythology one discovers that long, long ago the sun was worshipped as a goddess. From Aditi – Hindu Solar Goddess…

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Birth as a Shamanic Experience by Molly Remer

“I feel I actually encountered the Goddess most meaningfully during this time of personal suffering…I did not feel a truly personal experience of Goddess ‘energy’ until this pregnancy loss.” – This speaks to me and is so profound. I knew the Goddess, somehow, I’ve always known Her; but it wasn’t until my miscarriage in 2006, a few years after I formally dedicated myself to Her, that I too really truly felt Her and knew Her – it’s very difficult to explain. I grieved, I was at an all-time low, in pieces, an emotional mess – and yet I stood humbled and in awe of Her, Her power, and Her strong encircling presence – it had never felt so strong. It was She who helped me go through this transformation and bring me onto the path I’m on today. It was good to read this because I know that I’m not alone in feeling this and other women too have had a similar experience in really coming to know the Goddess through their miscarriages, trials and tribulations.

Of course, I also became familiar with Her in a totally different way and tuned into a different energy with the birth of my daughter in 2008. It is through these shamanic experiences that we come to know Her in our own ways.

“Childbirth is a rite of passage so intense physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, that most other events in a woman’s life pale next to it. In our modern lives, there are few remaining rituals of initiation, few events that challenge a person’s mettle down to the very core. Childbirth remains a primary initiatory rite for a woman.” –Maren Hansen (MotherMysteries)

When I was pregnant with my first baby, I read an article with the theme of “Birth as a Shamanic Experience.” I can no longer find the exact article (online or printed), but I distinctly remember my feeling upon reading it: I was entering into a mystery. Giving birth was big. Bigger than anything I’d ever done before and it went beyond the realm of a purely biological process and into something else. Like shamanic experiences, giving birth is often described as involving a sense of connection to the…

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