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Art Journal with the Moon December 4-10 2023

Art Journal with the Moon for December 4-10 2023

December 3, 2023

This is a summary of the moon’s energy for the upcoming week and the inner work and magic you can do in your art journal to make the most of the opportunities the cosmos is gifting us with.

Every week the emotional and magical opportunities the moon is sending you are different because the energy she is drawing down from the planets and stars changes moment to moment. Planets and stars and moon phases and moon signs each carry their own unique energy. This is my weekly update of the moon’s comings and goings to support you in aligning with her energy.

Get your art journal or a scrap of paper you see lying around, your art supplies or those pencil crayons you have hidden away somewhere and have fun. Spend 10 – 20 minutes focusing on the themes the moon is supporting you to explore that day while you play with colors and shapes and watch what happens over time.

It’s amazing what a little consistent creative time can do.

Let’s Look Back and Celebrate

Indulge me if you please. I want to start this moon update with a bit of a celebration. I’m feeling proud of the inner work I did this year and I want to celebrate it with you.

When we’re doing inner work, like deep emotional healing or changing our subconscious beliefs or rewiring our brain, it’s easy to forget to celebrate our progress. This kind of work is tough and it’s all happening inside us, where it’s not easy to see the changes. Unlike physical achievements, where you can clearly see the results, the shifts that happen in our minds and emotions are less visible. But it’s so important to recognize and celebrate these milestones. Doing inner work is a continuous journey, and there’s always more to learn and heal. That’s why it’s crucial to take a moment to acknowledge how far we’ve come. It helps us remember that even though this work is challenging, we are making progress, and that’s something to be proud of. Celebrating these victories gives us the encouragement to keep going, especially because this journey of growth and healing never really ends.

I’m sorry. Did I disappoint you? Were you expecting to arrive at some place where everything was healed and you were done with all that inner work?

If you’re like me, you’ve come to learn that inner work is a winding journey that twists and turns throughout your. Becoming who you really are is a constant process of unfolding and learning more about your true essence then shining a little brighter then bumping up against another challenge or setback and having to look within and stretch and grow and heal to reveal once again a little more of your inner light and shine a little brighter still.

Last year, when I sat to plan and vision the year ahead, I learned that according to an ancient astrology technique called annual profections, the area of my life that was going to be most prominent was the second house of my astrological birth house or in other words, my finances, my relationship to money and my concept of self-worth.

True to what my year ahead reading predicted, I experienced a significant change in how I see and handle money. That’s what I’m celebrating – all the hard inner work I did to change my relationship with money and the amazing lightness and ease I’m experiencing lately because of it.

Cancer flavors my second house so the moon was my guiding luminary for the year (how lovely is that?) which also means that my emotions, body and subconscious realm were important to consider when it comes to my relationship with money.

Cancer’s emotional influence meant I was looking more deeply into my feelings about finances. I started seeing how my thoughts about money were deeply rooted in my past, especially the stories and experiences I picked up from my parents and ancestors. As a child, I misunderstood many things about money, taking on beliefs that weren’t really what my parents intended. This year, I worked on letting go of these old stories and creating a healthier relationship with money. I spent a lot of time working with the MAP Method to release what no longer serves me when it comes to money.

I also had to face how powerless I felt when dealing with money problems. Even though it wasn’t fun to admit it, I often felt like a victim in these situations. But this year, after a lot of emotional healing and changing the way I think, my first reaction to money issues has started to shift. I’ve moved away from feeling like a victim to feeling more in control.

Another big challenge was dealing with my feelings of envy and jealousy towards others who seemed to be in a better financial position. I realized these feelings came from feeling powerless about my own money situation. By confronting these negative emotions, I’ve started to heal that part of my relationship with money too. This whole process has been more than just learning about finances; it’s been a journey towards understanding myself better and becoming more emotionally and financially empowered.

Looking ahead to 2024, I am feeling excited about the fact that all this emotional healing around money is being followed up with a year ruled by the Sun. My annual profection moves to the third house in my birth chart which is flavored by Leo. The third house deals with communication, intellect, short trips, siblings, neighbors, and early education. It’s about how I communicate and connect with my immediate environment. Leo, a fire sign ruled by the Sun, is associated with creativity, self-expression, confidence, and a bit of drama. Leo energy is bold, expressive, and seeks to shine.

A Leo-activated third house year will bring a focus on confident and creative communication. This could be a great time for my art, my writing and my ability to express myself in a way that helps my true essence shine – which is absolutely perfect for what I have planned. I can’t wait to share it with you later in the spring.

Before I gave myself a Year Ahead Reading, I was feeling confused about what to focus on this year. I have a lot of creative goals I want to accomplish. Do you relate?

Highly sensitive creative people often find it challenging to focus and achieve their creative goals due to their abundance of ideas and their sensitivity to the world around them. The changing moods, ideas, and inspirations can make it hard to stay on one path without getting distracted. This is where understanding the themes and energies of the year ahead, as revealed by the moon and astrology, becomes invaluable. By gaining insight into these celestial influences, you can align your efforts with the natural rhythms and lunar cycles. This alignment helps to narrow down focus and use time more efficiently, preventing that feeling of being scattered and ineffective.

For someone like me, with a strong air element in my birth chart, this tendency towards a multitude of ideas and a highly creative mindset is even more pronounced. Air signs are known for their intellectual and conceptual abilities. Being highly sensitive and often dwelling in liminal spaces to connect with angels and ancestors for professional purposes, I have an even more unique understanding of the importance of grounding. Locating myself emotionally, energetically, and spiritually is crucial to remain focused and take action in the physical world. This grounding is not just about being physically present; it’s about integrating my creative and spiritual experiences into tangible, actionable steps. I don’t experience physical results when my spirit and my mind is constantly floating around.

My Year Ahead Reading pulls me back into my body and focuses my energy. It helps me ‘locate’ myself, not just in the physical world, but in the context of time and energy. The reading offers a map of the upcoming year’s energetic landscape, showing me where and when to focus my efforts. It’s like having a guide to the shifting emotional and spiritual tides, allowing me to plan and act in harmony with these forces. This guidance is especially beneficial for someone attuned to the spiritual and ethereal realms, as it provides a framework to channel my insights and creativity effectively. By understanding the astrological forecast for the year, I can better ground myself, ensuring that my creative and spiritual endeavors have a strong, focused foundation in the physical world.

As the new year approaches, what inner work from 2023 are you celebrating?

What themes or energy are you excited to explore in 2024?

If you’d like help exploring the themes and energies that will be most prominent for you this year, I invite you to book a Year Ahead Reading.

This is a chance for you to find out what the next year might have in store for you, especially in terms of your own personal themes and energies. The Year Ahead Reading will:

highlight specific areas of life that are likely to be more active or significant during 2024
help you set intentions of growth for the coming year
indicate potential obstacles and help you prepare for and work through these challenges
help you time creative projects and launches
reveal the ebb and flow of creative energy throughout your year, helping you to plan and make the most of these natural cycles
highlight the spiritual lessons in the coming year
connect you to the larger energies supporting your creative dreams

Knowing what’s coming up in 2024 can be really helpful. It’s like having a roadmap for the year. You can find out the best times to start new projects, when to take it easy, and how to make the most of your creative energy. It’s all based on your unique astrological chart and the intuitive messages I receive from my guardian angel Cassandra.

I don’t do a lot of these readings, so they’re pretty special. If you’re interested, I’d love for you to book a session with me this week. This way, you can go into the new year feeling prepared and excited about what’s to come.

Looking forward to helping you discover what 2024 has in store for you!

Book your Year Ahead Reading

Monday

Today the moon is in the last quarter phase and in the sign of Virgo. The moon is also in a tense relationship with Mars, a happy relationship with Mercury and an opposing relationship with Saturn.

The last quarter moon in Virgo brings a focus on refinement and introspection. Virgo, an earth sign known for its attention to detail and pursuit of perfection, encourages us to analyze and organize our thoughts and feelings. This phase of the moon is a time for inner cleansing, where you can sift through your emotions and experiences, keeping what serves you and letting go of what doesn’t. It’s a period to take stock of what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown, especially in areas where you seek improvement or efficiency. It’s the last waning moon of 2023 so extending your focus to cleansing and clearing from the last year is helpful and suggested.

During this time, you might feel more critical of yourself or more aware of the small imperfections in your life. This critical eye, though, isn’t meant for self-judgment; instead, it’s there to help you see what’s really important to you – and you can again extend that into considering what’s important for you for the coming year.

Emotionally, it’s an excellent time for self-care routines that not only care for your body but also for your mind and spirit. You may find yourself drawn to activities that help you organize your thoughts, such as making lists or planning for the future.

Spiritually, this moon phase is about aligning your daily habits with your higher purpose. It’s a reminder that the small actions and decisions you make every day can have a significant impact on your spiritual journey. The practical nature of Virgo can help ground your spiritual practices, making them more a part of your everyday life.

If you have a moment with your art journal today, reflect on the areas of your life where you’ve noticed growth and improvement. Create a page in your art journal that represents this personal evolution. Use symbols or imagery related to gardening or cultivation, as Virgo is often associated with the nurturing of growth and development. You might draw or collage a winter garden scene where each plant represents a different aspect of your life that you’ve nurtured and grown. As you work on this page, think about the ways you’ve tended to these areas and how you can continue to foster growth. Celebrate your inner world accomplishments from 2023 and consider what needs pruning or more care, and how you can apply the meticulous energy of Virgo to further refine these aspects of your life.

In your art journal, draw, paint or collage an image of a winter garden that represents the growth you made in your inner world in the last year.

Tuesday

Today the moon is in the last quarter phase and in the sign of Virgo. It is also having a happy relationship with Uranus.

As we approach the end of the year with the moon in its waning phase, it’s a perfect time for emotional and spiritual cleansing, particularly with Uranus playing its role as a pattern breaker. Uranus is all about shaking things up and pushing us out of our comfort zones. It challenges the status quo and encourages us to break free from habits and beliefs that hold us back.

During this period, Uranus’s influence can be incredibly powerful in helping you identify and let go of those old patterns. These could be habits, routines, or even ways of thinking that have become so ingrained, you hardly notice them. But often, they are the very things that keep you stuck or limit your growth.

Think of Uranus as a gust of fresh air, sweeping through the dusty corners of our minds and lives. It’s an opportunity to question those “that’s just how I am” beliefs and habits. Do they still serve you? Or are they just comfortable and familiar? Uranus encourages you to be honest about what’s really working and what’s not.

As you reflect on the past year, consider what you’re ready to release. This could be a mindset that limits your potential, a routine that no longer fits your lifestyle, or even relationships that don’t support your growth. Uranus’s energy is there to support you in making these significant changes.

You might find it helpful to jot down these thoughts in your journal or express them in your art journal. As the moon wanes, imagine it taking away these outdated parts of your life, leaving you with a clean slate for the new year. The combination of the waning moon at the year’s end and Uranus’s pattern-breaking energy creates a powerful moment for release and renewal. It’s an invitation to shed the old and embrace change, setting you up for a fresh start and new growth in the coming year

In your art journal, draw, paint or collage an image that represents a comfortable or familiar habit or thought you are ready to release and change.

Wednesday

The last quarter moon moves into the sign of Libra today. It is also having a tense relationship with Mercury, a happy relationship with Pluto and an opposing relationship with Neptune.

The relationship the moon is having with Neptune can feel polarizing. It brings energy that is confrontational and intense which produces discomfort and sometimes even blocks and barriers.

Neptune is a planet of intuition, psychic abilities, imagination, spirituality and dreams but it can also represent our delusions or our desires to escape, including our desire to escape our uncomfortable feelings.

When Neptune is in opposition with the moon, it can cause us to feel confused about our emotions and intuition. Discerning what’s the truth and what’s a projection or a memory or a hurt part from the past causing an emotional trigger can be challenging. You might be feeling more sensitive than usual or taking things more personally than you might typically be prone to do. It’s also an energy where you might jump to conclusions or believe things that aren’t actually true and consequently feel hurt by something someone says or does when in reality, their words or actions aren’t exactly what you’re making them out to be. Your past pain is just reliving an old story.

It’s a good day to realize that your conscious mind isn’t always able to catch when you’re operating from a wounded part. You might NOT be interpreting everything you experience today from your wisest most aligned self so have patience with yourself and with everyone you encounter today. Their wounded parts might be rising to the surface as well and in this moon energy they might be reacting instead of thoughtfully responding to whatever situation you both find yourselves in.

In your art journal, draw, paint or collage an image that represents a memory from your past you’ve noticed sometimes makes you think or feel in ways you’d rather not.

Thursday

The last quarter moon is in the sign of Libra. It is also having a happy relationship with Mars and Jupiter.

The moon is in a happy relationship with Jupiter today.

Jupiter wants to bring harmony, well-being, kindness, justice, abundance, growth, expansion, good luck and balance to your life. The moon is supporting Jupiter’s desire to do this in your life today.

The moon is the queen of the night. She wants to illuminate the darkness, bring about change, be a mirror to reflect us back to ourselves and awaken our receptive and intuitive powers. She represents your body and emotions and reminds you that life is an ever-changing cycle of birth, death, decay and rebirth. She wants to bring kindness, nurturing, novelty and adaptability.

Together, the moon and Jupiter are shining more peace into our lives today. They’re helping us feel open-hearted and generous. They’re supporting us in focusing on what connects us to each other and what brings us together. It’s energy that helps us feel calm and safe and willing to see and receive the goodness other people want to share with us. It’s energy that reminds us what’s good in our life.

One of the best ways to work with this energy is to drop into your heart and choose something in your life to feel grateful for. Since we’re nearing the end of the year, let’s expand that feeling of gratitude by considering all the things you have to be grateful about from the last year. There are a lot of hard and devastating things happening in the world right now. It can feel pointless or challenging to focus on what is good or right in your world but spending some time focusing on what you have to be grateful for in the past year helps you to build resilience and focus on what you want to grow more of for yourself and the world in the coming year.

In your art journal, make a list of all the things you have to be grateful about from the past year..

Friday

The last quarter moon moves into the sign of Scorpio today. It is also having a tense relationship with Pluto.

Pluto wants to illuminate what is hidden in your subconscious realm to help you transform. It can bring endings, new beginnings, deep spiritual growth and rebirth. With Pluto’s energy influencing us, its helpful to face your shadows and your inner darkness – and hopefully you can do that with compassion.

In this tense kind of relationship the moon and Pluto are having today, challenging emotions can surface and affect how you speak or act. It can stir up difficult issues to process or unresolved issues that still need to be tended to. It’s like facing dark truths that ultimately set you free.

Personally, I see this as an opportunity to address those exiled parts within my psyche. The ones I’ve hidden away because of shame, fear or the worry that I won’t be loved or accepted. Those parts get activated in this kind of moon energy and yes, it can cause challenges in your life and relationships but its hard to tend to those deeply hidden inner parts without them being activated so there is a blessing to this kind of tense moon energy – especially when you are committed to doing your emotional work. Today’s moon energy supports your emotional and spiritual growth by giving you the opportunity to meet the emotional or spiritual needs of your hidden inner parts.

Think about the last time you faced a hard truth – about yourself or someone else.

What was that experience like for you?

In what way did the experience set you free?

In your art journal, draw, paint or collage an image that represents setting an inner part of yourself free.

Saturday

The balsamic moon is in the sign of Scorpio. It is also having a happy relationship with Mercury and Saturn, an intense relationship with Venus and an opposing relationship with Jupiter.

The balsamic or waning crescent phase of the moon, just before we plunge into the darkness of the New Moon, is a deeply spiritual time, ripe with opportunities for introspection and release.

Emotionally, the balsamic moon phase is like your spiritual guardian, whispering, “It’s okay to let go.” It’s not the time for launching new projects or making big decisions. Instead, it’s a time for tying up loose ends, letting go of what no longer serves you, and giving yourself permission to rest and recharge. The balsamic moon phase is a little like a detox for your soul.

Spiritually, this phase is your invitation to dive into your inner world and tend to what emotionally and spiritually needs tending to. It’s like a spiritual retreat, allowing you to explore your dreams, fears, and the stories you tell yourself. This energy encourages you to let go of old emotional baggage and release patterns that might be holding you back. It’s an opportunity to make peace with the past and create space for new beginnings.

Imagine you’re decluttering your emotional closet.

What do you need to let go of?

What emotional weight is dragging you down?

What emotional baggage from 2023 do you want to release and let go?

In your art journal, create a page that represents the things you’re ready to release. It could be a collage of images or words, or even an abstract representation of the emotional baggage you’re letting go of.

In your art journal, draw, paint or collage an image that represents the emotional baggage from 2023 you are releasing.

Sunday

The balsamic moon is in the sign of Scorpio and it is having a happy relationship with Neptune and an opposing relationship with Uranus.

Today, the Moon is forming a harmonious relationship with Neptune, which brings a wave of gentle, dreamy energy into our lives. Neptune is a planet that deeply connects us to the spiritual realm and our higher selves. It encourages us to tap into our divine potential, to feel that profound sense of being unconditionally loved, and to recognize our interconnectedness with all things.

With Neptune’s influence, our psychic abilities and intuition are heightened. It’s a day where you might find yourself receiving divine inspiration or experiencing profound insights. Neptune also dissolves barriers, making it easier for us to feel a sense of wholeness and unity with the world around us. This is a time when our imaginations can truly soar, helping us to envision possibilities that we might not usually consider.

However, Neptune also has a side that can lead us into delusion or a desire to escape reality, especially when it comes to facing uncomfortable emotions. But with the Moon in a supportive aspect, we are reminded to stay grounded in our emotional truth, using Neptune’s expansive qualities to enhance our creativity and intuition rather than escape from reality.

Today is perfect for delving into your emotions, trusting your instincts, and using the power of imagination to manifest positive changes in your life. It’s an energy that helps us connect deeply with others on a soul level, enhancing our ability to offer comfort, care, and soothing support to those we love.

As you art journal with the moon today, create an image that represents a comforting, soothing, or caring thought you have for someone you love. This could be a visual representation of a warm embrace, a peaceful scene, or even an abstract depiction of love and care. Let your imagination guide you as you create a piece that not only reflects your feelings but also serves as a beacon of love and comfort for the person in your thoughts. This exercise is not just about creating art, but about channeling and expressing your deepest, most caring intentions.

In your art journal, create an image that represents a comforting or caring thought you want to send out today to someone you love.

Have fun with your art journal and the moon this week.

with love,

Dana da Ponte

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This is a space where art and spirit come together. On the blog, I share art rituals for working with the magic of the moon. I also work with the subconscious mind to lighten your emotional load and follow your creative dreams.