Dana’s Moon Page for the Full Moon October 31 2020

This month’s journal page was created to help you honor and connect with your ancestors.

Reflect

In the Northern hemisphere, this is the time of year when nature is speaking death and endings. The leaves on the trees are dying and dropping to the ground. Plants are wilting in the frost and the once fertile gardens and fields are becoming resting beds of dirt. Birds are flying south. Animals are disappearing into their holes and won’t be seen again for a long time. Even the daylight seems to be dying as the moon takes up more time in the sky but as nature shows us, death is not an eternal goodbye. The sun will come again, the birds will fly back, the hibernating animals will wake up, the snow will melt and the seeds will grow shoots out of the dirt when they are warm enough. However, until that time, death and endings are reflected everywhere in nature.

For many witches like me, this is a time specifically carved out of the Wheel of the Year to acknowledge death and loss, to experience grief, and to honor the Ancestors and the loved ones we’ve lost. It’s a time of year when the veil between this world and the world of Spirit is thinner and so visits and messages from the other side are easier to see and hear.

I’ve been visited by my ancestors often. I have one particular ancestor who shows up when I’m writing. She is my grandmere (my father’s mother). As a child, everyone would say I took after her and her side of the family. I didn’t feel especially close to her but she has made herself known to me many times since her passing and I’m coming to realize she loves words and writing as much as I do. Apparently, our resemblance is deeper than facial features and body shape.

She let me know that my creative dreams are being affected by the pain of my ancestors, including what she passed down to me. Some of the subconscious blocks she passed down to me are her own but much of what holds me back has been passed down from farther back our family tree. I carry an entire history of women who were unable to do what they wanted in life. Instead they had to cook and clean and raise families. It’s very important to her that I see where her story was woven into mine and what work I need to do to release myself from the past.

It’s also very important to her that the books I have in my heart become real. She has shown me she will be with me every step of the way but she’s made it very clear that in order to get where I want to go, I need to see that my body is carrying more than my pain and work to release whatever generational trauma and buried emotional memories that I can. She knows that her emotional memories live on in me just like her mother’s emotional memories lived on in her and she doesn’t want her ancestral memories to block me from my goals.

Being a professional intuitive, I obviously don’t just talk to my ancestors. In my work, other people’s ancestors make themselves known from time and time and intercept a session to share a message with my clients or tell me where we need to do some energetic or emotional work for them. I think our ancestors want us to break generational patterns as much as we do. In ways I don’t yet understand, I think it frees them as much as it frees us.

I’ve become far more finely attuned to the layers of energy and emotions we all carry. A lot of the energy and emotions that have affected me the most have not even been mine and I suspect the same applies to you. So much has been passed down and shared with us like a family sitting around the table passing around butter and salt except instead of butter its trauma and instead of salt its buried emotions. Our ancestors may be dead but they are still with us. Someone else’s story has been woven into our blood and bones. We are deeply affected by the past. It’s alive in us. We don’t want it to be. We try hard to become different or better than the past but despite our best efforts our bodies remember.

This month, in the self-healing recordings I create every week for people who’ve signed up for the Moon Mapping Year, I worked with Spirit and the subconscious mind to clear generational trauma and ancestral memories from our bodies. We started with the bottom half of our bodies and worked with the feet and the legs then the next week we worked upwards from the hips, pelvis and abdomen and finally we finished with clearing the ancestral memories and generational trauma we were holding in the top half of our bodies. When I listened to the recordings (because I don’t just create them, I use them too), I had a lot to clear in my legs and halfway through the treatment something wonderful happened and a pain I’ve had in my legs for many years just disappeared and it hasn’t come back (I’m hoping it never does).

This full moon page continues the work with our ancestors by inviting you to contemplate the kind of legacy you want to leave future generations then guiding you to receive a message from your ancestors. I’ve done something special and added a guided meditation you can listen to before you work on your moon page.

A Guided Journey to Connect with Your Ancestors

Feel free to set up your altar or light a few candles, cover yourself with the softest most comfortable blanket you can find then listen along and see who out of your ancestors decides to join you. When you are done listening, follow the instructions for the moon page that I’ve listed below.

If you are not on my email list and haven’t received this month’s moon page, visit my homepage and sign up. You’ll receive a link where you can download the hand-drawn page I created for this particular moon. Print it, grab a tea and a cozy blanket, get comfortable then follow the instructions below.

Create

If moon rituals are familiar to you, prepare your sacred space and invite Spirit to join you in whatever way works best for you.

If, however, you are new to moon rituals, I’ve included a quick guide to the steps I follow to prepare for my moon rituals in a past blog post. Take a look at it before moving forward.

Print out the October full moon journal page and gather your pencil crayons or paint.

On the page you will notice there is a moon tarot card is sitting on the table. One of the symbolisms of the moon is intuition. You cannot connect with your loved ones who crossed over if you do not trust your senses. Perhaps when they are near your body picks up on the energy and you experience your connection to them as a body sensation where your hands get cold or the hair on the back of your neck stands up or your tummy feels warm. Perhaps your intuitive connection to your ancestors comes as a scent in the air like when the cinnamon scent of your grandfather’s favorite candies linger in your nose for a brief but magical moment or the smell of fresh baked bread like your favorite aunt used to make comes at you out of the blue. Maybe your intuitive connection to your ancestors is less physical and you just get this sense of knowing. You can’t explain why but you just know the brother you lost years ago is standing right beside you. Or maybe you hear your name being called when no one is near and the vision of an old family friend who passed years ago comes to mind in that same moment. Whatever way the messages from your ancestors come, the tarot card of the moon depicted on this page is to remind you to trust it. As my guardian angel Cassandra used to say to my clients, stop worrying about whether or not what you are sensing is true or not. A better question to ask is whether or not it is helpful.

In the foreground of this moon page is the image of a human skull. Skulls, human and other, have been used in ritual for ages. I wanted to include the image of a skull as a gatekeeper of sorts. Notice on the page the picture frame I drew with a small door at the top of it. The door symbolizes opening ourselves up to communicating with those who have crossed over and inside the picture frame is where you will write or draw your promise to your ancestors. The skull is placed between you and what you draw or write on the page as if to say that death stands between you and your ancestors. It also speaks to the fact that death is as common as birth and is an experience every single one of your ancestors had to go through and it is one you will have to go through as well. Why fear it? Why hide thoughts of it away as if the very mention of it is unpleasant? Get comfortable with the idea of it. Maybe it’s even as much a miracle as your birth was.

There are other symbols on the page such as the Ouija board planchette to symbolize receiving messages from Spirit, rosemary to encourage us to remember the past and honor those who can no longer be with us in body and dead twigs to remind us there is beauty and art even in death.

Grab your pen or markers and crayons and after you have listened to the accompanying guided meditation, in the picture frame, draw or write the promise you are making to your ancestors. What kind of ancestor do you promise to be to future generations? What legacy will you try your best to leave behind? How would you like them to support you in fulfilling that legacy?

Enjoy!

If you end up completing this moon page, I’d love to see what you created. You can even post the finished piece on Instagram or Facebook with the hashtag #danasartrituals or email me at support@danadaponte.com and share with me how it went for you. It’s fun for me to know there are others out there enjoying the moon with me.

with love,

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