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February new moon 2020

Dana’s Moon Page for the New Moon in February 2020

This year is a leap year. I created this new moon ritual with the intention of helping us work with the energy and symbolism of this unique time.

Reflect

Before I delve into the symbolism of a leap year, let’s consider the energy that 2020 brings to our dreams and goals. In numerology, 2020 is a 4 year (because the numbers add up to four). I caught my love of numerology from my friend and gifted psychic Marlene Chapman. From conversations with her, four has come to be associated with angels and stability and building strong foundations. The sum of four for this particular year, however, is made up of 2s and 0s so I also bring in my ideas of choices, decisions and free will that the number 2 makes me think of with the infinite eternal of the number zero. So weaving all these concepts together makes me feel like the year 2020 is asking me what choices I want to make to firmly plant and express my spirit into this world. 

Personally, I believe every moment invites us to choose whether to live from our spirit or from our pain and as my journey with chronic illness and trauma has taught me, it’s impossible to set my spirit free when I carry unconscious pain begging for care and kindness.

How do you know you have unconscious pain begging for your attention? Easy! Anywhere you feel blocked or any area of your life that doesn’t feel in flow is influenced by one pain or another. It might be your pain. It might be pain from your childhood. It might be pain from another time. It might be pain connected to the environment you live in or pain your ancestors carried.

The tricky thing about unconscious pain is that you can’t see it head on. You have to look for the way it affects your body, heart, mind and relationships in order to even know it is there. Where your Spirit feels tied and bound hints at where unconscious pain is affecting you.

I believe this is true for society as a whole as well. Anywhere things aren’t flowing or there is suffering and disharmony, there is pain wanting to be tended to. It might be ancient pain. Pain doesn’t die with time. The pain of colonialism hasn’t died in my country just because 500 years have past. The pain is still alive and running through our systems and relationships and it will continue to do so until the pain of colonialism is heard and understood to the degree that this particular pain requires it to be.

That’s the other tricky thing about the pain we carry, IT is in control. Our conscious logical minds are not. We may think we should be over something  but you’re never over something until you are and you don’t have much control over when that is. The heart needs what it needs for as long as it needs it. We’ve forgotten this. We often feel impatient with this because the journey our hearts need to travel in order to heal feels confusing to us. We don’t always understand what it needs or why it needs it. But the important thing isn’t understanding. It’s listening. Can you give up control long enough to listen and surrender to its needs for as many days, months or lifetimes that it requires you to?

If that seems daunting, don’t worry. There are some unconscious pains that we carry that can easily and gracefully be tended to for us. They can be cared for by forces we can’t actually see but that nonetheless want so much to support us in freeing our wild beautiful Spirits. You are not doing the work alone, my friend.

Let’s imagine that this new moon, which shares proximity with a leap year, is a rare portal that helps us advance spiritually.  Where does your Spirit want to be free to express itself? Where do you wish to leap forward? These are the things you will consider when you follow the instructions for this month’s new moon page, which I’ve described below.

If you are not on my email list and haven’t received this month’s journal 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 February new moon journal page.

You’ll notice the page depicts hands holding a book in a forest where creatures have gathered round. This particular new moon felt significant to me. It felt like it was asking us to look deep inside ourselves while at the same time feeling supported and held by the earth. The book represents your Spirit…or in other words, the way your Spirit wants to express itself in this world with the body and personality that is YOU.

The animals and creatures represent the fact that the world is actually your friend and despite experiences that point otherwise, can be a place where your Spirit feels safe to be who it wants to be. There is the rabbit who invites you to become friends with your fear and learn to be playful with it so you can jump from experience to experience without carrying pain that no longer serves you. There is raven who reminds you to believe in magic and follow the shiny things that bring you joy. The baby dear speaks to your heart of gentleness and the need to approach your pain with understanding and compassion. The coyote encourages you to not be afraid of seeing things as they really are while the squirrel invites you to go find all the things you’ve stored in your unconscious. You stored it until a time when you were ready to deal with it. Perhaps that time is now. The mice say, “Yes. Yes. Those kind of details matter.” And finally, the butterflies sit on the pages of your book as a symbolism of your Spirit using your life and your body to transform and grow.

I suspect it can take lifetimes to unravel the pain and fear that we’ve held onto or haven’t had the opportunity to tend to and care for but the journey doesn’t start without getting curious about what exactly makes our eternal Spirits happy so what exactly makes you shine with joy? On the pages of the book, write a letter from your future self. Imagine yourself four years from now. What has changed in your life? What is different? How has your Spirit expressed itself more fully in your life? What areas of your life have been most affected by the changes? Imagine your future self is describing the changes to you. What do you imagine your future self will see?

When you are done, put the page in a journal you can look at later on or place it in an envelope that says, “To be opened on the new moon in February 2024”.

If you end up completing this spiritual art ritual, I’d love to see a part of your process. You can even take a picture of a part of your process and share it on Instagram or Facebook with the hashtag #danasartrituals or email me at [email protected] 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,

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.

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