The Lamp in the Dark and the Water Tree
Originally part of my letter series that goes out to my email list. You can join it here. This letter was sent October 20, 2022.
Looking out over the sea, life on land can feel as thin as the ecliptic. The ocean’s depths speak to us about the Moon, the Earth’s consort. A month ago I stood in the sea in the dark and felt warm rip currents, dragging. I know better but it felt so good, the water so smooth and inviting. I lost my head a little and moved in deeper and deeper, until finally I seemed to awake and realized the danger I was in. The Moon was high in the sky. I turned away from her* and her black-purple waves.
Like the sea, the Moon should be measured in fathoms yet she is unfathomable. I try to fathom her anyway. The Moon is an embrace, a lake of threads that tug, a hand across a harp, moving us in her rhythms and tides. The Moon is a Caretaker. Sweet Luna. But she is also of the sirens, the witches, the wolves, the poison-as-medicine. A dragon around an egg. The egg itself. She is tide-pulling, weather-making, heavens-manifesting. She is the creative force. She is the chaos of a crowd. She is omen and revelation and the darkness that drags us under. She is escape. She is analgesic and numbness. She is pregnancy and possibility. She is every bitter farewell.
In the birth chart, the Moon’s placement describes your relationship with your physical-emotional body and the rhythms of your life. The Moon has something to say about what kind of nourishment we need. The Moon is about matter, the physical incarnation of a thing, and its cycles of growth and decay. This part of the chart is about care, yes, but also rip currents. The Moon walks with you through every threshold, every shedding, every fruiting — with twigs in her hair and dirt on the soles of her feet, soaked and glimmering.
The longer I practice astrology, the more mysterious the luminaries become. I find that seeking the planets here on this one, where I can relate to them in a tangible way, makes my life more wondrous and connected. So I look for them. And I find them everywhere.
Right now, I am courting the Moon even more than usual because she’s the planet who guides my year until my next birthday. I find the Moon in a cup of water. I find her in the cooling wet-crunch of lettuce and cucumber, and in the starch of potatoes. In the kindness of the linden tree. In the intoxicating scent of jasmine incense.
But it is the willow tree who has taught me the most about the Moon this year. An eerie thing, a willow tree. Forlorn and graceful. Limp. An arm hanging off the bed. The bark is soft, the branches more like hair, fallen loose, hiding a face. Yet for all the lithe swaying, the roots are large and climb down deeply. A fairy tree. A tree of Luna to me but others have said Saturn, Juno, or Demeter, and I would not uninvite them.
Willow is a tree of eternity, which makes it a tree out-of-time. Willow baskets full of food to eat. Willow coffins to carry us to the end. You can put a willow branch in wet soil and a tree will grow. It will root. Like the Moon, the willow cannot help but make. It will create a whole from a part. Wax from wane. Willow water, made from steeping willow twigs, has been used for centuries to stimulate growth on shrub and tree cuttings. The tree whispers about stretching out and dying back. Like water, it will carry things away. You can knock on its bark to ward evil. A willow may accept your secrets or your illness if you offer them properly.
Take tutelage with a tree. They are wonderful astrology teachers. Go to a willow and offer it some fresh water. Or a strand of your hair. Your rapt attention. A song. Sit with it a while. See what happens. Return and return.
Wherever the Moon is in your chart, there you can also find a willow tree. Imagine it there, growing under your Moon. Leave an offering there too. Then request entrance. Gently, gently, glide your hand across the branches and slip into the world of the lunar tree. Perhaps there is a still lake nearby or a noisy river. Perhaps there is a sacred well. It may depend on the sign the Moon was in when you were born. But let there be, in that story-place, some water for the willow who loves it so.
When I visit the willow in my birth chart, the air is indigo. Where the Moon should be there is nothing but stars. I was born under a dark Moon. Instead of in the sky, I feel the Moon in the black soil under my feet, full of worms and good grub. I know it is fecund; the Moon was in Taurus when I was born. I sit with my spine against the trunk of a large, old willow, and can feel its green blood thumping, slow and steady. The roots are bigger than my torso. As I took my first breath, the Moon was in the terms of Saturn and in Saturn's decan. This tree knows Time. I feel the way this Moon's cycle is ending as a demarcation. The way it teaches me my own limits, my need for retreat, despite the other parts of my chart clamoring for action and quick-thought. But here, near the willow tree, I find stillness. I can hear my own prayers to the Litae, the spirits of this part of Taurus, who take our petitions to the gods. I feel hidden, covered, protected in the curtain of the silver-green leaves. I can slow down enough to know how fertile my secret needs are and learn to tend them — their wild siren currents and all.
The Moon and willow — these languorous makers, crafty creatures, funerary guides, eaters and revivers — hiding, revealing us to ourselves and each other. These pain-relieving secret-keepers. The willow is a beloved abode of a butterfly called mourning cloak (Nymphalis antiopa). The mourning cloak likes willows and poplars. Odysseus went to Persephone’s garden of black poplars and willow trees in order to enter her realm. Some say Orpheus took a willow branch in hand when he went into the Underworld. This tree knows this world and others. So does the Moon.
What would your spine tell you if you leaned it against this grey one? What secrets would you say three times into the willow’s bark of your Moon? Would you become quiet enough to hear its roots drinking? What would you learn about the Moon by watching a willow respond to wind, twisting its branches, showing leaves, one side light, the other dark?
*I refer to the Moon as "she" and "her" in this letter but not because I see the Moon as some cisgendered female god-planet. Nothing of the sort. The personal relationship I’ve built with the Moon over time has led me to refer to her with those pronouns. Please use whichever pronouns the Moon tells you to use, or none at all.
