dark moon rituals newsletter

April 2024

Welcome to the Dark Moon Rituals Newsletter. 

For a few days every month, at the end of the lunar cycle, the moon disappears from our sight. A hush descends over us during these days. We feel it in our bones, as our ancestors did, that this is a time consecrated for the paradox of transformation: simultaneous letting go & birthing, shedding & glimmering with possibility. 

While many of us are familiar with the New Moon and the Full Moon, and their associated ancestral and modern lore, the Dark Moon is less well-known. Some witches and spiritual practitioners do not even recognize the Dark Moon as a phase, moving from waning into New Moon without demarcating these days. I think it is telling that this phase is sometimes left out of popular practice, shrouded in darkness. This phase is inherently mysterious, unknown, a portal to the Underworld. The Dark Moon deals with endings and death, dreams and intuition, the ancestors and the Sacred Pause. 

It is these very same energies that the dominant culture of our world today has spent centuries trying to systematically eradicate, through means ranging from covert repression to genocidal violence. We live in a colonized culture that is driven by unending economic growth and extraction, building its industrial concrete menageries on a heap of denial: denial of death, denial of intuitive ways of knowing, and denial of living relationship to the earth’s ecology. 

But try as they might, they couldn’t wipe out the children of the Dark Moon. 

I was born under a Dark Moon. I hear their whispers in my dreams, and their underground resistance echoes in my soul. I am a Devotee of Dark Moon medicine, and for years my practice has centered around the energy of the Fertile Dark. The affinities of the Dark Moon are vast and fluid, including such themes as ritual, grief, wild primal embodiment, queerness, gender nonconformity, femininity, death & decay, stillness, dreamtime, roots & soil, sensuality & sexuality, ancestral veneration, and a bubbling cauldron of other rooted rebellions. The forces of oppression that suppress this power do so because they know just how threatening it is to their systems of control. The embodied communal power of the Dark Moon has the potential to topple systems of injustice and send seismic ripples of healing throughout the ecosystem - and therefore it has been violently suppressed. 

This suppression has made the Dark Moon, and its associated themes, a place of intergenerational, collective, and personal wounding for us. Our deep medicine has been distorted and warped into poison. We are full of shame and fear around many of these topics, and as such we do our damnedest to avoid them.

When I have followed the call to become intimate with the places of my deepest wounding - my queer identity, sexual & religious trauma, mental health, and experiences of devastating death & grief - I have been humbled to find that these places also hold my deepest power. Like so many of us in our world, much of the pain I have experienced can be traced back to the way that systems of oppression target, shame, and harm those who do not fit into the proscribed box. But that is not because these shamed parts of us are weak. No, in fact it is the opposite - we who are on the margins are powerful beyond measure. The primal, subversive medicine of the Dark Moon is a wellspring of ancient power, and that is exactly why it has been suppressed for so long. 

And that is why I believe it is time to come home to the Dark Moon. At a time of so much collective grief & sorrow, we are being invited to stop and sit in the silence of the dark night sky. Listen for the whispers of the shrouded moon. Share a cup of tea with her. Allow her to change us. And in the process, to transform these places of our deepest wounding into our deepest power. 

These monthly Dark Moon Ritual newsletters are my way of inviting us in to sit with the Dark Moon. Each month, I will share my attuned reflections of the medicine of that month’s Dark Moon, as well as offer rituals to deepen into relationship with the Dark Moon. The exact timing of the Dark Moon varies from practitioner to practitioner, and you can experiment to see when you feel these energies most strongly. In my practice, guided by the eyes of my ancestors, I consider the Dark Moon to encompass the span of days when the moon is not visible to the naked eye, which is usually a day prior and including the New Moon. 

For me, this practice of relating to the Dark Moon is an intentional practice of re-weaving kinship with the Ones I call our forgotten kin. The forgotten kin are those beloved beings with whom relationships have been intentionally and often violently severed: the land & its ecosystems (including the elements, plant allies, animal kin, and all other wild ones), our Beloved Dead, our lineage of ancestors & elders, our villages/communities, our ancient sacred lifeways, and our selves (especially our bodies & our intuitive connection to unseen beings). 

It is our birthright to come home to belonging. It is well within our capacity to remember these ritual skills we have forgotten, to rebuild relationships with these ones who are yearning for us to reconnect. The Dark Moon can be a time we set aside as sacred, to engage in practices of devotion to these forgotten kin, to slowly and intentionally rebuild nourishing relationships with them. And in the process, to reclaim our rooted power, personally and collectively. 

The OG Ritual - Dark Moon Bath

The Dark Moon Bath is the foundational ritual that I began my Dark Moon practice with, and it is both simple and powerful. 

Purpose: To introduce yourself to the Dark Moon and her energies, and to begin creating a vessel for your grief. 

1. Select your water source and prepare your materials. This ritual is designed to be performed in a bathtub of course, but the water source can vary according to what you have access to and what you desire. You can also use your shower, a hot tub, hot springs, a river or lake, or even simply a bowl of water that you can submerge your hands or feet in.

2. While drawing your bath or filling your bowl of warm water, gather any other materials you would like, such as candles (black, red, or white), any magickal oils that resonate with your intention, epsom salts, and herbs for your bathwater (rosemary, marigold, & rose are friends of the Dark Moon, along with a whole host of others). You may also want to dedicate a specific bar of soap for your Dark Moon baths (I have a black salt soap bar for this purpose). This step can be as elaborate or as simple as you like - it’s your practice, after all. 

3. If possible, perform this ritual in the dark, with only candlelight. Allow your bathroom to fill up with steam, extinguish the lights, and light your candles. 

4. Play instrumental music that helps you get into a ritual state, or bask in the Dark Moon silence. 

5. Once you have prepared your bath and added any herbs, oils, or salts you would like, get in. Let yourself be immersed in the water, and begin to feel it heating and softening your skin. Take slow, deep breaths as you deliberately feel into every part of your body, starting with the crown of your head and moving to your toes. Allow the warm water to embrace you with its ancient wisdom & care, and feel how the water and the earth holds the heaviness of your body. Allow yourself to be held. 

6. We are entering the Underworld now. Attune your awareness to the Dark Moon, and introduce yourself and your intention to build relationship with them. Listen for any responses, and steep yourself in the energy of the Dark Moon. Do they feel distant or close? Heavy or light? Mysterious or direct? At this point, you may also greet any Underworld beings (deities, ancestors, Sacred Death, etc.) with whom you have relationship in your practice. Spend some time here steeping in their presence, listening and engaging in conversation if it feels good and right. 

7. Now that you are held in the embrace of the water, the earth, the Underworld, the Dark Moon, you have created a safe container for your grief. If you so desire, this is the moment to feel any grief you’ve been storing up in your body. Allow the ancient wise element of water to hold your grief, letting it flow out of you in whatever way occurs - tears, sobs, deep heavy breaths, even silence. This is a sacred container for your grief and loss, for the sorrow that we must often hide in order to survive in this numbed-out world. It’s okay to let it out here. Whisper your sorrows, scream your prayers, sing of your losses and frustrated desires and estrangement. Take as long as you need here. 

8. As you pour out your grief, begin to use your ritual soap to gently scrub your skin. Hold the intention in your heart and mind that you are cleansing any layers of defensiveness and sorrow from you that need to be released now. This is a cleansing, allowing yourself to let your guard down and release the pain, giving it as a gift to the Underworld and the Dark Moon. We feed the Underworld with our sorrows, and our expression of our ache becomes the compost that nurtures the soil of our lives. The Great Guardian of the Waters, The Dark Goddexx, the Dark Moon eats the sorrow and in her body, the seeds of new life are born. Trust in the wisdom here, that you are held in your sorrow, and that you are being birthed into something new. Feel the sorrow and grief flow from your body into the body of the water, and breathe your gratitude for its holding. 

9. When you feel complete, say your thank you’s and goodbye’s to any beloved kin who joined you and held you. Express gratitude to your grief, and to your body.

10. Open your eyes slowly, empty your tub slowly, and clean up your ritual slowly. As much as possible, let yourself move softly and quietly the rest of your night. Write down any messages you received in your journal.