Well, here we are, almost at the full moon – 94% of full, as my moon phase calendar tells it. As a pagan I follow the moon’s cycle in the same way as I notice the season’s coming round – it’s a part of life, and it affects the way I live.
And if you follow the moon regularly enough, you eventually notice yourself getting caught up in her cycle. I don’t mean you go checking the moon phase slavishly every day but you find yourself, from time to time, greeting her as an old friend. And in time you come to realise that we all are – whether we realise it or not – also caught up in a cycle unique to each of us – our Life Cycle, which begins the day we’re born.
When I look back to myself in childhood, I realise I’m still basically the same person. I see the world through the same eyes; hear the same sounds. I still love to see the moon through the trees and the sun on the water. I still get pleasure from snow and frost, the sweet taste of wild strawberries, hearing the waves crashing on a beach.
All that’s really changed is how much – or how little – I’ve integrated into the society around me. We all move through the different stages in life, beginning as small helpless babies, growing through childhood, adolescence, maturity and maybe parenthood and then what? It’s a bit like the moon, growing from the thinnest sliver into the glorious orb that lights up our darkness. But whereas the moon then gracefully wanes and recedes, human beings seem to struggle to remain young forever.
Why should this be? Well, I can only offer my own point of view here. What holds true from my observation may be quite different from yours. I suspect that so much of our lives is spent looking ahead that when we actually arrive at our destination it’s something of an anticlimax. We’re never shown how to grow old, only given endless, unrealistic expectations of prolonged youth.
But while face lifts and botox may iron out a few wrinkles, they don’t address the real problem within, which is how our essential self reacts to this latest change in our cycle of life. And rather than celebrate what we are, and what we have yet to be, we fight against it.
‘Nobody wants to listen to us,’ we tell ourselves (and maybe others tell us the same thing, too.) But maybe that’s our fault. If all we’ve done over the past few years is plonk ourselves in front of the TV and watch soaps, what exactly do we have to say anyway? No amount of plastic surgery is going to make us interesting people. The saddest thing of all, I feel, is that many people – young and old - are quite literally boring themselves to death.
Some people will tell you there is no respect for the elderly in our society. And they’re quite right. Nor is there much respect for the young, who need discipline and guidance yet often receive neither, nor is there much respect for the middle aged who have much to offer the workplace but all too often face redundancy instead. Nothing is respected. Nothing is loved. Everything is an easy target for the vicious, the snide, the sarcastic and the downright malevolent.
Well, I’m not playing this game. Like the moon, I have grown to maturity, and like her I will wane towards whatever end lies in store. I will pass on the knowledge of my years, which is why I write books on paganism. And most of all I will pass on something I have held dear for most of this life:
Nothing's ever really lost, and love goes on forever.
Seeking the Green by Tylluan Penry, published soon by Capall Bann. For more info please watch this space!
