mysterium lunae

First quarter moon. A piece of magic in electric blue, I glimpse it before Night draws her heavy cape across the sky. I think of it now, strung amongst stars. Mysterium lunae, the symbolism of the moon. The first quarter moon emerges out of the crescent moon, in its turn appearing from darkness, the new moon phase, positioned between the Earth and the Sun. First quarter moon, decision making. I see it through latticed glass windows, an angle of glass cut into my room as if for that very purpose. What direction is that? South I think. I live in an old artists’ haven, the huge studio rooms facing north. ‘Northern light is effectively reflected light and doesn’t come directly from the sun, but is in fact light bounced off everything else…’. A softer, constant light. A light for painters. Sometimes I wake and the moon is there, blazing through my angle of glass. Liquid light, its silver soothes me. In my green witch book, it mentions that ‘sowing and harvesting were once done according to the phases of the moon’. The moon’s influence on water is perhaps suggestive of why plants, themselves made up of water, would be affected within their life cycle by the moon. Often I feel more alive at night than day. Or early morning, when the ground is still sleeping, a stolen moment to explore what isn’t mine. A jasmine flower, placed in my window, has blossomed from my little Sicilian shoot, I noticed this second! A charming nod to life’s strange cycle.