Creating a Lunar Healing Practice That Actually Works for You
If you've found yourself here, reading these words, it is likely that you're interested in some sort of Moon-based practice. Maybe you've always wanted to hold Full Moon rituals every month or want to explore the ebb and flow of time from a more lunar perspective. Perhaps you've heard about the benefits of working with the Moon when it comes to creating healing and wellness in your life or you've tried to have a lunar practice before and got bored or overwhelmed or some other stumbling block appeared on your path. Whatever has drawn you here, I hope to spend some time with you helping you explore your unique needs for a lunar practice and ways to create one that you'll actually show up to on a regular basis (whatever "regular" means to you).
I'll start by suggesting some self-inquiry practices (i.e. asking you a question that you can write about or meditate on), help you figure out the structure that'll best support your practice, and then share some tools that I think are useful when it comes to supporting a lunar practice.
Ready? Let's start with the all important why.
The Desire for a Lunar Healing Practice
Before we're even able to start a new practice, an important first step is to know your "why" for wanting to make an effort to show up in the first place. Defining your desire for a practice helps you to recognize what needs are most present in your life as well as help you to connect with dreams and visions of your own becoming. Knowing our desire helps to motivate us to show up for our practice but it also helps us to shape what our practice might look like.
Now, some of you might be getting ready to scroll away or skip over this section because you feel like you know your why already and don't need to define it again or you want to get to the good stuff. But I'm going to encourage you to keep on reading and to spend some time answering the one question I propose about finding your why.
I'll be honest with you - when I have taken courses and come across writing prompts or questions to consider during meditation I have found myself on more than one occasion hesitating to do them. I would tell myself that I wanted to get to the easy-to-measure practical stuff or I've asked myself a question like that before so I didn't need to do it again.
However, I've never regretted actually making time to practice self-inquiry, especially through writing, and the one thing that helped me show up to the practice was making it into a special ritual. I make myself a cozy cup of tea, I grab something nourishing to eat, and light a candle. Sometimes I pull out a collection of colorful pens, but usually rely on a trusted favorite black ink pen as a favorite tool. Often I like to hold a stone in my hand for a few quiet moments, something that helps ground me and connect me to my edges, calling myself back home again to this moment and this place. Doing these things in a ritual manner starts to wake up the curious part of me that's interested in being asked questions and answering them in turn.
So I hope you'll stick with me and take time either now or later to participate in the lunar magick that is self inquiry.
Deck shown is Lilifer Tarot by Marion Constentin
Everybody's why is going to be different, though there are certainly similar needs that show up again and again when we're talking about Moon magick and healing work. I've gone ahead and listed out examples of desires underlying a need for lunar practice below to help inspire your own self inquiry.
I want to connect more deeply with lunar time as a way to break out of habits of overwork.
I want to awaken my intuitive gifts.
I hope to feel connected again to ancestral practices through connecting with the lunar calendar.
I want to dedicate time each month just for me and my spiritual practice.
I want to explore my inner world through shadow work guided by the Moon.
I feel called to develop my skills as a healer and I feel that a lunar practice would help me.
I feel called to the Moon and I want to understand why.
I want to gather together with my magickal friends for a Moon ritual each month.
I am working on creating feelings of wholeness in my life and the Moon feels like an appropriate symbol to help guide me.
Ready to explore your own why? You might have some very clear reasons or they may be more vague feelings, but wherever you're at in defining your desire, I encourage you to go ahead and answer the following question, whether spoken aloud, considered in meditation, or written down:
Why do I want a lunar healing practice?
Remember, no one is going to read or hear your answer to the above question unless you choose to share it (and you really don't need to share it unless you're called to share it with someone you love and trust). It's time to be honest with yourself and try to move out of the place, as much as you can, of comparison and performing-for-others-first space that has been hypercharged in our culture through social media, including amongst magickal practitioners. Get inspired by the magickal world, but don't get lost in the smoke and mirrors of the online world. In fact, being intentional and (at least initially) private about our desires around a lunar healing practice is in itself lunar healing work.
Working with the Moon is, in part, a process of understanding of our consciousness and subconscious realms beyond expectations of culture and peers, of trends and institutions in order to be able to show up to ourselves and in community as our ever-whole, ever-changing lunar self.
Once you have your why, let's talk about creating a structure that'll honor the rhythm of your needs, the ebb and flow of your magick.
Deck shown is The Morgan-Greer Tarot by Bill F. Greer
The Circle That Supports Us
Within the magickal communities that I belong to, the most often used symbol of magickal space is the circle. Never-ending and all encompassing, at the beginning of rituals and gatherings, special care and attention is placed on creating (or really, recognizing) the holiness of the time and space we're in. Sometimes these circle preparations are longer than the actual ritual itself, which is a good indication for how a successful magickal practice, including a lunar healing one, might be structured.
Being intentional and following our desires when it comes to creating a circle or structure for your practice to thrive in is important if you want to develop one that is long-term and sustainable. Below I've listed some questions to help you to define a structure for your practice that'll best support you. There are broad and general questions, but you can use many of them as starting points for deeper inquiries (i.e. you don't have a lot of time for a lunar practice as your life is right now, but you want to make big changes to your life to make more time, and want to ask yourself what sort of effort that'll take).
When you imagine a lunar healing practice, what does it look like to you? How does it make you feel?
What do you imagine achieving, realizing, releasing or other experience through a lunar healing practice?
How much time can you, reasonably and without hardship, make for your practice right now?
Where do you want to practice and what sort of physical space do you have for your practice?
What lunar phase do you feel called to work with? Learn more about the healing energies of the Dark Moon, New Moon, Waxing Quarter Moon, Full Moon, and Waning Quarter Moon phases.
What tools do you feel called to incorporate into your lunar healing practice, such as plant allies, a divination practice or devotional work with deity?
Let's start to put this all together by imagining that our friend, Magnolia, is excited about starting their own lunar healing practice. They are feeling called to this practice because they really want to develop their intuition after years of feeling like they kinda understand it, but are now interested in being intentional in their explorations. They feel like their intuition was dismissed a lot as a child and young adult which has led them to not listen to their intuition as much as they would like to. Magnolia wants to incorporate tarot into their lunar healing practice because they've been reading the cards for about a year and want to be able to rely less on their tarot books and more on their intuition when it comes to interpretations.
Magnolia is called to work with the Full Moon during a monthly ritual. They made space in their bedroom for a little altar that they have already started meditating at in the mornings. When they were doing research on Moon rituals, they came across an old book by Margot Adler called Drawing Down the Moon and the cover inspired them so they've added a picture of it to their altar. (1) Magnolia decides to start with a simple structure for their monthly Full Moon ritual:
A simple ritual to create sacred space based traditions from their African and Irish heritage.
A short meditation to awaken their intuition.
A simple tarot spread where they won't read from their tarot book at all, but only interpret the cards intuitively. They are thinking of doing a tarot spread based on the sign the Moon is in (i.e. a Aries spread for an Aries Full Moon and so on), but they're going to be flexible about it and not stress too much over finding the "right" spread.
Practice one psychic development game with the tarot.
A few minutes to journal about their experiences.
Closing up the space.
Through stating their desire and considering what it is that they hope to experience (re-awakening their intuition), Magnolia has created a very sweet and simple lunar practice. There are no fancy tools, just the items that they already have. They dream of being able to perform their Full Moon ritual on a beach like the image from Drawing Down the Moon, but that is something that they hope to draw towards them as they work with the Moon each month. There is plenty of space for them to innovate, add to or subtract from their practice as time and energy allows and mostly they feel inspired. Having a Moon altar in their room means that they get to see and be reminded of their intention every day, creating a path of connection between one Full Moon to the next.
Magnolia is not trying to observe all the Moon phases every month (which would be every night because the Moon is always changing into a new phase) or trying to practice a multi-hour long ritual every New and Full Moon complete with an herbal bath consisting of dozens of herbs, three tarot spreads, thirteen candles that they hand-dip themselves each fortnight, and an elaborate ritual that includes a interpretative dance and costume change halfway through. Now, I'm not saying that this is not going to be the way that some of you want to practice, but for most of us this sort of effort is not sustainable for the long run and part of being in practice is being able to maintain a practice. Remember, a personal lunar practice is about being able to show up, not show off or be beholden to the expectations of others. (2) Good questions to ask yourself when you're developing your outline are:
Is this useful?
Will I be able to show up for this practice with as little hindrance as possible?
Do I actually want to do what I'm proposing?
What would the outline of your lunar healing practice look like? Go ahead and take some time to write it down now. If you like you can start with your most elaborate dreams of a lunar practice and then distill that into something that is much more achievable for you in this time and space. But like Magnolia, with their picture of Drawing Down the Moon on the altar, you can incorporate affirming and aspirational images to your practice space to help you feel inspired.
To help spark your inspiration and imagination, I've listed types of lunar healing practices that you might want to try or make your own below:
Cast a tarot spread each month during the Moon phase of your choice. I've created tarot spreads for the Dark, New, Waxing Quarter, Full, and Waning Quarter Moon phases.
Take a monthly bath during the Moon phase of your choice each month, perhaps incorporating sea salt and/or lunar herbs into the water.
Perform simple rituals of healing.
Observe your monthly lunar return in a special way.
Commit to learning a particular magickal skill at a certain lunar phase each month (i.e. crystal divination, trancework, charm making, psychic development and so on).
Dance, howl, and sing under the Moonlight.
Learn about and engage with lunar deities.
Moon bathe (i.e. get outside under the light of the Moon, preferably with some bare skin exposed) as often as you can and are called to do.
Hopefully at this point you're starting to form a clearer idea of what it is your lunar practice might look like and feel like. Next, I want to introduce you to a few useful tools to support your practice.
Deck shown is The Natural Ink Tarot by Martha Miller
Useful Tools for Your Lunar Practice
Writing down your lunar practice plans - whether in a planner, on a calendar, in your journal or book of shadows, or on a note stuck somewhere you'll see it all the time - is one obvious, simple, and useful way to show up for your practice. You can even choose to have a special notebook reserved for writing down reflections, tarot spreads, dreams, and rituals all relating to your lunar healing practice, but you can also just use what you have available (like a current journal - use a different color ink to help you easily find entries about your lunar healing practice - or a notes app on your phone).
Find a way to keep track of the phases of the Moon. The cheapest, (often) easiest, and most ancient way is to look outside up at the sky to see what phase the Moon is in. Now, light pollution and limited access to safe spaces to Moongaze might restrict your ability to do this, but actually being able to observe the Moon in the sky whenever you can (or being under Moon light and dark whether or not you're able to physically see the Moon), helps us to connect with the very old parts of ourselves and our species that have been watching the Moon for millenia. Of course, there are apps and websites that help us learn even more about the lunar phases, signs, and mansions that the Moon is in and these are a useful addition to physical observation. Astroseek provides a free and comprehensive Moon calendar and there are plenty of other apps that you can find for your devices. For my own practice, I like to use the We'Moon planner for helping me track lunar and celestial rhythms.
For those of you trying to find your way back into practice after a fallow period or who are struggling to reconnect with your magick, might I suggest some pageantry? I know I warned against performing-for-the-other, but we can still perform for ourselves. Sometimes we don't feel able to show up to a practice because we're struggling to connect with someone we were before or we can't yet imagine what we're becoming. Perhaps we're struggling with feeling worthy of our magick or what the meaning of having a lunar or any sort of practice is. I feel you. Here is where we can practice a bit of ancient and effective magick: faking it til you make it. Get dressed up, create a soundtrack for your ritual, step into the role of a confident healer / witch / priest/ess, and perform. Stir your tea mug as if you're the Great Goddess Herself stirring the cauldron of life and death and rebirth. Swirl your skirt, draw sigils on your jeans, pretend to be an old hag of the wood who is deeply enamored with their own sense of curmudgeonly self. Speak your whole ritual in "ye olden english" and let a character of your own creation show up to the ritual first. It can be silly, but all ritual is silly and strange to some degree, and if it helps you to show up to a practice that you really want to show up to, it's not just silly but a very effective form of magick.
Here are a final few questions to help you discover the desire of your practice:
Who do I hope to become and/or feel through my lunar practice?
What do I hope to call home to myself through my lunar practice?
Where do I want to go with my lunar practice?
I hope you're feeling inspired and like you have some tools and ways of thinking about your lunar healing practice that'll help you show up to your practice. Through working with the Moon I hope you are able to know yourself as always whole and always changing and that you're able to set up practices in your life that make space for all of you to show up however you want and need to.
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Discovering your monthly lunar return can be a very sweet way of starting a lunar healing practice. Or you might spend a year observing the lunar sabbats. If you're interested in learning more ways of including tarot in your healing practice, come this way.
There are so many ways to create a lunar healing practice that is all your own. For those of you called to learn more about your unique gifts as a healer through lunar-based rhythms and rituals, you're invited to join me in The Lunar Apothecary.
Wherever your journey with the Moon takes you I hope that helps you spiral home again and again to your own wild wisdom and the ways you are deeply interconnected with your community.
This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎
Footnotes
(1) For my beloved readers who have balked at the thought of Drawing Down the Moon considered an "old" book by the current generation of young magickal folk, it was first published in 1979 which is 43 years ago and is sort of the equivalent of reading Dion Fortune's books in the 1990s (which were considered "old" books at the time by school age witches like myself). Seeing the new books I read as a young witch being touted as "vintage" by the younger generation is the main way that I recognize that I am becoming increasingly (thankfully) old.
(2) Public ritual performances, on the other hand, can be a great time to show off!