new world library

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Book Review: Your Moontime Magic

It may seem strange, after just having a hysterectomy to be writing a review for a book about menstruation, but I had wanted to review this book before I knew I was to have this surgery. Maureen Theresa Smith’s Your Moontime Magic: A Girl’s Guide to Getting Your Period and Loving Your Body is a great little book that I wish I had in my hands when I first began menstruating. Though I’d had all the facts, and had support from my family and doctor, still my periods were a difficult and painful time, every month, since the age of eleven (I’m now 45, going on 46). Perhaps this book could have helped me, at least in a spiritual sense, to come to terms with my monthly periods when I was younger, the pain and the release, the cycles within cycles.

Published by New World Library, this book was previously released as First Moon in 2005. However, the information and advice go far beyond the first moon, and can help you throughout your life in working with your cycle, or helping someone else understand and see the spiritual nature of this women’s journey.

My own journey began early, a couple of months before my twelfth birthday (I had not yet started high school). Very painful, each month they would put me out of commission for a few days until I got some high dosage painkillers from my doctor when I was fourteen, and then later put on the pill when I was fifteen (for medical reasons). But when I went off the pill when I was 21, everything came back just as before. Little did I know that I suffered from endometriosis, as well as fibroids and ovarian cysts later in life (which is why I had to have a hysterectomy this year). Getting my period each month was a lot of work, both mentally and physically, as I prepared myself for the pain and the hassle of trying to deal with this and also with life in general.

Had I set up a spiritual practice around this monthly cycle, perhaps things might have been different. Your Moontime Magic definitely could help with that – it is filled not only with biological facts and information, but also rituals, crafts and imaginative ways of working with your monthly cycle. It discusses the oft taboo subjects of PMS and body changes, as well as going deeper into self-image and how that creates the world that you inhabit in this body. What I especially enjoyed was the fact that Smith included things like how your dreams change when you menstruate, how to work with that and allow them to inspire your own creativity. She also talks about how your friendships will change and grow as you develop into your own power as a woman, connecting to your power as well as connecting to nature. She uses language that is easy to understand, and it’s like having a chat with your cool aunt at the dining table about all these things.

If you have a daughter who is coming to this time in her life, or know someone who is, I highly recommend this book. It is also helpful to have others in the family read it, to understand more about women’s cycles and what they go through in their lives. It teaches us to take care of ourselves, our physical and inner selves, and to shine – “like the moon, there are times when you can be hidden from the world, and times when you can shine full and bright”.

Blessings to all women out there, wherever you are in your life’s journey.

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Book Review: Seasons of Moon and Flame

Seasons of Moon and FlameI’ve just been introduced to Danielle Dulsky’s work, and I have to say, it’s been a pure joy to read Seasons of Moon and Flame: The Wild Dreamer’s Epic Journey of Becoming. Dulsky is the author of The Holy Wild, which I shall have to put on my list as well!

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book that is so poetic. Her style of writing is just pure poetry – there is no other way to describe it. It took me a while to get into that headspace, but after the first chapter I was there, riding the currents of imagery and information, of inspiration and imagination. It’s encouraged me to be more poetic in my own work, for sure!

Seasons of Moon and Flame is a journey that takes you throughout the moons of the year, connecting with the energies of that enigmatic, wild and wisdom-filled Hag. The elder who tells us what we need to hear, but doesn’t couch her words. The one who teaches us without molly-coddling. The one whose lessons can be grasped as easily as plucking dandelion seeds floating on the breeze, or has hard won as climbing a steep and lonely mountain.

The key word is “wild”. Using the archetype of the Hag, the grandmother, the sacred Elder, this is a book for the mystic, the nature mystic whose heart beats alongside the earth’s heartbeat, whose soulsong is as enchanted and free as the hawk that soars on the thermals. Seasons of Moon and Flame teaches us to live in balance and harmony, with our selves and with the natural world around us, allowing the inspiration of nature to show us how to live our lives accordingly, in tune to the cycles of life. Our own stories are epic myths that must be lived. We hear the grandmothers calling, calling out their pain, their triumphs, and we know that we share in their stories. The Hag tells us to stop, to listen, to really be in the moment, to experience this for all it’s worth, because we are the living generation, now, today, that foretells the future of generations to come. We are Her children, and we will become Her in time, wiser and wrinkled, with a mischievous smile behind our eyes and the knowledge of the world in our bones.

This book is full of practical knowledge, rituals that you can perform, stories from our ancestral past and the poetry of today. Each moon we follow what is happening in the wild around us, exploring the nature of nature in our souls and in our environment. The final lesson of the Hag is as follows:

“Our Bones Want Belonging.

In the end, we all want to belong. We will go to all lengths to feel we belong to something, to some tradition or group. We will overidenifty with flawed organizations, let ourselves be hazed, shun the whole parts of ourselves, leaving them forgotten in shadow, while we put others in the spotlight in order to appear special or good. All the while, we do belong to great and immense collectives. We all have rich Earth-based ancestries if we go back far enough, We all have immense ancestral stores we can use to bolster our resilience and work for a broader, more just, more whole world. Our bones want belonging in a postcolonial world, and our grand story is not about questing and running, not about journeying so far from who we are or what we have become; it is a story of coming home to the house of the hag, returning to a place that part of us – the better part, maybe – never ever left.”

This book is a great guide post to walking in our own true nature. We walk with the hags of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, and they teach us to come home to ourselves. Their lessons help us to remember our selves, to remember who we are in a world that tries to tell us differently. With this book, we  definitely come home.