moonwork missive: waxing crescent 🌒

idk about you, but i loveeee it when a pretty new crescent moon falls on a monday, doubling that new-new feeling, inspiring me to really practice how i want to commit for the lunar cycle

today i'm mostly recovered from my brief return to party girl life saturday night; i give gratitude for a spell at my home club with a local DJ whose dance floor i've been devoted to since old Daomé thursday nights in like 2012, at least

today i prepared my tiny travel altar since i may be crossing a border this week, put my tiny fat clay mother goddess & my amethyst obelisk & my tiny sample-size perfume jars that have become tiny shabbat candlesticks into the metal box that belonged to my ophthamologist great-grandfather in berlin before the nazis & after, that came with him when he arrived (his lineage back) in california in 1939.

i began preparing what i & my child will need for me to be away for 3 days.

i opened the bedroom window & lit the mugwort & sang my re-earthed version of morning has broken in tribute to my 1st felt ancestral goddess bríd, who is uniquely scottish & also pan-celtic & pan-british, a sun goddess, a smith a poet a healer. this hymn has always been my favourite from the christian choirbook that i ever experienced, which was mostly at my aunt's church on mother's day for the annual tartan kirking. this hymn was always on the liturgy for that sunday; episcopalians/anglicans follow a solar cycle with their holy book too, but the imperial one, not the one of the lands.

i knew before my Oma passed in january, years before, that when she crossed over, this morning hymn ritual would become her devotional, her rooting over my right shoulder on my mother's side of my Team. i don't fuck with jesus as a deity, but i fuck with those who know him as a wisdom keeper, a Holy man, who loved immigrants & wh*res. for my personal practice, i return this hymn, which goes to an old scottish tune called bunessan, back to a god of the land where this melody came from, who is part of my home & hearth. if she (bríd or oma) wants to share with jesus, that's their business not mine. i recognize also the stewardship of this song of yusuf islam, fka cat stevens, through his personal spiritual embodiment & his return to Islam he makes a bridge of connection from my parental white 70s folk lineage to those who belong now to the Holy Land where jesus was born & lived & died.

& i honour my Oma, whose memorial i missed this weekend in brief due to MAGA & its poisonous hold over the lands that raised me, both at the systemic & institutional levels & within my own family. one of my Oma's daughters, for example, one who would claim to have loved me since before my birth, said to me she did, "have you looked? his cabinet is so diverse" when i named the safety her False God's administration had stolen from my immediate queer & trans & biracial family here on the other side of the border from her, & my family on the same side of the border as her. & more, & more even more horrifying atrocities, unending atrocities, perpetrated by her False God & his puppets & props.

as a Jew it is my understanding that our priests ceded the Old Temple(s); we were exiled & persecuted many times, it's true & we also chose to transform our holiness to become a People of the Book. my lineage, i understand as an Ashkenazi, gave up the yearly sacrifices to our Kohens at The Temple for prayers led by Holy Scholars––rabbis––in minyans & neighbourhood shuls & prayers led by Mothers in our homes worldwide; these prayers, these many-times-per-day prayers, became our devotional sacrifice. these prayers portable while running, these prayers rooting us wherever we are, together as One People who were together no matter when in this life we were born or "converted"/reverted to Judaism, we were all together at mount Sinai when we received the Torah.

& thus through our trusted holy people's choices there back in that Holy Land––yes under threat yes under coercion but still choices––the Old Temple is meant to be the ruins beneath Jerusalem, that Holy City; the Old Temple is meant to be in ruins beneath Al Aqsa that Mother Mosque.
or, we could say, we accept the objective truth of our Temple, which is that it is ruins & has been for thousands & thousands of years & now a Holy Mother of Islam welcomes worshipers on that land. & of course some Jews never left that Holy Land & lived there round the feet of Al Aqsa with their neighbours of many religions, as neighbours. as a Jew, were i ever so blessed, so God-touched as to be invited to that Holy Land when she is Free, i would touch the stones at the foot of Al Aqsa & pray her perpetual safety on the shoulders of my people's Old Temple. i would pray her eternal liberation to the care & keeping of Palestine. & for this i have a portal on my right wrist, a place to gaze in my heart's commitment to doikayt, tattooed by joey nicholson-landau, one of both our first tattoos post-lockdowns in 2021 (masked, bien sûr).

& is there a moon in the sky at the top of the stairs, up the tunnel back to the surface of earth from the ruins of the Old Temple there beneath the earth, beneath the generous & steady feet of Al Aqsa? yes, Habibti, of course, yes there is

a huge full moon, the same huge full moon of all People of the Earth

& so this New Moon after Eid, after Nowruz, after Rosh Chodesh Nisan, after Navratri, after the equinox, all together, i say, next year in Al Aqsa to all who observe Eid,

& as always, i pray bríd's Cloak of protection over the People of Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, Congo, Sudan & everywhere on Earth currently under the cannibal slaughterhouse iron fist of Amerikkka with her lil cousin Kkkanada, including here at home on all these Turtle Island lands

& then i turn to my immediate kin & community right here on tiohtià:ke / mooniyang / montréal & i offer them something,
trusting natural law to move all currents & flows to their right place & time

speaking of which...

don't forget about MOON RITUALS WITH EROTIC INSURGENCY! moon molt for white people doing liberation work, moonkin for QTBIPOC 💕

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come practice live together on fridays, 12:30 pm ET for 30-45 minutes––practice loves company; practice loves repetition! video off or on as suits you, participation by silent presence or voice or chat as suits you <3