Moon of Territoriality Review

OK so this is a few days late....  This has not been an easy Moon for me at all.  Emotions have not been the issue but the misunderstood territory of my own body.  I have been so very tired with it all but despite being able to do very little apart from go to work, I have not generally been down.  Illness has previously taught me when to hunker down and not push forward so hard.  Acceptance comes much more easily now.

But although I am acceptant of how I feel in the Now, I am not complacent about the future.  I have been going to the Doctors, bringing up symptoms, having tests.  Sometimes in the past, I have allowed myself to be swept away by the Doctors and have not gotten very far.  No saying how far I shall get this time but I am trying to push.

I think because I am overweight it is easy for my issues to be blamed on that rather than for them to see that my weight is just a symptom of some deeper issue that no one has been able to resolve.  The lady who I go to for Massages agrees wholeheartedly that some thing is fundamentally wrong with my body.

When I found out I had a virus lurking I immediately booked a massage so she could pummel my lymph and help clear it out of my body and today I feel fragile.  I am glad I booked a day off because it meant she was able to go really hard at it.

This Moon has fundamentally been about the only thing any one of us ever really own - our bodies.  It has not been about emotions or thinking or even really moving forward in many, many ways.  It has just been about being in my own skin.



This beautiful picture here is the one I have choosen for this Moon.  I think I look a bit like this in my own head maybe *laugh* but mainly it is about how the woman in the photo is just so very much in their own body.  Their territory is their Body.

I don't know if I said about the totem for this Moon....  Having wondered whether or not it was Grasshopper, I waited for some synchronicity.  The following day we were at our drumming circle, which was a lovely occasion.  The birds were behaving unusually though.  It was full daylight and we could hear an Owl calling and I have never heard an Owl call in the day before.  And then at the end I could hear a bird that sounded exactly like a Grasshopper!  It was a completely new one on me and on the people I was with, including the land owner who used to work in nature conservation.  One person told me there was a bird called a Grasshopper Warbler and said it could be one of those.  I listened to one online and yes...  I think hearing this bird counts as confirmation of my totem for this Moon but it amuses me that it was a bird that confirmed it for me.  Birds feature really strongly in my Wheel which surprises me.

The young Warrior picked up the pot and smeared the salve on to his bare skin.  With every stroke of his fingers he vanished, every little thing that built over the years, emotion, experience, thought.  Until there was nothing left but him, in the moment, stripped bare and coloured blue, with feathers bound in his hair, their inky depths just adding shadows within shadows.


The blue marked the boundary of everything that he was, his animal shell but he was at one with all around him.  Then he and his brethren were walking forward through the gloom to wait the men that would come.  And whether or not he died here did not matter.  He was himself, at one, in the moment and living his fate, with no fear or excitement, just his skill, practiced until it became instinct and his spear and his blue, blue skin.


The Crows gathered in the trees beyond and waited for their time to come.  Part of him stayed behind with the Crows and watched.  Watched as blue ran red.  And black beaks and legs turned red with the magic of blood.  In two places at once and then there was only pain as skin left and only feathers remained.

Not what I expected to write...  Writing it made me want to cry.  Living in this land in ancient times and in some nameless life being a warrior and fighting does not seem unlikely.  There is a legend that King Arthur's soul was carried away by a Crow who was transformed in to a Chough, which have red legs and beaks.  If King Arthur, why not other commoner fighting men?  Given my kinship to the Crows and their Cousins in this life, why not in previous lives too?  I am surprised by how much this hurts...