A homily for the New Moon on November 30, 2024.
Dearly Beloved,
Blessed New Moon in Sagittarius, dear siblings.
Mercury recently entered retrograde and, as always, the occult community has collectively battened down the hatches, preparing for the difficulties that are to be with us for the next few weeks (helpful tip: a daily invocation of elemental Air can offset the usual problems caused by a retrograde Mercury by balancing out the adverse intellectual and communicative aspects of macrocosmic Mercury with a dose of good old microcosmic Air). During these times, even those of us like myself who were born with Mercury in an extremely favorable sign (like Virgo, which Mercury both rules and in which it is exalted) must be concerned. As such, I am moved this month to speak of that act which allows us to come together and be of one mind, that act which allows us to debate and make clear our differences, that act to which I have devoted so much of my life.
I am moved to speak upon communication.
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the dark time has gotten well and truly dark. The days are short and getting shorter, while the nights are long, cold, and often filled with winter storms. We have gotten into the part of the year where it is hard to remember that special quality of the light on a clear Summer day, the buzz of the insects in a warm Summer night, and the sweetness of the Summer fruit. The shadow has fallen over the northern part of the Earth and we shiver in that shadow. Sweet maiden Kore has once again gone below and become dread Queen Persephone and we all wait with bated breath for the warmth to return. So what shall we do while we wait?
Let’s talk.
There is an old story that is related by Aleister Crowley in one of his letters that ended up collected as the book “Magick Without Tears”. I won’t put anyone through a quote because it is written in Crowley’s particular style that can be a bit annoying for some readers, but essentially the story is this:
Two initiates of a certain order were experimenting with a certain drug (those naughty folks!) as a way of inducing a trance state where new insights could be reached. The method was such that person A would take the drug, induce trance, and then person B would ask questions. All well and good. They proceeded. A short time after person A had taken the drug, person B asked “Is communication possible?” Now, person B was merely trying to find out whether the drugs had kicked in so they could start asking the list of questions, but person A thought that “is communication possible?” was the first question. For a long time person A sat there silently, considering, until finally they burst into long and resounding laughter.
So much for communication.
Is communication possible? Do I have any real hope of expressing myself to you, my dear siblings? Can we, as St. Paul puts it, see and be seen, know and be known, through the signs and signals we send each other? I believe we can. I believe the gifts of Hermes are true gifts, but like most divine gifts, there is a certain complexity to the issue. A fly in the ointment. A catch, if you will.
In Egyptian lore, the god Djehuty, called Thoth by the Greeks and a star in the same constellation of deities as Hermes, is often accompanied by Aani, an ape. In some traditions of magick, this is interpreted as meaning that all communication, all writing in the “book of Thoth”, is always altered, always distorted in some way. The “curse of the magus” is to be misunderstood. Similarly, in science and engineering, there is always some amount of background “noise” that the “signal” has to overcome in order for that signal to be understood, no matter how good the medium of communication.
Thus, at least on our level of existence, I can only come so close to truly saying what I really want to say to all of you. I can try again and again, every week (published on Wednesday, the day of Mercury, so I have all the help I can get), every Full and New Moon, and every sabbat, and I can keep this schedule for the rest of my life, and even then I will only be able to truly communicate some fraction of what I wish to tell you. The rest will be lost, like a whisper in an earthquake, forever.
Sad, isn’t it?
There is, however, a certain poignant beauty to this limitation, this boundary on the possibility of communication. It means that all of us are necessarily unique and inviolate, that no two of us can truly share the same thoughts, no matter how hard we try. We can do our absolute best, and through that we can grow closer, but we can never share so much that we are lost to ourselves completely. We are always safe within our own secrets.
But secrets can be a burden, and sometimes being left alone with them is no blessing. Sometimes I get sick to death of myself, and in those moments I want nothing more than to be unburdened. I want to burst out of the private sphere of my mind and into the public sphere of my community. And so I read and I write, I listen and I speak. I reach out in the ways that I can, and I try desperately to understand and to be understood.
I have said before that I wish to always lead with my vulnerability with you, dear siblings. I wish to love the world with my whole heart, even—no, especially—when that heart is breaking. So let me tell you that I want nothing more than to hear you, to see you, to understand you. I want to see your beauty and your pain, your struggles and your triumphs. Sometimes I can only bear a bit at a time, and I beg your forgiveness for that weakness, but I want it. I want it all. And I want to be heard, to be seen, and to be understood. No matter how terrifying it can be, no matter how revealing.
So let us listen and let us speak. Let us read and let us write. Let us raise our voices to the heavens and open our hearts to each other in understanding.
Let us communicate.
Blessed New Moon.
In love,
Soror Alice
Art: Paul Cézanne, “The Conversation”, (1870-71)