A homily for the New Moon on September 21, 2025. Written, as always, without authority.
Dearly Beloved,
Blessed New Moon, dear ones. I greet you in the name of Aphrodite and the name of the Divine on this, the New Moon in Virgo.
I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. Oh, I know what you’re thinking: “Bitch, that is literally your job”. And you’re right. As a priestess of Aphrodite, love is my business. But in case you haven’t been paying attention to the news (and you probably shouldn’t…I certainly have not benefited from it), things are pretty bad out there. Love is my business, but business is bad and it’s getting worse. People are embracing the anger and hatred more and more, and even the people who aren’t going over to the dark side are so scared and sad that they are falling into despair. Folks are freaked out and acting out all over and all of the plates set spinning for the last two centuries are about to come crashing down all at once.
But at the same time, everything is breathtakingly boring. Bafflingly banal. Bits and bytes fly through the air, money exchanges hands, and a tiny minority of people live lives of unimaginable privilege while the vast majority of us struggle, suffer, and die. People are going to work and buying groceries as the world burns. The actors of tragedy and comedy have exchanged masks so many times no one can tell the difference anymore and we are becoming numb to the screaming shriek of all of it, all of the time, everywhere.
We are dozing in the clockwork dreams of Empire, and whether they are sweet dreams or nightmares, they are invariably gray.
In this time of gray dreams, pain, and the continuous siren song of despair, it’s easy to put up walls. That’s no weakness. Having firm boundaries is healthy and none of us can live with all of that (waves hands vaguely at the world) all of the time. We all have the right to take space and recover from the way this aching world can just break your heart over and over. Magickal circles aren’t just for having rituals. Your circle is your whole life, and you shouldn’t let just anyone and everyone stomp around inside your circle whenever they want. The formula of Babalon, of universal acceptance and embrace, is valid, but is not the only formula around…those of us not specifically called to Babalon mysticism should absolutely hold our boundaries when necessary.
Love yourselves fiercely, dear ones.
But there is another way of loving ourselves. A way of surprises and aching sweetness. A way of sometimes softness and sometimes soreness and sometimes a strange mix of the sharp and the sweet. A way that I am the first to acknowledge is not for everyone. But on this New Moon, as the Wheel turns and moves into Autumn, I am called to speak of letting down our shields. I moved to write of taking off our armor. I am inspired to speak of letting down our guard and meeting the world on Her own terms.
I am called to speak of sensitivity.
You may be surprised at my choice of words for today’s topic. Being “sensitive” is often deeply criticized in my home of modern (postmodern) America, even out here in California. Every authority figure in my life since I was a child—even my deeply sensitive Dad—at some point or another told me I was being too sensitive. And I will admit, I do sometimes experience autistic meltdowns where I get upset and agitated and end up bursting into tears and either yelling or going silent (it really does seem to be random). I know that’s not any fun for anyone and I have worked hard as an adult to make sure that I take space and self-soothe before I melt down. But there was another sort of sensitivity that was being consistently criticized by those around me, a basic sensitivity to how others felt about me, a sensitivity about the things they said and did, and a willingness to empathize with others that meant that I could easily be pulled down into the dumps by hanging out with someone who was sad or moved to righteous anger by an injustice against someone else.
Sometimes this got me into trouble. I got into fights in school because I would interfere when someone else was getting bullied. I would get mad at the teachers when they disciplined other students and try to fight back, which never ended well for me. I even went toe to toe with a couple of abusive parents in my teens. As I got older, I got involved in activism and started organizing for the Wobblies, which led to me doing a lot of work supporting the labor movement. In college I studied the history of labor and unionism and, again and again, I was moved by the stories of the strikes and the marches, of Joe Hill, Emma Goldman, and so many others fighting the good fight. I devoted myself to their cause because I could think of no better way to defend and help the people around me. I was surrounded by workers who were suffering and I wanted to help, and while that might be noble, it’s also a good way to get into trouble in a capitalist society. Still…I think this is a good sort of trouble to get into, and so I think that this was an instance where my sensitivity served me well.
At other times, however, my critics were right…I was too sensitive. If someone I respected had a problem with something I did and confronted me, even gently, I would spin out and go into fits of anger and denial, or even worse, paroxysms of ethical despair, sure that I was now a horrible person. This was a deeply problematic response to confrontation for three reasons:
I experienced a lot of unnecessary anger, angst, guilt, and compunction that hurt me deeply. Feeling bad doesn’t actually help anyone, including me.
It made it really hard to confront me or talk to me about anything difficult. If I don’t make it easy to confront me, people will wait until my behavior has become truly unacceptable before saying anything, leading to more problems and harm than is necessary.
It made it all about me and my reaction, rather than the issue that I was being confronted over. Centering my own intentions or feelings over the actual harm I have caused is never okay.
So sensitivity, as a concept, is deeply fraught. It’s a complex issue that has to be navigated carefully. It is good to be sensitive when it allows us to feel the pains of the oppressed and helps motivate us towards care and justice. This sort of sensitivity opens us up to the suffering of others and responds with both the desires to protect and to care for those in need. It also fosters the desire to be open to the needs and desires of those around us. But walking around in this world like an open wound makes our whole life into a giant wince. We are constantly in a dance of extremes, either screaming in anger or weeping in pain, and that doesn’t actually help anyone. It can even make us a real burden on those around us. I can be a real pain in the ass when I am overreacting in this way, so I try hard to never get to that point. Taking time and space to recover emotional equilibrium and then returning to the situation when we are calm can go a long way towards resolving bad situations.
But at the same time, we cannot distance ourselves far enough from others that we cannot share in their joys and their pains. We should not close ourselves off from life so much that we can no longer feel our connections with others. Because it is those connections that make the world go around.
There is also another sort of sensitivity that I must speak on: the sensitivity to beauty and the sublime. In order to enjoy—and often even recognize—beauty, one has to be open to it. One has to be patient enough to stop walking along the way to do the shopping and look at the asters blooming along the way. One has to be caring enough to see the love of a mother as she watches her child play. And if one is open enough, if one allows themselves to be sensitive enough, one can even see beauty in a graveyard, the sublime in a skeleton, the face of the Divine in a wriggling maggot. But if we keep our guards up, if we are constantly worried about losing control and losing ourselves to vulnerability, we can never see these moments when the sublime breaks forth from behind the veil of the world. We can never lose ourselves to beauty.
Now, sometimes a certain amount of guardedness is a natural response to trauma and adversity. It is very hard to come in for a hug when we are scared we are going to be hit (I speak from experience). It is also very hard to take a chance on caring about something or someone when we have been hurt so many times before. I would never ask that any of you take any chances you don’t want to take. Maintain healthy boundaries. As I said earlier, I believe that we should love ourselves fiercely and make no apologies for it.
But sometimes we have a choice. A choice about whether we are going to take a chance on some new experience or new person. Sometimes we get to decide whether we are going to be cold or warm, stone-skinned or embracing. We shouldn’t always take a chance on these moments—some things and people are actually bad for us—but I do think that we should cultivate our sensitivity. We should try to empathize and embrace others. We should try to be open to beauty and embrace it, even when it is tragic or sad.
I think we will all be better for it.
So let us put down our shields and take off our armor (when safe). Let us turn to each other and look with open eyes at the truth before us. Let us open our hearts to the world, even when the world is a little scary.
Let us be sensitive.
Blessed New Moon, dear ones. May all of the blessings of the gods be with you all during these next two weeks.
In love,
Soror Alice
Art: Odilon Redon, “Cup Of Cognition (The Children’s Cup”, (1894)