On The Blessedness Of Hope

A homily for the Full Moon on 8-19-24.

Dearly beloved,

Happy Full Moon in Leo! And what a big, beautiful Moon it is this month, with the Moon being within 90% of its closest approach to the Earth (generally called a “supermoon”, a term coined in 1979 by astrologer Richard Nolle). Such a Full Moon is a glorious event, and as the Moon moves closer and the light of the Moon becomes more intense, so too does the lunar energy we experience here on Earth. The magickal currents we set into motion on the New Moon have come to their heights (and hopefully their fruition) and the waning half of the lunar cycle is beginning.

This being so, I am moved to speak upon that most difficult of virtues, that virtue that lives in our best moments even as it breathes in our worst, that virtue that dreams in the building up of the waxing Moon and celebrates those dreams in the letting go of the waning Moon. I am moved to speak of hope.

Hope is scary. We live in a world where cynicism has become the very air we breathe, where to believe that something better is possible has become passé, and where our best hopes and finest dreams are often weaponized against us through the twin plagues of capitalism and authoritarianism. Our aspirations are held hostage and used against us so often that we can become numb to our own dreams. We can become scared to hope because we just can’t bear to see those hopes dashed or used to hurt us yet again.

And yet…

Every month, the cycle of our beloved Moon invites us to plant the seeds of hope. The deities associated with the Moon, however you know them, welcome us into their deep and resonant lunar currents. The dark of the New Moon, like the dark of the compost heap, is where new life is set into motion, where new warmth is generated, and where the glimmer of new hope, like a star being born, comes into being. And as the Moon waxes, that new life, that intention, that hope, grows with the Moon, and comes to its fruition in our lives when the Moon grows full.

Except sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes our hopes come to nothing. Sometimes we do magick for that new opportunity, that new relationship, or for some good old-fashioned rent money…and it fails. Sometimes we know what went wrong, more often we don’t, but the reality is that sometimes we just don’t get what we hoped for. And that hurts. Sometimes it hurts so badly that it feels like it would have been better for us to have never hoped at all. Sometimes it feels like we should just give up on hope, like hope is a game for fools, and that the beginning of true wisdom is to let go of hope, to never hope for anything ever again.

And I am here to tell you one thing: that is bullshit.

Hope is said to be a fragile thing, a weak thing, a creature of timid beginnings and early endings, easily cowed and easily beaten into submission. And sometimes that is how it seems. But time and time again, through sufferings so horrific I can’t even begin to imagine them, life has risen to the challenge of its circumstances, and it has done so through hope.

When the chick pushes out of the shell, it does so through hope. When the sprout pushes out of the soil, it does so through hope. When the butterfly pushes out of the cocoon, it does so through hope. All life and death, all meaning and resonance, all light and shadow, every single step we take forward into the uncertain future, begins with a moment of wild, dangerous, terrifying hope.

And that hope is beautiful. That hope is amazing. That hope is the little miracle that we all perform every day when we wake up and greet the Sun.

So let us embrace this most difficult of virtues. Let us remember that even on the darkest of nights, the light is still there on the other side of the world, waiting for us to come join it. Let us take the chance. Let us rise to the occasion. Let us accept the risk of disappointment, the risk of looking foolish, and do it anyway. Let us hope.

Happy Full Moon.

In love,

Soror Alice