Full Moon Ritual August 1, 2023
Full Moon Ritual August 1, 2023
August 1, 2023 is an auspicious day as we have a supermoon, and we are celebrating the Sturgeon Full Moon. Lughnasadh - a Celtic festival - is also being celebrated today, honoring the first fruits of the harvest. The energy of full moons are potent, allowing for big energy shifts to occur. This full moon I want to pause, reflect, and honor the loss of a dear friendship. With this full moon, I fully release this friendship and the ties that connected it.
Below I provide a full moon ritual geared toward honoring and releasing friendships that no longer serve our souls.
Loss of Friendship Ritual: Grief, Gratitude and Grace
Earlier this year I lost a longtime friendship. We had a friendship that despite the length of time between visits we could still connect, share, and have a good time together. We didn't see eye to eye on everything but we could offer each other something. Then life happened. We began drifting away from each other's lives. Circumstances, events, and situations started to cause rifts in our connection. We never seemed able to (re)connect. Our friendship was like an electrical outlet and the plug-in cord, but the pieces no longer worked together. The prongs and the outlet never seemed to line up.
I finally decided to speak up about what I needed in the friendship to allow the outlet and the plug to align again. Instead the electrical wires shorted out. A circuit breaker got tripped and the friendship was over. I felt much grief about the loss of the friendship. I went through grief stages: denial, anger, bargaining.
After some time, I began to reflect on the good times of the relationship: lunches and brunches, long talks, endless text threads, watch parties during COVID, and yoga. I began to see through my grief: there was much gratitude for the friendship. So much to be grateful for.
Then I felt into the misalignments and realized how far out of alignment things were. As much as I did not want to lose the friendship, I realized it was time. It was a natural progression for this friendship to fall away. With divine grace I began to accept the friendship was over, and it would not be restarted.
Below I'm sharing a ritual to honor the sacredness of friendships and how to let them go as a natural maturation.
Full Moon Ritual: Honoring the end of a friendship
Items needed:
candle
yarn or string about 5" inches long
matches or lighter
water or sand to extinguish flame
it is best to be barefoot for this ceremony
Best time to complete this ritual and ceremony: Full Moon
Full Moon Ritual & Ceremony: Grief, Gratitude, and Grace
Light a candle and invoke the four directions.
Call forth any guides or deities you work with.
Take the yarn or string and make tie a knot. This yarn circle symbolizes the friendship that has ended. Take a moment to reflect on the friendship. The beauty, the challenges, all parts of the relationship. Take ownership for your involvement in the friendship.
Turn towards the North and invoke the power of the ancestors to help you release the friendship.
Allow yourself to share and speak whatever needs to be said.
When you are ready, light the string and allow the fire to burn the material. Use the water or sand as needed to extinguish the burning string.
Thank the guides, deities, and ancestors for supporting the release of the friendship.
Turn towards the East and invoke the power of the deities of the East and New Beginnings to help you call forth new friendships and allies to support you on the next phase of your journey.
Close your eyes, breath deeply into your belly for three breaths.
Feel into your feet and place your weight evenly throughout your feet. (If you do yoga, this is Tadasana, Mountain Pose). Feel yourself center and ground. As you feel the ground beneath your feet, visualize you are standing on rich, healthy soil. Imagine you are sowing the seeds for new friendships. Take a few moments to plant your seeds of new friendships and commit to tending this new garden and future friendships.
As you close your visualization, take a moment to thank the guides, deities, and ancestors for supporting the conception of your new friendships.
Slowly call yourself back into the physical space. Begin to feel your feet on the ground, gently move your fingertips and hands. Slowly open your eyes.
Close the ceremony by thanking all of the guides, deities, ancestors, and allies who supported you.
Personal Reflection and Further Inquiry
Take some time to write down and reflect upon your experience.
How do you feel in this moment? What sensations are arising? How does it feel to have said good-bye to this friendship? What value did this ritual provide for you in honoring the end of your friendship?
As always, I’d love to hear how this ritual worked for you. Please reach out and share your experience.
Visualization
Another way to release a friendship is through a deep visualization. This visualization has its roots in an Oral Interpretation piece I did in 1995 in junior high school. It was based on a piece called "Watermelon Boats." It is also influenced by the Viking and Indian death rituals of placing a body in a boat or flowers and allowing them to float down the river.
Settle yourself in a comfortable position, seated or lying down. Begin to breath into your belly. Allow your belly to rise and expand on the inhale, then becoming smaller on the inhale.
Take your time to find the center of your belly, feel into the grounding energy of belly breathing. In Daoist studies this is called the Lower Dan Tian. In Japanese it is called the Hara. See if you can focus on this inner belly center and breath.
In your own time, on your next exhale, imagine you are standing near the water's edge. Call to mind a body of water that is most significant for you. Imagine that you have half of a watermelon that has been carved into a floating boat. Notice that you also have a wide array of objects and symbols that represent your friendship.
Take your time to pick up each object, remind yourself of what it brought to your relationship, and then place it in the boat.
Do this with each object. Again, honor all that your friendship has brought you. Allow your self to remember, to feel, and allow each object to be placed in the boat.
Once you have completed with all of the objects and symbols, take a moment for gratitude for all the love, support, and learnings this friendship has provided. When you are ready to let go and release the boat and release the friendship, allow your next exhale breath to guide your action of letting the boat go. You can simply push the boat through the water or blow on the boat.
Take a few minutes to watch the boat, see how the water carries the boat away. When the boat is no longer visible, take a moment to check in with yourself. See what has arisen with releasing the boat.
When you are ready, begin to sense into the physical space around you. Start to gently move your fingers and toes. Welcome your senses back to the physical and material world.
Personal Reflection and Further Inquiry
Take some time to write down and reflect upon your experience.
How do you feel in this moment? What sensations are arising? How does it feel to have said good-bye to this friendship? What value did this ritual provide for you in honoring the end of your friendship?
As always, I’d love to hear how this ritual worked for you. Please reach out and share your experience.