New Moon in Aries

I want to take a moment and talk about beginnings. I could talk about how the new moon in Aries starts on April 5th, just a few days after my birthday. New moons are perfect for new beginnings and cleansing of spaces or ritual tools. But let's delve deeper.

The phrase "new beginning" is redundant ; as an English teacher, it makes me cringe a bit when I use it. The word origin is "beginnan" in Old English, the first Old Germanic variant specifically identified as English. This tells you that as humans, we've been discussing what it means "to begin" since before Beowulf was written down and Christanized. As creatures who generally live linear lives, why the obsession with "new" beginnings? (Insert cringe here.) It implies a cyclical life, like getting sent back to start in Candyland or hitting the "reset to factory defaults" option for electronics.
​
I could get into a long and involved discussion about reincarnation, but I think I'll leave that to a person more learned on the subject. As an writer and feminist and teacher, however, I can speak to the power of beginnings in a literary and theoretical sense.

---

The beginning of a story is very important. It's not necessarily THE most important part, but it ranks up there! Beginnings have a "hook," or the attention-grabbing line that ensures the reader is sucked in. The appeal of escaping into another world --in essence, to begin again as someone else, without the pain of change or moving house-- is irresistible. The beginning is where the story has yet to unfold; where the writing hasn't shaped a path to take through the woods, the battles to fight, nor the pain to cry. Beginnings are not necessarily all joy-- just look at the opening scenes in Hamlet-- but they usually are before the inconvenience or even trauma of change and growth sneak in to toy with characters' and readers' hearts. ​

As humans, we love that. Beginnings are scary... anything can happen next... But again, ANYTHING can happen! We like being in charge of writing our own stories. We like choosing who we join our stories to as friends, lovers, and family. We like writing new lines to say and new actions to take.  And we certainly like that, should we choose, we can hit "delete" and start again.

---

​This new moon, I am not doing new beginnings. I'm doing re-commiting. I'm re-commiting to my dreams and forming a plan to achieve them. I'm keeping to the path I've been walking lately. It's leading me in a good direction. That's not to say that I'm telling you to abandon the idea of rituals or plans to start again. But I do encourage you to include a continuation of at least one thing that you're working on. Don't start it over, however flawed it may seem. Revise it! Write it down, as a statement, and examine the phrasing you used. Is it immediate? Firm? Believable? Accessible? If not, rephrased it. "I want to manifest a new job" becomes "I manifest new career opportunities every day." Write it powerfully. Write it actively. Since we're in Aries season, consider burning it ritually.

Then... Begin. 

Blessed be. 
​​
​Author: Witchwriter of Silfren Circle

---