Red Plum Super Moon + Matrice Musings + High Season Ceremony
Threading the Needle of Confluence, a contextual dive into the Matrice of Relational Forces in which we Find Ourselves in Preparation for the Sturgeon Moon
“People today will mostly focus on the points of connection, the nodes of interest like stars in the sky. But the real understanding comes in the spaces in-between, in the relational forces that connect and move the points.” Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk - How Indigenous Cultures Can Save the World.
Dear Ones of the Cura Council,
Shall we have a cuppa tea in preparation for our Matrice Ceremony on the High Season between Solstice and Equinox and the Super Full Moon?
Ceremony always requires preparation, and context. There is a way that we want to be looking forward to what we are gathering in and preparing our spirits for what is to come. Our Native American Elder, Carmen Baraka would often prepare for ceremony months in advance. Being that this is our 500 year calendar, there is already a lot of preparation underway!
In this Threading the Needle Cura Council Letter I will share with you:
Creativity as a way to create context in preparation for Ceremony
(a spontaneous story)A look at the harvest at Musea (oh my! Photos from this week)
An exploration of this Super Moon and the times you can see it where you live -
it will be happening DURING our live Ceremony (but you can also watch the recording as it will be posted on the Subscriber Dashboard)The Native American names for this moon and the sorrows of the Sturgeon Moon
The old Celtic and Wiccan names for this High Season of August 1
How all of this is part of the Matrice - the fabric of creation
You can think of the different parts of this letter like an ecosystem with intersecting relational parts - all woven together within the context of the High Season of August 1.
Let’s begin with the spontaneous story - it’s less than 7 minutes.
Creating is how I weave with the fabric of creation. How I do my part through holding the threads that are mine specifically. Threading the needle with the unique qualities that are part of who I am. I create throughout the day every day. Sometimes drawing, writing, painting, meditation, spontaneous story, poetry. You name it. If I have five minutes, I am creating! Usually that creating is deeply connected with the seasons, moon phases and the mood of the Muses that live here with me. Today’s spontaneous story is no exception.
Right now I am in the big moon-mood preparing for our Ceremony so I decided to turn on the recorder and see what comes out. It’s like each word just reveals every other word. There is often a mood, but the mood is wordless at first. It is actually intuitive painting that taught me to try this in language as well as image.
Okay let’s get a look at these full moon harvest plums!!!
This is the plum harvest at Rancho Musea that my love Jonathan picked yesterday - then last night he had a dream and the plum tree spoke to him. We are an neo-animistic family to be sure. Everything is personalized to Jonathan - it is one of the things I love about him. In the Native Traditions they name the moons specific to what the big happening is around the parts where they live. So many of us have started naming our moons too - based on the Musea Harvest, this one is Red Plum Moon!
Our theme of Matrice is inspired by the fabric of creation. Let us see ourselves as a part of the fabric of the universe. The galaxies suspended within a cosmic web that is still moving 13.8 billion years later in your own body. The subatomic stardust expanded to cosmic proportions through this expanding fabric. The Ever-Emergent Ma!
YOU ARE AN INTRICATE NODE in the GREAT FABRIC of CREATION
BUT
Let us not overly fixate on the node and forget the fabric (humans have a tendency to do that)
Painting by Sue Hoya Sellars - We Must Weave the Future Creating it as We Go
Ceremony requires care, preparation, planning and in our case technology, communication and an agenda! You will receive a reminder with access - and it is already on the Dashboard for Subscribers.
In honor of this time I spent about 4 hours yesterday refining the story of The Cura Council with photos of our Elders. if you want to see that, it is here. You can also share that link with your friends if you would like to invite them to join you. Our hope is that we can create inter-generational experiences as time goes on.
If you would like to tithe to support the gatherings, as we do pay 4 staff and musicians to create this with me - no one is volunteer here except me, then it is much appreciated. I trust that in time there will be enough tithe to cover the investment in each ceremony. But regardless, this is mine to do so I am doing it. Thank you to each of you who chooses to tithe. Truly it warms my heart. Regardless, thank you.
Now Let’s talk about the MOOOOOOOOON. That was my first word, did you know? And I was born on a full moon too. Here’s the thing. We MUST pay attention to the moon or we will not be in rhythm with creation and creation is held within a Matrice. Life on earth would not even exist without the moon. There are even theories that life arose from the tides, because of the tug of the moon. So for us, honoring sacred cycles invokes awareness and inter-connection. When in Ceremony in these peak moments, the energy is full and bright and palpable if we pay attention. (If you haven’t watched the last ceremony on the moon - you can find it on the Dashboard.)
Not only is it the Full Moon, it is August 1 for our ceremony which is half way between Solstice and Equinox so we call it High Season - the Celts called it a Cross-Quarter day, and this one was called Lúnasa. Note the word LUNA in there! This was a major Celtic holiday that heralded fairs, markets and match-making and in many places in the Northern Hemisphere, a pre-harvest. This was a time for prayer for a good harvest, but wow - much of our harvest here is amazing already. I guess we could also call this Squash moon! (Photos by Jonathan McCloud from Rancho Musea - follow him at The Intentional Table on Substack).
This day has other names celebrated by the Wisdom Keepers of the year and Wiccans, the call it "Lughnasadh" or "Lammas" to honor the first of the autumn harvest festivals. This is one of the eight yearly festivals, or Sabbaths in their Wheel of the Year, following Midsummer Solstice. This day is one of the most auspicious for union and handfasting.
In the ancient early church of my Ancestors, on the eve (July 31) the lives of all Saints According to the Orthodox Church in America, “the Cross was removed from the imperial treasury and placed it upon the Holy Table of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia (which is dedicated to Christ, the Wisdom of God). From August 1 until the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, there was a procession throughout the entire the city (Constantinople) and then the Cross was placed where all the people could venerate it.” This is also the day for many within the ancient church of the Blessing of Water and Honey for the year - a precious ritual I have participated in.
There are so many things celebrated on this day - August 1, it is curious that the date of the 1st seems almost arbitrary - but the math of it right between the Solstices and Equinoxes has it’s significance.
For us in Sonoma, California it is High Summer, for the Southern Hemisphere it is High Winter. This is the first full moon of two in August and here in the US in the Native American traditions it is called the Sturgeon Moon. The full moon will reach peak illumination on Tuesday, August 1 at 11:31 pst 2:31 est. The Sturgeon Moon is the second supermoon of four in a row this year! We moon lovers get really excited. We have a full Blue Moon on August 30. A Blue Moon means there are two full moons in a one month cycle. hint: This is why we have 13 moons and not 12. Oh and that second full moon is 222,043 moon miles from the earth. We won’t have another one like that until November 2025.
Here are the times of the full moon around the world…..as you read them…consider the Matrice idea of all of us being one and seeing and feeling the same moon. This idea, of all of us being related and connected is part of the awareness The Cura Council chooses to bring along our red thread.
The Full Sturgeon Moon is named after the fish that used to be so abundant in North America during the summer months for fishing and they could be seen on the full moon. Sturgeons are amazing in that they haven’t changed very much since the first fossil records and can grow to be 100 years old and 12 feet long. They are now endangered in many areas. Deep belly sigh. I didn’t know this when I made the spontaneous story - but clearly - that is the part where we must speak of the hard things, like loss of ancient life, ancient language, ancient meanings and the loss of the fabric of community that we once all lived within. And that most of us I feel ache for. Aching for true belonging - to be seen, known and loved. To have kin.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity at EPIC: “A federal court has ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make a determination by 2024 whether imperiled populations of lake sturgeon will be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Millions of these giant, ancient fish once lived in the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Basin, but today the population is less than 1% of historic levels.” The petitions to pay attention and save this ancient being are many and progress is slow and very regional. The process is often undertaken by local government and they have to do tons of process - to get things like the protection of sturgeons passed. There are many reasons of course, habitat changes, over-fishing for caviar, damning of lakes. So this Sturgeon moon I offer you the suggestion to see what is endangered where you live…and if there is a call for sturgeon protection where you are.
For example, on SonomaNews.com I learned that: “In 2011 a sturgeon that measured 12 feet, 5 inches long and was estimated at more than 850 pounds was caught and released in San Pablo Bay. The battle spanned across 4 miles and lasted nearly two hours.” This is, as the crow flies a few miles from my home.
This moon has many names in other Native American traditions - all based on what was happening where they are - here are a few. The Full Fruit Moon - Cherokee, Black Berries Moon by many, the Sioux - the Moon When All Things Ripen. The Paint Clans harvested medicine and herbs on this full moon.
A super moon is what astronomers call a perigean full moon which means it happens at almost exactly the same time when the moon is closest to us in it’s own orbit. This means it’s big and fat - it is approximately 8% bigger and 16% brighter according to the Farmer’s Almanac.
The image below features red ochre within the stone. We went hiking in the canyon of the first Shaman in the Agua Caliente Band of Native Americans. I was so moved, internally and physically moved, by the way the rock is grey on the outside, and red ochre on the inside where some of the stone sloughed off. So inside of all that grey, is a red beating heart of earth with star-blood that is over 13 billion years old.
What a life! What a world! What a paradise! What a precariousness! What a chance to gather and honor all of life!
All the things I have shared with you in this message are part of my own matrice. From the story, to the harvest, to the moon stories and the naming of cycles. All of this, is The Cura Council. A gathering of beings, who care. We learn to care, through actually caring.
I don’t really KNOW what matrice is to be honest other than I KNEW it had to be one of the ceremonies we brought forward in The Cura Council. I had actually forgotten that the root is literally Mother. But all day long I keep walking around saying Mother, Mother, Mother - and longing for a connection that feels like Mother. Since my mothers are no longer here to hold me - will the earth embrace me as mother? Will I allow myself to be held within the Matrice that is Mother Life?
Matrice is the archeic form of Matrix, and it means, the womb. matrix (n.) late 14c., “uterus, womb,” from Old French matrice “womb, uterus,” from Latin matrix (genitive matricis) ” in Late Latin “womb,” also “source, origin,” from mater (genitive matris) “mother” Later Matrice came to mean, a place of development. It is ALSO the name of the define area an archeologist works within.
For me it means the fabric in which all of us are held in a great weave.
Curious and lovely is that from this same root we get Matter and Material as in the most primordial substance which gives rise to other substance and refers to matter suspended within a pattern. And pattern, is related to Pater, which is Father, and is connected to the way that things are organized.
Which brings me to another thread about Matrice which has to do with High Context and Culture. I first heard the term from Tyson Yumakporta, in his book Sand Talk - How Indigenous Thinking can save the world he says: many people are caught up in low context cultures that are rather disconnected from the specifics of place and community. Yunkaporta also lifts up what Aboriginal and indigenous knowledge asks of those who are attempting to bring about change in complex systems (all living systems). What he calls the “complexity agent protocols” includes:
Connectedness (create bonds to self, others and wider networks)
Diversity (respect and engage across difference)
Interaction (continuously transfer knowledge, energy and resources)
Adaptation (remain open to change, as that is the constant)
That really gives us a lot to chew on…
I will see you in the full moon my friends,
With love that I hope you can feel….
Curate Shiloh Sophia
❣️🌛🌕🌜❣️
p.s. the Wheel of the Year at the bottom of this page shows the two full moons in August.
I am excited because part of the Cura Council is going to be shares from Legend students, you get to see their paintings and hear a bit of their stories.
We also have the amazing Lavender Grace joining us for drum song, Rashida Oji with song and movement and Kathleen Brigidina with a meditation on the Matrice and the ever-beloved Sumaiyah Wysdom hosting and holding space.