Moon of the Winter Queen

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I caught sight of a golden full moon that turned rapidly white on my drive home from work.  It hung low over a snowy landscape and it was mesmerizing for the few seconds I could look at it without sliding into anyone on the expressway.  It is darn slippery tonight.

We just got done celebrating the return of the light, and a young solar god coming back to pierce the night. Yet, lest we celebrate too soon, we have most of the wintery-est part ahead of us here.  It’s the time of the winter queen.  A lot of people focus on a crone concept of the feminine divine at this time of year and I suppose that’s fine.  But what about the queen?    What about the wisdom and our right to rule; a right we have gained by learning icy, stormy lessons?  It’s a bittersweet personal power with a hard edge; the kind that nothing can take away from us, because we earned it.  The hard way.  It’s a lonely sort of power, sort of like the loneliness of the moon in tonight’s white and black sky.

So from now on, I will celebrate the Moon of the Winter Queen each full moon after the winter solstice each year.  I imagine this will be less festive and more contemplative but it will include doing something loving and honorific for myself.   I imagine that my crown has a jewel in it for every mistake I made and hard life lesson I learned.   And, my friends, my crown has a LOT of jewels.  I have earned them, in all of the wrong ways, but to the final benefit of my growth.  In fact, I was just getting ready to make a couple of those errors all over again, and didn’t after all.   I’ll just take those lessons, and with the strength they gave me, rule.

Guys, you can get in on this too.  There must be some scratches on the armor of your youth; some notches in your sword.  You earned them, you may as well celebrate them.  Men and women both, we have some scars.  Our shields have taken some hits.  We are people of valor.  No one ever became a legend by staying home where the wind never blows.    In a nice fairy tale world, we don’t talk about our mistakes.  In the world of courage, the courage it takes to accept the blast of icy wind in your face, our hard won lessons are worthy of wearing with dignity.