Child of Light
CHAPTER 128
Child of Light
The story for the full moon time:
January 25 – February 8
MOON DETAILS
Full Moon
5°15′ Leo
Jan. 25, 2024
12:53 PM EST
REFLECTION DATES
Jan 21 – Feb 3, 2019
Jul 28 – Aug 10, 2022
Aug 16 – 29, 2023
15 MINUTE READ
Of the twenty people executed in Salem, thirteen were women. Thirteen. How had I never noticed this before?
Despite years of fascination with the 1692 witch trials (mostly thanks to the fact that my eighth-great grandma was one of the accused), I’d never bothered to separate the women from the men. But for some reason, on January 13, after crash landing my car at exit 13 and seeing a witchcraft course labeled Anthro 113 and receiving an email announcing Final Draft 13, I stumbled upon a list of all the people executed in Salem. And I found myself counting the women: 1…2…3…13. There were thirteen women.
My mind flashes to the message my great-great grandma whispered to me on August 27, 2020. Through the ether — from the place where her spirit now lives — she told me:
You have to know the secret women have been holding for years, for generations — no one told me and I felt so alone:
We were the 13th tribe, and we held inside us the great secrets of the earth and how matter grows and how to create...Man wanted to entrap our power so we would forget, but we never forgot. We remembered. We placed the memories in the bodies of our high priestesses to be bearers of wisdom through the ages —
I wince at the stabbing sensation suddenly striking my right ovary and place my hand atop my womb. The pain lasts throughout the day on January 13, and reminds me of ten months earlier. That’s when a similar sensation shot through me, down my thighs, all the way to the tips of my toes.
It started when a tiny piece of copper shifted inside my uterus, but even after it was removed, the pain stayed. It lasted for over a month. Made it impossible to do things like bend over or stand up straight.
I’d be making toast in the kitchen when out of nowhere, pain would rip through my body and send me back to bed. I lay there for nearly a month, legs outstretched, a red heating pad across my lap.
Then, on January 13, the pain returned, just for one day.
And I wondered, how many years did I have that thing inside me? I tried to do the math, to remember when I first asked the doctor to put it there. At the time, it felt like freedom. It was freedom. Freedom from artificial hormones. Freedom of personal choice.
I called my doctor and asked, When did I first get an IUD?
2010. She confirmed, and the answer clicked in place.
Thirteen years.
I had something inside me for thirteen years.
☆
I pulled out my calendar and mapped the dates — every time, over the last thirteen years, that something major happened with my IUD — and I was shocked to see a pattern in the sky.
On each of the following days, near perfect astronomical conjunctions were occurring between the sun and the nodes of the moon (more on what this means in a bit, but first, the dates):
July 6, 2010: I received my first IUD.
December 24, 2012: It shifted inside me on Christmas eve and left me writhing in pain on the bathroom floor.
January 18, 2013: I had it removed and replaced with another. That one stayed inside me for nearly ten years until —
November 10, 2022: I had it removed. Replaced with another, thinking I would just keep this thing inside me for as long as my body was capable of creating a life I didn’t want to birth. But it moved again, was never quite right.
March 14, 2023: I had it taken out and spent the next month mostly bedridden with debilitating pain.
On each of these days, in my personal chart, the sun was aligned at the same point in the sky as either the north or the south node of the moon.
In astronomy, these nodes mark where the moon’s orbital path intersects with the sun’s (see the diagram below). Knowing this helps us understand things like when an eclipse is going to happen.
Descending Node = South Node. Ascending Node = North Node. Image Source.
And in astrology, the lunar nodes are also known as the karmic nodes. The south node is believed to represent your past while the north node represents your future — your destiny.
So, in 2010, as my IUD journey began, the sun and the south node were perfectly conjunct.
Then, in 2012, when my IUD randomly, out of nowhere, moved inside me, the north node (aka the destiny point) was perfectly conjunct my sun. This alignment remained mostly the same when three weeks later, my IUD was replaced. That second IUD, the one inserted when the sun was aligned with my destiny (versus my past) stayed inside me without any issues for nearly ten years.
Then, in 2022, when I received my third (and final) IUD, the sun was conjunct the south node yet again. Just as it had been twelve years earlier when I received my first IUD. And just like then, the IUD shifted.
My body rejected both of the sun/south node IUDs.
And while this final IUD was removed in March 2023, it took weeks for the pain to subside.
During that time, I experienced not one but two sun/destiny point conjunctions as the sun crossed both my personal north node and the collective north node. This very rare transit hadn’t happened in seventeen years.
In summary, astrologically, my thirteen-year IUD cycle looks like this:
Sun conjunct south node (received IUD)
Sun conjunct north node (removed + received)
Sun conjunct south node (removed + received)
Sun conjunct north node (removed)
And on January 13, as I was looking at all of this, I was struck by how deeply karmic it felt. The cycle itself started years before I even believed in astrology or magic, but now, I couldn’t deny what I was seeing.
Somehow, over the years, my womb experienced major shifts both in accordance with my own free will and also, in alignment with something else. Something that, if you believe the lore of glyphs and stars, is akin to destiny.
☆
In November 2022, just days after I received that final IUD, I prepared to visit my old home — New York City.
I’d recently accepted a part-time job and was a bit disappointed when they said they wanted to fly me out there, but Fine. I agreed.
I packed my red heating pad and zipped my boots. From the back of the closet, I pulled out the black leather jacket I had always worn during Novembers in New York. Since moving to Ohio, I’d only ever worn it once. It felt oddly restrictive here, but when I thought of returning to New York, it felt like welcome armor.
So, I donned my city-armor and boarded a plane.
The job had booked the hotel, just a few blocks from the office, and when I arrived, I realized it was also just a few blocks from where one of my ancestors is believed to have been hanged.
He was the grandson of my Salem ancestors, and he was killed on September 22, 1776. Exactly eighty-four years after the last “witches” were killed in Salem on September 22, 1692.
And Salem was on my mind because as luck (or something) would have it, the timing of the trip also happened to coincide with the start of the play Becky Nurse of Salem at Lincoln Center. Two years earlier, I’d written an essay to accompany the play. It was going to be published in the Lincoln Center Theater Review, but then, Covid hit. Theaters shut down, and my essay hung in the void of unpublished words…until now.
I received tickets to the play, and thanks to this part-time job that fell in my lap when it did, I just happened to be in the city and was able to attend as my piece was published and the play was finally performed.
It felt like a blessing.
It felt like destiny.
It felt like of course I had to be here, and the universe had gifted me an all-expenses-paid trip to make sure I was exactly where I needed to be.
I flew home the day before my thirty-sixth birthday, and I didn’t know it then but have since learned that thirty-six is the exact age my eighth-great grandma was when she was accused of witchcraft in 1692.
☆
Flash forward four months, and the energy was shifting — away from the south node, away from the past, and towards the future.
My IUD shifted with it, and on March 22, 2023, nine days after my IUD was removed, I felt like I was being spun in a cocoon of golden thread.
I played this meditation, and in my mind’s eye, I watched as the cocoon fell down around my legs. I stepped out of it, and to my great surprise, I was pregnant.
A bright ball of light came down and rested on my head, and in my mind’s eye, I was radiating, holding my pregnant belly, water dripping from my wet white gown.
And despite the fact that I have always had zero interest in being pregnant, whatever this was felt so holy that I didn’t fear it. I didn’t push it away. I welcomed it.
☆
In the months that followed, I was greeted again and again by visions of this imaginal pregnancy. I was told in my dreams that I would soon be giving birth. And by summer, I could see what was growing inside me — a stream of stars, like the Milky Way, and a blooming white lily.
I looked at the map on my phone, the one that told me the destiny point was about to be in the same place it was when I was born, and right beside it, I saw the asteroid Amanogawa. Amanogawa means “Milky Way” in Japanese.
Out of curiosity, I searched to see if there was an asteroid named Lily. I found Lilium (“true lily”) and learned that when I was born, both Lilium and Amanogawa were right by the north node of the moon. In other words, my destiny is aligned with both of these asteroids, these words, this idea: a flower in a sea of stars.
I wasn’t pregnant with a child.
I was pregnant with my destiny.
A mapping of stars: December 26, 2023. Lilium and Amanogawa conjunct the destiny point.
And when I reflect on all of this, I can’t help but think that for whatever reason, it was important for my womb to be empty before this could happen.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my IUD experience aligned with these major karmic transits, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I had to have my IUD removed — my womb emptied — before the rare seventeen year sun/destiny transit last April and before my nodal return two weeks ago.
But mostly, I can’t help but think that there is magic at this point in my body — in my womb — regardless of how I choose to use it. And I think again of what Cora said:
We placed the memories in the bodies of our high priestesses to be bearers of wisdom through the ages.
And as she said this, I saw in my mind’s eye: an egg implanting, growing in time, becoming new life.
You are a star being. You are so much more than you even realize.
☆
And on this Leo full moon (as we move through this starry Aquarius season), we are being called to grow the next version of ourselves.
This lasts through February 8 and connects back to the Leo new moon in August. Turn to the reflection dates above (on mobile) and to the left (on desktop) to get a better sense of what you’re growing, but also know that everything happening now is connected to a much larger cycle.
This is about a larger version of yourself, a version that reaches beyond your own life and into past and future generations.
This full moon is conjunct the asteroid Maja — named after the great mother of Hermes, the goddess Maia whose name means “larger, greater.”
Additionally, Maia shares a root with the word maiores, meaning “ancestors.”
There is more to come on all of this with the new moon in February. What’s growing now connects to what you’ll be birthing then and with the Aquarius full moon in August.
We are healing our destiny. All of us. We are healing the wounds of the past. Our personal past and our ancestral past.
We are growing through healing, and preparing to birth something new.
For you are a child of light, born not just from sperm and egg and DNA but from the magic of your mothers’ womb. And your mother’s mother. And her mother’s mother. And her mother’s mother. All the way back to the beginning of time. To the very first woman.
And the power of the 13th tribe.
☆
☆
☆
On July 6, 2023, it’d been exactly thirteen years since I received my first IUD, and my womb had been officially empty for 113 days. The thirteen year cycle was complete.
That same day, my second cousin flew into town.
We hadn’t seen each other in twenty years, and we hadn’t kept in touch. However, I’d recently learned that while he was living in California and I was living in New York, we had both met and married people from Ohio. But not just anywhere from Ohio. The exact same town.
I sent him an email, something along the lines of: Let me know if you’re ever in town!
And a few weeks later, he was.
We reunited at his in-laws’ house, just five minutes from mine, and bonded upon realizing that…we are not alone.
Because both he and I? We have dreams that come true. We have mystical visions. We know things before they happen and have a deep connection to the stars. And the more we talked, the more eerily similar our experiences revealed themselves to be. Of all the ways magic appears in the world, our magic felt like the same kind of magic, as if sourced from the same place.
Across the dinner table, his wife handed me my great-great grandma Cora’s wedding ring. The one my cousin had given her many years ago because this is the line we share. The line that goes all the way back to Salem —
A loud thud shakes my attention, makes me turn my head to the left.
A holiday card has fallen from the shelves, and when I look up, I see why. A book fell on its side.
Strange, I think. There was no noticeable rumble. No change in the air that would obviously have caused the book’s collapse.
I pick it up. It’s small and green and smells of must. Its title’s gold foil has faded over time and now, it’s barely legible on the spine: FAUST, PARTS I & II. The author’s name, GOETHE, is printed beneath it.
I open to a random page and am struck by the smell rising from its browned pages. “WITCH.” My eyes land on the word written in all caps all over the page. I flip to some other pages and the word is nowhere in sight, confirming the feeling in my gut that that particular page wasn’t so random at all.
Curious, I decide to see if Goethe has an asteroid named after him, as many famous writers do, and sure enough, he does…
It’s right by my destiny point, alongside Lilium and Amanogawa.
I take a break from writing and turn on the TV, press play on the next episode of a show I’ve been watching. Turns out, this episode, of all the 171 episodes of the series, just happens to feature a total solar eclipse. One from May 10, 1994, when the destiny point was again…right on my sun.
That eclipse crossed over America, right over Ohio, just like the one that’s coming on April 8, 2024.
I change the date on my mapping software and look to see where Goethe will be on the April eclipse, which, coincidentally, is also the next time my cousin will be in town.
Chills run up my arms and into my throat —
April’s eclipse will be conjunct both my personal destiny point and the collective destiny point. Two sun/north node conjunctions…not in a span of weeks (like last April), but this time, all at once. And Goethe? It will be right on my rising then.
The eclipse is coming for all of us. It’s conjuncting the destiny point for all of us. It’s bringing a massive healing of our destiny — for all of us.
And all things are weaving through time and space, part of a web that’s far too large for any of us to fully comprehend, and it is meant to be.
It is meant to be.
It is meant to be.
Amen.
☆
To be continued…
LONG STORY SHORT
During this Leo full moon time, which takes us from January 25 to February 8, you are growing something magical. You are growing your SELF. This is the next version of you, a version grown not just from your personal past but from your ancestral past. You are embarking on a deep ancestral healing. We all are. And you have choice in all of this. Tremendous choice, but fate also plays a role in your fortune now. Things are moving around you in ways that you can’t see. Destiny is at work. It is meant to be.
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