When twilight falls, a soothing daily respite from the blistering heat of the day, it is the time of the Moon. The Moon Goddess of Greek myth, Diana, visits us, so to speak, and we turn within ourselves and indulge the mystic and the dreamer in us, the idealist and the seeker after truth.
“What is truth? Said Justin Pilate, and passed on.” A sophistry, since each and every one of us has posed this question to himself/herself at least once in life, and it is the eternal question.
We know that we are creatures of a mystical Creator, and it is beyond our mental capacity to understand the hows and whys of our existence, or the forces that determine the directions of our lives. Our lives have dimensions of which we are unaware. We can sense and feel, however, some of the natural sources that influence us. We human beings are made of sixty percent water. Just as the moon exerts its gravitational pull on the tides of the seas and the rotation of the earth, so too, as it waxes and wanes, it influences our moods, the hormonal cycles of women, and the behavior of animals.
The full moon is believed to be mystical in its influences and to have a special significance in all natural cultures, especially when it is full. It is almost revelatory in its effect on the subconscious. The imagination awakes, while all that is best and purest rises to the surface of the mind.
Particularly in sleep, whether it waxes or wanes, the moon is ever present to awaken the intuitive spirit that lives in all of us. Sometimes we sense but do not heed our deepest instincts. The healing time of sleep and its accompanying dreams carry foresight, memories, regrets, and hopes. They visit us after the work of day is done, when we are at rest and most receptive to the call of the psyche.
Such dreams are messengers. Their messages can be predictive, wish fulfillment, cathartic, and even pleasurable. It is essential to our mental and spiritual well-being to allow both aspects of our personalities, the solar and the lunar, to be given equal importance in order that we be complete sentient beings.
For me, the moon has always been a source of peace, an escape to the realm of the romantic imagination. Many of my most delightful memories center round moonlight.
Many years ago, during a tour through Greece, we visited the Oracle at Delphi.
According to Greek myth, Apollo himself chose the shrine and appointed pirates to become his priests at the temple. It was a simple structure, but it was believed that Apollo was present and spoke through the high priestess, Pythia, to those who sought guidance. There are innumerable tales of prophecy from the Oracle at Delphi, many of them linked to the stories of Ancient Greece.
We spent only a night in Delphi in an exquisite little hotel perched on the mountainside. We arrived late in the evening, dined and went to our room, which had a terrace that overlooked the valley. There was a full moon that night which flooded the entire landscape with bright clear light.
As I stood on the terrace and looked out over the valley, and perhaps because of the knowledge that I was in an almost spiritual place, I sensed something unusual, almost magical, in the atmosphere. It was both eerie and awe inspiring. For some moments, I felt like a different being from another time, light in body and spirit, floating over a beautiful and unspoilt world. I almost came to believe that Apollo and his brother Dionysus had actually existed and something sacred had been created in the grove at Delphi.
For the romantic, evenings can be an endless delight when the mind roams free. My thoughts flit from myth to music. I put on and listen to “Song to the Moon,” the beautiful aria from the opera “Rusalka”; or “Claire de Lune”, my favorite by Debussy, or “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven. I think of my girlhood and my then favorite poem by Keats, Ode to a Nightingale, where he says, “Tender is the Night”. I could continue ad infinitum.
For those who stop and look: Life, literature, music, art, imagination, and beauty are everywhere and to be treated with respect as great gifts.
When the poet Dylan Thomas pleaded, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” he must have felt as my late mother did when she said one evening while gazing at the moon, “This world is so beautiful, how can I bear to leave it?”
Nasrin Sobhan is a freelance writer.
