Most years the Harvest moon falls in September, but this year sees the full September Moon as the Corn Moon.  This is because the Harvest moon is always the closest moon of the year to the Equinox.  That is set to happen Tuesday September 22nd, much closer to the October full moon. 

The common names of moons have been cemented through the Farmers Almanac, which uses those from Native American Algonquin tribes.  These people lived along the Atlantic Seaboard all the way in to the Great Lakes.  They called this the Corn Moon because, as you’d expect, it was time to harvest corn.  Celtic British peoples were known to call this the Wine Moon, pushing the prosperity of harvest into its end product.  The Lakota Sioux, a people linking that area through the Dakotas and Iowa towards the Pacific coast called this the Moon When Plums are Scarlet.  The Swinomish, a Pacific Northwest Coast Salish Tribe, names this the Moon of the Silver Salmon.  Either way, it’s a time of gathering in and with.

Astrologically, this moon occurs in Pisces.  A pisces moon is plentiful with intuition, rich in dreams and magic.  It’s the place of universal oneness, the last sign we must ascend before we finish the wheel of karma.  This sign knows were are all divine star seeds, and when the moon is there, we don’t just know it, we feel it.  This is a time of balance, of reaching into the universal to snap into your healthy self. 

This month we will not meet in person, or virtually.  You can join us in spirit, access the power over the Piscean universal spirit web.  Two days before the full moon, I will send you your own full moon spell, complete with embodiment practice, instructions for relevant ritual craft and a mantra to invoke the astrological influences of this month. 

Feel conflicted? Jubilant one minute, knocking your forehead on the wall the next? August is that month where we paradoxically aim to skedaddle to our favorite vacation spots, and yet we have to kick into high gear to prepare for the close of summer.  It screams ease and fun, but requires us to stay the course.  Therefore, this month, we come home to what matters.  We will celebrate oneness, the ancestors, and honor the cycles of life, death, and rebirth.  We will explore how creativity can help us break through obstacles. 

Traditionally the first days of August are the Celtic holy day of Lammas, and we will evoke these traditions in circle.

In the States, the August full moon is often called the sturgeon moon, and the name came from the Great Lakes Algonquin tribes.  It’s harvest time for many things, but especially these fish.  If you don’t know what a sturgeon is, you’re not alone.  It’s a fossil-like white fish that can live up to 150 years, there are near 30 species worldwide.  Interestingly, the females don’t mature to birthing years until they are 20 years old!  But the name is not about birth, but death, as this is when the fish were best caught to salt for the winter.

But here in the Pacific Northwest, the Kalapuya people called this the Akupiu moon – or end of summer moon.  The Swinomish called this the moon of the salal berry, pədt̓aqaʔ, because of all the plants to be harvested, these made the most delicious cakes.  You may walk outside and notice how hard it is to resist picking fresh fruit from the blackberry and raspberry bushes near you. 

Our full moon occurs August 3rd at 8:58am PDT.  It will be in Aquarius, opposite the Leo sun.  This highlights tensions between the individual, Leo, and the collective, Aquarius.  However, both of these fixed signs revel in their uniqueness, and appreciate authenticity and expressiveness.  Both planets are square Uranus, which means the month will start with a bang.  There is potential for awakening or rebellion, and if we set our chessboard up right, we can harness the power of this season.  

Join us for the Rites of the Full Sturgeon Moon to find your unique role in contributing to this collective transformation.  Utilize the shared magical imprint to break through obstacles and set your energetic frequency to one of fulfillment.

This ritual will be virtual. Join us for meditation, authentic relating, divination, and spellcraft. Join us on Zoom from 7-9pm.

Suggested donation of $35. Scholarships available for BIPOC.  Preregistration is required. Invite your friends!  Register early, we sell out! Open to all women and nonbinaries.

The Full Buck Moon occurs on July 4th, and we will celebrate on July 12th.  This moon, also called the Full Thunder Moon, or the Full Hay Moon will occur in Capricorn, the sign of the goat.  There is an earthy nature to our feelings, and the very physical Matter of life matters. We’re still in eclipse season, and the partial lunar eclipse will be visible July 16th-17th.  Eclipse tunnels are powerful times when we have access to greater emotion and insight.  Especially following the Summer Solstice, there is an energetic vortex pulling us forward.  The sun and moon are opposite, and the anima, animus are pulling in different directions.  What tension within you is creating a sense of fire within?

The Buck Moon is named after the young antelopes and deer, growing new antlers at this time.  This is the season they leap into adulthood, and start to shed the coatings of velvety fur on their antlers.  In the collective consciousness there is a great awareness of shedding systemic racism to regrow a healthier framework.  Embedded within this is an ask for each of us to shed, and regrow from ego scarcity into the majestic truth of our universal belonging. What do you want to stand for?  How can you keep the stoke the fires while guarding the flame?

While many animals can lose and regrow body parts like this, deer are the only mammals with this trick.  And deer do it really well — antlers have one of the fastest regrowing times (transformation) out of all of these body parts. Remember, regrowth is only possible if we let go, or shed what we don’t need.  To do so, we need determination and courage.  How do you stay strong, when you feel small?  To take a stand, it turns out you need to own all of it.

The fire of summer is upon us.  As we approach July 4th, independence day in the US, envision the tremendous energy and courage needed in 1776 to stand in a truth previously thought to be defiant.  Creating a new country, remember, was defiant.  This kind of passion is here my friends.  As we do the work, and fine tune the vision, we have to keep this vitality, this momentum, this compassion.  In this moon circle, we’ll call forth the strength and regenerative power of bucks on the mountain ridges.  

This ritual will be virtual. It will be physical distance, but not social. It will be physical distance, but not emotional. Join us for meditation, authentic relating, divination, and spellcraft.

Join us on Zoom from 7-9pm. Be ready with a journal, a deck of either playing cards or tarot, and a set of flowers handpicked from the street where you live, or your own backyard!

You can pay online here, or choose “pay later”  and venmo me what you can. Preregistration is still required. Invite your friends! Register early, we sell out! And, if minimum registration isn’t met 24 hours prior, circle will be called off for the month.

Open to all women and nonbinaries.

Call Xan with any questions 206-683-1838.

In Paulo Cohelo’s much beloved novel The Alchemist, the protagonist realizes at the end, the gold he sought was under the tree where he first had his vision.  All he had to do was Arrive.

The time is now. The truth you’ve been scratching at is almost clear. This is a call to initiation. Social structures are shifting. The world we live in will never be the same. It’s time to find out who you are in this new world. This summer solstice sets off a chain reaction to be realized six months down the road at the winter solstice, which astrologers worldwide connect to the dawning age of Aquarius.

On the longest day of the year, in this longest year of the century, what can you access through ritual?

Arrival. Don’t deny that you have gone on ten thousand mental journeys in the past few months, even as you’ve sheltered in place.  

In this ritual we will honor our cosmic origin, connect the dotted lines of our own firmament.  We will write, move, remember, connect.  To Arrive beyond circumstance, and lay claim to the goodness that is ours already, we will celebrate this day together.  We will divine by remembering our divinity.  The ritual include a screencasting of the 2020 Solstice at Stonehenge. This is the first time in history this powerful ceremony has been shared with the world.

This is a celestial pivot point. What can you let go of? What are you ready to manifest?

How long do you want to wait to harness the interior wilds of this time?

This ritual will be cohosted with Matt Trease from In Transit Astrology.

Price goes up after June 20th . Open to ALL!

This image was captured by Oliver Nagy to depict range of the sun’s arc between the June and December solstices. He pointed the fixed lens to a single spot for the duration of the exposure, and recorded the suns path like glow-sticks streaming across the sky. Thanks, Oliver!

If the sky were a digital sphere, the password to get in would be the moon’s phase. Every ancient calendar, until ours, the Gregorian calendar, was linked to the phases of the moon. This calendar was made to dissuade worship of the natural elements, prevent polytheism, and gather the power in one central location. We have been undoing this for centuries. Join us to continue this awakening.

The Full Strawberry Moon is the closest of all moons to the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. It is also a lunar eclipse. Though we will celebrate our Rites of the Moon the Sunday directly after, the full moon itself will occur on June 5th at 12:12pm. The Strawberry moon gets its name from the Algonquin tribes in the New England region, who gathered the sweet fruits plentiful at this time. It is also often called the Mead Moon, the Moon of Horses, and the Honeymoon!  For the Swinomish, a Coast Salish tribe, this moon is called the Salmonberry Moon, and along with the ripening salmonberries, and huckleberries, cues a time when salmon runs begin. This time offers low daytime tides allowing access to shellfish for harvest.

Themes for the Full Strawberry Moon include a ripening, and a sense of pleasure. But because this moon occurs in Sagittarius, we will explore how it shows up in a ripening Curiosity, Intuition, and a sense of Adventure. If you have felt irritated, annoyed, and emotional, you are in good company. If you have (mostly) kept your cool in the Emotional Coronacoaster, you are ahead of the curve. It’s required us to disassociate and re-associate in new ways, and within each of us our child self is in the back seat of the car screaming “Are We There Yet!?”  No. Not yet. How do you soothe this part?  You shift the focus. You keep growing, you make discovery multi-dimensional.

These times have stoked our restless hearts, and the edge is nigh. As we crest Gemini season, community and communication are essential. In this Rites of the Full Strawberry Moon, we’ll explore some ways to get present to the joys of the body, and harness our internal seeker to keep us in check.

This ritual will be virtual. It will be physical distance, but not social. It will be physical distance, but not emotional. Join us for meditation, authentic relating, divination, and spellcraft. Join us on Zoom from 7-9pm.

This circle is sliding scale with a suggested donation of $35. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Preregistration is still required. Invite your friends!  Register early, we sell out! Open to all women and nonbinaries.

At Sarah Lawrence, when I worked with poet Matthea Harvey to discuss my MFA, she said to me, “So I guess you really like thinking about Boundaries.”  I do!  I didn’t even know how much I wrote about boundaries until then. That manuscript was titled “the Circus Doesn’t Travel Anymore,” an ominous title today. The entire thing was a meditation about restlessness, and what we lose when we stay put.  I wanted to explore how we censor ourselves, and wash off our luster when we stay put, when we are seen.  
 
Boundaries are hard.  They are not walls (god forbid) and change when the time is right.  Sometimes we don’t even see them.  But when we do, when we own them, we can create a freedom greater than any traveling circus.  Good boundaries create a safe place to grow.  But what about when you have extreme boundaries?  What about when you haven't left the house for more than essential things in over 2 months?  

That is exactly what we'll look at, how to use this stillness, this time-out from the universe to redraft our own boundaries. If you listen to Brenee Brown, if you burn sage, if you work past 6pm on a regular basis, this workshop is for you.  If you ate too much ice cream last week, this workshop is for you.  You will get the support to stand in your own space, as you are, perfect, whole and complete.
 
We will explore how time in quarantine gives you space to own your boundaries, draft, and redraft the blueprints of your power.  Have a journal handy.

We have been tasked as a planet to grow in new ways, and it’s not easy. But it’s easier when we have some semblance of community and connection. It’s easy when we see the patterns that sustain us. That’s what this circle has been, and will be.

The Full Flower Moon will be the last of three supermoons for the season, which means it will be closer to the perigee, and appear up to 7% brighter.  Though we celebrate on the Sunday after, the Full Moon actually occurs on Thursday the 7th at 9:45am. It might be a good day for a morning stroll? 

The name Flower Moon, signifies the way that Spring has finally sprung.  It’s a rich time of blossom and birth.  Like many moon names solidified in the Farmer’s Almanac, it comes from the connection to Native American tribes in the Northeast.  The Tlingit tribe, native to Alaska, called it the Moon Before Pregnancy “at gadaxeet yinaa dis.”  It is also sometimes called the Mother’s Moon, the closest full moon to mothers’ day, or the Hare Moon, after the wild rabbits hopping through the brush. It marked a warmer climate, fertility, and a time safe enough to bring little ones into the world.  (ha ha ha). 

Natural themes of the Full Flower Moon are Beauty, Birth and Rebirth.  You may be feeling like your world is in a pressure cooker, like the quarantine is just an intensifier of all your feelings.  The highs are higher, the lows are lower.  How can you go into this with grace?  What is on the other side?  And as importantly, what is right here, right now? Given the fact that the full moon is in Scorpio, the ask is that we get deeper. 

Astrologer Kyle Thomas says, “Whenever Scorpio energy is being activated by a Moon or planet, we are drawn to these deep and intense passions, and often in relation to relationships with others . While many of these things may paint a dark picture, they are not. All human beings are a mix of both dark and light, and our hidden, deeper selves can only be acknowledged healthily if we face those deepest desires, obsessions, and feelings to release them in positive ways.”

Flowers are beautiful and plentiful for us here in the Pacific Northwest.  They are also delicate and temporary, like mandalas.  We will explore how to claim these instances of beauty as part of personal transformation.  We will recognize and ritualize the possibilities of our unique feminine divinity.  What blooms in you will help you revel in your own depths?  

This ritual will be virtual. It will be physical distance, but not social. It will be physical distance, but not emotional. Join us for meditation, authentic relating, divination, and spellcraft. Join us on Zoom from 7-9pm.

This is a donation only circle, and you can pay online, or venmo me if you’d like. Preregistration is still required. Invite your friends! Register early, we sell out! Open to all women and nonbinaries.

Suggested Donation of $35, payable at event in cash/venmo/paypal

Cohosted with the amazing Jo Sullivan.

Doors open at 6:30.

Suggested Donation of $35, payable at event in cash/venmo/paypal

Exact location will be sent out by email closer to the date.

Suggested Donation of $35, payable at event in cash/venmo/paypal

Exact location will be sent out by email closer to the date.

Co-led with the mystical lioness Kymbr McMurray

Suggested Donation of $35, payable at event in cash/venmo/paypal

Exact location will be sent out by email closer to the date.

This workshop will be co-taught with the amazing Michael Haug from Flow Dance Studios.

We ask you register with a partner. But your partner can be a lover, a friend, a family member. Choose someone who will make you smile!

$60 per couple. Price goes to $69 after Thanksgiving.

Co-led with the mystical lioness Kymbr McMurray

Suggested Donation of $35, payable at event in cash/venmo/paypal

Exact location will be sent out by email closer to the date.

Run by Xan Roberti & Kymbr McMurray on the Sunday nearest to the Full Moon.

Suggested Donation of $35, payable at event in cash/venmo/paypal

Exact location will be sent out by email closer to the date.

Run by Xan Roberti & Kymbr McMurray on the Tuesday or Sunday nearest to the Full Moon.

Prices range from $25-$10.

Exact location will be sent out by email closer to the date.

Trust, Play & Connect: A Workshop

Led by Xan Roberti & Michael Haug