Wisdom in the Night

There is a pure light the moon casts when it is full. It shines over everything, and at the same time it allows us to see the heavens. The bright sun turns the sky a full and shining cerulean blue, and doesn’t let us see past the clouds, but in the light of the moon the dome of heaven is removed, and we can see the stars, the planets, everything beyond. The moon, reveals what before we could not see, this great light which makes what would be utter darkness a rich and living blue, and suddenly on my moonlit walk I begin to say:

Virgin most prudent,
pray for us.
Virgin most venerable,
pray for us.
Virgin most renowned,
pray for us.
Virgin most powerful,
pray for us.
Virgin most merciful,
pray for us. 

It is from the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, a prayer that, really, is so old I never learned it  in Catholic school, simply found it at the back of a hymnal. Our mythologies are often subconscious. We cannot force an identity onto a thing, or make ourselves believe in gods and spirits and goddesses because we like their stories. I was realizing, as I walked, that I had always identified the moon with Sapientia, with the the Virgin of Wisdom. She is a strange mysterious Goddess. Being wise and very primal, she has the good sense to resist stories. She isn’t Athena. She is beyond Athena. She is before the Virgin Mary, but identified with her. She may have at one time been the Holy Spirit—before the Holy Spirit was downgraded—into a male bird. In Judaism she is Chokmah, who sits perched near the top of the Tree of Life.

It is because of this very quality of calm coolness, of roundness, of absolute clarity, that one of the Virgin's homes is the Glass Castle in the northwest. She both holds the Glass Orb and is the Glass Orb, for the empty/ not empty space it holds is that of fruitful Maidenhood/Motherhood. She is most certainly the serpents made transparent, Maiden and Mother joined, the delight of the Lord Janicot. This why the Holy Child conceived in Spring is born in the stark clarity of cold winter.

She is Evervirgin, that is, ever within her own solitude, always touched but never possessed or obsessed. Under her light, which is always gentle, things are revealed. After a day of stress she whispers, “None of what you were worried about was really that important, was it?” After worrying about that man and how he may not love you or love you as much as you hoped, she whispers, “But you didn’t really love him anyway. You just loved being in love, and now you can let him go. Can’t you?” In the very early morning, when no one else is up yet, and there are one of two candles lit on the altar, she calls you out of bed to sit down and be quiet. She doesn’t say anything, and quietly lets you know you don’t have to either.

Tower of ivory,
pray for us.
House of gold,
pray for us.

Gate of Heaven,
pray for us.
Morning star,
pray for us. 

Amen.