Almost As Cheap As November!

The 2018 MoonTimer Calendar at only $15, while supplies last. Suitable for goddesses of All Ages.  

January 2018 & Wacky Holidays

Hello, dear reader. I am starting this post by saying a few words about the 'downsheets' -- the b&w pages that hang below the graphic panels, the place where you expect room enough to write in your dentist appointment.

This year I had decided not to note so many religious holidays -- but considered that those observed by the workforce (i.e., no mail, no school, government offices closed, etc) needed to be included, for planning purposes. Most of those are of the Christian variety.  And, I made a mistake and provided two dates marked as 'Ash Wednesday', the beginning of Lent.

Just so we're clear, Ash Wednesday is indeed on February 14th, not on March 14th. These are the type of errors that result when there is no proof-reader on staff. We actually do have one, but she is also the marketing director,  the research assistant, the accountant, the writer, the illustrator, and the janitor. Yes, her name is my name too. 
Not being of the Catholic persuasion, I nonetheless did celebrate Lent one year by giving up ironing. And since I am not Catholic, I felt no obligation to take it back later. Consequently my wardrobe now more closely matches my complexion: an abundance of wrinkles. I like to go with precisely coordinated outfits.

So, other than the extra bonus Ash Wednesday, everyone can be responsible for inserting their own religious holidays. This calendar is pretty much BYOG (Bring Your Own God).

Several days noted in the calendar are not so much holidays as they are remembrances of specific events or existing situations, and many of these are not terribly pleasant. They are somewhat solemn, emotionally heavy, weighing on our conscience like an unreturned phone call from our better selves. They direct attention to the darker aspects of humanity, the sore spots, where we seek to improve. Examples are Victory Over Genocide Day on January 7th.  At least this one has a bright spot - the word "Victory" -- but some days are not so shiny.

That being the case, I went online and found a site called 'Wacky Holidays', and threw a bunch of those in to lighten things up. They are real -- I did not make them up; and they've unexpectedly turned out to be a big hit, exposing our deep need for humor in these darkening times.

I've watched more than one of my customers search to see if their birthday has a Wacky Holiday associated with it. There's been some odd synchronicity with this: one fellow's birthday landed on International Jazz Day, and as it turns out, he IS a jazz aficionado! This happened in a few other instances, whose details now escape me. So next year, my goal will be that each and every day should be notable for something, even if it's only the start of Daylight Savings Day in Mongolia - which, if you've been lying awake nights wondering about that, falls on March 30th this year.

So never fear, even if your birthday this year was a complete blank (it wasn't even Lumpy Rug Day) -- next year, it won't be!

Graphics used in the construction of the January panel

On Lantau Island, near Hong Kong, there is a monastery, and a massive Buddha sits atop a hill accessible by a hefty hike up an extreme staircase. 

 

Surrounding him are a series of magnificent bronze Devas, each holding forth an offering. I found them captivating. 

This particular Deva was chosen for the panel because her offering reminded me of Pandora's Box -- that fabled forbidden cache filled with all manner of unforeseen consequences. It's a Greek legend, but as I write this, I feel a resonance with Eve and her Apple. It is the famous infidelity of women who ignore the restrictions handed to them by males. Don't worry, you will be blamed for whatever happens after that.

It's rather like the ironic criticism I have heard from some men, who say that all the trouble in the world is causing by the tongues of women. Don't you know that it is our excessive discussion of their behavior (sometimes devolving into sheer gossip) that makes complications for everyone? To that I say, just do something honorable, give us something to respect, and we will be happy to talk about THAT, instead of your less mature episodes.

But in the case of this Deva, I felt she was asking us to receive all that is joyous, from the abundance of our Mother ---- Nature, whose generosity is beyond all human limitations, who is our great benefactor and teacher, and is far less punitive than male God-figures.  She doesn't set up any rules, as there are natural laws (from the physical plane through the higher realms) that allow us to experience our own outcomes, for better or for worse, based on our decisions. Instead of being punished, we should receive Her knowledge. An apple a day keeps ignorance away.

And frankly, this business with the apple seems like a set-up to me. Here's a delicious, nutritious fruit, but don't eat it because some shifty snake-oil salesman said so. Who does that? A dirty double-crosser serpent, and who is he working for?

My mother would say, oh hell no, you're not gonna waste any food around here. Clean your plate, children somewhere are starving. That's the guilt trip permanently engraved into my neural networks, as, to this day, I abhor seeing food wasted. 

For nearly every panel this year, the 'underlayment' of the moon phases through the month is a floral by William Morris, whose incredible wallpaper patterns, designed in the 1860's, are still sold today.

The background that frames this panel is a photo of glorious Antelope Canyon near Page, Arizona. The stone looks liquid, like frozen music, that no symphony of human composition can rival. 

A chunk of blue tanzanite, from a photo by Anton Watzi, became the 'water' from which our Deva is emerging, while a portion of a wave painted by Hokusai is intended to show her generosity radiating outward in all directions. 

At some point, it hit me that my Deva, nestled against her field of green ivy, was derivative of Green Tara, a Buddhist icon. There are actually 21 forms of Tara (the Mother of All Buddhas), but most favored by the Tibetans are White Tara, associated with compassion and long life, and Green Tara, associated with enlightened activity and abundance. 

It was then that this Deva became Blue Green Tara -- to honor the indispensable contribution of water, without which no life is possible. Perhaps she is the Mni Wiconi Tara. 

The lotus flowers that drift from this Deva float gently into the hands of an unfortunate. They represent spiritual gifts, the generosity of empathy and compassion. Hidden in his corner, the pobrecito reminds us of the sufferings of others, that exist even when out of range of our perception, and may be always invisible to those of us less sensitive.

Pobrecito portrait by Ryan Correon Aragon

Finally, the panel receives a few decorations from Nature:   

Add one portion of Blue Jay Feather,
 and repeat

Add one portion of Butterfly Wing,
turned upright

 

Add one Sacred Earth Girl who is the human vehicle for
manifesting the dispensation of Divine Grace she RECEIVES

Lastly, Sacred Earth Girl is given a little crown of Purple Lotus, to remind us that the Divine is ALWAYS present on Earth. 

Thank you, beautiful generous Earth, painted from the creator's pallette - You ARE without doubt
the best planet there is. 

We don't want another one, we just want YOU. 

~ Prayer to Tonantzin (Mother Earth) ~
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you. 

How Light Moves Across the Moon's FACE -- creating the PHASES

There are two things that change as the moon takes her path around us each month: her shape, and her position in the sky. Changes in her shape result in the phases, a pattern of change that is constant.

Notice that in the Northern Hemisphere the light, and the darkness, move across the moon from the right to the left, creating the changes in phase. 


In the Southern Hemisphere, the moon looks upside down (to us Northerners), and the pattern of light and darkness push in from the left side, moving to the right.

To help your reproductive system migrate naturally (effortlessly, basically) to the pattern established by our ancestral Grandmothers, it helps to begin to observe the full moon, which is the moon for ovulation. The moon is as full of light as she can get; after this, the light declines, pushed out by darkness. The full moon rises at sunset. If you begin to watch every night from the full moon, you will see the moon wane (lose light) in the subsequent nights. 


The  "lunar day” is 24 hours plus 50 minutes, so every day the moon rises over the horizon nearly an hour later than the day before; take that into account as you observe the moon wane. 

The new moon, two weeks later, is the moon for menstruation. The moon has no light of her own; she reflects light from the Sun. During the new moon phase, the staggered rising time of the moon has advanced several hours, to the degree that she is now rising WITH the Sun. She is between Earth and Sun, during the day. The light of the sun is shining on the 'dark side' of the moon - the side that faces away from us, shown in this photo by Bill Frymire. That's why she is not visible in the sky at night (nor during the day), during the 'no moon' - the New Moon.

ALL eclipses of the Sun take place during the New Moon phase. But we don't see them every month, because It is only occasionally that the angle of the moon in her elliptic is such that she blocks the Sun from our view here on Earth.

The line that separates light from darkness is called the "Terminator". Below, the Terminator is seen moving across the moon's face, in this demonstration from the US Naval Observatory. This is a time-lapse of a complete lunation -- all the phases in the moon's cycle (Northern Hemisphere view).
   

The movement of the Terminator delineates the changing balance of light and darkness that gives us the complete pattern of phases.

These can be simplified to the eight main phases: 

And from there, further reduced to the four phases most often seen in calendars: 

People often get confused by the names of these phases. It doesn't seem sensible that the phase following the Full Moon is the "Last" Quarter. This confusion is easily cleared by realizing that astronomers have always reckoned the phases as beginning at the New Moon: 

There! Does that make better sense now?

Of these, the two that represent the 'opposite poles' of ovulation and menstruation are what I call the 'pivot': the full moon to the new moon, and back again (I simply added Moon Phases to this illustration from Menstrupedia).  It's basically Rinse and Repeat. 

And I don't say Rinse and Repeat lightly, because bathing was, and continues to be, an element that follows naturally upon the ending of the menstrual period. 

We may not do it ceremonially so much now, but it is still a ritual we observe, one that is necessary for obvious reasons.

Water is our friend during the experience, as well. Hot water is the helper supreme, for cramping. Total immersion, if you can get it; if not, then a hot water bottle on the lower back.

We Are Water

I leave you with this quote, although I can't recall its source, 20 years on. I'll be hunting that citation now. 

May your medicine always be kept effective!

Good night, Moon 

2018 MoonTimer Calendar - Postcards from the Moon

They've landed! We are shipping! 

Designed by a health educator, this calendar guides women and girls in the use of the moon as a  clock: the elegantly simple system, practiced by our ancestral Grandmothers, for regulating the cycle. Their non-toxic, nature-based system has been approved for 25,000 years or more. 

It can also be enjoyed by those who have no such needs! Multi-cultural illustrations explore the qualities of the eternal Feminine reflected in the circumstances of women, whose images become energetic placeholders and speak to the archetypal conditions of our time.

The MoonTimer Calendar empowers women with respect for the cycle, and encourages teens, who are learning to manage this new and unpredictable aspect of their lives.

It also conveys a positive expectation to tweens, those coming next to the threshold of adolescence. Some studies have shown that expectations given by adults are reflected in the experience of girls, and may even influence health outcomes.

The MoonTimer Calendar is inter-generational: suitable for the Goddesses of All Ages in your family!

A word to the gentlemen: Impress the special women in your life. They'll see you as Sensitive and Insightful - which, you are. You've proved it by reading this far.

It's the turn of the year. Everyone needs a calendar, 

Christmas is solved! 
.

We have upgraded to a better grade of paper this year. Each calendar comes spiral bound and individually shrink-wrapped with a chipboard insert to ensure stability during shipping. 

 Price for one calendar is $19.95; 10% off when you buy two or more, 20% off on orders of 5 or more. Order at the bottom of this page. 

Here are a few images from the 2018 calendar.  Click to enlarge.
Thank you, my friends!

An Uzbeki woman expresses her self reliance,

supported by the spirit horses of her ancestors. 

Our senses exalt in the verdant exuberance of May

Kahina, the warrior queen of the Berbers, was the guiding light and
protectress of the tribal families of North Africa in the 7th century. 

The MotherShip: a collection of Madonna figures from diverse sources, including
Our Lady of the Aborigines. 

Our printer is a green company, a member of the Forest Stewardship Council.  http://www.publicationprinters.com/green.html

Thank you for your order!

An account is not needed to use the Paypal shopping cart as a guest. Alternate payment arrangements can be made with an email to RubiconMoon@gmail.com; or by voicemail at 303.351.3962. Thanks!

Discounts for quantities

1 Calendar $19.95 USD 2 or more Calendars $18.00 USD 5 or more $15.00 USD

March 2017 - Calculating Women

Of course Nature is our first teacher. How could it be otherwise? We copy her handiwork, infusing it with our own human aesthetics, and this fuels the matrix we call 'culture'.

It has been the provenance of women to apply decorative arts to ordinary objects used in daily life, because we love and require beauty. If I have to look at the same clay pot everyday, by golly, it needs to be beautiful. Anything mundane can be elevated by decoration, applied to bring harmony and self-expression into the standard tasks of survival. 

Beyond the basics of food, clothes, and shelter, we expand into the cosmological function of design, the sacred patterns used ceremonially to honor specific milestones in human life, to identify one's rank or function (whether Queen, Midwife, Cook, or Shaman), or to honor the Divine.

Do you knit? Do you crochet, or do bead work? Are you a weaver? If you do any of these, you know the importance of math in the protocols of fabric. All the stitches must be counted to maintain the integrity of the pattern. Spider Grandmother seems a perfect mentor for these skills, as she is simultaneously an architect, an engineer, and an artist.

She knows how to catch her own dinner, which is occasionally just some poor suitor attempting to impress her. Cannibalism is an unfortunate potential by-product of courtship in the spider dating scene.

Still, Grandmother Spider retains her popularity in many cultures. Hopi, Navajo, Choctaw, the Ojibway, the Zuni - all have specific cultural gifts that are said to have come from her. She is described as a helper of the people. The style of her webs inspired the female relatives to weave Dream-catchers, to catch and filter out the bad dreams of infants, so that only good thoughts are allowed to enter.

Spider Grandmother is honored in the Nazca lines of Peru. 

We find Spider-Lore among the Greeks too. Ariadne, the Cretan lass who couldn't catch a break, eventually ended up married to Dionysus, the town drunk of Mount Olympus. But she also had the spidery strategy to help Theseus, giving him a thread to unroll as he entered the labyrinth, so he could find his way out after slaying the Minotaur. She then ran off with him, but Theseus abandoned her on the island of Naxos. At that point we might say he went from Cretan to cretin.

image by Thalia Took

And anyway, 'Naxos' sounds like the name of a designer pharmaceutical drug that you can 'ask your doctor about' and, next year, join the class action lawsuit for damages suffered, if you're not dead.

Then there is the tale of Arachne, a weaver so renowned that a whole class of anthropoids is named after her.

Haeckel Arichnida, Wikipedia

Her consummate mastery of the loom aroused the attention of Athena, the favorite daughter of Zeus. So sure of herself was Arachne that she vowed her willingness to compete in a contest of skill with this immortal competitor.

Athena, you may remember, sprang fully grown from her father's forehead (signaling the predominance of intellect over the intelligence of the heart). Like Sekhmet, who was sent by her father Ra to extract revenge for human offenses, these goddess patterns have personas that are actually more male than female. They are the 'Daddy's girl', their "father's daughters", competitive by nature.

And, yes, even though Arachne's work was impeccable, her waft and weave described as "sheer magic and a sight to behold", her arrogance had to be answered. To correct this, Athena turned her into a spider.

Hardly a level playing field. It's so annoying the way some people exploit their super powers just because they can.

from The Digital Renaissance by Carlyn Beccia

I hope, at least, that Arachne earned enough points to be transformed into a Peacock Spider. View this remarkable video of the male courtship ritual with your speakers on. Spiders have no ears, so their special language is a love song of drumming. And woe to the male who is not a good drummer. In spider marriages, 'consummation' takes on a whole new meaning.     

The only male version I have seen of Spider energy exists among the Lakota, who perceive him as a shapeshifter called Iktomi. Similar to the Hopi Clown Kachinas, he dispenses moral lessons, particularly to youth, in ways that may be shocking or embarrassing. As a trickster figure, his behavior hovers somewhere in the ambiguous zone between right and wrong.

Getting back to our subject, let me declare that our skills with numbers are legend. Drawing on the mythological records, we find a plethora of goddess credited with having created mathematics. To support that, here are the entries from a few celestial pantheons:

Sarasvati: She is said to have invented all the arts of civilization: music, mathematics, calendars, magic, letters, and all other branches of learning.

Mensa - Goddess of Measurement, numbers, calendars, calculations, tables and record keeping.

Seshat - Egyptian Mistress of the House of Books, the Goddess of writing, history, measurements, calculation, record keeping and architecture. Goddess of Hieroglyphics. Lady of the Builder's Measure.

Savitri - Hindu Mother of Civilization, She Who brought forth music and literature, rhythm, time, measurements, day and night, memory, conquest, victory and yoga. 

Unelanuhi: In indigenous cultures, spirits exist in all phenomenon of nature, such as the wind, the storm, the clouds. All can be called upon for aid.
In Cherokee culture we find Nuda Unelanuhi  (Apportioner/Sun), and Nuda Geyaguga (Woman Measurer /Moon), functioning as both messengers and helper spirits.

The Cherokee word for Calendar -- nv-do di-se-s-di -- translates as "moon counter". Unelanuhi's name means 'Apportioner', for she is responsible for having divided time into units. 

This is no coincidence. This is how our history was kept. It's not for nothing we became known as Calculating Women. We earned it.

And while we learnt a great deal from Grandmother Spider, her abacus was not our only source. The moon also taught us math. It was from watching her that we became Unelanuhi.  

For instance, this girl has her calendar in her hand. On that crescent horn, 13 notches are carved, indicating the naturally occurring lunations in a year. A lunation = one complete cycle of moon phases = the synodic month (29.5 days) rather than the sidereal month (27.3 days).
 

So here it is, the original 'app' for tracking a pregnancy to term.
Not available on I-Tunes.

Given the name, "The Venus of Laussel", she was discovered in a cave in southwestern France in 1911, but she'd already been standing there for 25,000 years, still bearing traces of the red ochre with which she was painted. That she is tracking her pregnancy is fairly obvious, and this IS the urgent survival need that engendered the lunar/menstrual calendar. Even in the Stone Age, one wants to be prepared, for birth is a life or death proposition.

Animal mothers, just like human beings, may die in the process of birthing their young. But because they do not know of this possible outcome, they have no need for courage. Courage can only be summoned in response to a clear danger. Of all animals who labor in birth, only the human woman approaches the birthing process with the consciousness that her own death may be required.


A woman about to give birth stands at the gateway between death and life. She peers into the death realm, not knowing for certain if she will come out alive, and she reaches over there to bring through another new soul.

                                              -- Vicki Noble, Shakti Woman

My first encounter with this image described it as the Aztec goddess Tlazolteotl
giving birth to CORN, which is considered to be the Mother of the People.
The true origins of this sculpture are disputed among scholars. Tlazo displayed at Dumbarton Oaks.  

The Aztecs accorded special respect to women who died in childbirth, honoring them as warriors. They went to a special heaven. It is said that in battle, Aztec leaders would exhort their men to aspire to the courage of a birthing woman.

Some of our moon-counting tools are even older than Ms. Laussel. The Lebombo bone is estimated at 35,000 - 37,000 years old, and was found in the mountains between South Africa and Swaziland.

Its 29 notches confirm it as a menstrual calendar, because these indicate the duration of one complete lunation. In other words, this calculates for you the time to begin packing for the Moon Lodge every month.

It was necessary to prepare: we would be gone for close to a week. We had to bring enough food to last us the journey, including preparing food to leave behind for the elders who were watching the children.

Almost sounds like a nice monthly vacation, doesn't it? Maybe we should seriously consider reinstating that practice!

But, you might ask, why did we go away to the Lodge?
There were at least 3 good reasons. 

One is simply hygienic. This is a messy business and we don't want that all over the house. Who do you think has to clean it up? Give us a moment to invent indoor plumbing.

'Domestic Goddess' by Edith Vonnegut.
One thing I love about goddesses: they are not Gods. I think of them as snapshots of the Feminine, expressing a portion of the spectrum of the female psyche. They're metaphoric and archetypal. As patterns of behavior, and they demonstrate how to behave, how not to behave, and how to NOT BEHAVE when that's what's called for.

We can be certain that this practice of timing the cycle was in place before we began our migrations, because even today, throughout the world, the phrase 'moon time' persists. We took the knowledge with us to everywhere, even though it was later suppressed, repressed, and oppressed. But back in the day, when the Rift Valley was home, there were dangerous neighbors - like lions, tigers, and hyenas, oh my - and all of them attracted by the scent of our blood! The compelling strategy was to remove ourselves to a distance, protecting the village by drawing those animals away.

But, hey, after surviving childbirth, we aren't to be scared off by a few hyenas. I imagine that a cave was the perfect Lodge, easily defend-able with our superior technology, which we call fire. 

So that is the second reason: we transfer the danger to ourselves for the safety of others, which remains a courage characteristic to women. Men are also capable of this. 

The female DNA commands our primary mission, which is to Keep Life Alive. This applies whether it's an ailing house plant, a baby bird that fell from the nest, or an orphaned child of any species. If it is alive, we try to keep it that way. This is our inherent genetic obligation to life. 

Only men need worry about being 'pro-life' -- we're already hard-wired for that. I'd advise them to go practice their drumming, as it is my duty to point out that in the model demonstrated by our animal relatives, the needs of the living outweigh those of the unborn. Animals do not reproduce another baby until the first one can fend for itself. That's just the way it is. Nature knows more than we do.

However, we do have an advantage peculiar only to humans: elders. In contrast to other animals, we live long past our ability to reproduce. This means we needn't wait for baby #1 to graduate college before we have another. Grandma will babysit while we go to work.

And the third reason: from out of the Lodge came The Council of Women. In that gender camp, business got handled. The needs of the community were sorted. Societal balance was maintained.

So we return at last to Africa, where Grandmother Spider is known as Anansi. One story goes that she took a web she had spun, laced it with dew, threw it into the sky and the dew became the stars. Her web construction illustrates how, as humans, we should be linked together to build our society.

What if we would truly see ourselves as balls of light-reflecting water, connected to each other by a web of flexible filaments? 

photo by Brian Valentine

This might be the most important lesson we could take from Grandmother Spider. We would then access the World Wide Web from the inside. No need for a computer.

Who taught Grandmother Spider how to weave this silken thread that rivals the tensile strength of steel?

I hear she studied at the Uni Verse City of Fibonacci,

learning that perfect math by which
the organic universe is spun into existence. 

May all your dreams be protected.

Ms. Kiva's Mom