Greetings!
Last night we had the Full Moon in Libra with a Lunar eclipse as well. As most of you probably noticed, this was a particularly potent eclipse coming on the eve of the upcoming Mercury Retrograde that begins Monday. From a folk or native perspective, one of the names for this moon is the “Hunter’s Moon.” Of course there are other names for it as I’ve mentioned before, but in this blog I am going to focus on this one.
Traditional images of hunting and hunters isn’t as common as they used to be. We are evolving into a society that is much more urban overall, so let’s focus on what it means to be a hunter because we all hunt things. While they may not be traditional things like animals, they are still just as potent things that are being hunted. Some people hunt knowledge. Some people hunt sex. Some people hunt power. No matter the target, hunting is still in common use today. One of the lessons that we can take from this then, is to improve our hunting skills to maximize what we can accomplish. Stereotypical tools of the hunter include a knife (in this case, representing the mind), camouflage (adaptation and anonymity), some sort of ranged weapon, whether it’s a bow and arrow or a gun, patience, and most of all, foresight and planning. Knowing these correspondences, it becomes easy to see how we can be hunters without having to go into the wilderness to kill something.
Another important point, though, is that true hunters generally kill to survive. Killing for sport is not a traditional pattern of hunters, and while it is done, for lower ego reasons of course, it is not optimal nor really preferred by the intelligent. This brings us to the crux of this blog, though. When you are hunting something, there are two things to be acutely aware of: 1) Knowing your target enough to stalk it, and 2) Knowing whether or not you’re hunting out of necessity or sport. This is an excellent time of the year to take stock in what we hunt and why. As we move into winter, this is also a good time to assess our effectiveness and the use of our hunting skills to be better hunters in the future.
To close, though, let’s remind ourselves of the most useful tool of the hunter: patience. Hunts don’t always go quick. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to achieve what we set out to do, and in the process of achievement, we have to reassess and change what we’re doing to maximize our gain. What do you hunt? How effective are you when it comes to hunting? What room for improvement is there, and how will you incorporate that into your personal repertoire? We are approaching winter after all, and because of this, it is time to stock up on the necessities and to plan where to go from here.
Blessings
Bill