ARIES NEW MOON GUEST CONTRIBUTOR : ASTRA PAPACHRISTODOULOU
TUE 11 MAY 19:59 - Mooning Monthly searching for better value....
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Welcome to MOON LIT, a burgeoning platform for lunar influenced new literature, this month featuring the poetry of performance poet and multi-media creative force, Astra Papachristodoulou.
And in typically loose astrological fashion, Edition 5 also welcomes the approaching Taurus New Moon. Taurus likes to take it's time over everything, particularly in and around its home comforts. The material world has to be arranged around the domestic 'need' for luxury and there can be an attendant, vehement distaste for change, mostly expressed from the sofa. A Taurus moon can swiftly make of us intransigent, material girls and boys.
Nonetheless, a new moon is always a good time for a spot of quiet introspection and under Taurus we would be well advised to question the things that we value, or take for granted in life, to ensure we maintain a steady path towards our highest goals and aspirations.
Many wisdom traditions suggest that the more regularly we refine our values in life, the closer we get to self awareness: a vital step on the path to reclaiming our inherent power to create the reality we want to experience. Every conscious thought, word or action under a new moon is the equivalent of planting a seed of intention for the future we want to harvest - a genuine start to the process of making our dreams come true.
However, under a new moon, subliminal thinking can be as potent a seed for manifestation as one more consciously and positively devised. In fact, subliminally held negative thoughts regularly ride roughshod over positive intents as they carry the additional impetus of emotion.
If we hold onto perceptions of ourselves as flawed: too fat, too thin; not rich enough, not pretty enough, not funny enough; not this, not that; unworthy, unlovable or unlucky, we are unwittingly poisoning the very personal soil in which we then attempt to sow the seeds of positive intent. Is it any wonder so many of them then fail to germinate? And, if those seeds do happen to flower and fruit, it's more than likely that their taste (our experience of life's bounty) will be bittersweet, tainted by the toxic ground in which they grow.
If, under this Taurus New Moon, we can have the courage to take a look into the long shadows of our less palatable, habitual patterns of behaviour, we may, through an attitude of forgiveness, allow the past to remain in the past, and prevent it from consistently hijacking our present and future.
The past holds lessons from which we can learn of course, but more regularly we subconsciously use it as a big stick with which to beat ourselves for not coming up to unrealistic and limiting sets of socially defined expectations.
Under this Taurus New Moon let us create our own, appropriately personalised determinants of joy in life. Such self determination is a courageous act of rebellion against the useless 'Hollywood' archetypes with which we are so consistently presented. To find one's ultimate value in an inner world that consequentially reflects in the outer, is to understand and experience the true worth of Life.
May the forthcoming Taurus New Moon provide a deep sense of value for the lives of All.
I am delighted this month to introduce the work of Astra Papachristodoulou to the MOON LIT forum. Astra is an experimental poet and artist based in the UK. She is the author of several poetry books including Stargazing (Guillemot Press, 2019) and Astropolis (Hesterolock Press, 2020). Her poetry has been translated in Spanish, Slovenian, Russian and Greek and her visual work has been exhibited at the National Poetry Library and The Poetry Café amongst other UK venues. She is the founder of Poem Atlas, an exhibition platform and publisher of visual poetry.
She offers us a single poem, first published in Anthropocene Journal in 2020 that reflects on Aubrey Beardsley's illustration, The Woman in the Moon (image included below the poem). The drawing was created in 1894 for the first British edition of Oscar Wilde's play Salomé, the image serving as the frontispiece for the book with the face in the moon resembling Wilde. Astra toys with the pre-digital age and chases history playfully through the cyclical pen and ink archaeology of past decades. She identifies and claims her lineage, under the moon, in pen and ink, as she too lays literary foundations for the architecture of words yet to form.
LAYERING GAZE
After The Woman In The Moon by Aubrey Beardsley
in the age of pen & ink
the moon is concealed
by marble mantles
large dark-ish ones
over blank marble ones
and areas of fine detail
they tumble-down
contorted into all sorts
shapes and lines
large dark-ish ones
something elaborate
stumbled, over
blank marble ones
scribbling & drawing
on areas of fine detail
almost nothing blank
and something absent
in their gaze
contorted into all sorts
just up and increasing
cautious like that
it grows
yellow lines, black
and yellow marble strands
heaven is lowered
onto marble light
while something absent
over scribbling, grows
over large dark ones
in the age of pen & ink
almost something
almost enough
over the scribbling
but tumble-down
contorted into all sorts
by yellow mantles
just up and increasing
and cautious like that
shapes and lines
they tumble-down the moon is hidden by a marble cloud
see the shapes and lines the face concealed by yellow mantles over large scribbling where heaven is lowered and contorted into all sorts while something absent turns light mantle over blank marble ones shapes and lines stumble in their gaze while heaven is lowered to a wholeness that contorts into all sorts, for sure just up and increasing while shapes and lines conceal the moon who’s the serious type and cautious like that he reaches to the moon who’s the secretly-mad type and cautious like that but little did they know that the yellow is lowered & she’s the fun-loving type
Astra Papachristodoulou 2021
Illustration: The Woman in the Moon Aubrey Beardsley 1894
Once again we open the doors of our very own art gallery MOON LIT DISPLAY, exhibiting drawings, paintings, prints and sculpture by artists with a lunar bent. Each month, alongside our literary guests, a visual artist will be invited to share their most recent creative output, ensuring our exhibits complement the contemporary, enquiring nature of the poetry.
Under this Taurus New Moon we are additionally fortunate to exhibit an art work by our featured poet, Astra Papachristodoulou. She is a renowned visual artist in her own right and offers us a small but perfectly formed multimedia piece Crystal Moon which I hope you enjoy.
More of Astra's work can be viewed at www.astranaut.co.uk
CRYSTAL MOON
bio-resin, vitrail colours and cellulose acetate
6 x 4 cm 2020
CRYSTAL MOON (detail)
bio-resin, vitrail colours and cellulose acetate
6 x 4 cm 2020
Just so you know, MOON LIT seeks to present literature and artwork that celebrates and reveres, marvels, champions and cherishes, whilst never shirking the necessary excavation of life's rich shadows in search of the priceless shining diamonds within. Each edition is a poetic invitation to contemplate our reading of, and reaction to, circumstance, that we may more consciously direct our thoughts, words and actions toward positive benefit for All.
Throughout 2021 MOON LIT will offer a monthly meditative pause under the poetic guidance of our distinguished literary guests. It is hoped readers will find time in hectic schedules to unhurriedly savour their literary craft; to read and reread these new perspectives on the miraculous, beguiling life experience to which we all belong.
MOON LIT publishes at new moon alongside its full moon sister publication MOONING MONTHLY that offers loosely astrological lunar forecasts for the coming month. (Mooning Monthly 116 still available here) Subscribe for free HERE at your leisure to ensure both emails hit your inbox when it matters.
And of course, do please share MOON LIT with friends and family of similar lunar sensitivities, in the hope that this illuminating endeavour brightens our currently challenging, darkened times with the light of beauty and Love.
With love 'til next time
Mark
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