The full moon raises high above the horizon and a circle of women, arms outstretched to the sky, chants in harmony as they raise a cone of power toward their common goal. The full moon is a time of amazing energy and we channel that energy toward our workings.

I have a confession to make.

I have no energy on the full moon.

Sure, most people are energized by the full moon, and take the new/dark moon time for introspection, as the natural energy is lower. I am the opposite. At the full moon, I feel like shit. Really, almost every month. My brain is tired, my body is tired. Even my feelings feel tired. When the new moon comes around, I’m a creative dynamo. But full moons? Exhaustion.

So, you can imagine how difficult it is to drag my sorry ass to esbat ritual each month. As the leader of a coven, I’m an integral part of our ritual (to be fair, though, so are the rest of the ladies), so it’s not something I can just skip. More often than not, when I get to esbat ritual, I’m tired, probably quieter than usual, maybe cranky. But when I leave, I feel more energized and my spirits are lifted.

There’s something about circle ceremony with women that grounds us. It connects us on an energetic level as we share and celebrate and honor one another and the goddess. When we work together, when we raise and channel that focused energy, we get the chance to flush our energetic system. This allows us to feel energetically refreshed. It’s pretty much like a 2 for 1 deal – you get to raise energy toward your goal AND you cleanse and replenish your personal reserves.

Sure, you can raise energy as a solitary practitioner, but it doesn’t feel the same. It’s not the same. When you raise energy in a group, your energy has others’ energy to grasp onto, creating an energetic synergy. It’s more than the sum of its parts. You can feel it in your whole body; you can almost see it melding with others energy and growing into something more. It can be a powerful experience, and the more you do this with the same people, the easier it can be.

But sometimes it’s hard to remember that when you’re exhausted and trying to get your stuff together for ritual.

This past full moon, I not only was my regular level of exhausted, but also I had just started my period, had a houseguest so I was running on much less sleep than usual, and mercury just had gone into retrograde. I arrived at the covenstead feeling a little like a space cadet. My words weren’t coming out right, I was over analyzing everything I was saying, and I couldn’t even read aloud normally.

I know the “RULE” is that if you are tired, etc., you shouldn’t be doing a ritual. But then me (and other people who deal with things like insomnia, depression, fibro, etc.) likely wouldn’t often do ritual – and it’s such a fulfilling part of a goddessy spiritual path.*

So, I began the ritual as usual –I’m a professional, so I’m used to doing ritual under all sorts of circumstances- tired. As the ritual progressed, as I watched my sisters evoke goddesses, as we communed with said goddesses and raised energy during our working, I started to feel better. By the end of the ritual, I felt grounded and refreshed.

Was it the energy? Was it the company? Does it even matter? It’s magic.

 

 

 

*if you are new to the witchy path, you likely wouldn’t want to do an energy raising while tired, especially if you don’t have experience with channeling energy that isn’t your personal energy.