OCD and Moon Rituals
My band recently played at an event called Witchstock. It was amazing. Also at the event was CoLab, a group that facilitates the collective creation of paintings at local events. Prominent on the instruction sign is “don’t be afraid to cover someone else’s painting!” The point is not to create something fixed, but rather the process of making the painting, and making something together. I painted the birds with corn over the pale purple background, but who can say if they’re still there!
I’ve mentioned it here before: I have OCD. This means my brain regularly wants me to track things, plan things, and generally try to control things. It doesn’t matter if I actually can control them - usually I can’t, but my brain will try hard anyway.
Over the years, my work systems have shifted in relationship with my anxiety and OCD. I’ve made innumerable poster-sized calendars and schedules for myself; very few of them have stood the test of time, and the systems that last are always the ones that provide me with a shape to follow, but also space to move stuff around day to day based on my current reality (like, “I’m very tired today,” or, “Actually I want to work on this other thing I hadn’t planned, but it feels right”).
The same is true for my spiritual practices. The best example is my new and full moon rituals. When I started a moon practice, I thought, “There hast to be a right way to do this,” so I followed the practices of other witches I admired.
As you might already know, there are no rules in witchcraft, only your own intuition and interests. Eventually, I created a practice that worked well for me for a long time, and it’s still one that I teach:
At the new moon, write about what seeds you are planting.
At the full moon, write about what is blossoming and what you are harvesting.
(If you’re asking, “What about what we’re releasing?” I’ve heard arguments for releasing at both the full and new moon, and right now I’m doing that part of the cycle at the full moon, to kick off the waning part of the cycle, but it’s really what feels good to you.)
I did the same moon practice for years, with little variation. The same 2 questions for each new or full moon.
Eventually, the practice started to feel more like a chore than a spell. I had to put out post-its to remind myself to do it.
And that was a sign that I wasn’t as connected to it anymore, or it wouldn’t have felt like I needed reminding.
I felt ashamed. What kind of a witch was I, to not even feel inspired by the moon? The thing is, I’d lost the inspiration part of it. I still loved the moon, but I felt like she’d become someone I could only interact with through a set of boxes to check.
And I realized that something was fundamentally wrong, if my spiritual practice had become about satisfying my OCD rather than, well, spirituality.
So I took a long break. I told myself, “Don’t do this just to do it. Stop doing your moon ritual. [This was VERY HARD to get my OCD to let go of. It took months to even consider the idea.] Just start paying attention to the moon, without writing about it. Notice it in the sky. Notice how you feel day to day, and what’s happening with the moon, and if they relate.” I did this for about a year, I think.
(This happened, not-s0-coincidentally, right before I also stopped taking quite so many notes in therapy, and started paying better attention in the moment.)
Eventually, when I felt I had the energy, I started up again, but not with my own ritual - I started doing moon rituals put together by a colleague I like. (This is where I picked up the practice of releasing at the full moon!) If you’re into moon cycle support directly connected to your birth chart, check out Reena’s wonderful work.
I loved those rituals, for a while, and they played the very important role of reconnecting me with moon practice from a new angle, and reminding me how moon magic should feel: joyful, empowering, inspired.
And when they weren’t the right fit for me anymore, I felt like I had a solid, happy connection to the moon to help me create my own rituals once more.
Here’s what I’m doing these days:
Every morning, when I pull a card and write about what it means (my morning prayer), I also write down where the moon is in its cycle. (For example, today is waning gibbous, the last day of that phase before the last quarter moon.)
A few days before the new or full moon, I light a black or white candle on my altar and burn it for a while each day. This helps me intentionally tune into the building moon energy.
At the new or full moon, I journal for a while about what the atmosphere feels like and how that moon phase has been reflected in my own life. Then I answer these questions:
New Moon: What has been releasing since the full moon? What has what seeds am I planting?
Full Moon: What has blossomed since the new moon? What am I releasing?
This outline is not rigid. I do a version of it that feels right on the day.
My most important realization came when I was doing September’s new moon ritual. I like to look back at what I wrote the last 2 rituals, so during this ritual, I was looking back at August’s new moon and August’s full moon.
As I did this, I noticed something important: I wasn’t looking back because it was a box to check, but rather because it would expand my understanding of the current moment. “This is witnessing, not tracking,” I wrote.
And when I reread those words on September’s full moon, I bracketed them and drew a heart next to them.
Back when I was doing that same rigid moon ritual for years, I was tracking. I thought of the practice as a responsibility to myself and the moon, and I was rigid in my rereading, comparing, and looking forward.
Witnessing, while it has similar journal prompts, is a completely different practice from tracking.
It’s about being present and giving myself what I need now, not giving myself (or the moon) what I hypothetically might need based on a rubric I came up with years ago. Years ago me didn’t know what present me would be experiencing. (A fun aspect of life, if an alarming one for my OCD.)
Tracking feels satisfying in a thin way. The dopamine hit of “I met my own expectation!” and the relief of “I did my responsibility” feel good, but pressure and arbitrary rules feel bad (though I didn’t notice they were part of the equation at the time, because I wasn’t being honest with myself about feeling bad).
Witnessing feels satisfying in a lush, open way. The joy of strengthening my own awareness of what I need, and then meeting that need, is more challenging than following a rote list of instructions — but the fulfillment that comes from it gives me more than enough juice to meet the challenge.
I can tell that I’m witnessing, not tracking, by how I feel as I do the ritual. Alive? Relaxed? Enthused? Energy field filled with color and imagination? That’s witnessing. Jumpy? Tense? Wanting to look at my notebook to check something? That’s tracking.
I hope you are finding plenty of witnessing, your version of it, this autumn season, and that you’ve got ample time for pumpkin picking and putting up Halloween decorations and watching the yellow leaves fall, or whatever your favorite autumn things are.
Love,
Isabel
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