Meeting the Runes in Mani’s Silver-Hall

What the moon can teach us about secret knowledge by Chaise Levy

It is the evening of the full moon, and in the whirlwind pace of life I’ve barely stopped to notice what is unfolding in the sky. Rushing from the car to the house to begin the bed time routine, I am stopped in my tracks by a breathy “Wow!” from our one year old, I stop myself and see his silver dollar sized eyes bright with the moon's face, fingers pointed off into the sky. He had just seen the moon for the first time. This was a once and a lifetime moment, where the moon opened the gateway to the sky. Arrested by the moons gaze, we stood together under the silver light my own wonder revived by the simple act.

So in the search for a ceremonial life of depth, meaning, and purpose these remembrances lead me toward the moon. As the gateway to a relationship with the depths of the cosmos, but also as a guide to the tide like swaying of the energies of life. A counterweight to the solar staunchness that is so often called for in this world, learning to maintain an appearance to shore up the edges of a life, and plot a course are valued.

The Wolves Pursuing Sol and Mani (1909) by J. C. Dollman

In the Voluspa we read:

‘Sól, companion of Máni,21 cast from the south

her right hand22 over the sky-horse-deer(?);23

Sól did not know where she had halls,

stars did not know where they had stations,

Máni did not know what might he had.24

6. ‘Then all the great powers, the most holy gods,

went to their doom-seats,25 and deliberated about it:

they gave names to night and its kindred,

called them morning and midday,

afternoon and evening, to count the years.26

The moon's name is Mani, companion or sibling of Sol the sun, later in the Edda the giant Vafþrúðnir in a battle of wisdom with the one-eyed tells us that Sol and Mani are the children of Mundilfari whose name may mean “the one who turns with time.” Looking around at these times, when ecologically, socially, politically the structures and patterns of the world seem to be loosing their bounds it is good magic to look back at cosmogonic forces, maybe in working magic with their moment of tuning we can find the harmonic resonance once again.