Moon Dance

image by Joanna Crane

The Moon Dance There are physical places that communicate with a part of our soul even before our consciousness becomes aware. For me, that place was Mexico.Its traditions, its plants, its culture entered into me without asking permission and I let myself be carried away as in a dream. So it was when I learned about the Moon Dance. The Mother of Dance circleT was born in 1992 in Mexico, thanks to a group of women who followed their dreams, visions and studies of the Borgia Code, and following the ancestral traditions transmitted by wise old women from the four directions of the earth. Following my intuition, I decided to participate and I went to the house of the "Abuela" to ask her permission to dance in her circle. It was a ritual practice. The first words I heard her utter when I timidly presented myself at the door were “Go immediately and put on a skirt... if you don't have one, we'll lend it to you, otherwise you can't come in!” Abuela Tonalmin is a strong and resolute woman but also a sweet one, and wants to remind us that the skirt lets the energy channel connect us to the earth flow. The Abuela house was an interesting place, a corner like any other in crowded Mexico City, but it was full of beautiful, strong women who were rehearsing songs for the dance. In the following days I prepared the "rezos", prayers with other women. We created our mixture of tobacco leaves and dried plants to fill 208 colored bags: 52 for each of the symbolic colors of the four directions (red, yellow, black and white), which were then tied together and placed around a stick to be donated to the circle and burned during the dance. I borrowed a white "atuendo" (traditional dress) with a blue border, and a few days later I was standing in line at the entrance. I came out completely transformed. For four nights, until dawn, we all danced in a ceremonial circle, praying for the good of humanity and reactivating the feminine essence within us. We fasted all the time, drinking only water and infusions and participating in 8 temazcal (sweat lodges) at sunset and sunrise. It is indescribable to dance with 700 women under the Full Moon. The first days you feel sleepy and cold. Sometimes you have visions and you see your animal guide dancing with you. The last night, you dance as if you were your guide and you no longer feel hunger and fatigue. You are just part of a collective prayer, and you cry for joy seeing the old “Abuela” dance with the energy of a young woman. I will never forget the silent men who supported the dance by preparing the burning stones for the temazcals and lovingly bringing us something to drink during the night. And the women in the circle, carriers of wind medicine, who sang and played the Panwewe drum all night; the women of fire, who performed sahumava, (energetic cleans) all of us protecting ourselves with copal smoke (incense resin); and the women of water and those of earth who lead the sweat huts. Even today I keep the Sacred Pipe, that represents the feminine (obsidian) and the masculine(wooden handle) and on some full moon nights , I share the pipe with other women and I raise my prayer to the sky, sure there is already another circle waiting for me .