New Moon Observer

May 27, 2025

Tetragrammaton New Moon Observer is best experienced in broadsheet format. Click here to read the full PDF.

Cosmic Respiration and the Four Elements

Molly Hankins, March 2025

By deliberately observing the light as it travels through air, we can “hold onto it” with our awareness and thereby recreate the same process of using the four elements. “We absorb the light through a network of minute channels in our bodies and our whole being vibrates with greater intensity. Of course, light can affect some work in us without our conscious collaboration, but if we are attentive to the work it is doing and eager to take part in it, the results will be greatly enhanced.”

The “luminous particles” released by consciously focusing on absorbing the sun’s rays strengthen our energy and physical bodies by optimizing the process of cellular turnover. Everyday, 1% of our cells, around 330 billion, are replaced with new ones. By consciously creating more energy to fuel these natural processes, we free up more energy for creativity, magical practice and anything else we care to do…

Some Thoughts on the Common Toad

George Orwell, 1946

At any rate, spring is here, even in London N1, and they can’t stop you enjoying it. This is a satisfying reflection. How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can’t. So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, Spring is still Spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it…

The Principles of the Nature Cure System

Benedict Lust, 1918

The prime object of natural healing is to give the principle of life the line of least resistance, that it may enable man to possess the most abundant health.

What is life? The finite mind of man fails to comprehend the nature of this mysterious principle. The philosopher says “Life is the sum of the forces that resist detail,” but that definition only increases its obscurity.

The spark of life flickers in the sockets of millions and is about to go out. What system of medicine will most surely restore that flickering spark to a steady, burning flame?…

Tetragrammaton on Monet

Even the great master of Impressionism himself, who had taught the world how to capture nature, light, color, and form in all of its beauty and translate the splendour of the environment into oil and canvas, felt humbled by the view ahead of him. He laboured over the works here. The sun, the trees, the sea, all were, as he wrote in letters to friends and contemporaries, almost too beautiful to bear — “In order to paint here one would need gold and precious stones”…

Parting (Museum of Suspense)

Ale Nodarse, April 2025

Our own mortal vision is set within the work. We are consigned to a lower realm. We are like them: those figures who, to the right of the dark outcropping, peer up. As one figure points and as the other raises a hand to forehead (as if to guard his vision from excessive light), we may recall when we have looked similarly to the sky above. The distance of cosmic events unfolding there, above — whether eclipse or ascension — may remind us of our proximity here, below. For a moment, the painting’s suspense might remind us of our shared conditions: of gravity, of departures, and of the periodic longing to overcome them both.

In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene carries news of Christ’s ascension. “Do not cling to me,” Christ tells her, “for I have not yet ascended […].” Christ continues with an instruction to go to the apostles, “to go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

As the chosen messenger, Mary becomes another apostle. The painting of her departure may be said to recollect this moment, as her temporary ascension mirrors that of the man she once knew and sought to grasp. Apart from one’s own beliefs, the image finds poignancy in this lingering of leavings. Mary’s stance remains open. Her eyes turn skyward, and her arms outstretch — less certainty and more question. That question may be a familiar one: Who do we look up to when we look up and away?…