The Moon pulls the tides of the ocean, but the question that won’t let us go is simpler and stranger: what is it pulling in us? Melanie Reinhart joins me for a wide, grounded, moonlit ramble through lunar consciousness, astrology, and the body. We start with the moon as a constant companion for earthlings, a reliable rhythm of waxing and waning that can steady us when life feels politically, personally, and collectively turbulent.

From there, we drop into somatic territory. We talk craniosacral therapy and the experience of “tides” in the system, from surface noise to the deeper mid tide and the long tide where time feels different. That becomes a living metaphor for the lunar path: not a heroic push to achieve, but a deepening that restores life force. We also bring in the Orphic Hymn to the Moon as an invocation practice and explore why reverence matters, not as an antique idea but as a way to relate to powers we still live inside.

We get practical about moon phases too: the dark of the moon as a window for retreat, the full moon as an emotional amplifier, and how lunar timing can support better choices in work, conflict, learning, and creativity. We move into dreams as night-world digestion, why forcing interpretations can block the nourishment, and how light pollution mirrors a cultural forgetting of darkness, sleep, and imagination. If you care about the lunar cycle, dreamwork, depth psychology, the Jungian unconscious, or the roots of astrology in the night sky, this conversation is for you.

*the above blurb was auto-generated by Buzzsprout's AI.

Cover Artwork is The Fairy of the moon by Hermann Kaulbach (b&w) circa 1891 with a background extension from Canva.

The Orphic Hymns including the one in this episode dedicated to the moon, and the invocation with Musaeus. It's the Thomas Taylor translation from 1792. Melanie's personal favourite.

Find out more about Melanie and her work here. She has many great books including, famously, Chiron and the Healing Journey.

Melanie reads from:

Dane Rudhyar, The Lunation Cycle: A Key to the Understanding of Personality, from the section “The Pattern of the Lunation Cycle.”

Rudolf Steiner, “In Pure Rays of Light”
The verse appears in Esoteric Instructions (GA 264), with related commentary in an esoteric lesson of 5 December 1907 (GA 266/I).

We discuss:

Iain McGilchrist's book: The Master and his Emissary and associate right brain activity with the moon and left brain with Mercury.

Jung, obviously, comes up a lot. I paraphrase this quotation from him.

We also talk about the Tides in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. If you'd like to know more about that the work of Franklyn Sills (may he rest in peace) is a good starting point.

Clearing up the confusion of the 'far side' vs the 'dark side' of the moon we go to NASA...

But always appreciative to Pink Floyd for creating such confusion but also such a cracking album.

Melanie also mentions the Dark Sky Movement. Such important work. Have a look at darksky.org.

We also acknowledge that "mentor" is not etymologically related to Mene or taurus. What we're engaging in during that section is a nice bit of folk etymology.

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