The Sex of the Moon

Another Archive item from the Pagan Movement newsletters by Tony Kelly:

The sex of the Moon is a trick of language, but this trick of language must itself have its origin in myth. The Moon tends to be masculine in the Teutonic and Slavic languages and feminine in the Romance and Celtic.

I thought the Moon magical for as far back as I can remember and have many happy memories of her. When I was young I used to stay with my grandmother, who had many fascinating tales to tell me about all sorts of things that were old, and my uncle lived there too and did astrology and told me about the pull of the Moon on the tides, and I was in awe for the mysterious force that the Moon exerted, and I don't know if this was for the sheer wonder of it, or because my uncle was himself in awe of it and his awe was infectious. But I used to lie in bed at night, just under the window and next to my grandmother who slept in a big bed alongside, and more often than not, the Moon would be high in the sky, always it seemed, big, bright and full. She sailed high in the clouds, dashed from cloud bank to cloud bank, and I was saddened when she was hidden, and elated when she burst through in a dazzle of silvery light again. It was beautiful, but it was also magical, serene, and strangely powerful. It seemed liked hours that I used to lie there watching her, and though I didn't put it into words, it was then that I fell in love with her and I've been deeply in love with her ever since. They say you go mad' if you sleep in the light of the Moon. I'm not surprised. If they'd told me that before I'd done it, I'd have done it purposely! But I wouldn't call it madness. Rather I'd call it enchantment. It's a strange feeling. Ancient. And beautiful.

So old, so very long ago ....

The wood was vast and there was no sky overhead. The trees were immensely tall and very old, and belonged to the forest. They were separate trees and communicated as trees do, but they were also part of the pulse of the woodland. There was something intense about them, not human, very, very old, and the moisture on them and the tree mosses belonged to the forest. It would be perilous to interfere with them, yet it would be sacrilegious too. You couldn't help loving them because they were magic, but loving them because they were trees and because they belonged to the forest.
The light was darkened as it is in the greenwood and there were paths. But it was very quiet, and peaceful, and strangely menacing, and loveable. It wasn't the sort of place you'd want to be alone in. And it wasn't the sort of place you'd want to leave. It's the sort of place that, if a god had appeared with horns and cloven feet and the magic pipes, you wouldn't be too surprised.
And there was something alluring, and bewitching, and magic about it. The trees and everything growing in the greenwood was alive and it was aware, but it wasn't human awareness. It was the diffused mind of the woodland, as much one tree as another, and as much all of them, but not divided. A presence. Thinking. Brooding. Aware of the people in its midst. It was vast, but deep and quiet, immensely powerful, but passive. It was green thinks, and it belonged to all that grows in the greenwood, and all the plants that come from her womb. And green thinks are not like red thinks. They're old, and they were old when red thinks were young. Old memories, an aching sadness, and separation, but so long ago. But here in the greenwood, we were in the presence of green thinks, in its own land, on sacred ground, and the faerie mind was more powerful than the human, beckoning, but menacing, threatening, but loving. So old, so very long ago.....

TONY KELLY (circa 1970) from The Pagan Movement Archive