Buck Moon — July Full Moon

The moon is full tonight, low and warm at the horizon, the way full moons always are in the thick of summer.

This one is called the Buck Moon. Named by the Algonquin peoples who noticed something specific happening in the world around this time of year: the bucks’ antlers are in full, visible growth. Not yet hardened. Not yet the impressive rack they’ll become by autumn. Still covered in velvet, soft, vascular, alive, growing so fast you can almost watch it happen if you know where to look.

And here’s the thing almost nobody mentions about a buck at this stage: he is clumsy. He is motivated beyond reason. He does not yet know what he’s carrying on his own head, or how to carry it, or what it’s actually for. He just knows something is growing, and it wants out into the world, and he is going to go crashing through the summer figuring out what that means whether he’s ready or not.

I feel like the young buck this Buck Moon.

Wayfarer House is new. We are reaching out into the world for our people — the hermits, the recluses, the solitary practitioners, some of whom chose that solitude on purpose, some of whom had it handed to them by circumstances they never asked for.

And we are trying, honestly, not to get it wrong. We don’t have the velvet hardened into antlers yet. We’re still growing this thing in full view of everyone, a little clumsy, a lot motivated, figuring out in real time what we’re actually carrying and what it’s for.

And here’s what I want you to sit with tonight, under this particular full moon: you are probably doing the exact same thing.

Whatever your own spiritual path looks like right now — the Wheel you’re learning, the tradition you’re piecing together from fragments of a dozen different sources, the practice you started without anyone to teach you the steps — you are also a young buck. Still growing. Still soft in places that haven’t hardened yet. Still crashing through your own version of this same summer, trying not to get it wrong, motivated by something you can feel more clearly than you can explain.

That stumbling isn’t failure. It’s the growth stage itself. You cannot skip past the velvet straight into the hardened rack. The antlers have to grow soft and visible and a little embarrassing before they can become what they’re eventually going to be.

Go outside if you can. Find the moon. Let it be low and warm and a little clumsy in its own way — not yet at its highest point, still rising, still becoming what it will be later in the night.

Then name one thing that is currently in velvet in your own life. Something growing. Something not yet hardened. Something you’re still fumbling your way through, motivated more than you are skilled, trying, honestly, not to get it wrong.

You don’t have to know yet what it’s going to become. The buck doesn’t know either. He just keeps growing, keeps crashing through the summer, trusts that the velvet will eventually harden into whatever it’s actually for.

And if you work with crystals — tonight’s the night. Set them out before you sleep. Let the light do what light does.

Let them grow, too, in whatever soft, unfinished stage they’re still in.