Quietly now, below the braying noise of the world, the moon takes her leave. On soft silver she slips silently behind the veil that shepherds her transition. Her rebirth in Aquaria will deliver the next lunar year and fresh threshold in a brand new cycle full of them. Mythologies will glitch and shift as wings and fire breath give way to the itch of ill fitting skins and a promising gleam beyond the moult.

Every dark moon found her wandering these enchanted moors, a practice she had employed for lifetimes as she bore witness to painful rising and falling in the world of men. For far too many centuries now she had held the terrible cost to her aching heart as the moon turned her face to darkness. They wept together, tears turning to crystal in the frozen night air and falling from the sky like diamonds to litter the landscape with hope.

Not all moons are created equal. The journey through the deep treacle of the Aquarian balsam is no ordinary dark mooning. Descending like an otherworldly cloak as beneath its soft sparking folds you are transported, this caravan of selves.

Dark moon bolthole, anyone? You know by now darklings my penchant for the isolation and wonder of the dark moon. And its blessed bliss is now upon us in the midst of madness, mayhem and a solid first week Mercing.

We have officially entered the balsamic phase or the deepest dark of the moon. How well you dance through your darkness is the scene setter (and greatest determinant, in this witch's opinion) of how effective your new moon will be. And this next new moon in a few days - a solar eclipse and the lunar new year - is a Very Big Deal and the mightiest this year.

Just let it go. How many times has that old chesnut been flung in our direction with a well meaning lob? By the time our stomach sinks we know it is truth and our mind madly scrambles to find a way around it. There is none. If something in your life is toxic and you know it deep down in your marrow, it is time to let it go. And the dark moon is the perfect time to do it, adding Lady Luna’s gentle breath out to your own deep sigh of recognition.