Charm Torres: Embodying your Moon for Ancestral Sustenance

Friday, July 14, 2023, 1 – 3 PM PDT

Centre A (Zoom)

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Register HERE.  

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Join Charm Torres for an afternoon of exploring the Moon from your birth and the inherent webs of ancestral connection reflected in your birth chart. Your Moon is so much more than your emotional self. Your astrological birth chart is not just about you, but it is also about multilayered stories, people and places that surround your life. We will learn about your Moon with the intention of supporting your ancestral rituals and practices. Embodying and connecting with your Moon can help you navigate your desire for belonging. You’ll come away with practical and creative ideas to nourish your need for ancestral sustenance. 

Disclaimer: You don’t have to know much about astrology to attend. However, it can be helpful to have a basic understanding of your birth chart. Bring your open heart, curious mind and writing tools as we will do some writing-oriented exercises to support your learning.

Embodying Your Moon For Ancestral Sustenance

At the live workshop on Embodying Your Moon For Ancestral Sustenance, I guided the audience with creative writing prompts for developing a character for the Moon in their birth charts. The primary purpose of this exercise was to build an understanding of one’s Moon as a point of entry into ancestral veneration work. Within this premise, exploring one’s birth chart can help us experience more intimacy toward parts of our fate that often require time, grace and kindness.

In addition to the information provided at the workshop, I’d like to share the Lunar Phases as an added detail for your lunar characterization exercise. In the birth chart, the lunar phase describes the quality of the relationship between the sun and the moon when you were born. They express the dynamic balance between the soul’s purpose (sun) and the body’s need for care and safety (moon). 

Find out what your natal lunar phase is and consider these questions for your moon’s characterization:

WAXING PHASES: 

• the moon is 0° to 180° ahead of the sun 
• from the plant’s seed to the flower buds
• oriented towards doing

New Moon – a birth, a seed in the dark

• the moon is 0-45° ahead of the sun
• the moon reflects no light

Questions:

What is emerging in your life?

Do you honour your intuitive impulse?

How do you take risks to birth something into being?

 

Crescent Moon – a vulnerable will to live, a budding plant

• the moon is 45-90° ahead of the sun
• the moon reflects a sliver of light from the right

Questions:

How does the past pull you back?

What struggles have you gone through?

What kind of resilience do you draw upon to fight against inertia?

 

First Quarter Moon – time for action, stems and roots expand

• the moon is 90-135° ahead of the sun
• the moon is half-lit from the right

Questions:

How do you execute your thoughts into action? 

How do you organize in the face of crisis and chaos? 

What is gaining light as you reach the point of no return?

 

Gibbous Moon – exacting perfection, the flower buds form

• the moon is 135-180° ahead of the sun
• the moon is almost full, but not quite

Questions:

What needs to be urgently expressed but needs critical inquiry? 

How do you manage your expectations under immense pressure?

Is your desire for perfection detrimental to realizing your full potential?

 

WANING PHASES: 

• the moon is 180° to 0° behind the sun 
• from the plant’s full bloom to death
• oriented towards being

Full Moon – peak illumination, the flowers bloom

• the moon is 180-135° behind the sun 
• the moon is fully illuminated

Questions:

What oppositional tension are you trying to balance? 

What is being fully shown, for better or for worse? 

What is now clear to you?

 

Disseminating Moon – distributing the harvest, the flowers now bear fruits

• the moon is 135-90° behind the Sun
• the first shadow is casted, moving in from the right

Questions:

What messages and gifts are you now distributing?

Do you readily project your values and beliefs onto others? 

How can you better develop learning from others?

 

Last Quarter Moon – deconstruct and reassess, decomposition begins 

• the moon is 90-45° behind the sun
• the shadow now occupies half of the surface from the right

Questions:

What has reached its peak form? 

How can you start to wrap up and clean up? 

What old structures are you turning away from?

 

Balsamic Moon – descent and transmutation, the seed gets replanted back into the dark soil

• the moon is 45-0° behind the sun
  • the shadow is now engulfing almost the whole surface and the moon reflects only a sliver of light from the left

Questions:

What have you learned and understood deeply? 

What needs to be transformed and let go?

How can you best prepare for the end?

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Charm Torres is a professional divinatory guide – with astrology and tarot as the main tools of her trade  – and a multi-disciplinary artist in her approach to life. She intends to support people in connecting with their agency by offering nuanced and collaborative explorations of her clients’ lived experiences. Charm is a contributor and has been featured in the CHANI App, CUSP, Chatelaine, BBC, Global News Online, Moon Press Issue 12 Paraselene, and Beside Online Magazine. She utilizes astrology and tarot as magical and remedial tools to understand human life in its various cycles. Charm’s work aims to assist people in living life with as much reverence, grace and joy as possible. You can learn more about Charm’s offerings HERE and HERE.   

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Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected]. As the workshop will take place in the format of a Zoom Meeting, audio transcripts will be available upon request.

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.