On this episode, I am joined by Julie Peters. She is my first repeat guest that I have on the show. Julia is a yoga and meditation teacher, writer, Tarot reader, and counselor living and working in Edmonton, Alberta.
We discuss her latest book: The Full Moon Yearbook. The Full Moon Yearbook combines lore and seasonal lunar wisdom from Indigenous, Celtic, and East Asian cultures in a colorful and beautifully illustrated celebration of the power of the full moon. Over thirteen chapters, we learn the stories, seasonal moods, rituals, Tarot cards, and yoga postures that match the energy of each full moon throughout the calendar year.
The Full Moon Yearbook — Julie Peters
Julie Peters Wellness - YEG Counselling & Tarot (@juliepeterswellness) • Instagram photos and videos
The book is absolutely stunning and illustrated by Lauren Spooner.
Lauren Spooner Designs – Graphic Design and Illustration
Filled Up Cup - Unconventional Self Care for Modern Women
Ashley (@filledupcup_) • Instagram photos and videos
On this episode, I am joined by Julie Peters. She is my first repeat guest that I have on the show. Julia is a yoga and meditation teacher, writer, Tarot reader, and counselor living and working in Edmonton, Alberta.
We discuss her latest book: The Full Moon Yearbook. The Full Moon Yearbook combines lore and seasonal lunar wisdom from Indigenous, Celtic, and East Asian cultures in a colorful and beautifully illustrated celebration of the power of the full moon. Over thirteen chapters, we learn the stories, seasonal moods, rituals, Tarot cards, and yoga postures that match the energy of each full moon throughout the calendar year.
The Full Moon Yearbook — Julie Peters
Julie Peters Wellness - YEG Counselling & Tarot (@juliepeterswellness) • Instagram photos and videos
The book is absolutely stunning and illustrated by Lauren Spooner.
Lauren Spooner Designs – Graphic Design and Illustration
Filled Up Cup - Unconventional Self Care for Modern Women
Ashley (@filledupcup_) • Instagram photos and videos
Welcome to the Filled Up Cup podcast. We are a different kind of self care resource, one that has nothing to do with bubble baths and face masks, and everything to do with rediscovering yourself. We bring you real reviews, honest experiences, and unfiltered opinions that will make you laugh, cry, and most importantly, leave you with a filled up cup.
Ashley:I am so excited. I have Julie Peters joining me today. Julie is an author, a counselor, a yoga teacher, and a tarot card reader. Her newest book is the Full Moon Yearbook. Thank you so much for joining me, Julie.
Julie:Thank you so much for having me back. It's really great to see you and chat with you again.
Ashley:Can you tell us a little bit about the full moon yearbook?
Julie:Yes, absolutely. So this book goes through the 13 moons of a year. So the idea is that rather than counting time by dates and by month The ancient way of counting time was by moons, so each of the moons had nicknames, depending on, you know, where you look all over the world, there would be, you know, you might have heard of harvest moon and strawberry moon and hunters moon, things like that. So I really just dove in to the meaning of each of those. Moons, you know, some of their common nicknames. There's a yoga pose for each moon. There's mythology related to some of the moons. There's a tarot card for each one. And some sort of suggestions for seasonal wellness so that you can follow. your year in alignment with the cycles of the moon and the sun, the seasons, as opposed to, you know, it's January, whatever. And we should be doing this on this day. Cause I think in our culture, we don't live seasonally and it's actually so good for our bodies and our hearts and our minds to really come back to that cyclic way of living. I think it can just be really helpful in something that we can integrate into our everyday lives relatively too.
Ashley:I love that because they think. It is so true that we don't go by the seasons, and we don't let that guide what our body... needs in that sense, whether it is like you were talking about the moon and the pull that it has on us, or even the food that we can get from those different seasons that we were never meant to be on a January to December,, 24 hour cycle, like that just really wasn't how time was originally invented. So it is really important for people, especially wanting to focus on their health and their wellness to. Think about it in a different way, and I really love that you have the different names of the moon, that you talk about the English Medieval, the Wiccan, I love the fact that it is not from different points of view, but it has so many different options for people.
Julie:Yeah, and what I loved about learning that is, depending on where you were looking and which moon you were looking at, some of the names really align well. You know, the August moon is pretty related to either heat or grain, it's just sort of what's going on at that. And I was only looking at Northern Hemisphere. Because there are lots of moon names in the southern hemisphere in the same way, too. It's just, I was following the northern hemisphere rhythm of things, so that's what I was looking at. But it is, interesting to know that, some of the names from First Nations, you know, here in Canada and the US would still have a relationship to some of the Old English or Celtic names, from Europe that there would be sort of a similarity there. So it was kind of cool to see how. Even though we might be coming from such different places in the world, we share this, we share this cyclic experience of, being human beings and living, in a natural world that we can feel kind of divorced from.
Ashley:I think so many times we focus on how divided we are, but to really dig deep into it and to see that we really are so connected, I think is so beautiful and something definitely need to focus on going forward.
Julie:There are some amazing coincidences in terms of the science of the moon that I find really fascinating for that reason. And the one of them that you might already know is just because of the rhythms of how the moon phases and how the same we are. On the planet. So, you and your long distance lover across the world will be looking at the same moon, maybe at different times in the day, but you will be seeing the same one. I also learned a little more specifically about something called geosynchronous orbit which is and I didn't really know this, maybe everybody knows this, but it's the idea that the moon does rotate and so does the earth. But the way the moon rotates, it does so in such a way that it's always showing the same face to the earth. So that idea of the dark side of the moon, there's a side we really never see. And I feel like it's sort of like a lover always turning her face to us, you know, because she is moving. It's just that she's always looking at us. I find that really. So poetic. And there's a third one, which is that just coincidentally, as it happens the sun is 400 times bigger than the moon, but it's also 400 times farther away. So when we have an eclipse, the moon appears to completely cover the sun, even though it's so much smaller because of that coincidental distance. And so we have these amazing solar lunar phenomena, several times a year, just because there's this strange coincidence of how far away they are and how big they are. And we get this incredible visual change with the moon and the sun quite frequently, just because of that odd coincidence. It's just again, quite poetic and quite strange. Like sort of the chances of that happening, like it's not, you know. There's just not that slight difference of how far away that the moon and the sun are, for example, that we couldn't have eclipses. We do have eclipses. It's very cool.
Ashley:It is really cool. And it's also one of those things that you can look at it from, like you said, that really poetic side. So whether you're left brain or right brain thinking, there's something for everybody with like, it's just, The universe is so cool.
Julie:Yeah, absolutely. I'm definitely someone that's interested in both of those sides, you know, looking at it from the more scientific practical side, and also looking at it from the sort of witchier, more energetic spiritual aspect of things. I just don't think they conflict, as often as sometimes people think they do.
Ashley:I think it doesn't have to be an either or. Exactly. Yeah. Is that what made you sort of inspired to write this book, is sort of thinking about your interest for both sides?
Julie:It's one of them for sure. I've been working with the moon for a long, long time. My first book was actually about a set of tantric moon phase goddesses. And through that book and that practice, you can go through a phase of the moon from the new moon to the full moon. And every single night has a different goddess and a different meaning and a different lesson. So that's a practice I would do over and over again with many moon cycles where I'd be doing, you know, the meditations and the practices every night for a moon cycle and really paying attention to, the energy of this particular day of the moon, like when the sort of lower energy feeling of the new moon starts to shift into the waxing moon and so on. And I have a series it's called the spiritual meaning of X moon. So like the harvest moon, or, you know, one of these moon nicknames, the beaver moon was November. And my publisher, David and Charles got interested in that series because I think I have one for every month of the year. And often they would include rituals and practices and, David and Charles was just like, what if we made a book of this? I was like, well, that's an extremely good idea. Let's absolutely do it. I got really, really excited. Thank you. Because I got to, you know, research into some of the things that I'm most excited about, which is, you know, mythology is something I've always loved the symbols and archetypes of tarot is something that I've always loved and always practiced, but only in the last few years started to really take more seriously and, do readings a little more professionally and so on. So I think it's really a collection of. A lot of things that I've been excited about over the last many years, all linked together through the story of the cycle of, the moon through a solar cycle, like the moon and the sun. Right.
Ashley:I love when we can find things like that, that really do sort of light our soul up and become our passion in a way that we can share with other people. I feel like it just feels so much more authentic that way. And it's just so To receive things that come from people's passion.
Julie:Yeah, absolutely. And you know, like I was telling you just before we started recording my previous books were a little more niche, right? So there's the Moon Goddess book. I mean, it's wonderful, but it's very, it's about Tantra and a set of goddesses. Like not everybody's interested in that. My second book, which also I love is about recovering from sexual assault, which is just not a topic that everybody wants to necessarily dive into. It's been so nice for me to share something that is so accessible, not only for me from my sort of, you know, intellectual research based writing perspective, but also the illustrations by Lauren Spooner are so beautiful. I've just loved seeing, what she comes up with in relationship with the symbols and the energies and the mood of. Each of the month's moons like it's really nice to have something so visual too, because that's not my talent. I don't really have any visual talent, but it was a real joy to kind of bring that to get those two aspects together in working with someone in that way. I'm just very excited for everyone to see the book, hold it in their hands, you know, dig into the parts that they find interesting and maybe skip over the parts that they're not, there's lots of different things that you can kind of pull out from each of the months here.
Ashley:It is a very, very beautiful book. It almost looks like it could be a coffee table book. The information in it is so interesting as well. But just visually, if somebody who hadn't seen it, it is almost one that you would display out versus just on a bookshelf.
Julie:I feel like it's a perfect coffee table book too, in that you can pick it up and just like flip through to whatever month you're on and just see what's going on, you know, for seasonal wellness that month. You don't have to read it cover to cover. And maybe people won't, you know, maybe it's more of a resource when people want to connect in with, okay, where am I in the cycle of the year? You know, what do I need to keep in mind? You know, you can pick it up and put it down sort of as you need it. So I think, you know, coffee table book, waiting room, you know, it would be a great one for that.
Ashley:And thinking about for the holiday season, it really is a book for everybody. Whether you have that person in your office that you're. Unsure of what to get them, or whether it's the teen in your life, or whether it's for yourself, that's the great thing about the moon and lunar cycles, and just connecting with ourselves, is that it isn't, like you said, it's not a taboo topic, everybody can relate to it to some degree, there's so much information in here that it's educational, like there's things that you won't necessarily know unless you are somebody who actually studies this, so that it is kind of one of those, Things to make sure to maybe add it to your list this holiday season.
Julie:Yeah, thank you for saying that. I appreciate that. It's international, too. You know, I really enjoyed that aspect of it. in another life, I have a minor in world religions when I was in school. And that was sort of a passion that I mean, I've used it in my writing in lots of different ways, but it was really nice to have an opportunity to sort of dip my toe into, you know, the Celtic traditions and what happens in China around the moon. Just in all of the different mythologies, different goddesses from around the world, there's a tiny little bit of Tantra in there too, from my research from there. But it's accessible in that sense too, where it's not just about one culture or one place in the world. I mean, it's probably Northern Hemisphere specific, but that's a pretty wide sloth.
Ashley:You had talked about the research that you had kind of done for the book. Was there some of the folklore surrounding the moon that you discovered in your research that was like really eyeopening or surprising to you?
Julie:Oh, so much. Yes. The folklore was really fun to learn about. I think one of the things that I found really interesting that I'll share is how often we don't realize we are celebrating Thanksgiving. Thank you. The pagan holidays from ancient traditions that we don't necessarily know the names for. So, in bulk is the early February celebration. It's sort of a part of the witches wheel of the year, like ancient. Pagan traditions and that's Groundhog Day and it's St. Patrick's Day and yeah, Groundhog Day, it's funny because we don't think of that as having any, religious or spiritual aspect necessarily, but it's actually based in a tradition of weather divination, like in bulk would be the day that we would be doing the weather divination for the year. And so that's kind of how Groundhog Day is related to that. And I think for pretty much every one of the Wheel of the Year celebrations, which for those that are unfamiliar with it. They're marking time in the solar year, usually, so it'll be the two solstices and the cross quarter days between the solstices. So there will be harvest celebrations, whatever it is. Lunasa is another one that I find really interesting. I think it's August 1st. But those traditions were have sort of evolved to become the summer county fair. So it's like Lunassa was like the day that you would have games and you would have sports competitions and you would gather together and you'd eat your grains and stuff like that. So when we do. You know, in Vancouver, I used to go to the PNE, you have your mini donuts and you have your corn on the cob and you have your roller coasters, like that's actually all based in or came from or was inspired by the Lunasa tradition. So, you know, we don't even realize that we're celebrating these things even as we go through the year. So it's kind of nice to see how we already have a relationship with these seasonal holidays, even if we're not thinking about it that way. I'll also just share a funny story. It's just very weird. From Norse mythology. So July is the mead moon. And this is based on the idea that June was traditionally the month to get married. And then July was traditionally the honeymoon month. So honeymoon meant you would go away for about a month with your new partner and you would drink mead and get to know each other. And one of the pieces of folklore is that the family or whoever would give the new couple mead. And if a baby boy was born nine months later, they would compliment the mead maker on the quality of his product. So that was one piece. And then there's just a story from Norse mythology which is about who was this man created by the gods to hold all of the knowledge in the universe. So he was someone that would, he just knew everything. So he'd go around answering everybody's questions, sort of like an on call Google sort of guy. And there were These two people who really wanted that power. So they tricked him into coming over and answering their questions and they killed him and they mixed his blood with honey and this that to create this kind of elixir of knowledge. So anyone who would take a sip of this mead would immediately become a scholar. So Odin, the Allfather, found out about this. Odin is the sort of the king of the gods in the Norse mythology, and he's someone who really wants knowledge. That's his big thing. He wants to know everything. So he found out about this mead. By this point, it was held by Gunnlod, this woman, and I'm probably mispronouncing these names but the three vats were held by this woman at this point, and so he made a deal with her that he would sleep with her. Every night for three nights and for each of those three nights, he was entitled to one sip of each of the vats of mead.. So she agreed to this. He did his three nights. He went to take his three sips, and sure enough, he's a God. Each sip was the entire barrel of mead. So he swallowed down all this mead in one go and then started racing for the door'cause he knew he wasn't supposed to do this. Immediately turned into an eagle, flew back off home, and as he was flying with his belly full of mead, drops of mead fell out of the eagles. mouth or sometimes other places, depending on where you get the story from. And these sort of soiled drops of mead fell to earth and they are responsible for all the bad poets and musicians in the world. And the good poets and musicians were, directly gifted the mead by Odin himself. So I think that's just a very weird sort of classically Norse kind of disgusting story about mead and it's magic because people still think of mead. is having magical properties and people do still drink it in this ritualistic way today. So who knows what magic it can bring and hopefully we'll drink it and end up being the good poets and musicians and not the bad ones.
Ashley:Hopefully. I love that. I love thinking about the root of things because I think with technology as accessible as the knowledge has become, a lot of the times, like, Say, for example, even if you're looking for a word, my daughter does this to me all the time and it'll drive me nuts. She'll be like, how do you spell something? I'll spell it, but she'll also Google it at the same time. She'll get four letters and she'll be like I don't need any more. And then just kind of goes with it, but we're not really learning or we're not really finding the root of things. It's like our knowledge has become so surface based, but it is so interesting to really think about that. There's no reason really that we should be following just a specific like Christian or Catholic calendar where it tells us about just different holidays and things like that. I think for too long, we're just kind of like, okay, it's New Year's. Okay, it's this, but we never really think of like. And how does my body feel? How does this actually work for me? Or things like daylight savings time and how we change things all the time. We never really think of how it affects us, why we do it, and really question it. So I love the fact that there is so much history with whether it's the folklore, whether it's actually scientific fact, that we can figure out those things and really investigate.
Julie:Yeah, absolutely. And I think for me, starting to learn about this seasonal wisdom in this way has really helped my work in a lot of ways. And I mean, my work is relatively flexible. Unlike I know some people's, but you know, There's a parallel between, for example, the new moon phase and the winter solstice and the menstrual phase of a menstrual cycle. This is a time for darkness, for quiet, for self reflection. This is the Yule or Christmas time, you know, it's December. And so why are we trying so hard to get so much done when it's the darkest, coldest part of the year? I think a lot of the time, it sort of depends on how you are about it, like the holidays. cAn be joyful. I think for some people they're very stressful. And one of the things that I recommend in my December chapter, which is Long Night's Moon, is to do some grief work in December. We think of that as the end of the calendar year. It's a very natural time to be thinking about grief, to be looking at, what happened over the last year? What did I lose? What did I gain? What do I want to be different in the new year? And holidays can be very triggering if we're dealing with literal grief. Like if we've lost someone always around the holidays, that's going to be triggered. There's just, it's for pretty much everybody. So what if we actually give that the space it needs? For me, if I do a grief ceremony of some kind on the solstice itself, it gives me so much more space to enjoy the holiday celebrations that I have with people. So, you know, December is what it is. But then I think January in a lot of ways is harder for people because all of that distraction is gone. And now we're just, we're in bleak, we're in cold, we're in dark. We've just spent all our money, we're getting all this pressure to like go on a diet for news resolutions and stuff like that. There's a lot of like body image stuff that can come into it. We need even more tenderness, I think during the wolf moon, which in the book I talk about is like, it's another word for it is the hungry moon, you know, is traditionally this time where, okay, some of the food stores are running low, that you can hear the wolves howling, out in the night it's not time yet for example, the SAP to start coming in, which is in March. And so it's a hungry time. And I think metaphorically January is very hungry. It's a time when we're really feeling like emotionally hungry. It's a time when we really need tenderness and affection and care. And this is ironically the time of year that we're on all these diets and trying to go to the gym every day. That's just not what our bodies are built for. We should be eating soups and like cuddling and blankets and sleeping more in January. We can get to the gym in may, you know, when it's like the, energy is a lot more conducive to that type of thing. So I just found, learning that kind of stuff and giving myself the grace to know that, these are quieter times that actually serves the brighter times when there is more energy from the sun, for me to pull on, those are my more creative seasons, I can get more done during those times. Because we still live in this very, like, hyperproductive society, of course, I still have to remind myself, especially in November, slow down in November, I get sick often in November, you know, it's when the sudden cold turns, and it's really the time when we should be wrapping up and slowing down, not amping up and doing more, and I have to remind myself of that because, of course, I'm a product of my culture as we all are but I think working with the moon has really helped me to shift that in myself and just take Better care of myself, give myself more permission to be where I'm at.
Ashley:That's such a good point, like the permission of it all. I feel like the more people talk about it or the more that they can read about it, they realize, Hey, it's not just me that's struggling with this hustle or that I can't get all these things done or that I want to jam all of this stuff into December to create this memory or this magic or whatever. Women traditionally are the ones that end up taking on so much of that mental load. And then Yeah, by Christmas it's like it doesn't necessarily even feel the same enjoyment because it's like I need a mom to do all these things for me instead of me creating all the magic. So I think it's really important to, if you know that you feel that way, to let yourself off the hook, that it isn't just you, and that a lot of us do feel that burnout, that it's like, it's so cold in the morning, like even getting out of bed, like
Julie:it's just, when it's pitch dark, yeah, yeah,
Ashley:or the seasonal depression, It kind of leads into that hustle culture of it all, whereas if we do take that time to be slow and to be intentional about things and not feel like we have to, or that we're like shoulding ourselves like should not shit. It's important to know that. These are quieter months and it's okay to hibernate just like we were always taught that animals did.
Julie:Yeah. One other sort of interesting facts that I found out. So the calendar month names that we use are from ancient Rome. But when the calendar was first created, January and February didn't have any names. So March was the first month of the year, because that was like, okay, it's time for the God of War, March, Mars you know, war starts again in March. Let's do our thing. And then the months are actually numbered up until December 10th month. And then it's just this nothing space. Like there was no name for it for a while because. Nobody's doing anything in January, February, you know, February people would do this sort of cleansing, clearing practice called Februalia. There was like a celebration around cleansing, clearing, atoning, you know, preparing for the new year. And that became the name February, but originally it was nothing. It was just a nothing time. So like, if you kind of remember that if you're in, you know, January, February, maybe let it be a nothing time, let the work start later.
Ashley:I feel like. The spring almost would be a better new year. It really does feel like everything's changing. It feels like more of a rebirth. It feels like we're, I don't know, in a different cycle. So I do think that calling it January 1st, while we're still in pitch black and in debt and I don't want to say that.
Julie:In a dead zone. Yeah. It's an interesting time to choose for a new year. There are different new years from different perspectives from all over the world and winter solstice is. There's an argument for that to be a new year because it is the darkest moment, but it also is the moment when I forget which it is, but it's like the Holly King wins over the, oh, I'm forgetting the, folklore of it from a Wiccan perspective, but it's basically we can think of it as sort of a dark king is raining, from the summer solstice to the winter solstice. It's turning things are turning dark, right? But then after the winter solstice, the light king starts taking over and sun starts increasing until the summer solstice and then the cycle flips again. But, you know, Chinese New Year is in February, usually later February related to the moon. I think it's the second new moon after the. winter solstice makes so much more sense to start your new year then. The witch's new year is samhain and halloween we just had. I love that concept too because it's the idea there is that the new year begins when it sort of starts becoming dark. That's the cross quarter between autumn equinox and winter solstice. So that's the moment when it starts to become dark. And then the idea is that all of the flowers and fruits of the spring are sort of the result of all of that underground stuff. Right. And if we think of that as the new year, then, okay, great. It's our new year. It's time to go to bed and rest and percolate and dream, you know winter is a good time for dreaming, for learning for reflecting. And then by the time, like the light starts to change in February, March, we can start to put some of those dreams and ideas into action, but it's just not action time, you know, between November and. early February. it's still really important work, but it's underground work. It's quiet work. It doesn't look like much on the outside, but if we allow that work to happen, all of our new creative ideas can come through, you know, when the season shifts.
Ashley:I love thinking of it that way. Like, who doesn't want to start their event? Or they're like, new anything in bed, like I love sleeping. So I love the idea of starting the rest and then sort of going up to the peak. Versus starting at the peak and then kind of ending on the rest. It just seems more. Hopeful start.
Julie:Yeah, and I think and I think that concept to that. A lot of work can be done underground. You know, a lot of work can be done. That's not visible on the outside. You know, if you think of how much work a seed has to do underground before you see any green there's a lot happening there. It's not just like nothing. And then suddenly the green comes, I think that's an important thing for us to remember with a lot of things that we're working on is that even when it doesn't look like anything is happening. It is, you know, resting is the most important medicine we have, and it's probably the one we take advantage of least because again, our culture is sort of anti slowness, anti rest, anti darkness. It's, always go, go, go and do, do, do. And there's a place for that, but it needs to be in balance with the other things as well.
Ashley:I definitely agree with that. How did you connect with Lauren for the illustrations in the book?
Julie:You know Lauren actually designed my logo for my business. Oh, awesome. Yeah. She was recommended to me by someone else that I was working with in a business capacity. She was just like, oh, I know this great designer, I absolutely loved everything that she did. She created my logo. And then. When the editor and I were working on ideas for the book, I just said you know, they hadn't picked an illustrator yet. And I was like, well, I'll send you Lauren's name. Like if you like her, you know, check it out. And of course they loved her. I couldn't be more happy with what she did. I think it's really wonderful that she brings a really unique style that I think just matches well with me and what I do.
Ashley:It's always kind of nice to be able to, almost like a puzzle piece, to be able to find somebody that clicks.
Julie:Yeah, exactly.
Ashley:When you were also doing your research for the full moon and maybe with your like just regular practice, maybe this was something that you kind of had already. But do you have a favorite full moon?
Julie:I think my favorite full moon is the one that we just had the hunter's moon or the blood moon, usually in October. The name is a little bit dependent on where the full moon lands in accordance with the autumn equinox. So the moon names are a little shifty in terms of where they land in the months because there are 12 to 13 months each year. So they don't exactly match with the calendar months, but The hunter's moon is probably one of my favorites, the blood moon, because it is so dark. beCause I do love samhain and Halloween. I always have in different capacities. Like as a kid, I loved the candy and the dressing up as a young adult. I loved the parties. And now as an adult, I love the witchiness of it. I love the magic of it. I love that. I really do feel that the veils start thinning a little bit around this time of year. I feel like my intuitive powers are a little sharper. The name Blood Moon, and as we're having this conversation, we just had a What was it like a week or two ago, the full moon and it was an eclipse, which is also called a blood moon sometimes. And one of the nicknames for this moon is blood moon. And that's because Samhain Halloween Samhain is the ancient pagan traditional name. That's now Halloween. This was the blood harvest. This was the slaughter of the animals in preparation for the winter season. Not that I'm pro slaughtering animals, but I think it's more so that, you know, Halloween is an engagement with play around death. it Also is located around Day of the Dead, All Souls Day, All Saints Day, like there are other death and ancestor related holidays that sort of are packed in around this time. So I think, you know, it really is a time when. It's the witch's new year. It's like a time when witches are born, sort of, it's a time when people might be pulling out their tarot cards and doing their meditations and, thinking a little bit more about this darker side of things. I used to really think I was a summer person, but with all of the learning that I've done through the moon, I've come to realize I am more of a fall winter person. And not entirely, but that's partly because it's moon season. I get to see the moon more, when it's darker out, I get to just visually see her. I get to engage with these witchier aspects of myself, which I think, you know, the gates really open to that around the hunter's moon for me. So, that's usually a time when you've got enough darkness that you can see that moon really well. It has all of this sort of spookiness to it, you know, moon mythology is pretty related to, Halloween time. So I think if I were to pick a favorite, that would probably be it. And of course I love them all, but you know, in the summer months or in sun season, we're not thinking about the moon as much, it's a little more related to outdoor magic, herbal magic, you know that's the summer, which sort of place to be. I'm more of an empath, being in that sort of more reflective time, winter is a great time for writing, for reflecting, for meditating. And that's sort of where my practices lean a little bit more. So, yeah, opening the gate to moon season around October, I think probably that's. I don't know if favorite is the right word because I love them all, but probably that would be my favorite.
Ashley:I think it's so beautiful. I feel like people think of Halloween as You know, spooky season. And when we think about ghosts or people that we've lost, it's almost beautiful. It's almost like reconnecting in a way where it's like you can lean into your intuition. If you are somebody who believes in like mediums and psychics, maybe that's the time to go in and actually connect with people that it's more of like yeah. Feeling supportive by your ancestors or by your loved ones that you've lost versus, I don't know, having a ghost in the closet, being scared like in a movie or something.
Julie:Yeah, absolutely. And I think, speaking to the way that our culture is, very solar, very young, very, Productivity and doing focused. It's also our culture is very pro like happiness, pro cheerfulness, pro positivity. There isn't always a lot of room for grief. Like I talked about around the solstice. It's a really important time to be engaging with grief. And I think that you can do that in a little bit of a different way around. Halloween Samhain as well, because there is this invitation to think about death and about ancestors and to honor those that you've lost. I feel like if that was folded in a little bit more to our seasons, which it is in a lot of traditional cultures, of course, there's a day where you honor your ancestors. Like why wouldn't there be? In my experience of Halloween, anyway, it's this sort of strange day where we're playing with it and we're dressing up as skeletons and ghosts. And we're sending our children out for candy, but we're not actually engaging with. this is a holiday about death. This is what this means. We've so westernified it where it's just like, this is a really fun holiday where you can buy stuff and eat candy. And it's like, that's great. That can be fun too. But the point of it was actually to think about. You know, from my understanding of Samhain and the blood harvest, it was like honoring the animals that are giving their lives so that we can survive through the winter. We don't need to do that anymore. But there was a time when we did, and so we would really be honoring the spirits of those animals. We don't do that. We don't honor the spirits of the animals we're eating. If we eat animals like we don't honor the spirits of the those who've gone before. And if we are grieving someone who's died, we can feel so alone and so isolated after the initial. Month or two when we get some support and there's a funeral, and then it's just like, okay, we're all supposed to be over it. Nobody talks about it anymore. We need anniversaries. We need times to return, to remembering those people and going back to those things. I think Halloween can be that if we let it, right, but we have to step out of the costume parties, for a minute to engage with it in a bit of a different way.
Ashley:That's the one thing that I really love about your book is that it does take us back to the root of it. So it is like giving ourselves permission to grieve, giving ourselves permission to not be over things. And not have to just be surface level, which again, the Halloween side of it, awesome. Do the trick or treating, do the, you know, slutty Halloween costumes, if you're in that phase of it. Like, it can still be this really fun, joyful thing. But it's just, again, to kind of mirror both sides of it, to let it be both, to let yourself feel both sides of the spectrum.
Julie:Exactly. Yeah.
Ashley:For somebody who, say, doesn't know anything about the moon or the cycle of things, are there certain things that people, like, we always sort of notice, or I, you know, Notice like the energy shift around people, like people make the jokes of ugh, you know, a full moon's coming because people are being a certain way. Are there things that people can do to prepare for these cycles a little bit better?
Julie:Yes, definitely. So I think that knowing the basics of the energies of a moon cycle is really helpful. It mirrors the solar cycle and it also mirrors the menstrual cycle. So if you're someone who has a menstrual cycle, you might be able to relate it that way as well. So again, new moon. Winter Solstice, Menstrual Cycle, Dark, Quiet, Reflection, etc. Waxing Moon Cycle, Springtime, and Follicular Phase. Of the Menstrual Cycle is when your energy starts coming back, your creativity is present, it's time to take action, it's time to do things, it's time to go for it you know, act on all the dreaming that you were doing during that darker phase. Full Moon. Ovulation, summer solstice. You would think that this would be sort of peak, like, excellent energy. It can be, but it's actually a little bit different from that. So as you may know, if you have a menstrual cycle and you've been paying attention, ovulation also can feel a little weird. Sometimes there's some pain there. Sometimes there's a little hormonal surge. It can be a little bit of an intense time. Summer solstice is often sort of too hot to really do a lot. It's like you've kind of gone to that point where it's like, okay, slow down. Like we've hit that place. We need to pause here. And so full moon. Is a time when we want to pause. We want to think about hold on a second. Okay. What have I been doing? That's working for me. What have I been doing? That's not working for me. I often find that the full moon, especially when there's an eclipse, there's this feeling of shining light into areas that are normally dark. So I think that's why a lot of the time people feel like. Emotions that have been kind of underground start coming up around the full moon. You start to feel sort of angry or frustrated about things that weren't bothering you that much last week. And I think it's because it just, it heightens our senses a little bit. It brings us into that place of being able to sort of look into the darkness. Literally the moon is brighter at night during the full moon and so it does affect our sleep sometimes. It can change the way we dream, give us less sleep, things like that. So there is an energy but it's sort of like you need to pause there, actually don't keep going. And then the waxing moon phase, autumn and the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle have an energy of integration. So, you're kind of processing all the work that you were doing in the waxing moon phase. You are preparing for some rest. You're wrapping some things up. It's a really good time, especially towards the very end for like cleaning up, organizing your closet, throw things out. Like that's kind of what that phase is for. And then you prepare for the rest again and then you do the cycle all over again. So I think even just being aware of that, you can really make that work for you. Many people do menstruate with the moon. So many people will menstruate on the new moon and ovulate on the full moon so that, it's especially easy to follow that cycle if you do that. There's a whole section in my book about the spiritual meaning of where your menstrual cycle lands. So if you menstruate on the full moon, for example, that's considered to be the witch cycle. So you might be a little bit more connected to that other side of things if you're bleeding around the full moon. And depending on where you land, there are different meanings with that. But knowing your cycle and if you menstruate and also knowing the energies of spring, fall and also each moon phase, you can work with that a little bit. So if you think about it that way, too, when you have a full moon close to the summer solstice. You're going to be like, probably pretty I'm imagining like, electrocuted almost, it's like way too much energy. Like you need to lie down and have like a long siesta in the middle of the day. Whereas if you have a new moon around that time, the energy is going to feel a little bit more balanced because you've got a lot of that solar energy and the lunar energy is a little quieter. So it feels more balanced. So you can kind of start to, lay them against each other and sort of see how these energies might be affecting each other as you go through. So I think just having that knowledge can really help you to think about what you should be doing during that time. I often, obviously I'm a writer and I have times when I have a lot of creative surges and a lot of attention. And then I have times where I'm just like nothing is coming. And then I look at those phases and I'm like, you know what? I'm just starting my period. It's not the time. I'm going to wait a few days, or like it's new moon. Let me just get some more sleep, the next couple of days. And I'll come back to it in a couple of days. And I find it does when I give myself that rest, when it does come back, it comes back nice and strong. And I'm not sort of struggling against myself because I'm not as burnt out when I do that. Right.
Ashley:Just a great reminder to listen to what your body is telling you and to really not feel like you have to force yourself all the time to question, you know, where am I in this? And doing that like full on check in or looking up where we are in the cycle and being like, okay, I'm going to let myself off the hook. It doesn't have to be. Forcing against it or be this like awful push where you feel like you're fighting yourself all the time.
Julie:Exactly. It makes it so much easier because we are cyclic beings. That's just the way our minds work. There's a cycle in a day as well. We're encountering cycles all the time. We resist that we struggle against it. When we start to lean into just the truth of that, that we are cyclic beings. And as you said, you know, our bodies give us so much information about that. You don't necessarily need my book to have your own relationship with the moon and to see how it affects you, right? Like just paying attention is so much of it. And many of the practices that I offer in this book, they're intended to facilitate that connection that already exists, right? It's not giving you something you don't have, though. There's information in there and there's. Like suggestions and stuff, but it's not that, there's some one specific correct ritual that you have to do every new moon or else you're failing at it. It's more like, okay, here are the general energies of that. Here's some suggestions for how you might want to lean into that energy. And if you have your own way of doing that, do it your own way. You know, like that's totally fine too. Because the point of it is, is that it's to feel more connected to your body and the cycles of. Your body and how your body is already in connection with the natural world around you and your communities and, the sun and the moon and all of these things. It's just a question of noticing.
Ashley:I love the fact that the moon kind of joins us all like everybody, no matter where you are in the world can look up and we've all seen the sun. We've seen the moon. Whether it's being taught nursery rhymes about the moon, or whether it's that romanticizing of like, Oh, I wonder if I'm looking up at the moon as my soulmate is looking up at the moon and, the romance of it all that I just really love that it's something that everybody has some sort of relationship with.
Julie:Definitely. I think, one of the most basic relationships that we have with the moon is, you know, I think we've all had that moment with a full moon where, you're looking at the full moon out a car window, for example, and it feels like the moon is looking at you. It feels like it's following you as you go, whatever you look, there it is. Right. I've had so many moments when the full moon has come through like, the skylight in a tent that I was sleeping in or like. Not too long ago, it just came in through, the sliver between the curtain and the window and it was so bright that it kind of woke me up in that moment. It's like it's a friend, it's like someone that's there really reaching out to me to let me know that it's there. And that is how it feels. I think for a lot of us, regardless of whether we know any of this mythology or anything, we've had those moments of looking at the moon and just saying, wow,
Ashley:coming from your experience with yoga. Is that why it was sort of important for you To include the yoga poses with each moon. Because I think that's sort of unique that I don't know that I've seen that before in other books about
Julie:with the yoga. Yes, I would love to talk about that. So I've been practicing yoga, as long as I've been practicing some of these other things. One of the things I've really been learning about yoga. The longer I do it is that. The poses have an energetic signature and Those energetic signatures can help us to tap into, either an energy that we feel we need or an energy that's already happening, right? So the energy of, you know, a lunge, for example, it's like your arms are up and your chest is open. That's a very springtime, follicular phase, waxing moon kind of energy, right? And then a forward fold or a child's pose, for example, is a very, Curled in softening, that's more of like in that menstrual phase, new moon phase, it has that quieter closer to the earth energy. And so, you know, I do teach yoga as well, not as often as I used to, but I teach it seasonally, what I'm teaching depends on where we're at in the solar year. The practices that we're going to be doing on a new moon in December are going to be really different from the practices that we're doing in a full moon in March. Right. I have a library of yoga classes on my website and they're organized by season. So it's like, okay, here we are in late autumn or whatever it is. And these are the kinds of practices that are going to work for that. And so as I was going through the moons, I started to think about, just the energetic signature of that. Month and how it relates to the different shapes that you could make. So I chose different ones that I thought sort of matched that and I put them together. So at the end of the book, there's a wheel of the year yoga sequence. So you can actually link them together. It has this cyclic. Circular feel to it where you start really low to the ground, you start making your way up, you're standing at a certain point at the summer solstice, and then you start coming back down to the ground and end up in Shavasana. There's also the moon salutation, which is a specific sequence that originated in yin yoga. I think it's a little bit more of an active sequence, but it has that shape to it as well, where you kind of like you rising up and then you're making your way down to the ground and you're rising up again. And it has that energetic signature of a cycle. So I think it's just working with yoga in a little bit of a different way where I think a lot of us think of it as, Oh, you know, my doctor told me I should go to yoga for my lower back pain. This pose is good for strengthening the core or whatever. And that's all valid. Like you can absolutely use yoga that way for sure, but you can also use it a little bit more energetically, a little bit more emotionally, you know, I think people who practice yoga know, hip openers, there's emotions that come up sometimes. I think I have pigeon around that around the blood moon that we were talking about. It's sort of like, that's when you want to get into your hips and like, let that stuff start to come out. It's really looking at the yoga poses, not so much in that clinical way, but more as, these are the shapes that have that energetic signature for this time of year. You may be able to feel in your body that Particular moon a little differently when you explore, you know what that shape feels like in your body during that time
Ashley:when I think that with yoga, we don't necessarily think of all of the benefits, whether it's teaching us how to breathe properly. We just sort of assume that we can do it. I think that yoga just in general is a practice that so many people would benefit from but without really realizing the spectrum of things that they could get from it.
Julie:It's interesting that you mentioned breath. I have breathing in standing like in Tadasana as the pose for the summer solstice for June. I was really stuck on that for a while because I was like, what is the pose for the summer solstice, you know, sort of the peak of that energy, like we were just talking about with the full moon. You know, ovulation, like it's not exactly. I didn't want it to be sort of like, Okay, here's your handstand. Here's your, you know, really super intense pose because that's actually not what that energy is about. It's about pausing and my wonderful yoga student, Laurel, who's so wonderful. And if she hears this, thank you, Laurel. You're amazing. And she was just like, what about breathing? And I was like, Oh, yes, that's exactly what we need to be doing is pausing and checking in with our breath. It's going back into the body. It's almost, taking that pause and. Making sure we're turning that gaze back inwards as we reach that peak of the moment. Right. So I love this. She suggested that she was absolutely right. June is standing and breathing the yoga pose for that month.
Ashley:It's sort of sad in a sense that we've gotten so far removed that we do have to almost have that reminder of like, it's not just what you think it is. It's really taking that deep breath. Somewhere along the line, I feel like we forgot to be intentional, or we're taught not to be intentional, and now we just. struggle with remembering to actually go back and do it. I know that your book was released last year at the end of November. Where is the best place that people can purchase a book now?
Julie:You can get it anywhere books are sold. You can get it on Amazon if you do Amazon. You can get it at independent booksellers. A lot of the time they will order a book for you that you want. It's a target. I have copies that I'll be selling myself. If you happen to be in Edmonton, I'll be selling them out of the wellness clinic where I see clients. You can order them from me online if you're in Edmonton. I'm also going to be giving copies to folks who sign up for a course that I'm offering that's related to the content of the book in the new year. It's called A Year in Full Moons and it has a lot of this information. There are video yoga classes and guided meditations that you can do as well in alignment with all of these lessons. So for folks who sign up for that online course, you can do that from anywhere. If you're in the US or Canada, I'll also ship you a book. So you'll get a book as a gift, for signing up for that course too. And if you want to learn more about that course you can see it on my website, juliepeters. ca. We start officially in January, but you can join anytime and you can kind of go through, but there will just be reminder emails going out every month, starting in January, 2024 with all of the links to all of the information so that you can go through and kind of explore the moon in a little bit more of an interactive way.
Ashley:Oh, I love that. I love having the option of getting the support as you're working through the book.
Julie:There aren't any live events for that. At the moment though, I suppose I could add some, you will kind of be doing it in community, like with other people who are also following along in that same way. It can be a really nice. Way to stay on track with it and kind of remind yourself, this is where you're at. Even just having that reminder of like, this is what this full moon is called. This is the energy of this full moon. It can help to keep us connected to something that, is bigger than us, something that connects us all as you were saying that can kind of get us out, I think a little bit of our small stresses that we're often in, in our day to day lives.
Ashley:And it's just always kind of nice to know that people are feeling the same way, or people have the same interest that I feel like, a long time ago when a lot of this folklore was happening, it's like we were in villages, and we were all connected, and everybody knew each other, and there was that community feel, and we definitely are not in the same realm of things where our community just keeps getting smaller and smaller, so I love anything that gives people the opportunity to have that connection.
Julie:In real time. Yeah, absolutely.
Ashley:Well, thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I think by the time we release this, you will be my first repeat guest, which I'm so excited about.
Julie:I love that. Well, thank you for having me back. It was such a pleasure to talk to you again and just have an opportunity to share a little bit about this book and these practices and all of that. I just really appreciate your attention and your interest and just being here with me. Yeah.
Ashley:Thank you. Thank you so much.
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