I love you more than all the stars and will always miss you, my beautiful Barbara, your Frances xxx

I was awake at 2am and again at 3. Over-excited. Clothes were piled up ready to slip on but I wasn’t optimistic. The east coast of Australia where I live had been drenched with rain and battered by winds gusting up to 90 kilometres an hour.
Got up anyway and made hot lemon and honey drink. Offered up prayers to the Moon Goddess and in my meditation received three messages: faith, synchronicity and discernment. Faith asks me to ‘act as if’; discernment warns me never to give my power to another and to trust my gut feelings. Synchronicity reminds me to trust in divine timing and to seek out and rejoice in clues (coincidences) that show me I’m on the right track.
I was counting down the hours to the dramatic partial eclipse of a full moon at 15 degrees of Pisces exact, pre-dawn in my neck of the woods, at 4.43am, Eastern Standard Time.
The astrologer Jonathan Cainer was going to Callanish on the northwest tip of Scotland to witness the eclipse after sunset at the site where ancient astrologers created an observatory out of giant stone monoliths.
Time is indeed an artificial construct because while Jonathan was viewing the eclipse in the northern hemisphere on 7 September at 19.51 British Standard Time, I was heading out my back door to view the exact same lunar standstill at 4.43am on 8 September. We are all equal under heaven. Just as rain falls on the just and the unjust.
Wind was whipping through the gumtrees, rain prickling my face. As far as the eye could see, the sky was grey, shading to ominous black, the trees contorted by wind. I splashed through the puddles in my snow boots, past the frog pond where the chorus of females rang out followed by the low-pitched grunting of the males. At least someone was happy.
Up the hill, climbing till my lungs burned. Cold. Wet. Dark. Should I turn back? Might as well climb to the top, the highest point, 600 metres above sea level and in the middle of coastal heath.
Sat on a large round sandstone boulder and looked up to the blank sky where I could see the feeble light from one star and a smudge of brightness that was probably my moon. Oh well.
I pulled off my rain hood all the better to enjoy the wind in my face.
Faith: I know the moon is behind the dark clouds and just because I can’t see her doesn’t mean she’s not there. Present but behind the veil. My cold fingers feel the binoculars, redundant in my pocket.
Then, majestically, the clouds started to roll back like giant grey curtains and I glimpsed the moon in all her golden glory. The curtain lifted some more and there in a crystal-clear sky she was magnificent and almost round except where the eclipse had taken out a bite. Yellow as a tiger’s eye.
I was shot though with delight; my faith rewarded: It was magical that in the whole dark, roiling expanse of black sky was just this one window dotted with stars and crowned with the full moon. Exactly overhead. She moved like a grand ship on the wide ocean and disappeared behind some filmy clouds only to appear and reappear twice more, causing my heart to leap in my breast on each occasion as she lit up my world.
I thought of Jonathan and of all of us joined in this ritual across the globe at exactly the same moment and after making my own petitions, I prayed for peace and love and tolerance to drench the earth.
The wonderful moon in Pisces headed towards a great dark mass that formed a dragon’s head and opened its maw and swallowed her. The show was over. Fade to grey.
It began to rain again and the wind rose up and I was forever changed.