Flowers and Fungi
On the mycological magic of tonight’s Scorpio full moon
Hi, doll.
I’m writing this just as the sun is supplanting the moon for the day.
I know the exact timing of this because I’m staying up in the Berkshires in a house overlooking a lake and plenty of mountains to the East, which means every morning I can plant myself in a rocking chair and watch this ordinary-extraordinary miracle while guzzling my coffee.
It’s pretty great, but that’s not why I’m posting this to you. I’m posting because tonight’s full moon is in the sign of Scorpio, which is a different sort of ordinary-extraordinary miracle.
This moon does not arrive with the fanfare of, say, a total solar eclipse or a supermoon. It’s just a garden-variety full moon happening in the most powerfully shape-shifting sign of them all. Paired with the sun in Venus-ruled Taurus, this lunar aspect heralds steadier growth, stronger self-awareness, starrier paths—the sort of alchemy that can occur when we consciously align our good will and imagination with Nature herself.
Outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence.—Wendell Berry
Technically, this lunar aspect is known as the Flower Moon, but I think of it as a Fungi Moon. This is not a demotion, but an indication of my profound appreciation.
While in the country, I’ve been reading Entangled Life, about the all-encompassing fungal web that facilitates life on our planet. Authored by the aptly named mycologist Merlin Sheldrake, it suggests fungi are the Earth’s true practical magicians.
Despite the bad press they get from The Last of Us, these organisms are perpetually transforming everyone and everything to keep nature’s cycles going. As spores, mushrooms, molds, yeasts, and other microbes, they travel, communicate, and intuit through soil, air, and electric waves. They enable our digestive tracts to transform food into energy. They enable plants to transform sun and soil into flowers and fruit and seeds. They enable soil to flourish by breaking down rocks into crucial minerals. They even enable trees to commune with each other.
What most fascinates me about fungi is that they are wildly inventive and wise without any consciousness as we understand it. Why? Because they lack ego, which our species too often conflates with intelligence.
It is as if, as Sheldrake says: “You could take a fragment of your toe or hair and it would grow into a new you, and hundreds of these new yous could fuse together into some impossible large togetherness.” Put this way, fungi are a wondrous amalgam of quantum physics and biology that is both alien and eminently familiar. No wonder many take psilocybin mushrooms to transcend their perceptions.
Honestly, I’ve come to think of the divine itself as a sort of fungi.
We carry around these big brains of ours like the crown jewels, but mostly I find that millions of years of evolution have prepared us for one thing only: to follow nature’s rhythms—Barbara Kingsolver
Which brings me back to tonight’s full moon, which taps into our own innate alchemical abilities. Much like fungi, Scorpio works with roots—re-alchemizing what lives below that both empowers and impedes our lives. Paired with the sun in gloriously grounded Taurus, this moon transmutes the stories and shadows of our past—our emotional shit, put bluntly—so we may more fully align with the present.
Tonight’s full moon is fertilizer, essentially.
Rituals, not Rules
Technically full moons in Scorpio are amazing for personal manifestation, but I acquaint this term with such fascist magicians as Trump and Musk, who have hypnotized millions of people into serving as batteries to fuel billionaires’ agendas. It’s the kind of pathology that has pulled our species deeply out of alignment with every cycle this planet has ever supported.
More and more, I am a naturalist, who believes the true magic lies in the interconnectedness of all forms of life. We can honor the miracle of our interconnectedness through conservation—by protecting and praying to the Earth’s resources—or we can get hung up on our relative insignificance and compensate by reducing everything and everybody else to props for our ego agendas.
The good news? You don’t have to do much to make the most of a Scorpio full moon. Instead, it makes the most of you, fungi style.
Expect signs and sirens galore. Breakthroughs and breakdowns, especially in areas of self-care. Especially in areas of money, honey. (Taurus season is always about stabilization and grounded expansion.)
Your job—your most important job, always—is to pay close attention and follow nature’s lead. If you’re cold, build a fire and notice what else may burn. If you’re warm, scrub yourself with salt in a bath or shower to purify your receptive abilities.
Learn about the bird that keeps showing up at your window, the plant you keep seeing on your morning walk. Wear the color that keeps flashing in your consciousness. Study the lyrics of the song you keep hearing in your head. Write down even the smallest snatch of dream.
Everything—from the tiniest mitochondria to the grandest tree—is part of a divine intelligence. Scorpio moons deliver amazing maps to navigate this collective unconscious.
Think of all the information you collect as clues in a scavenger hunt. Follow them, and they can flower into the beautiful change this world wants to take for granted once again.
We do need a 'new economy,' but one that is founded on thrift and care, on saving and conserving, not on excess and waste. An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable economy for a peaceable planet.—Wendell Berry
While I’m in the Berkshires, the woods and water are imparting major mycological magic to Ruby readings. Book a session for yourself or a loved one, and get a Whether Report to learn how this moon may illuminate your joy and resourcery.
Especially if you have a significant planet in Scorpio or Taurus, this next week may shift a lot. We may see a change in national attitudes; we may see a shift in our own sense of possibility. The potential for a new groundswell is high.
I big you growth, the most ordinary-extraordinary miracle of them all.
With waggling eyebrows and slow kitty blinks,
