Danza de la Luna

By Miku KeTukal

It was my first Danza de la Luna. I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. I thought I understood something about ceremony and sacred space. I knew to expect the unexpected, but still, I never could have anticipated what I experienced under the stars with my sisters that night…

My intention for this dance was simple. Or so I thought. It was to dance a dance of healing. For my husband, for all my brothers and sisters who have been ailing in this tumultuous time, and for the planet. To sing to the waters, and mountains and oceans of this beautiful world, and sing alive once more what I know within is possible in me, and for us all. A return to the sacred.

As I drove into the site on the first night of the four nights of dancing and prayer I was filled with excitement. This was the first year the dance was to be held at the base of Mount Shasta. I pulled in and found a sweet little juniper tree to make camp under. The grounds of the newly established La Ventana Retreat Center were stunning. Brilliant crisp greens and deep greens abounded with the broader landscape of orange and browns from the thirsty earth. It was so very dry and hot that it felt like fire might come. Indeed, the fire was already on Mama Shasta as I arrived in my 1990 golden-colored Previa van (affectionately named Sheppard). Luckily, for the moment, the winds were blowing the smoke away from our site, and things seemed clear and still.

To ready myself for the journey, I took a solemn vow. I vowed to myself the moment I heard of the Danza (3 years ago in Costa Rica with Grandmother Kaariina) that I would find this dance. The finding of the Danza is a journey in its own right. I vowed I would find it, and I would commit to the four years. I was committed in my heart even before I knew I could go. I didn’t know what I was committing to at the time, but I knew in my bones I was supposed to do this. Truly, I am still only now discovering what the Danza is, but I still hold true to this original vow, to this original knowingness.

***

It was a strange first Danza for me. A few weeks prior I caught a terrible cold (not Covid I was assured), but it left me without my voice! I chose to set my tent up alone next to my Juniper tree friend to stay in this strange silence that was part of my dance, as it felt I needed to be deep in prayer, in a way that wouldn’t be possible if I joined a cluster as many of the women had done.

After setting up, finding my Godmother who would guide me through the Danza, and preparing for the first sweat, red scarf band securely tied around my womb…

I was overwhelmed with the beauty and strength, the fierceness and commitment from the space of love. For the fierceness and commitment to love. To be warriors of love.

I learned that I was strong. The first three nights like many of the other new dancers I struggled to stay awake, I struggled to learn the dance. When we first began it was so complicated that I didn’t even understand we were dancing! I am not sure I knew what we were doing, shuffling along with the arbor decorated with prayers and ties of all the directions.

Imagine a beautiful arbor, stretching in a circle. Each door was guarded by a different god or goddess and sacred entity in the Aztec lineage. With a warrior goddess standing at each gate holding a smudge bowl. The hot charcoals glowing and smoking. Billowing in the moonlight with columns of white medicine smoke flowing up into the sky. Creating a cloud of moonlit medicine mist that swirled about us as we danced. Feathers flying, rattle shaking, drum beating, hearts calling, ancestors with us.

We danced! We danced and danced and danced. Until we could be nothing but the dance, nothing but our prayers. One body, with women laughing and dancing and crying and praying. All together as one. And all around us on the outside of the arbor the men danced, and others who were supporting us danced too. They danced and sang and sang to us and we to them, all together in celebration. We danced for life! For happy women! For healing. For a healthy and happy village! For healthy, happy, strong children. We danced for the mystery. We danced to remember.

And I remembered.

I remembered that all life is sacred. And I felt it deeply deeply deeply within me. And something more stirred. I remembered that we have done this before. That we have been here before. That we have always danced like this. That men and women around the world for thousands of years have danced like this. This work, this ceremony is universal and so so so needed.

On the last night of the dance, I decided I would no longer fight with myself trying to stay awake in between rounds of resting and dancing. I decided not to rest between the rounds. As everyone laid down and the arbor became quiet I settled into a cross-legged seat with my white veiled and flowered crown raised to the moon. I noticed that the drummers didn’t rest, the dance chief stayed seated, and the elders too also maintained a seated posture.

And then it happened…

I dreamed. I entered into the shaman’s dream state. The liminal place of here and there, with shape-shifting vortexes subtly opening up in the moonlight. A shiver up my spine, and ancestors were everywhere. I could feel them, this was the place of lessons, and this was my first one. To stay awake. Be present. All needs are met. Open the closed eyes to the subtleties and feel.

When I looked into my reflection in the mirror darkly I saw moths in my eyes! The harbinger of death and transformation. I blinked them away and looked once more and then I saw her looking back. Goddess Kuan Yin. Gazing at me with such beauty. I knew at least in that moment that she was there, within me, within all of us. Infinitely inviting us to compassion, love and divine yin fierceness. The fierceness to receive. Receive and be fully present to the invitations that exist infinitely all around us. To rise. To rise. To rise. And we are all rising, growing, blossoming, crying, singing, praying, healing and holding each-other together.

And then it was over.

and I realized…the greatest lesson for me of all.

That it is not too late to be a Mother!

What??

That is completely what I did not come for. My husband is walking the death wheel, for heaven’s sake. How could this be? And yet, there it was. He did not want me to pray for him. I learned this during the dance. It was not for him that I was there. It was for the Mothers, and the women of the world. And somehow, in all of that, it was to join them myself. Even after I had given up all these years later after sadness upon sadness.

It’s not too late.

It’s not too late for me.

So, here I am, back home in Hawaii, filling out paperwork for adoption with my husband and now a new journey has begun.

Thank you, Grandmother Moon

Thank you Abuela Shasta

Thank you to the teachers and guides of the Danza,

For Abuela Maninali

For Susanna and ShimShai

For the bundle they carry for this sacred dance.

Gratitude for all of our Relations

Omateyotl