In the Spirit of We'Moon

Production Coordinator

In the Spirit of We’Moon—Celebrating 30 Years
A Review of the New Anthology of Art and Writing from the We'Moon Datebook. Published in WomanSource Rising News, Winter 2011.
by Julie Weber

I hold in my hands something I call a homecoming, the homecoming perhaps many of us have longed to have. In the Spirit of We'Moon: Celebrating 30 Years is as close to living and palpable as a book can be. Resonant with the lens of a truly vast array of worldwide women artists and writers, the multicultural dimensions of spirit are astounding. Yet the work is rooted, earthbound and earth based, even as it pulses its pranayama through the seasons, planets, constellations and their configurations. Each page is literally a sanctification, a keyhole through which one can enter and partake of the ineffable mystery at the heart of women's experience with the Divine. This is the taproot of Women’s Culture and Women’s History in our time: the leaves of these pages flower in the linking of our hands.

The anthology begins with founder Musawa's story about the first handmade copies of a lunar calendar and the art and writing that accompanied it as it was delivered hand by hand to communities and women's lands. Born on women's land in Europe in 1981, moving to the US in 1987, the annual collection quickly acquired the reputation of both grassroots education and revelation, a thread of connection as tangible as the fiber that wove its pages. It's impossible to see the anthology and not remember the first time the We'Moon Calendar entered my life. I was 28 and it was 1992. The covers, reproduced as I roll through the pages of writing and artwork, mark recollections of each successive year in my life. Long before the internet, and in a different way, We'Moon datebooks connected women around the world and widened our understanding, gratitude and wonderment of each other. The calendars themselves with their collections of art and writing hold a talismanic quality like the Tarot cards from which the annual theme each year is culled.

In a world rife with trauma and disconnection, in a time when the earth itself in its clarity of resources is deeply troubled, this anthology can come to your aid—a companion, a compendium of empathy, magic and vision. I cried when I opened it—out of Love for this kind of beauty. There is nothing like this I have ever seen in print. The weavers, the ones who select each year from the submissions spread out at their collective meetings across cabins and on living room floors, have woven a Gift for you. A lineage, a sourcebook, a visual and literary spell of pages, the art is nothing short of oracular and the book reads like an unfolding of prayer.

Julie Weber is a psychotherapist and writer living in Ashland, Oregon. Her writing appears in OCHO, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, on butchculture.com, in We'Moon and its Anthology, in Dark Moon Lilith, and is forthcoming in Alligator Juniper. She received a Lambda Literary Fellowship in 2010 and has been a recent finalist in the Oscar Wilde, Chroma and Orlando competitions.


Flordemayo, 2008, a Mayan Grandmother from the Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, an excerpt from her review in We’Moon ’09.
“One of the biggest things I’ve been thinking is that We’Moon has been doing this for so many years and has this much world information—it has almost 30-year old roots (I think of Winona LaDuke’s article “Our Relatives with Roots” in We’Moon‘09). I believe all this information should be dedicated to the Goddess, and put into one book for all of us. The beauty of We’Moon is the beauty of oneness, putting all these nations under the same umbrella. We can’t separate ourselves from one another; we drink the same water, breathe the same air, we are under the same sun. This handful of information is sustenance for all of us, young or old. It doesn’t matter where you come from, you can see the relation.
And now I learn that a 30-year Anthology of We’Moon is being planned for 2011. This is very important. With the Grandmothers Council, when we put all our ages together, we are 870 years old—and when we speak, we speak with almost 900 years of feminine wisdom! In the Mayan calendar, every year we gain 13 years. The Grandmother Council has been meeting for 4 years now, but in Mayan terms, the Council is 52 years old and entering the Fourth Cycle of Eldership. So, when We’Moon’s 30 year Anthology happens, it will speak with 390 years of wisdom! It will be very important for future generations. I have absolute blessings for this Anthology. We can walk with this wisdom."

I am beside myself !!! What can I say.??....
The Anthology... OH, OH, OH, OH, Oh DEAR GODDESS !!!!
What a JOY to behold....what PLEASURE ....what DELIGHT... what WONDERFULNESS !!!!!!!!!
She is SUCH AN ACHIEVEMENT!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!!!
What a POWERFUL testament to all the years of long hard work, and lots of laughs too, put in by so many wonderful wemoon !!
I am relishing every page I turn with the most sacred soulful joy . . . the wisdomwords, the ART, the colours, so much love given and shared by so many wemoon.
She will be a treasure to return to again and again . . . and will transport me to a place of BLISS!
Many, many thanks for her. We'Moon has long been a women's wordwide treasure, but you have surpassed yourselves !!!!
Truely, THANKYOU. May the Goddess Bless you all one thousand times a day.

Arohanui, Annie (New Zealand)

How you keep track of us all is an amazing feat; that you treasure our gifts is inspiring. That’s what your rich anthology of the past thirty years reminds me of—like mothers caring for their children—remembering the years for us and minding our treasures—reflecting them back to us. You are our We'Moon sisters, mothers and grandmothers returning us to ourselves once more, lest we forget. My mind chewing on every page turning, eyes drinking in every visual... Longtime We'Moon contributor Marguerite Bartley, UK