🕯️🌕 The Strawberry Moon — Blood, Berries & Binding

A  Whisper Beneath the Witching Moon

Tonight, the Strawberry Moon rises—ripe, red, and dripping with ancestral memory. Do not be fooled by her sweet name. This moon, heavy with summer’s breath, hums with ancient magic: the kind that stains your fingertips and binds your spirit to something deeper than wishful thinking.

This is no gentle lunar blessing. This is the moon of blood rites and berry juice, of veils thinning in the heat, of spells spoken low between the trees. This is the witch’s moon. And tonight, she calls to you.

The Dark History Behind June’s Full Moon

They named it Strawberry Moon—a name sweet on the tongue, innocent in appearance. But names are spells, and this one hides what our ancestors knew well: that June’s full moon is no gentle light. It is a bloodletting. A marker of death dressed in crimson fruit.

Before colonial mouths tamed her name, this moon was known in whispers among the old bloodlines—The Moon of Sacrifice, The Huntress’ Eye, or The First Ripening. It is the moon that called forth summer rites of blood, when tribes of the old world honored the spirits of land and lineage with offerings of flesh, berry, and bone.

🩸 A Moon Steeped in Sacrifice

The Strawberry Moon rises at the seasonal crossroads—where spring’s innocence dies and summer’s fire begins. In ancient Europe and across the Americas, this moon signaled more than a harvest. It was a time of chosen offerings.

In Slavic pagan traditions, this moon bore witness to Kupala Nights—where fire, water, and fertility rites were soaked in the power of the full moon. Girls floated wreaths downstream to divine their fates. Forest witches gathered herbs said to speak only when cut beneath this moon. In some whispered accounts, animals—or even outcasts—were offered to appease local spirits and protect the village from drought or blight.

Among some Native tribes, the Strawberry Moon marked a time of both sweetness and sorrow—a brief ripening of fruit that signaled the coming heat, storms, and battle. Berries were eaten fresh, yes—but also mashed into pastes for war paint, and sometimes mixed with ash or blood in rites of remembrance.

The sweetness of the berry, like life, was always fleeting. And so witches, crones, and seers understood: June’s moon is a mirror of mortality. She does not ask for gratitude. She asks for truth.

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🌕 Tonight, the Moon Watches

She is not passive, this moon. She watches. She remembers. And if you sit beneath her long enough, you’ll remember too. Bloodlines. Past lives. The things you buried.

Her silver light sharpens shadows and amplifies whispers. The veil is not gone—it’s fraying, scorched at the edges by the heat of your transformation. The spirit world doesn’t knock during this moon. It enters.

The Power of June’s Full Moon

Known by the old ones as the Strawberry Moon, this lunation marks a time of gathering and sacrifice. Berries symbolize both sweetness and rot—harvest and death. The duality is sacred. Now is the time to:

🔮 Finalize bindings or banishings
🌿 Harvest herbs under moonlight (only what’s offered to you)
🔥 Burn old shadows to forge your next incarnation
🖤 Commune with spirits—especially matriarchs and forest shades

 A Ritual of Binding and Blood Memory

You will need:

• Black or red candle

• One ripe strawberry (or a handful if you're bold)

• Black thread

• A small sharp pin or thorn

• A bowl of moon-charged water

• A quiet space outdoors or by an open window

The Working:

1. Pierce the strawberry with your pin. Let its juice drip—this is your symbolic blood.

2. Whisper into the berry what binds you still. A name. A pattern. A grief. A hunger.

3. Wrap it in black thread while saying:

   "Sweet as sin, red as blood,
   What once held me, now is cut.
   By berry’s flesh and shadow’s sting,
   I sever cords and reclaim my wings."

4. Drop the bound berry into your bowl of moon water.

5. Let it sit overnight in full moonlight. In the morning, bury the berry at a crossroads or beneath a tree you trust.

🕯️ Ritual: The Crimson Cord of Release & Desire

You'll need:

• Black or red candle

• A single ripe berry (strawberry preferred)

• Black thread or yarn

• A mirror

• A bowl of water

Begin by facing the mirror in candlelight. Gaze into your reflection until it blurs. Name aloud what binds you—grief, fear, obsession, shame. Whisper it into the berry.

Take the thread and begin to wrap it slowly around the berry, binding the energy you’re ready to cast out or transform. Say:

"By thorn and sweet, by blood and bone,
I call my shadow to be known.
Bound in red, released in flame,
I speak my truth, I call my name."

Drop the thread-wrapped berry into the water bowl, extinguish the candle, and let it sit beneath the moonlight overnight. In the morning, bury the contents far from your home.

🌑 The Witch’s Allies Tonight

Crystals:

• Obsidian (truth unearthing)

• Garnet (blood power, desire)

• Moonstone (intuition & feminine flow)

• Jet — absorbs sorrow, binds oaths

• Bloodstone — ties to lineage, enhances ritual blood magic

• Labradorite — shields while walking between worlds

Herbs:

• Wormwood (gateway & spirit work)

• Black rose (hex-breaking & protection)

• Elderflower (ancestral connection)

• Belladonna (poison path, use symbolically only)

• Mugwort (visions and lunar dreaming)

• Elder (womb wisdom and ancestral gatekeeper)

Offerings to Leave:

• A splash of red wine or berry juice at a tree’s roots

• A strand of hair tied with intention

• A spoken word under your breath—“I see you. I remember.”

Dark Offerings:

• A braid of hair burned in candle flame

• A drop of red wine mixed with ash, poured at a tree base

• A poem of grief read aloud to the moon

🕯️ Closing Words...

"Witch, do not shrink from the fire. The full moon does not ask for perfection. She asks for your presence—raw, flawed, and real. Bury the past in sweet earth. Let your power bloom, as red as blood, as sweet as decay."

🖤J