Today's
OracleReading

The Moon is still round and bright today, just past her fullness, resting in Taurus on her own Monday. This oracle is the voice of the season itself: the deep blue days of late October, when the light slants gold and every leaf seems lit from within.

Savoring is the art of noticing that something is precious while it is still here. The trees know it. They blaze their brightest colors in their last weeks before winter. The sacred first-savoring current asks the same of you: notice what is beautiful now, while it shines.

With Mercury and Venus both retrograde, the pace of outer life is slowing. Let that slowness become a gift. There is time today to look up, and look around.

In the body, savoring feels like slowing down from the inside: the breath lengthening, the eyes softening, the senses opening wider to take in color, smell, and sound.

On a bright autumn day, try stepping outside and letting the cool air touch your face. Notice the color of the sky — that particular deep blue of October — and the gold of the leaves against it.

If you cannot go outside, look out a window for a full minute. Let yourself be moved by the season.

Today’s savoring brings one seasonal question forward: what beauty in this very season am I being invited to notice before it passes?

Every season has its own gifts that the others cannot give. Autumn’s gift is its brilliant, fleeting color and its crisp, clear light.

Helen Hunt Jackson, who grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, wrote a beloved poem arguing that not even June, with all its flowers, can rival a single hour of October’s bright blue weather.

The leaves do not hold back their color because winter is coming. They blaze brightest just before they fall, and so they teach us how to savor.

Today, softly, I step into the bright blue weather of this season and let its beauty fill me — tasting every golden hour while it is here.

1. What do you love most about this particular season?
2. What beauty around you right now will be gone in a few weeks, and how could you enjoy it today?
3. Which season of your own life are you in, and what are its unique gifts?
4. How might you mark this golden time of year with a small ritual of savoring?

Helen Hunt Jackson — born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830, where she grew up alongside her childhood friend Emily Dickinson; who began writing poetry and essays after great personal losses in her thirties and became one of the most widely read writers of her day; who later devoted herself to defending the rights of Native Americans in her book A Century of Dishonor (1881) and her novel Ramona (1884); and who died in 1885 — wrote these lines in “October’s Bright Blue Weather,” a poem first published in 1875.

O suns and skies and clouds of June, and flowers of June together, ye cannot rival for one hour October’s bright blue weather. The poem goes on to praise the goldenrod, the asters, the turning leaves, and the slow walks of autumn. It became so loved that it was memorized by generations of schoolchildren. Its message is simple and joyful: the late season has its own glory, and it deserves to be savored.

Today’s oracle lives in Jackson’s lines directly. She knew that a single hour of October light could rival a whole month of June flowers — if only we stop long enough to see it.

“Moon River” — Audrey Hepburn (from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961)

Audrey Hepburn — born in Brussels in 1929, who trained as a ballet dancer before becoming one of the most beloved film actresses of her era, and later devoted herself to humanitarian work for UNICEF — sang “Moon River” in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, sitting on a fire escape with a guitar. Written for her by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

The oracle hears the first-savoring in this song. It is a quiet, wistful wish to drift along a wide river and see the world, sung softly and slowly, every word given time. On the Moon’s own Monday, as the full Moon lingers, it is a song for savoring: unhurried, tender, and full of longing for the beauty just around the bend.