July Moon: Meaning and Totems of Sun Bear's Medicine Wheel "The Ripe Berries Moon" (July 23 - August 22)

Second moon of the Guardian of the South, the Ripe Berries Moon arrives every year between July 23rd and August 22nd, in the very heart of summer. The Sturgeon, the Garnet, and the Raspberry all carry the same teaching: that of protection. But when the fruit is ripe, which armor still needs to be kept, and which can finally be set down?

Traversée plutôt que blindée

My armor in the Amazonian jungle

There were months of silence, in the Amazonian jungle. Months of plant dieting. Months of ceremony. Then one day, the armor cracked.

I believed my strength was in letting nothing through. Taking every blow without bending. Standing straight when everything shakes. A vertical strength, hard as stone. The strength I had been taught to admire in solid women, the ones who face the storm alone.

In the jungle, I saw that this strength did not come from the feminine. I saw that this strength did not come from my heart. It came from a door locked twice over.

What I found behind that door was far more true: my real power was never in the shell. It is in what trembles. In the heart left wide open. In the tears we let fall without shame. In the courage to show ourselves moved rather than armored.

The armor was not protecting me from anything. It was protecting me from myself. It was cutting me off from my feminine power, the one that is the way of the heart, of softness, of compassion, of motherhood.

I did not tear off this armor all at once. I wore it for a long time because it had once served me. The real work was not to hate it or run from it, but to finally feel that it was no longer necessary.

That is exactly the question the Ripe Berries Moon asks again, every year, in the very heart of summer: What is ripe in me, and does it still deserve protecting, or only picking?

July Moon: Meaning and Totems of Sun Bear's Medicine Wheel

The totems of the Ripe Berries Moon

Here is the July Moon: Meaning and Totems of Sun Bear's Medicine Wheel, as he passed them down.

Animal — Sturgeon

Minerals — Garnet · Iron

Plant — Raspberry

Color — Red

The sturgeon carries a row of bony plates, an armor. Iron is one of the hardest minerals. The raspberry protects its sweet flesh behind thorns. Three totems, one same gesture. Covering oneself to survive.

La Lune des Baies Mûres

A question of discernment: the teaching of the Ripe Berries Moon

This moon arrives after the solstice. After the Strong Sun Moon, the one that taught us to open the heart in broad daylight, to give without counting. But a heart does not open once and for all. The Ripe Berries Moon invites us to look at what, despite that opening, is still closed off. Which resistances have stayed standing, and do they still serve any purpose?

What spring planted is now turning red under the sun, full of sap, ready to be picked. And yet, not everything ripe lets itself be taken. Some fruits stay clinging to the branch long after their season, protected by a skin that no longer knows how to let go.

The sturgeon, for its part, keeps its armor. The body keeps closing out of habit, even when there is nothing left inside that needs protecting. The shell that once guarded the tender fruit becomes the very thing that stops it from being picked.

This moon does not ask us to lay down our arms all at once. It only asks us to look, one by one, at the ones we still carry.

Some truly protect something tender. Those, we keep, a little longer. And some we drag out of habit, long after the danger has passed. Those no longer protect anything. They only stop us from being picked.

Grandmother Medicine Song used to say it often: to become a hollow bone. It is even at the heart of the Rainbow Medicine Wheel teaching. This word comes from the Lakota people, from the great medicine man Frank Fools Crow, who said the hollow bone holds nothing back, protects nothing for itself.

A hollow bone is a passage. Where wind, spirit, and life can move through without obstacle. The hollow bone has simply come to understand that there is nothing to protect. We do not become a hollow bone from one summer to the next. We become it moon after moon, one armor at a time, set down.

So the question of this moon is this one: What is ripe in me? Which armor am I still carrying out of habit rather than necessity, and which one can I now set down?

Going further

If this article has touched you, you can follow the teachings of Sun Bear's Medicine Wheel and the Rainbow Medicine Wheel, which I share in individual sessions.

The women's circle is also a space to set down an armor together.

You can also experience a great drum healing, to feel in the body what words can only brush against.

Join the community to keep exploring the teaching throughout the year.

And if you're in the Bordeaux area, join me at Studio Yoga With You, in Le Bouscat, for an upcoming in-person circle.

It is not the shell that makes the fruit precious, but the moment it opens to let itself be picked.

ASKWALI