Ocean Correspondences - Moon Phases and Tides

It's the full Sturgeon Moon tonight, and what better time to broach this topic of moon phase and tidal magic than right now?

While lunar phases and rituals are common in nearly every school of witchcraft, sea witches, and water witches who live near bodies of water that are visibly affected by the tides are especially attuned to the phases of the moon. Tracking tide tables and moon phases, you quickly learn when and during which moon phase the tides will “flip.” Most witches understand the lunar phases and appropriate workings in each. Knowing tidal magic and marrying the moon phase to the tide are powerful enhancements for any magical working.

These correspondences are very basic. We are currently working on building out a member's area on our website that will have more detailed information (keep following us for more on that in the next couple of months), but we wanted to share the basics with you here. When we make witch bottles or witch balls for the shop, we are very attuned to moon phase and tide times, and channeling the right energy into the right bottle. So without further ado, let's get right to basic moon phase and tidal magical correspondences!

• High Tide Magic: Fulfillment, manifestation, completion, protection

• Low Tide Magic: Curse breaking, rest and respite, healing, acceptance, revelation

• Flow Tide (the tide is rising to high) Magic: Attraction, drawing in

• Ebb Tide (the tide is going out to low) Magic: Banishing, releasing/letting go, seeing what’s really there

Knowing these tidal phases, we can now extrapolate how they work with moon phases. Here are just a few examples (experiment further on your own):

• Dark Moon/Low Tide: Rest and healing magic

• Dark Moon/High Tide: Tend to your personal shields; the  moon cycle has completed itself, so this is also a good time to incorporate completion rituals into your practice

• New Moon/Ebb Tide: Let go of everything from the previous moon cycle.

• New Moon/Flow Tide: Draw in inspiration and begin setting your new moon intentions.

• Full Moon/Low Tide: Illumination! See what’s really there, where you are with your lunar cycle intentions, and be prepared to banish anything holding you back at this phase at the next ebb tide.

Once you’ve gotten comfortable with tides and timing, you can begin to work with spring tides and neap tides – each of these occur twice in each lunar cycle.

• Spring Tide: The tidal range (i.e., how many feet the water rises during high tide, and drops during low tide) is at its greatest points. Spring tides bring the highest high tides and the lowest low tides.

• Neap Tide: The tidal range is at its lowest points, and a sort of equilibrium is found. There is very little range between high and low tides during a neap tide.

And finally, there are King Tides. King Tides are the highest high tides of the year. They generally occur once or twice annually. Here in Massachusetts, we typically experience a king tide once per year, usually in January or February. Gather king tide/full moon water from the sea if you can!

Hopefully this quick crash course was helpful to you. I'd love to hear about how you practice in the comments!