La Fiesta de la Luna at Miami Beach - A joyful drumcircling party and ritual for the moon

The full moon conjures up headaches and menstrual pains on some women, and gathers the ones that call themselves witches to celebrate the Esbat and chant. Some believe it awakens the werewolves, or at least some howling dogs. The atmosphere is definitely charged with airs of frolic soaked in sexual connotations, dripping suggestive undertones of mystery. In Miami Beach, the full moon brings La Fiesta de la Luna.

The full moon is just an excuse for the gathering, and yet it’s also its motivating cause and soul. A couple hundred youth, and many of those forever young at heart, gather up by the ocean to contemplate the reflection of the bright moon on the flickering waves. Although the clouds hover over the celebration, sometimes hiding the intense, captivating moon; not even the occasional bursts of rain stop the fest. Drum circles spot the sand for blocks and blocks. Tonight, women dance in bikini tops and flowing skirts belted with coins. If you are already wearing a swimming suit, what does it matter if you get wet?

Bonfires, candles, and the occasional flash of cameras, illuminate the night, already cleared by the moonlight. People drink and smoke – cigarettes, and marihuana, and god knows what else. Couples lay out mediating in stretched out pareos. The rest of us look for romance in nearby smiles. The passionate, rhythmic drilling of the drums is hypnotizing. We breathe in the mild, harmonious collective hysteria of the moments in which nothing else truly matters but the moment in itself, the beat of the music, the movement of the hips.

The occasion celebrates freedom in its simplest form – that of a space and time for non-judgmental enjoyment. Each person is free to decide in which side of their own concept of liberty and libertinage to stand. It is a justification for behaviors we would otherwise not engage in for fear of rejection, such as playing the drums recklessly or dancing as in a trance. We are allowed to plunge in the web of deep communal intensity; to be part of the momentary community that moves freely and independently, but at unison with the collective beat, holding hands. We are also allowed to stand by ourselves, among all the people who dance by themselves and for themselves, in the sea of individual waves, saturated with heartbeats and drumbeats. We are even allowed to calmly seat and watch, listen to the dancing waves, feel the drops of rain, contemplate the life bubbling out of everybody else – and write, if we so please. To think that I could walk in the ocean, and bathe naked in this moonlight, suddenly breaks locks that were forced closed in my mind – those that delineate what is socially acceptable and what is not.

The people that were here tonight will wait another twenty-eight days for another chance to experience, to cooperate with raising the energy that is, la Fiesta de la Luna. Once again, we will leave our names at home, and ignore the pungent smell of consequences. The full moon is just an excuse, but it is also the heart and moving force for this monthly energy renewing ritual of joyful spirituality – rain or not.