Full Moons have names by J. S. Marlo

 

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

On October 31, 2020, we saw something we hadn't seen since March 31, 2018. A Blue Moon. 

A Blue Moon is not blue in color. It's the second Full Moon of a  calendar month. Since the  lunar cycle is roughly 29.5 days, a Blue Moon doesn't occur very often, thus the idiom, Once in a blue moon.

 

At 28 or 29 days, February is a special month. It can't have two Full Moons, and about once every 19 years, it doesn't even have one Full Moon. When there is no Full Moon in a month, we call it a Black Moon.  The last Black Moon occurred in February 2018, when there were two Full Moons in January and March, also known as a double Blue Moon. The next Black Moon will occur in 2037.

 

The Blue Moon isn't the only Full Moon with a name. For millennia, people across Europe, as well as Native American tribes, named the months after features they associated with the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere, and many of these names are very similar or identical. Some Native names are often attributed to tribes who lived in a vast area stretching from New England to Lake Superior, and whose languages are related.

 

All the Full Moons have names--many names. Here are some of them:

 

January -> Wolf Moon  named after howling wolves. Other names are Moon After Yule, Old Moon, or Ice Moon.

 

February -> Snow Moon named after the snowy conditions. Other names are Storm Moon, or Hunger Moon due to the scarce food sources during mid-winter.

 

March -> Worm Moon named after the earthworms that come out at the end of winter. Other names are Crow Moon, Crust Moon, Sap Moon, Sugar Moon, Death Moon, or Chaste Moon.

 

April -> Pink Moon named after the pink flowers – phlox – that bloom in the early spring. Other names are Sprouting Grass Moon, Fish Moon, Egg Moon, or Paschal Moon because it is used to calculate the date for Easter.

 

May -> Flower Moon named after the flowers that bloom during this month. Other names are Corn Planting Moon, Hare Moon, or Milk Moon.

 

June -> Strawberry Moon named after these little red berries ripen at this time. Other names are Hot Moon, Mead Moon, or Rose Moon.

 

July -> Buck Moon to signify the new antlers that emerge on deer buck's foreheads around this time. Other names are Thunder Moon, Wort Moon, or Hay Moon

 

August -> Sturgeon Moon named after the large number of fish in the lakes where the Algonquin tribes fished. Other names are Green Corn Moon, Barley Moon, Fruit Moon, Grain Moon, or Red Moon.

September -> Harvest Moon if the September Full Moon is the closest full moon to the September Equinox (around Sept 22). Other names are Corn Moon, Full Corn Moon, or  Barley Moon.

 

October -> Harvest Moon if the October Full Moon is the closest full moon to the September Equinox (around Sept 22). Other names are Hunter’s Moon, Dying Grass Moon,  Blood Moon, or Sanguine Moon.

 

November -> Beaver Moon named after beavers who become active while preparing for the winter.  Other names are Frosty Moon, or Mourning Moon if it is the last full moon before the winter solstice,

 

December -> Cold Moon to signify the beginning of winter. Other names are Moon Before Yule, Long Night Moon, or Oak Moon.

 

To be honest, until today, I'd only heard of a few of them, but there are so many interesting names. Now I'm thinking I need a full moon in my next story--but which one?

Next month, I'll present my new novel, Mishandled Conviction. Until then Happy Reading & Stay safe.

Many hugs!

JS

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

The Evolution of Calendars

 

 

Calendars are intimately tied to the human observation of the Sun and the Moon.  Thus, the universality of calendars is no surprise, appearing in almost every human society, going back to pre-Bronze age cultures. The development of calendars spurred many related disciplines, such as mathematics, religion, astrology and astronomy.

The ancients’ observation of the sun, in relation to the various constellations, gave us the solar year. They noticed that the sun returned to the same position every three hundred and sixty-five (plus a fraction) days. Archeologists believe many Neolithic structures around the world, such as the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico, Stonehenge in England and several sites in Ancient Egypt to serve this function. “Calendar circles” are remarkable for their profusion: they are found all over Africa, China, India and the Americas.

The other large, observable, heavenly body is the moon. Humans noticed that the moon also appeared at regular intervals; two weeks in a waxing phase and two weeks in a waning one. But a problem arose. The moon took twelve cycles of two-week periods to complete a year—that is, 354 days, while the sun took 365 days. Another problem is that the solar year is roughly 365.25 days long, and this one-quarter day needed accounting. Finally, both the earth’s and the moon’s orbits have been decaying imperceptibly over time, as both are slowly moving away from each other and from the sun.

These issues have dogged societies, affecting things like calculating days of worship, the time to plant crops, and to today’s problems of space flight and satellite positioning.

Early societies arrived at various solutions to these issues. The Hindu calendar, known as Panchanga, combined the lunar and solar calendar, adding an extra month called the Purushottam mas every 32-33 months, based on a complex series of calculations, to align the sun and the moon, and to account for the fractional days in a solar year. Unsurprisingly, many Eastern countries such as Cambodia, Thailand and Sri Lanka follow this luni-solar method. The only differences between these various calendars is their start date. The original Hindu calendar has a starting date of 6,676 BC, corresponding to the start of the current cycle of time known as Kali yuga. In Buddhist countries, the calendar starts at the birth of the Buddha, in 563 BC.

The Persian calendar, introduced by Omar Khayyam in the eleventh century, calculated the length of the year with astonishing precision, as 365.24219858156 days.

The Roman empire used to have a ten-month year, but when Julius Caesar came to power, introduced the Julian calendar, which introduced the leap year, without reference to the moon. While it lead to a more accurate solar calendar, it completely disassociated the moon from calendar-keeping.

The calendar currently used, called the Gregorian calendar, is a version of the Julian calendar, introduced in 1582, and has as its start date the birth of Jesus Christ.

The calendar’s original function was to determine religious observances. Indeed, the word is derived from the Latin ‘calends’ meaning ‘to call out,’ referring to the practice of announcing that a new moon had been sighted. In various cultures, the Islamic, Hindu and the Chinese, the sighting of the moon has religious significance. From the sighting of the moon, in relation to the constellations, came astrology, which posited the influence of these constellations (or spiritual beings associated with them) on human beings and societies. This record of the movement of the heavenly bodies led to the science of astronomy.

The accuracy of calendars are important, not for recording of past, but for projection of future events. The recent use of atomic clocks, which record the passage of time with astonishing precision, are an absolute necessity in today’s life, necessitated by inventions such as cell-phones, satellite communication and interplanetary travel.

This blog started as an exploration of Daylight Savings Time, but deviated into a far more interesting discussion. By the way, remember to put your clocks back by an hour this November 1^st!

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of 'The Yoga Zapper," a fantasy, and "Karma Nation," a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com)