Names for the Full Moons Each Month

Each month of the year has a different name for the Full Moon. There could be multiple names used, depending on the heritage or system being drawn upon. There are practical, natural world reasons for the names of each of the Full Moons, and they make logical sense when you think about the month and season and what is going on in nature at that time.  

The names of the Full Moons follow a traditional pagan way of living, whether that be from North American Native people, indigenous Europeans, or others. They also follow the seasons in the northern hemisphere. I'm not certain if the southern hemisphere has different names for these Full Moons. Please let me know in the comments, if so. 

January - Wolf Moon, Cold Moon
February - Snow Moon, Ice Moon, Quickening Moon
March - Storm Moon, Worm Moon
April - Pink Moon, Seed Moon, Wind Moon
May - Milk Moon, Flower Moon
June - Strawberry Moon, Sun Moon, Honey Moon, Mead Moon
July - Hay Moon, Thunder Moon, Buck Moon, Meadow Moon, Blessing Moon
August - Corn Moon, Sturgeon Moon
September - Harvest Moon
October - Blood Moon, Hunter's Moon
November - Beaver Moon, Mourning Moon
December - Oak Moon, Cold Moon, Long Night's Moon

January and February are generally cold and snowy, hence the Cold Moon, Snow Moon, or Ice Moon. In January, hungry wolves could be seen and heard around the villages and civilizations, hence the name Wolf Moon. February marks the end of the harshest part of winter as we start focusing ahead to spring. It is a quickening toward the renewal of spring, hence the name Quickening Moon.

March is often a stormy month, and it has the Storm Moon. This is also the month when earthworms start to be visible again, hence the name Worm Moon.

April is time for seeding gardens and crops, and it is the month when wild seeds start to sprout and grow, so we have the Seed Moon. It is also often a windy month (Wind Moon) and is the month when a pink flower called moss pink or moss phlox starts to bloom again (Pink Moon).

May is a time when the grasses and plants are starting to come back plentifully. Because they have more fresh food to nourish their bodies, livestock start to produce more milk around this time. This is why we have the Milk Moon in May. It's also the month when wildflowers are growing plentifully, so another name is the Flower Moon.

June is when the strawberries are ripe and also when the daylight hours are longest, hence the Strawberry Moon or Sun Moon.  It is also called the Honey Moon due to the honey harvest and the Mead Moon from the honey mead that is produced and drunk around that time.

July is haying season, so it is called the Hay Moon. There are often thunderstorms in the thick of the hot summer, hence the name Thunder Moon. New antlers appear on the heads of bucks around this time, hence the name Buck Moon. The meadows are overflowing with beauty and life at this time, hence the Meadow Moon, and the blessings of nature are many, hence the Blessing Moon.

The corn is starting to be ripe in August, so we have the Corn Moon. The sturgeon were most easily caught in the lakes during this time, hence the Sturgeon Moon.

The last three Full Moons of the year (Harvest Moon, Hunter's Moon, and Beaver Moon) occur with the most moonlit hours of any time of the year.

The Harvest Moon (September) produces enough moonlight by which to continue harvesting the year's crops well into the night.

The Hunter's Moon or Blood Moon (October) provides extra moonlight for hunting, to prepare the winter's stores.

The Beaver Moon (November) marks a period of time when beavers are most active in preparing their dens for the winter and can be seen working by moonlight. In this month, we are coming to the end of the fall and beginning of winter, the end of the growing season and beginning of the dark months, and this Moon is sometimes called the Mourning Moon.

December is the month with the most dark hours of the year, hence the name Long Night's Moon. It is one of the coldest months, so it can be called the Cold Moon. Oak trees are symbols of strength, indicating the strength needed to make it through the long, cold winter, hence the name Oak Moon.

Fixed T-Square and a Taurus Full Moon - Things Are Getting Real With Some Samhain Online Activism

We're experiencing a squaring-off of planets in the fixed signs right now, continuing into the Taurus Full Moon, exact at 12:14 p.m. MST tomorrow.

This isn't a long-lasting t-square, as it involves the faster-moving planets, but it is a potent one.

We have Mars in early Leo (fully into its retrograde shadow) squaring Mercury in early Scorpio at 5:50 p.m. today, just five minutes after the Moon enters Taurus.

Also involved in that Mars-Mercury square is Ceres and the Sun in Scorpio. So in effect, we have a triple conjunction (if you include the asteroid Ceres) in Scorpio being squared by Mars in Leo and opposed by the Moon in Taurus, which is forming an ever-tightening fixed t-square as it moves to fullness. There are some definite fixed sign issues coming to culmination here.

This is a clash of the fixed titans. People will be digging their heels in. Any progress made now will be gritty and very hard-won, yet long-lasting and meaningful. Fixed sign issues are issues that stay with us and stick to us. The themes can be almost constants in our lives, and gaining movement with them takes a tremendous amount of effort for seemingly little progress. However, the progress that is made is also fixed - as in, it's not going anywhere.

Mars in Leo square Mercury in Scorpio can bring some passionate verbal sparring and a general feistiness to communications. Our words trigger deeper, multi-layered and complex issues now, often related to what has remained unsaid, unintegrated, taboo through generational lines.

Our Scorpionic realizations now can also fuel the huge new directions we're undertaking related to our personal creative processes, in focus over the next seven months as Mars retrogrades in Leo (December 19, 2009 to March 9, 2010).

Part of the tension here will be between us raring to go with our new creative goals (Mars in Leo) versus the slow, grounded timing related to bringing those creative directions into physical reality (Moon in Taurus). The impatience of Mars in Leo being tempered by the demands for patience and the wait for emotional readiness of the Moon in Taurus.

Mars square Mercury relates to the application of our will through our words. With Mars and Scorpio involved, things can get incendiary, and there can be a real attraction to getting down and dirty. Throwing some verbal punches. But there is a necessity with the square formation to stay in check - using the Taurean groundedness and boundaries and the Leonine playfulness and fun to temper the concentration in super-driven Scorpio.

We have to be careful not to cross those lines because there are things that must be accomplished with this square tension. As always with Scorpio energy, there are some very neglected truths that need to come to the surface. And in order to bring them to the surface, we have to stay in touch with our intuitive understanding of how to go about doing that while not letting the Scorpionic tendency to extremes push us to the point of meltdown, ruining our chances for that fixed sign movement.

Scorpionic insights are not comfortable for status-quo, steady-as-you-go Taurus or for expressive, fun-loving Leo. Scorpio has a "let's get it all out there in the open" drive that threatens to blow things wide open, shaking the Taurean foundations and the Leonine joie-de-vivre.

It's not all tension and harshness, though.

Luckily, we have a nice Venus in Libra trine to Neptune, stationing direct in Aquarius, in the late afternoon tomorrow (4:21 p.m. MST) to soften the T-Square edges. This Venus-Neptune trine will support us in keeping the peace by providing us with a broader, birds-eye understanding of these very important times we're living through. Our spiritual faith and guidance will be very accessible here to get us through any rough spots.

Appreciating what we find beautiful on this planet (with Venus in its own sign Libra and the Moon in Taurus) can also provide some uplifting and buoyance as we grind out the fixed squares/oppositions.

I experienced one of the square-induced rough spots online last night (Hallowe'en night) with a woman in an online forum I just joined (and subsequently left) who was claiming that Hallowe'en is an evil, Satan-worshipping occult ritual and that anyone who takes part in it is an unknowing pawn. She also grouped pagans and astrology into that category.

I was actually shocked to hear this type of thinking (I'm not exposed to it often).

The woman had no knowledge of the traditional roots of Hallowe'en/All Hallow's Eve/Samhain and was making blanket statements about it based solely on the commercialized form of Hallowe'en we experience today, as well as extreme examples of immoral and criminal behaviour committed on this day. IE. the Satan-worshipping stuff

While I respect the right of people to make their own judgements about things like Hallowe'en, I begged to differ with her blanket statements and attempted to explain the traditional roots of the day, pointing out that certain aspects of modern-day Hallowe'en being corrupted and misused by a small segment of the population did not mean that all people who participate in the day are unknowing pawns in that corrupted version.

For anyone who doesn't know, modern-day Hallowe'en stems from a thousands-of-years-old pagan festival called Samhain (pronounced sow-in) which was a day to celebrate the transition between the end of summer/harvest and the beginning of colder temperatures/the darker days of winter.

Outside the religious connotations (which don't relate to my use of the term), pagan means, very simply, country-dweller. So it refers to people who live connected to the land and the seasonal cycles, the harvests, etc.

I'm really not sure where this all-pervasive attitude that pagan is synonymous with "evil" comes from, but I must say that this ignorance (the same ignorance that would have led to my ancestors being burned at the stake) is certainly alive and well in 2009 North America.

Corresponding to the division between the lighter half of the year and the darker half, people traditionally thought Samhain/Hallowe'en was a day when the veil between the living and the dead was particularly thin. It has an association with ancestors and the sign Scorpio, corresponding to the modern-day focus on ghosts and haunted houses and such. Because this day and celebration relate to heading to the darker half of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway), there is a corresponding focus on the darker, more taboo elements of human existence. As well, it gives people a few delicious frights as we dress up and let loose from the constraints of daily workaday life - which forces most people to live according to the homogenous corporate time clock, not natural timing.

To me, the day has a sacred feel to it. Hallowe'en means "holy evening," and it's a day when you can feel close to your ancestors and honour all they went through to get you where you are today, including the dark, brutal aspects of human life.

Now, here lies a major distinction:

There is also an idea associated with this day that, because of the thinner veil and the potency of the day, you could draw on darker spirits, as well, if you so chose.

So of course, this means that a small segment of people will choose to use the energy of the day for irresponsible ends. Misuses of energy go on all the time. (The Secret, anyone?) But taking it to the dark, ritualistic extreme is done only by certain types of people. It's not a pre-requisite by any means, and celebrating Hallowe'en doesn't mean condoning murder, Satanism or immorality. To apply that corrupted version to everyone celebrating the day is just false.

But try explaining that to a person who thinks that the words pagan and astrology are synonyms for "evil."

This woman was using perversions of those terms, making them something sinister, and applying these perversions in a blanket sort of way to everyone involved. Sorry, but that's horseshit.

People who are connected to the seasonal cycles/nature have celebrated this day for thousands of years, alongside all the corruption and BS. To claim that we're all unknowing pawns in some sort of Satan-worshipping plot is just ridiculous to me.

Anyway, this was quite an interesting Hallowe'en, if irritating and neck-stiffening. But I'm sure my ancestors were gathered round as we did our little part.

Again, Happy Hallowe'en and let's never forget the real, strong, true roots of the day and what it really means to those of us who stay connected to beautiful Earth.

Old School (Non-Neo, Small-P) Pagan in the City

(Using the most simple, stripped-down, irreligious definition of pagan here: country dweller. Or a person who is earth-based, living life connected to the land/nature and the Earth's cycles.)

The thing is, I don't feel like an alien on Earth. I feel foreign among most of the people on Earth and within the way people have things set up currently, but I love being on Earth itself. The nature, the animals, the landscapes, the elements. These basic components all feel right to me. It's just when I'm around most of the people on this planet, interacting with them and traipsing through the way things have been set up (especially in the urban setting) that I wonder at times if I can withstand it.

It's the lack of soul that does me in. The lack of wisdom. The lack of connection to the Earth and its cycles. The lack of valuing what is truly valuable. It's living by the corporate time clock, chasing dollah dollah bills. It's the constant chatter that says nothing, the traffic, the cell phones, the disconnect, all the artificial light, the people living their busy, busy lives making decisions that boggle my mind with their shortsightedness. It's the meanspiritedness. The crookery. The illegitimate power. The institutionalized hatred and violence. It's the inane hierarchies and their ridiculous social rules. The compartmentalization. The ignorant, assheaded decisions made by our so-called leaders, who have little to no regard for (or understanding of) the effects of those decisions on the people and environments around them.

This makes it disheartening because I want to be able to enjoy my time on this beautiful planet. And I want to be surrounded by those humble, good-hearted, down-to-earth people who feel like home to me.

But I've had to be in the city way more than I would like (the most recent one being hugely corporate, Big Oil, glossy-imaged, new rich), among people whose value systems and ways of living I don't share.

I'm in the city because the cities are the epicentres for the people who want to eat the Earth I love for dinner. This is where the directives come from to strip my Earth down for parts, to trade it away for dollars and cents, and to use and abuse the good-hearted people here. This is the raw battleground where the tipping point is tipped and a new balance found.

So for my deep, deep love of Earth and my Earthly comrades, I'm here. We're here.

I don't feel as if I belong on another planet. I feel as if most of the people I come into contact with do. :-)

I'm not a starseed. I'm not one who feels that I'm "not of this planet, just in this spacesuit human body." I don't want to leave - unless we lose the fight and it becomes completely uninhabitable. (There have been moments, haven't there?) I want to make it better here. I want to kick out the bastards and the crooks and the devaluers of this Earth and its inhabitants.

I don't want to leave Earth's living things to their devourers.

I'm not an ascension-preacher. The consciousness has always been here on Earth for those willing to tap in.

I'm not here for a New Earth. I'm not here to transcend this Earth. I want the same Earth that that runs through my blood and bones. The same Earth that ran through the blood and bones of my ancestors. I want my feet firmly planted on the ground. The wind whispering to me the wisdom of the ages.