Thoughts on the Blue Moon and natural philosophy
I'm pondering the signficance of the Blue Moon. Tonight's full moon is considered by many to be a Blue Moon, because it is the second full moon in a calendar month.
I am very interested in how and why such a thing becomes significant. The popular belief seems to be that the Blue Moon is a special, or particularly magickal time. I have heard it said that extraordinary things are possible during a Blue Moon, that it is a good time for spellwork and to overcome odds. Why? I can't help asking. What is the mechanism by which this full moon is enhanced? What power is made available that differs from other full moons, and by what mechanism?
I'm asking these questions because I can't help feeling that there is something arbitrary about this Blue Moon. If it's only Blue because it happens to be the second one in a calendar month, then is its power all in our heads, or in our culture? If there really is a magickal quality to the Blue Moon, it seems to me there must be some natural force in action to empower it so; and that force should be perceptible to us. This is so with all other cyclical natural occurrences: the seasonal tides of power that move through the land and create seasonal holy days; which may be celebrated on an arbitrary calendar date within the season, but the changes in natural forces underlying the event are real and perceptible, and are independent of the Gregorian calendar. The land goes through its changes and shifts, and would do so regardless of whether we were here to call them "Beltaine" or "Samhain" and choose calendar dates to mark them. So also the cycles of the moon: there are full and new moons, there is waxing and waning, there are eclipses; and we and all living things sense and respond to the changes in the moon's tides and Her pull on the earth. Were there no calendars at all, this would continue to be so. Can this be said of a Blue Moon? Does the land feel the difference between this and any other full moon? The creatures, the plants? Does the moon itself?
I had an environmental philosophy professor who talked about First and Second Realities. The First Reality, he said, is the one that our senses perceive - the experienced reality. We of course experience it subjectively and therefore differently from one another, but (unless you are a solipsist) it can be understood as having an existence beyond our sense perception of it. The Second Reality is the constructed reality - the meanings, categories, systems of thinking *about* the First Reality that we construct. For example, in the First Reality my mountain range stretches from Diablo to the Pinnacles, covered in a gradually shifting matrix of ecological communities. In the Second Reality, the part south of a certain line is Santa Clara County, and the part north of that invisible line is Alameda County. In the First Reality, a cougar kills and eats a deer; the deer dies, the cougar is fed. In the Second Reality, Nature is a bloody heartless bitch, red in tooth and claw. You see where I'm going with this? In the First Reality, the moon grows full and pours power on the earth every 28 1/2 days. In the Second Reality, we have calendars and give numbers to those days, and call this one a Blue Moon. It isn't that I question the magickal qualities of the moon's cycle, or the possibility of certain moons being more powerful. I just have a hard time seeing how power is arising from a calendar artifact. It doesn't suit my understanding of how power works in the natural world.
We of course have plenty of events that are completely artifacts of the calendar, and still have real power. It's just that the power in that case is derived from the collective spiritual sentiment of the human beings who are participating in the creation of that consensus reality. New Year's Eve itself is of course a perfect example of this. We could have the end and beginning of our year any time. It happens in our culture to be the end of a particular calendar month, but now that we've built up a culture around this constructed transition, it probably has some real power. Does this mean that a thing can, through collective belief and human energy, transition from the Second Reality into the First? Of course. Come to think of it, that's a fine alternate definition for magick itself. So yes, the Blue Moon can be magickally meaningful that way, and Gregorian New Year's can be too. For me, these calendar-based events are hard to access spiritually. I personally find that I can engage much more fully when there is a perceptible natural phenomenon directly underlying the event. That's just my mountain-witch self, having as usual a hard time plugging in to the more urban currents that many of my friends are tuned in to.
Interestingly, it turns out that there is actually a seasonally-based, non-arbitrary rationale for the Blue Moon. But under that definition, tonight isn't one. It seems that the traditional understanding of what a Blue Moon was historically was different from the modern popular notion. This has to do with the old custom of seasonal names for the moon cycles. These were determined based on the astronomical reality of the Solstices and Equinoxes. If you observe the Solstices and Equinoxes, the year is naturally divided into four seasons, or quarters, by them. Within a typical quarter, there will be three lunar cycles. The first would be considered the "early" moon, the next the "mid-season" moon, and the last the "late" moon. Thus the lunation beginning with the new moon nearest the Winter Solstice in any year would be the Early Winter Moon, and so on. This in turn gave rise to the system of naming the lunations: Corn Moon, Hunter's Moon, Blood Moon, Frost Moon, etc. But since the moon has a 19-year cycle with regard to the solar seasons, we end up with a 13th lunation that doesn't quite fit within the solar year. So occasionally there will be a fourth lunation within a natural quarter. This fourth moon is the Blue Moon. It would be the one that is not either an Early, Mid, or Late season moon - the third of the four occurring in that quarter. It was called a Blue Moon because it wasn't one of the ordinary quarterly ones and therefore didn't have a predictable seasonal name. Under this system, tonight's full moon would be the Early Winter Moon, not a Blue Moon at all. What I find interesting about this is that while the particular names are somewhat culturally specific and arbitrary, the system itself is entirely based on natural realities, and has nothing whatever to do with when our calendar months begin and end. It makes the notion of the Blue Moon having extra power or magickal potential come to life - since every full moon marks a crest in the natural tides of power, it makes intuitive sense that a season which contains and extra full moon would represent a special opportunity to harness that moon's magickal potential. It becomes a supernumerary or "supernatural" moon, in the sense of being a gateway beyond the ordinary patterns of life, similar to an eclipse which is a natural phenomenon with "supernatural" qualities.
Where did we get this idea of a Blue Moon as the second full moon in a calendar month? Apparently it is the result of a misunderstanding of the above system, by a writer in a 1946 astronomical publication. The above complex, naturally-based system was misunderstood and simplified to "Seven times in 19 years there were - and still are - 13 full moons in a year. This gives 11 months with one full moon each and one with two. This second in a month, so I interpret it, was called Blue Moon." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_moon This misunderstanding somehow got propagated throughout the culture via magazines and radio, and it has now become the popular understanding of the Blue Moon. Does this mean it is meaningless? Not necessarily. It just means it is modern, constructed by popular culture; if it is spiritually real, it was made so by us rather than being a naturally occurring spiritual event in the life of the planet.
So there you go. By modern notions of calendar, tonight is the eve of New Year and a Blue Moon. For me, the New Year was a couple months ago, about 40 days after the Fall Equinox; and a Blue Moon won't be occurring until November of next year. But if tonight is magickal for you, then I wish you grace and power in your celebrations of it.
I am very interested in how and why such a thing becomes significant. The popular belief seems to be that the Blue Moon is a special, or particularly magickal time. I have heard it said that extraordinary things are possible during a Blue Moon, that it is a good time for spellwork and to overcome odds. Why? I can't help asking. What is the mechanism by which this full moon is enhanced? What power is made available that differs from other full moons, and by what mechanism?
I'm asking these questions because I can't help feeling that there is something arbitrary about this Blue Moon. If it's only Blue because it happens to be the second one in a calendar month, then is its power all in our heads, or in our culture? If there really is a magickal quality to the Blue Moon, it seems to me there must be some natural force in action to empower it so; and that force should be perceptible to us. This is so with all other cyclical natural occurrences: the seasonal tides of power that move through the land and create seasonal holy days; which may be celebrated on an arbitrary calendar date within the season, but the changes in natural forces underlying the event are real and perceptible, and are independent of the Gregorian calendar. The land goes through its changes and shifts, and would do so regardless of whether we were here to call them "Beltaine" or "Samhain" and choose calendar dates to mark them. So also the cycles of the moon: there are full and new moons, there is waxing and waning, there are eclipses; and we and all living things sense and respond to the changes in the moon's tides and Her pull on the earth. Were there no calendars at all, this would continue to be so. Can this be said of a Blue Moon? Does the land feel the difference between this and any other full moon? The creatures, the plants? Does the moon itself?
I had an environmental philosophy professor who talked about First and Second Realities. The First Reality, he said, is the one that our senses perceive - the experienced reality. We of course experience it subjectively and therefore differently from one another, but (unless you are a solipsist) it can be understood as having an existence beyond our sense perception of it. The Second Reality is the constructed reality - the meanings, categories, systems of thinking *about* the First Reality that we construct. For example, in the First Reality my mountain range stretches from Diablo to the Pinnacles, covered in a gradually shifting matrix of ecological communities. In the Second Reality, the part south of a certain line is Santa Clara County, and the part north of that invisible line is Alameda County. In the First Reality, a cougar kills and eats a deer; the deer dies, the cougar is fed. In the Second Reality, Nature is a bloody heartless bitch, red in tooth and claw. You see where I'm going with this? In the First Reality, the moon grows full and pours power on the earth every 28 1/2 days. In the Second Reality, we have calendars and give numbers to those days, and call this one a Blue Moon. It isn't that I question the magickal qualities of the moon's cycle, or the possibility of certain moons being more powerful. I just have a hard time seeing how power is arising from a calendar artifact. It doesn't suit my understanding of how power works in the natural world.
We of course have plenty of events that are completely artifacts of the calendar, and still have real power. It's just that the power in that case is derived from the collective spiritual sentiment of the human beings who are participating in the creation of that consensus reality. New Year's Eve itself is of course a perfect example of this. We could have the end and beginning of our year any time. It happens in our culture to be the end of a particular calendar month, but now that we've built up a culture around this constructed transition, it probably has some real power. Does this mean that a thing can, through collective belief and human energy, transition from the Second Reality into the First? Of course. Come to think of it, that's a fine alternate definition for magick itself. So yes, the Blue Moon can be magickally meaningful that way, and Gregorian New Year's can be too. For me, these calendar-based events are hard to access spiritually. I personally find that I can engage much more fully when there is a perceptible natural phenomenon directly underlying the event. That's just my mountain-witch self, having as usual a hard time plugging in to the more urban currents that many of my friends are tuned in to.
Interestingly, it turns out that there is actually a seasonally-based, non-arbitrary rationale for the Blue Moon. But under that definition, tonight isn't one. It seems that the traditional understanding of what a Blue Moon was historically was different from the modern popular notion. This has to do with the old custom of seasonal names for the moon cycles. These were determined based on the astronomical reality of the Solstices and Equinoxes. If you observe the Solstices and Equinoxes, the year is naturally divided into four seasons, or quarters, by them. Within a typical quarter, there will be three lunar cycles. The first would be considered the "early" moon, the next the "mid-season" moon, and the last the "late" moon. Thus the lunation beginning with the new moon nearest the Winter Solstice in any year would be the Early Winter Moon, and so on. This in turn gave rise to the system of naming the lunations: Corn Moon, Hunter's Moon, Blood Moon, Frost Moon, etc. But since the moon has a 19-year cycle with regard to the solar seasons, we end up with a 13th lunation that doesn't quite fit within the solar year. So occasionally there will be a fourth lunation within a natural quarter. This fourth moon is the Blue Moon. It would be the one that is not either an Early, Mid, or Late season moon - the third of the four occurring in that quarter. It was called a Blue Moon because it wasn't one of the ordinary quarterly ones and therefore didn't have a predictable seasonal name. Under this system, tonight's full moon would be the Early Winter Moon, not a Blue Moon at all. What I find interesting about this is that while the particular names are somewhat culturally specific and arbitrary, the system itself is entirely based on natural realities, and has nothing whatever to do with when our calendar months begin and end. It makes the notion of the Blue Moon having extra power or magickal potential come to life - since every full moon marks a crest in the natural tides of power, it makes intuitive sense that a season which contains and extra full moon would represent a special opportunity to harness that moon's magickal potential. It becomes a supernumerary or "supernatural" moon, in the sense of being a gateway beyond the ordinary patterns of life, similar to an eclipse which is a natural phenomenon with "supernatural" qualities.
Where did we get this idea of a Blue Moon as the second full moon in a calendar month? Apparently it is the result of a misunderstanding of the above system, by a writer in a 1946 astronomical publication. The above complex, naturally-based system was misunderstood and simplified to "Seven times in 19 years there were - and still are - 13 full moons in a year. This gives 11 months with one full moon each and one with two. This second in a month, so I interpret it, was called Blue Moon." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_moon This misunderstanding somehow got propagated throughout the culture via magazines and radio, and it has now become the popular understanding of the Blue Moon. Does this mean it is meaningless? Not necessarily. It just means it is modern, constructed by popular culture; if it is spiritually real, it was made so by us rather than being a naturally occurring spiritual event in the life of the planet.
So there you go. By modern notions of calendar, tonight is the eve of New Year and a Blue Moon. For me, the New Year was a couple months ago, about 40 days after the Fall Equinox; and a Blue Moon won't be occurring until November of next year. But if tonight is magickal for you, then I wish you grace and power in your celebrations of it.