More blue moon articles...

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
More blue moon articles...
4
Wed, 05-30-2007 - 5:49pm
Once in a Blue Moon: Maybe I’ll go lunar instead of linear

By Wickham Boyle


Once upon a time, a month was a month, determined by the arrival of each new moon. Many cultures, like the Jewish, Islamic and Chinese traditions, still keep a calendar based on the lunar schedule. But according to the solar calendar, a newer way to mark time, the month is an arbitrary, arithmetic division of the year. And so the months, as they have become delineated, have lost their intrinsic correlation with the real lunar phases. Calendar months of 30 and 31 days are longer than the actual period between one full moon and the next, which is 29.53 days. Consequently, the surplus hours and days of each month, each year, accumulate until eventually there is an “extra” full moon in one month. We call this extra full moon a BLUE MOON.


This happens in July 2004. July 2 was the Full Buck Moon and the Blue Moon is July 30, the Full Thunder Moon, in the naming tradition of the Iroquois. The cycle of the month with two full moons, the year with 13 moons, is 2.72 years, making it a rare and special, if not unusual or unexpected, occasion. So when we say that we visit someone rarely, we sometimes say, or at least our parents and grandparents said, “I do that once in a blue moon.”


How many of us actually know what that means? Now that all of our readers are wise and hip to the lunar vocabulary, I wanted to think about what does it mean to have such a rare day? How do we celebrate an unusual occurrence, and how do we acknowledge how auspicious this celestial lagniappe is?


I want to take this occasion to stare at the moon with my husband as we take our first prolonged, alone vacation in the hills of Umbria. We have run away before, but now that our kids are playing tennis like demons or working their own Italian summer jobs, we are free to have a once-in-a-blue-moon vacation. We are going to attempt to hold hands and walk, not talking about how to pay bills or juggle responsibilities, but rather be really, vitally present for each other.


I keep saying to my friends that nearly every fiber of my being is fighting this Blue Moon vacation because I feel it is the wrong time: I have too much work; a magazine for which I write just folded, so I have too little work as well. I am worried about…well, here you are free to insert any number of issues from my aging father, to school for kids, to the cats. O.K., silly. But so many of us fight being alone with our spouses, to rediscover why we loved them or even to learn who they have become while as partners we busied ourselves with raising children, fighting the good fight for democracy, volunteering for school or fighting the tide of gravity by taking our soon-to-be-saggy selves to the gym or out for a bike ride.


I see the Blue Moon as an opportunity to celebrate the rare in my life. What is rare for me now is realization, real-true, lying-on-my-back-and-letting-the-clouds-float-by detachment. Oh, I can go to the beach, but I need a pad of paper right next to me so when, or if, the good thought, or undone task pops into my brain, I can immediately write it down and not lose it — to fight fiercely not to lose the moment or the inspiration.


What is rare is deep appreciation for all the blessings I have: my health, my family, my energy and my enthusiasm. I lose that too often when I fall into my miasma of WOE IS ME. I forget the inner core of riches. I know we all do. So, time without agenda, phones and to-do lists gives me the window of opportunity to appreciate.


This is what I do once in a Blue Moon. I need to do it more, but when the heavens give me a cue, I try to take it.


http://www.thevillager.com/villager_65/onceinabluemoon.html


 


 






iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 05-30-2007 - 5:50pm
Once in a Blue Moonblue moon
Richard Giles asks: what really IS a Blue Moon??

Richard Giles, astrologer and feng shui consultant, has been busy researching the rare phenomenon known as the Blue Moon. He explains that a Blue Moon is when a Full Moon occurs twice in the same zodiacal sign in a single year, not just in the same calendar month, as is often put about in the media. If the two Full Moons are not in the same astrological sign, Richard argues that they are not truly "Blue". This is a fascinating story and one that will make interesting dinner conversation!


May, or June?

The Full Moon occurs at 01:05 hrs UT on June 1, 2007 (UT is Greenwich Mean Time in the old money), which is 9:05 PM EDT on May 31 in the Americas. So by a curious quirk of time zones, the month of May 2007 has the two Full Moons in the US and places west of the Meridien (including Canada, Mexico, South and Central America and the Caribbean), the first on May 2 in Scorpio (the Wesak Moon) and the second on May 31 in Sagittarius, but for people who live in the UK, Ireland and places east of the Meridien (Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand), it is June 2007 that has two Full Moons, the first on June 1 in Sagittarius and the second on June 30, in Capricorn. What an oddball situation!


The term 'Blue Moon' is used in the media at times and as well in popular literature. Perhaps where you may know it best is from the song of the same name about "standing alone, without a love in my heart," etc. What is a Blue Moon and where did the phrase come from? Well, it has a long and checkered career and it also has several meanings coming from different cultures. Lets see what we have from history.


My interest was triggered by the popular media attention focusing on the 'Blue Moon' of August 2004. It received a lot of publicity in the papers and even science journals. As an astrologer I've had a look at the Blue Moon phenomena in the past and discovered a few things about the origins of the term.


August 2004 had two Full Moons, one on the 1st and the second on the 30th August. These were referred to in the mainstream media as 'Blue Moons', which definition came from a children's "Facts and Records" book, published in 1985. (Margot McLoon-Basta & Alice Sigel, "Kids' World Almanac of Records and Facts," New York, World Almanac Publications, 1985). Where the authors of that book got it, no one seems to know. The term, using the occurrence of two Full Moons in a month is what's in use in today's media, but the origin of the phrase is much different from what we may believe.


Farmer's Almanac

An older definition for the Blue Moon is recorded in an issue 150 years ago of The Farmer's Almanac from Maine, USA. According to this definition, the Blue Moon is the third full moon in a season that has four full moons. Why would one want to identify the third full moon in a season of four full moons? Some years have an extra full moon—thirteen instead of twelve. Since the identity of the moons was important in the ecclesiastical calendar (the Paschal Moon, for example, was crucial for determining the date of Easter), a year with a thirteenth moon upset the Christian calendar, since there were names for only twelve moons. By identifying the thirteenth moon as a Blue Moon, the church calendar was able to be consistent.


The very idea of a "calendar month" is a relatively recent concept, as months were originally measured by the period between lunations, creating a Lunar Calendar of some 13 months per year (the word "month" comes from "moon"). A cultural revolution took place in the Classical Period, when the ancient rule of the lunar goddesses was replaced by the rule of the solar gods. This also saw the development of the solar year of 12 months, based on the seasons and connected with the 12 signs of the Zodiac. The true origins of the phrase 'Blue Moon' are really much, much older. In the ancient Lunar Calendars, time was measured according to moon cycles, change of seasons and the period between equinoxes and solstices.


Pope Gregory XIIIOur current Gregorian Calendar system dates from the time of Pope Gregory in the 16th century. The pre-Gregorian calendar was the Julian Calendar (the Roman Emperor, Julius Caesar, came up with the idea of standardising the chaotic Roman Calendar in 47 BC), a solar calendar of 365.25 days with various 28 to 31 day months and a leap year every 4 years. This is not out by much, but was out by enough to have put the calendar year out with the seasons by eleven days or so by the time of Pope Gregory, who rejigged the calendar in 1582 and put in the current leap year system. Many cultures, including the Protestant and the Orthodox communities were suspicious of such popery and did not adopt it until later (even now the Julian Calendar is still in use in parts of the Orthodox Church).


However, it was in 1582 that the Gregorian calendar was adopted in Rome, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. And it wasn't until 1752 that England adopted the new calendar.


What is an interesting historical aside is that in 1752 Uranus was in Pisces and Pluto in Sagittarius the same as today. At that time Pluto was in a positive trine to Neptune in Leo allowing for fundamental change. Back in 1582 Pluto was in another Fire sign Aries and Uranus was in Aquarius. Uranus was in a very challenging inconjunct (150 degrees) to Neptune making it a suitable time for shifting the way we standardise time.


With Pluto in Sagittarius back in 1752 we experienced the Pluto return in 1997/98 for the chart of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar by the English speaking world through Britain. Its not surprising that the role of the western calendar is being seriously questioned now and much is being made of the Mayan calendar and its more flexible role in measuring time and the use of moon calendars again in popular culture.


Never in a Blue Moon

Looking back through literature, the earliest western references to a Blue Moon are in a phrases as examples of obvious absurdities about which there could be no argument. Four hundred years ago, if someone said, "He would argue the moon was blue," the average sixteenth century man or woman would take it the way we understand, "He'd argue that black is white." This understanding of a Blue Moon being absurd eventually led to another meaning, that of "never." Something that would never happen in a 'Blue Moon'. Or similar to the phrase that it would be on the Twelfth of Never.


According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first reference to a blue moon comes from a proverb recorded even earlier in 1528:


If they say the moon is blue,
We must believe that it is true.


In the 19th century, the phrase about a 'Blue Moon' developed, meaning "never." The phrase today, 'once in a blue moon' has come to mean "every now and then" or "rarely".


Moon Cycles

The modern calendar, being an artificial construct from our Christian popes, does not really relate adequately to natural cycles, whereas the astrological position of the Moon is far more important in terms of moon cycles and in terms of the energy signature of each moon phase. What I believe are the real origins of this phrase come from Indian Vedic culture where the second of two Full Moons in one astrological sign was actually known as the 'Blue Moon'.


If within the sign of Taurus, for example, a Full Moon occurred at the first degree the sign then later that zodiac sign period the Full Moon came in at the 29th degree of the sign, then this second Full Moon in the sign was considered a very holy and auspicious day. It's considered to be a special time, when the connections with heaven and with the gods is very potent. Its a powerful and spiritually significant time for prayer and meditation going back a thousand years.


The Indian Tradition

The colour blue and its importance was derived from the skin colour of Lord Krishna, who is revered as the divine flute player. KrishnaThe special energy of the second Moon was considered 'blue' or divine by Indian religious scholars and priests. Thus they celebrate two Full Moons in the one sign and had large religious and sacrificial ceremonies to acknowledge the importance of the second.


Over recent times this happened in May/June 1997 when two Full Moons occurred in the Sagittarius/Gemini axis, in Feb/ March 2000 with two in the Virgo/Pisces axis and July/Aug. 2002 in Leo/Aquarius. You can see they occur every three to five years or so. The last was June/July 2005 with two Full Moons in the Cancer/Capricorn axis.


Because the Indian astrological tradition is a little different from the western tradition and they use a sidereal system based on where the constellations actually sit in the heavens then you may find the dates will vary slightly. But they have the origins of Blue Moon celebrations in their culture going back a thousand years.


Actual Examples

And the fifth meaning – we know there are actual examples of the Moon turning a blue colour. When the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa exploded in 1883, its dust turned sunsets red & green and the Moon blue around the world for almost two years. In 1927 a monsoon in India set up conditions for a blue moon. And the Moon in Newfoundland was turned blue in 1951 when huge forest fires in Alberta pushed smoke particles high into the sky blanketing its light.


There are probably at least six songs which use the term "blue moon" as a symbol of sadness and loneliness which is the opposite twist on the Vedic meaning. In a number of them the singer's Moon turns to gold when he gets his love at the end of the song. Wonderful!


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 05-30-2007 - 5:52pm
The Blue Moon
A "Blue Moon" occurs when two full moons happen in one calendar month. Since the phase period of the moon is 29.5 days, you usually only have one full moon each month. But each month it's a little earlier than the previous month. About every 2.5 years, you get two full moons in the same calendar month, and the second one is called the "blue moon". There is no physical difference in appearance, the second full moon looks like a regular full moon: circular and white with gray patches.

According to folklorists, the term "Blue Moon" is at least 400 years old. The earliest known references to a blue moon were intended as examples of improbable events or something that could never happen. As time passed the expression evolved to mean something that rarely or never happened. Hence the expression "Once in a Blue Moon" which is still popular today.

In the pagan community, the origins of the meaning of a Blue Moon vary. And the legend or origin of these meanings cannot be substantiated. However, some believe the second full moon holds the knowledge of the Goddess and is therefore contains 3-fold the energy.

In other traditions the phases of the moon represent the transition of knowledge within the Goddess. The quarter moons representing the maiden Goddess, the New Moon the Mother Goddess, the Full Moon the Grand Mother Goddess and the Blue Moon the transition of the Grand Mother or Crone to Divine level of existence.

Another view is that the Blue Moon represents a time of heightened or clearer communication between our physical being and the Great Grand Mother Goddess or the Crone Goddess.

http://www.paganspath.com/magik/moon.htm#bluemoon

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-20-2006
Wed, 05-30-2007 - 9:43pm

I was born under a Blue Moon!!

Wonder if that has anything to do w/ my *pull* that I feel towards Devine Feminine - which seems to have increased as I've aged (closer to Crone?!?) Hmmmm some interesting things to ponder here. (thanks for the link, too - pretty site!)

Many Blessings, "M" (who's so happy to be on-line again *smile*)

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 05-30-2007 - 11:20pm

It's good to have you back M!