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Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to
you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
--Carl
Sandburg,
Under the Harvest Moon
As of the date of this
issue (Aug. 31), we are one week away from the Harvest Moon.
Harvest Moon
is one of 13 names applied to full moons. There’s
Wolf
Moon,
Snow Moon, Worm Moon, Pink Moon, Flower Moon, Strawberry Moon,
Buck
Moon,
Sturgeon Moon, Hunter’s Moon, Beaver Moon, and Cold Moon--one each for
every month’s full moon, and then Blue Moon, referring to the second
full moon of the month when there are two in the same month.
Harvest
Moon, also known as Wine Moon, Singing Moon and Elk Call Moon, is
special in many ways. It behaves differently than any other full moon
because it rises each September near the autumnal equinox. The moon
rises at a point which is opposite to the sun, and is situated close to
the eastern point of the horizon. Normally, a full moon will rise around
50 minutes later on its second and third nights, but the Harvest Moon
rises only around 30 minutes later on its consecutive evenings.
Another characteristic
often applied only to Harvest Moon is “lunar illusion.” Because of an
illusion caused by the earth’s atmosphere, Harvest Moon appears larger
than any other full moon as it sits on the horizon.
More legends
and stories are associated with Harvest Moon than any other, and most
are related to death. For example, in Welsh mythology, this is the day
of the year when the God of Darkness, Goronwy, defeats the God of Light,
Llew, and takes his place as king of the world.
To this day
in
Japan,
the equinox is celebrated by visits to the graves of family members, at
which time offerings of flowers and food are made and incense is burned.
The three days preceding and following the equinox are called “higan,”
or the “other side of the
River
of Death.”
In
Roman
mythology, Harvest Moon was the time when
Hades
kidnapped Persephone to his underworld kingdom. Persephone’s mother,
Demeter,
goddess of the harvest, withdrew herself in loneliness, and the earth
ceased to be fertile. Knowing this could not continue much longer,
Zeus
sent Hermes
down to Hades to make him release Persephone.
Hades
grudgingly agreed, but before she went back, he gave Persephone a
pomegranate. When she later ate it, it bound her to the underworld
forever and she had to stay there one-third of the year. The other
months, she stayed with her mother. When Persephone was with her mother,
crops grew. When she was in the underworld, winter came.
No other
moon is so celebrated, so remembered, so honored. No other moon is
saddled with the status of endings, of death before rebirth. How ironic
then, that a moon so associated with death is the moon to shed the most
light upon the world below.
Although the coming of
winter will follow it, Harvest Moon itself is the last blossom of the
summer nights. Hanging low in the sky, round, bright and big, Harvest
Moon is the last and most beautiful bloom of the season.
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