Past Articles

AR 46 Sedna Enters the Arena

AR 45 Royal Stars of Persia

AR 44 Ancient Formulas for Immortality

AR 43 Twelve Gates of Heaven

AR 42 Jupiter in Virgo

AR 41 Geometry of the Spheres

AR 40 Saturn in Cancer, June, 2003 to July, 2005

AR 39 The Poles of the Zodiac

AR 38
Uranus In
Pisces
2003-2011

AR 37
Twelfth Planet, Plutinos or
Planet X

AR 36
Eclipses – Promise or Peril?

AR35
Solar Fire

AR34
The Lunar Mansions of Vedic Astrology

AR 33
Children of the Gods

AR 32
Wheels Within Wheels

AR 31
Horoscopes of Destiny

AR 30
Zodicac of Dendera

AR 29
A Star Is Born

AR 28
Age of Aquarius

AR 27
Persia's Royal Stars of Ancients

AR 23
The Lore of a Shaman

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” - Shakespeare, from Julius Caesar

The commonly-accepted definition of a “blue Moon” is a second full Moon in a calendar month. This assertion is backed by such diverse and impressive authorities as Sky & Telescope Magazine and the Trivial Pursuit Game. But this technical-sounding description is something of a red herring, pardoning the mixed metaphor, and tracing the origin of the expression becomes an object lesson in the mechanism of folklore and idiom.

Keeping time

The root of the problem lies in the modern calendar. Before clocks and calendars the motions of the Sun, Moon and stars gave us divisions of time. A day is one rotation of Earth, sunrise to sunrise. The passage of the Earth around the Sun gives us the year; the Sun’s apparent path in the sky. The idea, and Anglo-Saxon word for month, came from the movements of the Moon. But these familiar cycles move at different rates relative to each other.

The Moon’s motion is complex because the Sun, Earth and planets all tug on it. The Moon rotates on its axis every 27.3 days, the same time it takes to circle Earth. This is called the Sidereal period as the Moon returns to the same place relative to the stars. This dual motion is why the same side of the Moon is always turned toward Earth. However, the far side is not always dark since the Moon’s rotation exposes the whole surface to sunlight.

The Synodic month (29.5 days) is the time between successive New Moons. This period is longer because while the Moon is orbiting Earth, we have traveled about thirty degrees of arc in our annual trek around the Sun, and the Moon has to compensate.

Numerous cultures throughout millennia have wrestled with this problem. Indigenous cultures give names to the Moons, relative to the solstices and equinoxes, describing what occurs at the time of year. The most familiar of these is the Harvest Moon which is the full Moon closest to Autumn Equinox. Similarly, in Astrology there is one New Moon and one Full Moon in each of the twelve zodiac signs as the Moon circles Earth, which in turn orbits the Sun.We’ve adopted some of the names of the Moon, like Harvest Moon or Hunter Moon, but we’ve forced them into the calendar months.

Dividing the 365.25 days of the year by the 29.53+ days of the lunar cycle yields about 12.37 New or Full Moons. There’s no easy way to make these important cycles move in synch, and there is no inherent reason why our modern year begins on the first of January. It makes more sense to begin either at Winter Solstice when light returns, or Spring Equinox when the new cycle of growth begins. Today we use the Gregorian calendar with twelve fixed months of differing lengths, so as the cycles change, the shorter lunar cycle (29.5 days) can fall twice in a calendar month, resulting in what’s now called a blue Moon.

Curiouser and Curiouser

In a tumble down the rabbit hole with Alice in Wonderland, the evolution of the modern idea of a blue Moon is a bit surreal. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first reference to a blue Moon appeared in the year 1528 in a poem titled “Rede Me and Be Not Wroth.”

“If they say the moon is belewe (blue),
We must believe that it is true.”

One linguistic interpretation suggests that the word “belewe” originally implied betrayal, suggesting that the early use of the term had to do with deception. For the most part however, modern researchers assume the expression meant that a blue Moon was an absurd idea. But sometimes the Moon looks blue. If a substantial amount of sulfuric dust fills the air, resulting from a volcanic eruption or forest fire, the Moon takes on a bluish hue. This literal blue-tinted Moon is rare.

Jumping ahead in our story 300 years to the 1800s, the next reference quoted is from a Maine Farmers Almanac. Here a blue Moon is defined as the third full Moon in a season that has four full Moons. This definition stems from ecclesiastical rules for determining the dates of Easter and Lent. Easter Sunday is observed on the first Sunday, following the first full Moon after Spring Equinox, which can fall in March or April. Lent begins forty-six days before Easter Sunday and must contain the last full Moon of winter, called the Lenten Moon in church parlance. According to the almanac, when there are four full Moons in the winter season, the Lenten Moon (third one) became a “blue Moon.”

The plot thickens

In a March 1999 article in Sky & Telescope magazine, Philip Hisock, noted folklore expert and archivist at the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive, traced the origin of the term “blue Moon.” He concluded that two full Moons in a month was not the original definition. The May 1999 issue of the magazine featured a red-faced follow-up article, revealing that Sky & Telescope had actually, and inadvertently, created the current meaning back in 1943 through a misinterpretation of the Maine Farmer’s Almanac.

“Star Date,” a popular radio show hosted by Deborah Byrd in the 1970’s, further spread the idea by repeating the “wrong” answer to a 1943 “star quiz” from Sky & Telescope, which included the question about two full Moons in a calendar month. The quiz gave the answer as “blue Moon.” A later article in 1946 in the same magazine repeated the misinterpretation, and the definition gained ground. Then adding momentum, the 1986 Genius II edition of Trivial Pursuit included the blue Moon question, also with the answer as two full Moons in a calendar month. Trivial Pursuit cited their source as a children’s “Fact and Records” book published in 1985.

Folklore becomes fact

The accepted definition for a blue Moon is now two full Moons in a calendar month, but this description has nothing whatsoever to do with astronomical phenomena or the color of the Moon. The authors of the May 1999 Sky & Telescope article admitted, “With two decades of popular usage behind it, the second-full-Moon-in-a-month (mis)interpretation is like a genie that can’t be forced back into its bottle.”

The making of a blue Moon increases our understanding of the mechanism of folklore and the process which creates a cultural idiom. An idiom is defined by Webster as “A phrase established by usage whose meaning is not deducible from the individual words.” Somehow, an idea takes hold in the collective psyche and becomes a common cultural conception of reality without regard for technical truth. The blue Moon chronicle is filled with Medieval charm, human frailty and a generous dose of whimsy, and blue Moons are now part and parcel of our lexicon. Science and folklore have jointly created a new definition.

Colloquially, “once in a blue moon,” means rare, and actually happens about every thirty-three months. We just experienced a blue Moon of this kind on July 31, 2004. (The next “blue Moons” will be June 30, 2007 and December 31, 2009). Perhaps July’s blue Moon came and went without much fanfare because it has no intrinsic or symbolic significance. It’s an arbitrary, if agreed-upon term. Unlike the amusing chronicle of blue Moons, another fascinating story is unfolding which which is filled with symbolism and significance and concerns the Moon’s origins and the relationship between Earth and Moon.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

Since astronauts have walked on the Moon, returning home with moon rocks, scientists have been able to study the Moon’s origins first hand. Prior to that multiple theories competed to explain how the Moon came to be circling Earth. One knotty problem is the Moon is too big to be a “moon.” Analysis of the geology of the Moon, coupled with high-tech, computer-generated images, is resulting in a fascinating thesis. Scientists now believe that 4.6 billion years ago there were two planets circling the Sun where the Earth and Moon are now.

In this scenario, a Mars-sized planet, traveling in a tight orbit with Earth, collided with us, stirring up and jettisoning a great deal of planetary matter. After a lot of cooling and coalescing our Moon formed and settled into orbit around Earth. So rather than planet and moon, we are two planets, poetically termed Terra and Luna by astronomers, moving in a circular pas de deus around the Sun. No wonder our bond with the Moon is so strong; she is more sister than satellite.

Cutting edge astronomical theory is supported by astrological symbolism. Astrological interpretation has long understood this intimate and symbiotic relationship. Astrologically, the Moon represents our instincts, memories, the past, our habitual behaviors and our inheritance. The Moon is seen symbolically as our lost psyche, separated from our waking consciousness as we journey through time. The Moon reflects our instincts and our evolving personality. The hidden side conceals our habitual selves and unconscious patterns which need to be healed or reclaimed. The cycles and phases of the Moon’s reflected light offer periodic illumination into our individual and collective nature. Just as space travel has given us a glimpse of the Moon’s hidden side, the relationship between Earth and Moon is a journey of ever-changing, but ever-increasing, light and consciousness.

Measure versus meaning

Astronomy is science, based on observation and measurement. Astrology is an interpretative discipline which applies meaning and correspondences to what has been observed over thousands of years. Not so long ago they were the same.

I believe we’ve lost a great deal as a result of the extreme polarization of these two disciplines. When we separate meaning from measurement, and cleave two halves of the same pursuit, we tear apart the mind and heart. Clocks and calendars are useful devices, but they make it easy to loose touch with the real rhythms we’re biologically and spiritually tuned to. Artificial light disconnects us from the night, sweeping lunatics and werewolves under the carpet, and denying our instinctual response to these deep impulses.

Gratefully, there is a tremendous resurgence in backyard astronomy, and sales of small telescopes is sharply on the rise. Likewise there’s an enormous interest in astrology, and this subject tops the charts of “new age” book sales. In both cases I believe it’s because we long to feel connected and crave purpose and meaning. It’s a lovely and synchronous irony that the idea of blue Moons unwittingly made partners of science and folklore. As the eye of science peers further into the history and workings of the Universe, it’s my belief and heart-felt desire that the two ends of the star-gazing spectrum will in time be reunited in a circle.