The Mystery Of The Moon Calendar
Merlin
The history and mystery of the Silver Circle Moon calendar,
how it came into being, and more about the 13th moon.
"Witchcraft 2000, Part 4" (C) Wiccan Rede volume 18 nr. 1 * Spring 1997
OLD!
The Silver Circle Moon Calendar Once More Available!
(From our antiquities department)
Research on this calendar started in 1982, and in the Autumn of 1984 this resulted in the creation of the artwork that is by now known all over the world as 'The Silver Circle Moon Calendar'...
This is how the advert started for the full colour reproduction of the Silver Circle Moon Calendar, in Wiccan Rede, Autumn 1995. Although the advert may have been tongue-in-cheek, the calendar itself really is an old system. Over the years many people have asked me where it came from and what the meaning is of the individual moons. This article will highlight some of the history of the calendar and its creation. It will also present some ideas on the function of a moon calendar and what it means to us, embedded as we are in our highly technological society, on the brink of the 21st century.
The mists of time
My interest in a moon calendar grew out of my
involvement in Modern Witchcraft, where we celebrate the nights
of the Full Moon, as everyone knows full well. I started wondering
if there was anything in those full moons, if they were all the
same or maybe all different. One thing led to another, and I started
collecting magazine articles and books that were somehow relevant
to this subject. I came across quite a few moon calendars in the
process. However, most of those somehow didn't feel right. One such
example is the American system of using the current calendar months,
which almost always will contain one full moon each. Sometimes a
thirteenth full moon is present because a calendar month contains
two full moons, and the second is then called a 'Blue Moon'.
As happens so often, your intuition is years ahead of you, and it
is only much later that I came to realise why most of the other
moon calendars didn't feel right to me. More about that later.
However, there was one calendar that did appeal to me. It was only
a small article in a magazine, and much of the detail is now, literally,
lost in the mist of time. Although we have extensive archives, and
I spent a lot of time in 1995 trying to reconstruct all the sources
I used in 1982-84, the relevant material so far hasn't surfaced...
Maybe this is as it should be. Quite often you find that during
a research project information literally 'falls into your lap' just
when you need it. Maybe the reverse is true as well: when you don't
need it anymore, the magazines and books just 'vanish'...
The mysterious source
The article that I mentioned above appeared in an English magazine in 1982, and briefly outlined the moon calendar that I used as a basis for my artwork. It did not give much more than the names for each moon, and it certainly did not give any kind of 'system' as to how the moons should be linked to the solar year and when and why the Ice Moon should be inserted. The only information it gave was about the Ice Moon as being the thirteenth moon. For one reason or another though, this moon calendar connected with something inside myself; it felt right. And consequently I decided to use that cycle of moons as the basis for my artwork.
Art and inspiration
The Silver Circle Moon Calendar started out as
a piece of art. It was never intended to be a system, it was never
intended to be an intellectual exercise, it was not even intended
to come with a voluminous book full of information, correspondences,
rituals and other paraphernalia. It was intended to be what it still
is today: a work of art. When the calendar with first published,
in 1984, in its original black and white A3 size, it came with a
single sheet of information on how to use it. The calendar was printed
on heavy parchment paper, and you were supposed to colour it in
yourself, cut out the inner circle and use it as a perpetual moon
calendar.
Whilst I was working on the calendar, my mind wandered
off and I explored the cycles of the moon herself. Inspired by other
artists, such as Brian Froud, who did the artwork for Jim Henson's
film "The Dark Crystal”, as well as being inspired by the mechanics
of time, the solar year and the lunar rhythms, the drawing grew
into something that on the one hand represented the 'machinery'
of time, and on the other hand included definite breaks, or mistakes,
in this machinery, to highlight the fact that the moon will not
let herself be shackled to the solar year properly.
Sinister
The word 'sinister' means 'left-handed', which most people will
recognise when they realise that 'dexter' means 'right-handed',
'ambi-dextrous' means that you can use both hands, and 'dexterity'
means skilful, physically or mentally. People have commented
on the anti-clockwise direction of the calendar artwork. There is
nothing sinister (in the normal sense) here though. I was accustomed
to visualise the cycle of the year anti-clockwise. I have done so
as long as I can remember, from early childhood on. As an astrologer
I was accustomed to drawing horoscopes, and there too the signs
of the zodiac are drawn anti-clockwise. This is because the Earth
spins anti-clockwise when you're facing South (which you are when
you draw a horoscope), which is the same as saying that the Sun
moves clockwise, and which results in the next sign of the zodiac
rising on the Eastern horizon. So drawing the calendar anti-clockwise
was 'natural' to me.
People have also commented on the inverted
pentagram that can be seen in the lower left hand corner. Again,
this is a 'sinister' interpretation of what is meant to be a piece
of art. If you look closely at the four elemental circles in the
four corners, you may notice that the so-called magical sigils are
all upright, but the underlying elemental tools, such as the cup,
the wand, the Athame and the pentacle, point towards the centre
of the Circle. So the pentacle points to the centre of the Circle,
and so too does the top of the upright pentagram on it.
The source revealed?
Years after I had made the moon calendar, I came
across another moon calendar that used the exact same names and
alignment to the year that I used. Even though the actual system
of alignment was different to mine, the end result was the same:
the Ice Moon appeared in the same years, etc. Interestingly enough,
the two moon names that I had changed (I had altered Barley Moon
to Harvest Moon, and Wort Moon to Hunter's Moon) were changed in
his calendar too.
Naturally I was very curious, and I tried
to reconstruct all the source material that I had used, in order
to see if I had actually copied this system inadvertently. Alas,
to no avail: some of the crucial documents seemed lost forever.
A few years after that, once again I came across this moon
calendar that so much resembled my own, and I finally decided to
write to the person who published it. And so I did. I outlined how
my own calendar came into being, and that I had found the cycle
of names in a magazine that was lost by now. I explained that I
did not want to lay any 'claim' to a cycle that I had found in a
magazine, and that, although my artistic interpretation was obviously
my own, I would be very happy to give credit to this person if he
could show me that it was his moon calendar that I used in my drawing.
However, I received no reply.
In a sense I felt sad about this.
The moon calendar that I found was a very ancient British traditional
cycle, and the person who published this calendar so similar to
the one I found belonged to a very ancient family, which has worked
with trees and wood, fairies and deva's for centuries.
Full circle: the facts
In the course of working on this article, some
of the missing documents surfaced once again. The original article
that sparked off my interest was titled "The Thirteen Moons” by
Peter Larkworthy, and appeared in The Wiccan (now Pagan Dawn, published
by the Pagan Federation), May 1982. The addition to this article,
the list of moon names and their dates for 1981 and 1982 appeared
in The Wiccan, August 1982. There is no reference to the source
of these names, although the title 'Traditionalist Moon-names' implies
that the names would be traditional. The names Peter Larkworthy
gave are Ice, Snow, Death, Awakening, Grass, Planting, Rose, Lightning,
Barley, Wort, Blood, Tree and Long Night Moon.
As I explained
above, I changed the Barley Moon to Harvest Moon, and the Wort Moon
to Hunter's Moon. It is of course possible that I changed these
names using names I found in other books or articles - that part
of the story is still missing. Dusty Miller, whose calendar is so
similar to mine and who uses the names Harvest and Hunter's Moon
as well, was publishing articles and giving lectures at this time.
For example, in "The New Celtic Review”, Beltane 1983, there is
an article by Dusty Miller and Son, on Practical Tree Magic, in
which he outlined his work with trees, dryads and the wood items
he creates.
In the magazine Ophir, seven years later (1989
and 1990) a series of articles appeared, written by one F.P., which
explored the mystery-side of the lunar cycles, using Dusty Miller's
calendar: "... I shall use a widely available lunar calendar published
by Dusty Miller and expanded upon by traditional lore.” Reprints
of these articles appeared in The Cauldron in 1993.
The origins of the system
The 'system' of aligning the thirteen moons to
the solar year, as given by Peter Larkworthy, and also used by Dusty
Miller, takes the Winter Solstice as its central point. Although
Peter Larkworthy did not explain how you align the moons, Dusty
Miller did explain his system to me in a private conversation in
1995: the first new moon after Midwinter will be the Snow Moon.
In some years, there will be a full moon between Midwinter and the
Snow (new) Moon, and this will be the Ice Moon. Although you might
think that the Ice Moon could occur anywhere between December 21st
and January 6, in practice this is not true: the Ice (full) Moon
usually falls in early January.
As an aside, I've tried to use
Dusty Miller's system, and it does give more or less the same results
as the 'system' which I discovered by myself, provided that you
do not use the exact point of Midwinter as the pivot, but about
5 days later, which is when the Sun would actually be visibly moving
further South again at sunrise.
When I designed my calendar
however, I only had Peter Larkworthy's statement about Midwinter,
without any 'system'. I looked further, and came across an article
by Colin Murray in a beautifully hand-written magazine (yep! Some
magazines were hand-written in those days!) from May 1979: the "Newsletter
for the Golden Section Order Society and the Bardic Chairs of Caer
Llyndain, Caer Wydr, Caerleon-yr-Wysyg, Caer Alba and Caer Gvernicon.”
Murray, in his article "Tree Alphabet Divination”, stated that "It
is likely that in Cymric Britain, the Fire Festival of Samhain (Hallowe'en);
started the 'dark half' of the year, which culminated in fertile
May Day - the 7th Oak centre of the 13 month 'year'.” Extensive
correspondence tables in the same article outlined how Murray aligned
the Ogham alphabet to the year, starting with Beth and Hallowe'en,
and thus aligning the Oak, Dur, with Beltane. All these trees were
not my cup of tea at the time, but aligning a moon calendar
to the cross quarter days such as Samhain, rather than the minor
solar festivals like Midwinter, definitely seemed logical. After
all, the agricultural festivals pre-date the solar festivals, just
as moon calendars pre-date solar ones.
Jump-starting the next
sections then, my 'system' such as it was, was to align the Snow
Moon to Imbolc, and the Blood Moon to Samhain, so that these would
be as close as possible to the actual cross-quarter festivals. To
avoid these moons getting too far out of step with the actual dates,
the thirteenth moon, the Ice Moon, needed inserting every two to
three years. As it turned out, this insertion cycle followed an
18-year pattern.
Sundry philosophical notes on the system
Since I had not found
a specific 'system' that appealed to me, I had to think about one
for myself. It seemed logical to start with the fact that lunar
calendars predate solar calendars. From there, it follows that you
can not define the moon calendar by using the solar calendar (which
of course is still non-existent at that moment). So any mathematical
link with Midwinter for example can not be used. This brings one
back to the simple fact that the moon calendar must have been linked
with the cross-quarter-days, the agricultural festivals: Imbolc,
Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. None of these festivals were fixed
to the (non-existent) solar calendar; they were governed by the
Moon, and they were probably celebrated when it was Full Moon.
So the moon calendar was defined 'in itself' so to speak, and adjusted
when nature indicated that it was out of step. The Celts started
their year with Samhain or the Blood Moon, and I assume that, depending
on the Blood Moon being early or late with respect to what was happening
in nature, the priest or priestess would insert the thirteenth moon,
the Ice Moon, in the middle of Winter, in order to align the moons
again with the start of the next cycle: Imbolc, birth. In this way,
the normal people could use the cycle to keep track of past, present
and future.
Some people may find the above reasoning a bit contrived. And it is - to us, in the twentieth century. We have lost all contact with nature, and our lives are governed by the clock and the atomic calendar. However, it was different at the time that lunar calendars were in use. The moon governs life, and is a good indicator of what is going on in nature. A lunar calendar was probably all that was necessary to keep track of what was happening in nature, and to predict from one month to the next what could be expected. To those people, a solar calendar, with its mathematical precision that doesn't take frost or snow, nor germination or mating into account, must have felt far more contrived! People who live close to nature will experience the moon as a regular and dependable rhythm, growing from new to full and then waning again, as an example of what the flocks or the corn would do over a few seasons.
Why would the thirteenth moon be the Ice Moon?
Of course, you
can insert a thirteenth moon at any point in the cycle to keep the
moons in step with the seasons. It might feel 'logical' to add a
thirteenth moon if some other time span, such as a solar year, is
not 'full' yet. However, if you assume that there is no solar calendar,
such a rule of course can not apply.
If you have a moon calendar
that is only defined within the processes of life as they happen
on the planet, then the thirteenth moon will be governed by some
archetypal 'rule', rather than an intellectual one.
Imbolc is
the festival of birth in nature, still very delicate: the lambing
season, the first flowers. Samhain is the festival of death in nature:
the final preparations for Winter. And between death and birth there
is the Summerland - the magical and mystical Otherworld that people
still remembered in the stories they told each other around the
fire during the long winter nights, and in the festivals that they
celebrated, such as the giving of presents which predates the Winter
Solstice celebrations.
However, once the celebrations of Winter have
passed, we enter a no-man's land and anxiously await the first signs
of the coming of Spring in order to celebrate our Imbolc festival
and the rebirth of nature. And it is during this period in the cycle
that the Ice Moon, the thirteenth moon, appears every two to three
years. Again, the Ice Moon is not 'just any moon' that we humans
decide to call Ice Moon, no, it is a phenomenon that is linked with
nature, an integral part of the cycle which you can experience.
When Winter seems to go on forever and Spring seems years away,
the Ice Moon reminds us of the fact that the cycles of life are
not fixed, and that they are actually not circles either, but a
spiral. A spiral is a circle that is broken, because the beginning
and the end will never meet. And in the gap, the point where rebirth
is birth on a different plane of evolution, is where the Gods can
leave their mark. In the life of plants, animals and man, this mark
is left just before the actual birth. This is the time when the
soul, or spirit, will link itself with the physical body. In the
old fairy tales there were stories of fairy children, or changelings:
children that seemed somehow different, often ugly. Of these children
it was said that they were swapped with the real child immediately
after birth, and that they were fairy children. Maybe we would call
these children 'handicapped' in our current era, but the legend
of the fairy children still applies, because these children live
more in the world of fairy than they do on Earth.
There are
other fairy tales that have a link with the thirteenth moon too
- a few of those were discussed in Witchcraft 2000 part 2, Wiccan
Rede Autumn 1996, albeit in a different context. The thirteenth
fairy, the thirteenth element, the element of fate, of unpredictability,
always occurs just before or at birth, just like the thirteenth
moon, the Ice Moon, occurs unpredictably just before Imbolc. The
number thirteen has to do with destiny.
You'll be able to unearth plenty of examples for this principle yourself - just think of Arthur, or even the Last Supper, and of course the traditional Coven of 13 witches performing magic to shape people's destiny.
A moon calendar: why bother?
What is the point of a moon calendar for us,
today? It is obvious that we don't need it to keep track of time.
Solar calendars and atomic clocks are far better in doing that.
And that is exactly the reason why we need one: we are 'caught'
in time, in minutes, seconds and nanoseconds, and we have lost out
sense of the processes that are going on around us.
Modern
day humans are multi-tasking: they do a tiny bit of everything at
the same time. Work whilst you commute, phone whilst you drive,
eat whilst having a meeting, read whilst you walk. And at the end
of the day we moan that we haven't done anything, that we don't
seem to get anywhere, that nothing is finished and that there is
always more work waiting to be done. Why? Because we won't allow
ourselves to carry one thing from inception to completion! We can't
see the processes anymore because we only see little bits at a time,
and we only do little bits at a time. Efficiency dictates that people
should be utilised as very simple machines that can only do one
thing. And as soon as machines are clever enough to do this bit,
the person becomes obsolete.
It is clear that we have lost something. We have lost contact with life. People are living beings, not clever machines, but unfortunately the economy has no use for living beings, only for machines and computers. And very slowly some people start to realise this as well. Computers are being made 'user friendly' which means in effect that they are far too complex for people to understand, so they must be made to look simple, like humans...
This is exactly where a moon calendar can become the tool to put us back on track. At first, we may still need the solar cycle or some other sort of 'rule' to keep the moons in step with the solar year. But only until we have re-established the link with the cycles of life once more. Then we can let go of the 'rule', and we are once again close enough to nature to feel when a particular moon governs nature. And the moons do actually influence nature and natural processes such as the weather or human relationships far more than we think!
I hope that the Silver Circle Moon Calendar can help in this process to re-discover our link with the cycles of life, and that instead of a book that may appeal to the intellectual side of our nature, the artwork will appeal to the magical and mystical side of our nature!
Merlin
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The Silver Circle Moon Calendar is (C) Merlin.
