blue moon

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I think it's interesting that la luna is considered womanly and fertile, partly because of its alignment with the menstrual cycle, yet we talk about the moon's face as the Man in the Moon. It is the sun that rules supremely and is associated with men - Apollo, Ra, Surya - they ride a chariot of war across the sky. (There is a Norse sun goddess, Sol Sunna, who also rides such a chariot. And the Hittites had Arinna, sun & fertility goddess.)

Quickly after winter solstice and Christmas celebrations - which originated in sun worship called Saturnalia - we have a Blue Moon. My color enhanced version is just a silly literal blue moon. You can read about the origins of the term blue moon at wiki. Whether it's the thirteenth full moon of the year, or the second full moon of the month - like this December with one on the 2nd and another on the 31st - folklore says when the face is blue, he talks to those in his light.

For a long time the way people have listened to Nature is through myths. I am a terrible student of classical mythology - Roman or Greek - let alone Aztec, Ojibwe, Hindu, Arabian or Norse and all those Wagnerian Brünnhildes. First my high school Latin teacher tried to drill Zeus and Aphrodite into my head. Then my university teacher Diane (lunar goddess) Wakoski - who centers her personal story in classical myths when she writes poems - taught me what she could. I would like to know more so that when I read an allusion to mythical characters I can understand the connection without looking it up. Sometimes I think all I do is look things up, and I want to know something without looking it up. Don't get me wrong, I'm devotedly grateful to Google, wiki, imdb and pantheon.

One character I always seem to come across in my readings is Persephone, whose story is a way of imagining the origin of winter. Hades, god of the Underworld, kidnapped her because she was so beautiful. Her mother Demeter, goddess of the harvest - or Earth Mother - wandered the earth looking for her, and the earth ceased to be fertile in her grief. At last Hermes went down to get Persephone back at Zeus' bidding, and he reluctantly let her go, but not before giving Persephone a pomegranate, which she ate seeds from, and it tied her to the Underworld forever for half the year, which is winter in Demeter's grief. She spends half the year with her mother, and that is summer.


Back to the moon. Diana is the moon goddess, or goddess of nature, fertility and childbirth (that menstrual cycle thing). Somehow she managed to protect those realms without getting directly involved in the messy affairs of people. In fact she was so uninvolved she was a virgin. Strange to be the protector of childbirth and fertility as a virgin, no? In myths the male gods may be the supreme rulers most of the time, but goddesses manage to mold and salvage something out of harsh circumstances the guy gods created.

Of course the moon and earth aren't female or the sun male; it's a way to think of the moon as the lesser light that is only reflecting the true source of light, the sun, in terms which have for too long been the parallel for women and men in society. I tend to be earthbound in what I can see, hear and feel and lack imagination and fantasy. We watched "Bridge to Terebithia" the other night, and I didn't much enjoy it. I don't have a desire to see "Avatar." But in spite of my distant quiet "virgin" observation of fantastical creations, it's nice to go out in the moonlight and let something other than facts speak to me. Maybe there really is something not in our heads that the moon says (he or she) when I get up in the night and see that blue light softly falling on the sofa the barn and the maples that isn't spoken in the light of day.

Poems sometimes arrive in the night. And dreams. Fears and worries too. But I don't think I've ever been afraid when the moon shone blue through the window. To me it says, Be still.

I wish you a wonderful New Year.



~Top image is the Sturgeon Moon shot August 28, 2007, processed blue in PhotoScape
~Persephone image by blackeri
~Diana image by Marinshe
~Bottom image shot when I was out in Lesley's kayak before sunrise, October 7, 2006; look closely at the .
.....horizon on the left side for geese in the water
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