These articles are simply about the energies of each moon of the year. I wrote and published all of these in a long article years ago. Today I’m going to share them here, one by one, each month. These teachings/philosophies are from my Native American mentor who guided me through my childhood and taught me a great deal about this world and his people. I met him when I was 9 winters of age, and he began teaching me a year later when he was 86 winters of age. He was of the Munsee Lenni Lenape.
In December I will post two entries because there are not 12 moons in a year, but 13 full moons.
Each year has 13 moons, not 12.
Each moon is about 28 days long, but not exactly.
Since the calendar doesn’t add up, a Leap Year is inserted every 4 years to balance the scales.
The 10th Moon has arrived, or at least it’s month. The full moon will rise at 2055 UT on the 9th.
The Harvest Moon has passed and we enter the time of the October Moon, which my Native American childhood mentor’s people aptly called the Leaf Falling Moon. It is the moon when the deciduous forests shed their cloak to reveal the truth of the landscape once hidden in green drapery. The leaves turn from the deep summer green to a pallet of artistic hues, in one last explosion of glamour before tumbling through brisk autumn air to the damp chilly earth below. And here in the mountains of northern New England, the canopy is at peak color!
The trees spent the last couple of months producing buds for next spring’s awakening; small pouches filled with the promise of another growing season, though a long way off.
Many species of birds are in flight toward their winter homes. The rodent family hoarders have been busy stockpiling food stores all summer, and now feverishly collect the remaining seeds, nuts, and grains before someone else gets them!
Mammals are bulking up with dense fur and hair that will help protect them from the harsh winds and cruel temperatures of the long winter to come. And the ones that can gain weight through building fat layers are busy doing that as well. Some, like the weasel, for example, can neither build up fat nor gather food stores and so must go on as they do their whole lives (of a short couple years), hunting relentlessly to gain enough meat just to survive the moment.
Deer go into the rutting season (breeding season) now. Of course, they won’t give birth until next spring, but the mating season of the deer family in autumn is yet another promise of continuing life in the face of the growing season dying.
Of course, the Leaf Falling Moon is the time of shedding leaves, but also a time of shedding the physical world. September’s moon was the Harvest Moon and the last moon of summer. It was all about harvesting the physical and all that was grown throughout the physical side of the Medicine Wheel and the year. The October Leaf Falling Moon is the first moon of Autumn and therefore the first moon of the non-physical/spirit side of the Medicine Wheel and year.
The physical side of the Medicine Wheel goes from the Spring Equinox until the Autumn Equinox and the non-physical/spirit side goes from the Autumn Equinox until the Spring Equinox. We are now firmly on the non-physical/spirit side of the Wheel.
The Medicine of the Leaf Falling Moon is thus Transformation. It is the Transformation of all life into the realm of spirit within, from the physical outside. The energy of the body that has literally pushed outward in a state of venting all summer is now withdrawing back inward. Just as the sap from the trees that was coursing up and out all summer, it is now retreating back toward the trunk. As we get closer to winter the direction of energy for the body goes from drawing into sinking down into the kidneys and core.
Physical life transforms from being outward energy expressing existence to inward drawing vessels. We start to make the transition between the Black Road (east-west) of physical walking lives to the Red Road (north-south) of a spirit nature. But as it is we remain solidly footed in the western aspect of the Black Road. On the east side of this pathway exists spring, clarity, wisdom, and illumination. On the western side, we have experience, introspection, and strength internal. In the east are the expansion qualities of the mind. Here in October, on the western side, we have the aspect of holding and the physical body. The energy draws in to hold and preserve itself throughout the long cold moons to come.
This is a time when death becomes apparent once again in our physical lives and the reminder of the open door into the vast and eternal realm of spirit. The landscape seems to shrivel and die all around us as we go from fully cloaked forests to barren sticks of skeleton trees. Lush undergrowth turns to dry brown debris that quickly transforms into cold mud. And yet with all the death and dying the horizons open up and reveal the far reaching landscape. The sky becomes more prominent and the cold air turns the atmosphere darker and clearer, making the stars blaze like a million stories echoing in our ancestral DNA, waking the slumbering spirit to this side of the Medicine Wheel.
October is a great moon to remind us that the time we know here on earth as a time of abundant life and diversity is temporary. Life of this quality and nature can only exist on this planet for brief periods (in the scope of the planet's life), between the inevitable cataclysmic environmental events that truly dominate this globe. All the way back through the history of this world there have been massive events that have destroyed life for incredible periods of time. Catastrophic floods, fires, super volcanoes, ice ages, meteor strikes, earthquakes, and so on. It is the way of this earth. But even so, life has always managed to return and blossom, just as we see around us today. However, this kind of life can only exist between the wars of giants, the elemental forces that create and destroy the universe.
So here under the Leaf Falling Moon, The Moon of Transformation, it is wise to remember just how fragile and special our time here is while the giants partly slumber all around us. Much of what you see in this world is not meant to last, but as history shows, no matter how much life goes extinct, including humans, that much life and more will return like spring after winter.
In December I will post two entries because there are not 12 moons in a year, but 13 full moons.
Each year has 13 moons, not 12.
Each moon is about 28 days long, but not exactly.
Since the calendar doesn’t add up, a Leap Year is inserted every 4 years to balance the scales.
The 10th Moon has arrived, or at least it’s month. The full moon will rise at 2055 UT on the 9th.
The Harvest Moon has passed and we enter the time of the October Moon, which my Native American childhood mentor’s people aptly called the Leaf Falling Moon. It is the moon when the deciduous forests shed their cloak to reveal the truth of the landscape once hidden in green drapery. The leaves turn from the deep summer green to a pallet of artistic hues, in one last explosion of glamour before tumbling through brisk autumn air to the damp chilly earth below. And here in the mountains of northern New England, the canopy is at peak color!
The trees spent the last couple of months producing buds for next spring’s awakening; small pouches filled with the promise of another growing season, though a long way off.
Many species of birds are in flight toward their winter homes. The rodent family hoarders have been busy stockpiling food stores all summer, and now feverishly collect the remaining seeds, nuts, and grains before someone else gets them!
Mammals are bulking up with dense fur and hair that will help protect them from the harsh winds and cruel temperatures of the long winter to come. And the ones that can gain weight through building fat layers are busy doing that as well. Some, like the weasel, for example, can neither build up fat nor gather food stores and so must go on as they do their whole lives (of a short couple years), hunting relentlessly to gain enough meat just to survive the moment.
Deer go into the rutting season (breeding season) now. Of course, they won’t give birth until next spring, but the mating season of the deer family in autumn is yet another promise of continuing life in the face of the growing season dying.
Of course, the Leaf Falling Moon is the time of shedding leaves, but also a time of shedding the physical world. September’s moon was the Harvest Moon and the last moon of summer. It was all about harvesting the physical and all that was grown throughout the physical side of the Medicine Wheel and the year. The October Leaf Falling Moon is the first moon of Autumn and therefore the first moon of the non-physical/spirit side of the Medicine Wheel and year.
The physical side of the Medicine Wheel goes from the Spring Equinox until the Autumn Equinox and the non-physical/spirit side goes from the Autumn Equinox until the Spring Equinox. We are now firmly on the non-physical/spirit side of the Wheel.
The Medicine of the Leaf Falling Moon is thus Transformation. It is the Transformation of all life into the realm of spirit within, from the physical outside. The energy of the body that has literally pushed outward in a state of venting all summer is now withdrawing back inward. Just as the sap from the trees that was coursing up and out all summer, it is now retreating back toward the trunk. As we get closer to winter the direction of energy for the body goes from drawing into sinking down into the kidneys and core.
Physical life transforms from being outward energy expressing existence to inward drawing vessels. We start to make the transition between the Black Road (east-west) of physical walking lives to the Red Road (north-south) of a spirit nature. But as it is we remain solidly footed in the western aspect of the Black Road. On the east side of this pathway exists spring, clarity, wisdom, and illumination. On the western side, we have experience, introspection, and strength internal. In the east are the expansion qualities of the mind. Here in October, on the western side, we have the aspect of holding and the physical body. The energy draws in to hold and preserve itself throughout the long cold moons to come.
This is a time when death becomes apparent once again in our physical lives and the reminder of the open door into the vast and eternal realm of spirit. The landscape seems to shrivel and die all around us as we go from fully cloaked forests to barren sticks of skeleton trees. Lush undergrowth turns to dry brown debris that quickly transforms into cold mud. And yet with all the death and dying the horizons open up and reveal the far reaching landscape. The sky becomes more prominent and the cold air turns the atmosphere darker and clearer, making the stars blaze like a million stories echoing in our ancestral DNA, waking the slumbering spirit to this side of the Medicine Wheel.
October is a great moon to remind us that the time we know here on earth as a time of abundant life and diversity is temporary. Life of this quality and nature can only exist on this planet for brief periods (in the scope of the planet's life), between the inevitable cataclysmic environmental events that truly dominate this globe. All the way back through the history of this world there have been massive events that have destroyed life for incredible periods of time. Catastrophic floods, fires, super volcanoes, ice ages, meteor strikes, earthquakes, and so on. It is the way of this earth. But even so, life has always managed to return and blossom, just as we see around us today. However, this kind of life can only exist between the wars of giants, the elemental forces that create and destroy the universe.
So here under the Leaf Falling Moon, The Moon of Transformation, it is wise to remember just how fragile and special our time here is while the giants partly slumber all around us. Much of what you see in this world is not meant to last, but as history shows, no matter how much life goes extinct, including humans, that much life and more will return like spring after winter.
