A Little Moon Lore
Introduction
The Moon has been linked to ritual observances for millenia. The Babylonians considered the new moon to be the time when the Goddess was menstruating, and it was bad luck to do work on that day. In Jewish culture, this is the first day of the month, called Rosh Chodesh, and is still observed by some as a holiday for women.
An esbat is a ritual observance of the full moon within Wicca and other Wiccan-influenced forms of Neopaganism. Some groups extend these celebrations to include the dark moon, or even the first and last quarters. Traditionally, the Sabbats are times of celebration, while magical work is done at the esbats. The term esbat is probably a recent adoption, dating to the writings of Margaret Murray. It is derived from French esbat (modern ébat), meaning roughly "frolic, romp", with some sexual connotations. This term was used during the European witch trials to describe the supposed behavior of witches engaging in Devil worship, and it has been claimed that Murray was misled by the word's coincidental resemblance to the word Sabbat.
There are thirteen canonical full moons each year, although some years will have only twelve, because a lunar month is more than twenty-eight days long (actually about 29½ days). A "blue moon" is popularly defined as the second full moon in a calendar month, although some define it as the second full moon while the sun is in one sign of the Zodiac. The original meaning of blue moon was the third full moon in a season when there were four Full Moons in that season.
Background
The Moon has been the subject of many works of art and literature and the inspiration for countless others. It is a motif in the visual arts, the performing arts, poetry, prose and music. A 5,000-year-old rock carving at Knowth, Ireland may represent the Moon, which would be the earliest depiction discovered. In many prehistoric and ancient cultures, the Moon was thought to be a deity or other supernatural phenomenon, and astrological views of the Moon continue to be propagated today.
Among the first in the Western world to offer a scientific explanation for the Moon was the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, who reasoned that the Sun and Moon were both giant spherical rocks, and that the latter reflected the light of the former. His atheistic view of the heavens was one cause for his imprisonment and eventual exile.
In Aristotle's description of the universe, the Moon marked the boundary between the spheres of the mutable elements (earth, water, air and fire), and the imperishable stars of ether. This separation was held to be part of physics for many centuries after. In the 2nd century a Roman writer Lucian wrote a romance where heroes travel to the Moon and meet its dwellers.
By the Middle Ages, before the invention of the telescope, more and more people began to recognize the Moon as a sphere, though they believed that it was "perfectly smooth". In 1609, Galileo Galilee drew one of the first telescopic drawings of the Moon and noted that it was not smooth but had mountains and craters. On maps, the dark parts of the Moon's surface were called maria (singular mare) or seas, and the light parts were called terrae or continents. The contrast between the brighter highlands and darker maria create the patterns seen by different cultures as the Man in the Moon, the rabbit and the buffalo, among others.
The possibility that the Moon contains vegetation and is inhabited by selenites was seriously considered by major astronomers even into the first decades of the 19th century. In 1835, the Great Moon Hoax fooled some people into thinking that there were exotic animals living on the Moon. Almost at the same time however (during 1834–1836), Wilhelm Beer and Johann Heinrich Mädler firmly established that the Moon has no bodies of water, nor any appreciable atmosphere.
The far side of the Moon remained completely unknown until the Luna 3 probe was launched in 1959, and was extensively mapped by the Lunar Orbiter program in the 1960s. Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon on July 21, 1969.
Moon Facts
Moon Activity
When low on the horizon, the Moon can appear to be larger than when it's higher in the sky. It's all an illusion, scientists say, and it does not involve any enlarging effects of the atmosphere. Rather, it's all in your mind. Here's how it works: Our brains think things on the horizon are farther away than stuff overhead, because we're used to seeing overhead clouds that are close compared to those on the horizon. In the mind's eye, the sky is a flattened dome. With this dome as a reference, we expect something on the horizon (such as the moon) to be farther, and because it is actually no farther than when overhead, our brains goof and imagine that it is larger.
So why is one full moon lower in the sky than another? (Interestingly, the moon is never fully full from our point of view, but that's another story.) The moon's orbit around Earth is tilted 5 degrees compared to the plane of Earth's travels around the Sun, and Earth itself is tilted on its rotational axis. All this accounts for the lunar phases, and it also means the moon's path through our sky can be higher or lower depending on the angles on any given night. The complex orbit of the Earth-moon system is constantly evolving, too. Right now, the moon is moving away from us by more than 1.5 inches every year.
Skeptical? You can test this from home. When the moon first rises, hold something small like the eraser of a pencil at arms length and compare its size to the moon on the horizon. Keep in mind that mountains and buildings can dramatically alter your actual local moonrise time. Do the same a couple hours later when the moon is higher. Or try this: Take a picture of the moon in both positions, then cut, paste and compare. Another trick: Make a tube from rolled-up paper so the opening is just slightly larger than the moon when it rises. Tape the tube so the size stays fixed, then check later to see if the moon has changed sizes.
