The Hunter’s Moon: Light for the Long Nights

The Hunter’s Moon is October’s full moon, and this year it reaches full just after midnight on Monday, October 26, twelve minutes past twelve. That means the night of Sunday the 25th is the one to watch, with the moon rising close to full in the hours before it turns.

Named for what came after the harvest

The name is practical rather than poetic. It follows the Harvest Moon, and it marks the stretch when the fields had been cleared and the game feeding in them was easy to see against open ground. The light was long, low and useful, and the work it allowed was the last provisioning before winter.

It carries other names in other traditions, including the Dying Grass Moon and the Blood Moon, which is worth knowing because they all point at the same thing. This is the moon of the season turning hard.

Why it hangs low

Like the Harvest Moon before it, the Hunter’s Moon rises much sooner after sunset than usual. Through most of the year the moon comes up around fifty minutes later each night, but in autumn the angle of its path against the horizon is shallow, and that gap narrows sharply. The practical effect is several nights in a row of a big, low, orange looking moon in the early evening. The full moon guide has more on how the year’s moons run.

The colour is worth a word too. A moon near the horizon is seen through more of the atmosphere than one overhead, which strips the blue out of it and leaves the warm end. It is the same reason a sunset goes orange. Nothing unusual is happening to the moon, you are simply looking at it through more air.

Where it sits in the year

This moon lands between the equinox and Samhain, in the part of autumn where the season stops being pleasant and starts being serious. The harvest is finished. What is stored is stored. The work left is the work of getting ready.

If you want to read back through the season, the Sturgeon Moon piece from August covers a similar turn at the other end of it.

What to do with it

The provisioning question underneath this moon is a good one to sit with, and it is not really about food. What are you carrying into the winter, and what are you carrying that will not survive it.

One practice, if you want one. Go outside on the evening of the 25th or the 26th, whichever is clear, and stay out for five minutes without your phone. Let your eyes adjust, which takes longer than people expect. Then name one thing you are taking into the dark half of the year, and one thing you are leaving in the field.

The candlelit gathering

Jenny holds a Candlelit Full Moon Sound Bath for the Hunter’s Moon on the evening of Sunday, October 25 at Hope Flower Farm and Winery, in the loft of the renovated dairy barn. The room is held by candlelight rather than lamps, which changes it more than you would think, and the moon reaches full a few hours after everyone goes home. The gathering sits in the last of the rise.

Bring a mat, a blanket, and anything that helps you settle. It gets cold in the loft in late October, so bring more than you think you need. Come as you are. We are honored to hold space for you under this one.