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Astrology Explored » Celtic Astrology: The Harvest Moon–Remembering the Future
September 12th, 2011 @ 3:50 pm by Astrology Explored
The Celtics were a people that reconciled opposites, day and night, dark and light as the continuum of the same forces that bound the lives of men and gods together. Unlike us, with our 9 to 5 routines, the Celts viewed Time as fluid, as having the ability to flow back on itself. The Druids called prophecy “remembering the future”.
Also, unlike us, the Celts found the seeding of things in the darkness. A Neolithic people of the land, they were keyed to the rhythms of life and death, the fertility of the land and of their tribes, and the phases of the Moon. As the Sun dipped below the horizon, the moon rose, and literally, a new day began.
Instead of being the end of the day’s activities, sleep and dreaming were the start of the daily cycle for Celtic peoples. It was the natural time for adults to spend some alone together, as children slept and the adults got to the business of making their brothers and sisters. The darkness was associated with planting seeds for future growth.
The Celtic worldview centered on balancing the dark and the light. As such, the Four Fire festivals, Olmelc, Beltane, Lughaan, and Samhain, all festivals celebrating the cycle of life, were not celebrated at the solstices points, but at the midpoints of them. The Solstice points and the fire festivals celebrated the cycles of the sun as the male principal. The male principal was important to be sure and this eight periods that marked the passage of the Sun was seen as the life cycle of the male god, the consort of the great goddess. But most evident of the view of balancing dark and light is the highlight of their monthly calendar, the Full Moon. The seed of the dark new moon had flowered, and the fullness of the power of the moon was on display. Poised in mid cycle, between new and old moon, the Full moon was ripe with future promise of the seed planted in the darkness.
Today the full Harvest Moon, marks the fullness of the fruits of our past efforts.
It is the month the Celts called Samonois, the seed-fall. It is a time of preparation for the cold and the darkness as we remember what the future will be. In a few weeks, we will be at the time of the fourth fire festival, what we call Halloween and which the Celts celebrated as the New Year.
Lynn Hayes also writes about the Harvest Moon here.
Photo published under a Creative Commons license from Flickr.
3 Responses to “Celtic Astrology: The Harvest Moon–Remembering the Future”
ps we are approaching the spring euqinox or Ostara, soo hoping i have planted the good seeds this winter passed 
This Celtic reversal of dark and light raises questions about the (patriarchal) astrological orientation to the Sun as Self, and about our ‘solar bias’ toward the ‘dark’ houses of the horoscope. I’m thinking 8, 12, and, of course, the Samhain sign, Scorpio.
Do we have a solar bias? Are we not as aligned with the natural elements as we should be when interpreting a chart?
Do astrologers need to develop greater awareness of how modern ‘apart-from-nature’ culture effects our interpretation of the horoscope that is a mirror to nature?
It seems such a shame that humanity evolved to a point where the natural process has been replaced by man made rules. We forget we are a product of nature and spirit. I went down the path of trying to conform to cultural requirements and it brought me contstant struggle and hardship, now with maturity i will honour nature and spirit, i hope i wont be scorned by society, but when it comes down to it, nature and spirit are in charge and i would rather be scorned by humans than incur the wrath of nature and spirit after all HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT SHE IS CAPABLE OF???????? yeah, good luck to those who think they know better