Pagan Blog Prompt: Blue Moon

Pagan Blog Prompts: Blue Moon:

This weekend marks the full moon, the second in the month of August. When this happens, people refer to it as a Blue Moon. They say there is a lot of powerful energy in a Blue Moon, moreso than the usual full moon.

What does the Blue Moon mean to you?

Will it affect your magic or alter your perception in any way?

How will you use it, if at all?

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I’m going to combine my original thoughts with the answer to this prompt. Because I like both, and I’m going to do it this way for fun.

So original thoughts:

So am I the only one not excited about it? I’m sure I can’t be, but it sure feels like it. I’m definitely not even sure that it’s anything more than a modern invention. I know I read somewhere in a history text for class that it used to be 13 lunar months in a year, at least in some cultures, and the Church in Rome decided to make it 12 solar for some reason or another. I can’t remember the text or what class it was for (the scholar in me is cringing at the lack of remembrance I must admit), but I do remember reading it.

And what’s so special about a 2nd full moon in a modern calendar month, when the months are all wonky in length anyway? We have 30-day, 31-day and one 28-day (occasionally 29-day) months. So then, why all the hoopla about a 2nd one in a month? It’s bound to happen. And our calendar system is inaccurate, as evinced by the need for a leap year with an extra day to make up for the discrepancies between how time actually moves, etc and how we measure it. So the “blue moon” just seems like more modern contrivance to me.

I don’t really think there’s much special about full-moon or new-moon or any of it. I don’t think that you have to practice certain forms of magic at certain times of month for them to be most successful. I just think that it’s a bunch of culturally ingrained superstition as to the lot of it. I mean…the whole “crazies come out on the full moon” has been around for so long that I don’t think most people even know where the trope comes from. And if I remember my Classics prof’s lecture correctly, lunacy comes from lunar, which has to do with the moon of course. So there’s that. But I think that it’s a bunch of superstition, this whole magical properties to the moon.

Basically, the “blue moon” doesn’t mean anything to me. Just like a regular full moon doesn’t mean a whole lot to me either. It doesn’t alter my perceptions, doesn’t change how I work magic or how I think. It’s just another night. I enjoy looking at the moon at night, but full moon, blue moon, whatever moon, it doesn’t matter to me. I just enjoy sitting outside and star-gazing. The type of moon is irrelevant in the long scheme of things. I’m far more likely to want to know about star movements across the sky as having more significance, because those seem far more connected in human psyche than lunar phenomena. After all, the calendar as it is isn’t all that old, they’ve been changing years, months, how to measure time for hundreds of years, so I doubt that there’s very much of a deeply ingrained connection to a “blue moon” as being special, given the modern definition of the term.

I know the moon and lunar cycles were important, but this particular phenomena is rather new, as measuring of time goes, or that’s how I see it. Basically, the “blue moon” is absolutely nothing to me. It’s another chance to see a full moon, which is great, just for star-gazing interests of mine. Magically it means nothing to me.∗