After several weeks of unintended hiatus, The Storyteller’s Night Sky is back, just in time for the May Day Full Moon.
I love it when the phenomena align with the calendar this way. May Day is the spring cross quarter day, known as Beltane in the Celtic tradition. It’s a time for celebrating, protecting, and augmenting fertility. And to have a Full Moon at such a time amplifies its potency.
The eve of May Day stands exactly opposite Halloween in the calendar, and, like that autumn festival, is marked in some traditions by the merrymaking and mischief of witches, goblins, and demons. It’s as though the cross quarter is a time to step or leap over what cracks open and is laid bare as the season shifts away from its beginning toward its end ~ and woe unto those who get caught in the crossing!
So how best to prepare? For me it starts with knowing a couple things that will allow you to engage in harmony with the attending celestial phenomenon.
May Day is Friday, May 1st. The Moon will come to exact Full Phase at 1:24 pm in the Eastern Time Zone of the US. May Eve is Thursday, April 30. On May Eve, the Moon will rise about half an hour before the Sun sets, so we will have the two “great lights” straddling the horizon for half an hour ~ with the Sun sinking in the West, the Moon mounting up and waxing toward fullness in the East.
The following morning, May 1st, the Moon will set in the West half an hour before the Sun rises in the East.
So let’s think about this for a moment: on May Eve, we will have half an hour of both Sun and Moon above the horizon, then the Moon takes the stage. Then on May Day proper, we’ll have half an hour of neither Sun nor Moon above the horizon, but then the Sun rises and takes the stage.
It’s those in between times that I want to capture ~ to step in with my contemplation, my ceremony, my conscious awareness of the world spinning us toward a future that can be informed by our highest sense of what is noble, good, and true.
On Thursday in my time zone, the Moon rises just before 8 pm, followed by sunset about 8:30 pm. Then on Friday morning, May 1st, the Moon sets at 6 am, followed by sunrise at 6:30 am. Check your local times and choose your viewing spot where you can see the horizon both east and west. Or prepare yourself a place for contemplating the edges ~ to catch Sun and Moon above the horizon May Eve, and neither Sun nor Moon above the horizon May Day morn.
In Dante’s world, the area described by the Moon’s orbit around the Earth was known as the First Heaven. At every Full Moon, the Moon stands exactly opposite the Sun and the First Heaven is fully illuminated. Given that this week’s Full Moon aligns with the cross quarter time of fertility, it serves to prepare a contemplative space, and to consider what you have planted or are carrying within your heart in this season that could use the abundant growth forces that are now available, and that will simultaneously bring greater harmony into the world because I know the world and my soul are one great unity.
Here’s an excerpt from Rumi as we head into May Eve, with the Moon pulling us through the night toward its opposition with the Sun on May Day:
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray. In the silence, there is a sacred mystery, a path that shows the way not with words but with the heart’s yearning.” Rumi
~Mary
You can hear this episode of The Storyteller’s Night Sky on podcast here, or wherever you listen online ~ and thanks!