OF LIFFEY
RIVERS
NOTES:
names such as the WORT MOON or the
MOON OF CLAIMING (July), the BARLEY or
CORN MOON (August) and the BLOOD
MOON (September). The names
corresponded with the cycles of nature.
September's Blood Moon was the time when
animals were butchered and stored as food
for the long winter. The month of the Blood
Moon is also the time when Liffey Rivers
finds herself back in Ireland, seeking
answers on the Mountain of the Moon, before
her own blood is spilled....
October was the Snow Moon, as early snow
was a weather pattern in Celtic Ireland. Now,
the October moon is commonly called the
Harvest or Hunter’s moon and snow is very
rare in Ireland, coming in late December or
January, if at all, and with very little
accumulation.
November was called the Oak Moon,
December the Wolf Moon, signifying the
darkness of winter by the forlorn howling of
wolves. (The last gray wolf in Ireland is said
to have been shot by a farmer in 1783 in
County Carlow. But others think that the last
wolf killed in Ireland was downed right here
in County Sligo where I live.)
January was the Storm Moon, February the
Chaste Moon and March was called the Seed
Moon, the time of year when planting would
commence. April was the Hare Moon, a sign
of fertility. May was the Dyad (two) Moon
representing two planetary influences, June
was the Mead Moon—not the drink, but rather
grasses like hay. July’s Wort or Claiming
Moon was the time of gathering the wyrt or
plants. (The word ‘wyrt’ or ‘wort’ means plant
in Anglo-English.) August was the Barley
Moon, a grain gathering time.
The Celts believed that people were affected
by the cycles of the moon and that the moon
can be linked to intuition and has real power
over moods and actions. Their daily prayer to
the pagan moon goddess was: "Leave us
sound and whole."
Celtic clans would use the cycles of the
moon to plan clan gatherings and religious
ceremonies. On what is now called
Halloween or the ancient SAMHAIN (sow-in)
on October 31st, (or the first full moon in
Scorpio), the Celts believed that the veil
between the living and the dead was at its
thinnest.
In the third Liffey Rivers book, Liffey Rivers
and the Secret of the Mountain of the Moon,
Liffey Rivers experiences the tug of the Celtic
Blood Moon when, after dancing at her first
feis in Ireland, she observes an extraordinary
phenomenon directly above Queen Maeve’s
cairn on the summit of Knocknarea, (the
Mountain of the Moon) in County Sligo.
BRENNA BRIGGS
