00010 · Lunar naming conventions

I’m putting out newsletters based on the quarterly phases of the moon, and have discovered we have unique names for the full moon, but the other lunar quarters have no names. Why do we struggle to understand the beginnings and ends of cycles of time?

The full moon will be called something like the Wolf Moon, followed by an unnamed last quarter, an unnamed new moon, an unnamed first quarter, and then the Snow Moon. Those quarters and the new moon don’t share a name with the full moon that precedes or follows. Is the new moon related to the Wolf Moon or the Snow moon? There is no evident answer. Apparently it’s not worth thinking about.

The full and obvious gets named: Worm, Pink, Flower, Strawberry, Buck, Sturgeon, Harvest, Hunter’s, Beaver and Cold Moon. The in-betweens and invisible phase changes are incomprehensible, hence unnamed.

Similarly, the days of the week belong to the bright sunshine times. We’re completely aware of what Monday is. But the nights blend with the days. Our supposedly exact numerical hours and minutes fall apart nonsensically in the dark time between: 9 pm, 10 pm, 11 pm, and then 12 am? Post meridiem and ante meridiem and military zero hour all add to the confusion.

I’m in wonder about how the start and finish of our time cycles are blended into the same moment, and how our little human minds struggle to understand this. I’m glad for it, actually. We leave the mystery of simultaneous birth and death unnamed and misnumbered, as obfuscated as the lost name of G-d.

The definition of the new moon is that we can’t see it.