The Hunter’s Moon is full on Saturday at 4:24pm. This is the 13th and last lunation of the luna-solar year. It can be full from October 28th to November 14th, so you can see that the months have shifted relative to the solar-based 12-month calendar. For most of the year, moons have been falling right at the end of their possible time period. Then we skipped the Nutting Moon, traded the Falling Leaves Moon for the Harvest Moon, and now we’ve got the Hunter’s Moon as early as it can be. So for the next luna-solar year, the moons will fall about 2 weeks earlier in the 12-month calendar. Weather will be very different for each of the lunations in 2024 than it was in 2023. Though, I suspect we’ll still have quite a bit of unprecedented and weekly historical events and chaotic normalcy.
Folk names for most full moons are widely variable. Even just within the English language, you can have your pick of half a dozen traditional names for most of the moons of a year, none of which have any relationship to each other (many of which have no relationship to the time of year either, but that’s a different issue). But the Hunter’s Moon is almost always related to death and blood. This is the time of year that farmers in the Northern Hemisphere have to reckon with winter. Herds and flocks can be no larger than the store of food set by for them. If it’s been a rough year in the hay meadows (as it has been here in Vermont this year), then most of the herds have to be sold and slaughtered. But even in a good year, there are more animals born than can be fed in the months without grass — and this is when the surplus is culled. So, in traditional societies, early winter is a time of blood, a time of acknowledging and honoring the death that sustains every life.
Now, you might think that sending pigs to the abattoir is not much like hunting. And no, it’s not. But the Hunter’s Moon is not named for humans with spears, arrows and guns. Note that it is singular. The Hunter, not the hunters. It is not named for hunting, but The Hunt. The Wild Hunt. In traditional societies, this season of culling herds and looming winter dearth was driven before the storm dogs of Hel and the cold breath of Holda. This is when Bertha gathers the souls of innocents into her skirts and Perchta pursues the ill-natured with justice. The Valkyries soar over the fields of the slain, choosing warriors for Valhalla, and Odin rides his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, ahead of the bitter North Wind. This is when humans give death its due, however reluctantly; and the Wild Hunt and its Hunter are the heralds of the season of Death.
(1910, from the illustrated edition of The Rhinegold and the Valkyrie)
Taking responsibility, owning the death that comes with every life, holding space for the inevitable loss and grief in every life, that is what this moon is named for. Whether it be pigs to the slaughter or an old man breathing his last, the Hunter takes all of us. All of us will die and our bodies will feed someone. Those who are directly entangled with producing our food can not hide from the basic truth of corporeality — all bodies feed on other bodies. On the farm, there is no mediation between the spring calf you helped deliver into this world and the milk and meat that flow from its autumnal death, which also may be at your own hand. So we do the only sensible thing possible — we respectfully honor that death.
The Hunter is not violent, Romantic imagery notwithstanding. In the oldest stories, She is a gatherer. She gathers the frightened and bewildered souls and soothes them. She seeks out the lost and leads them to her warm hearth. She enfolds all the newly dead into her embrace. But our culture has turned away from this image of a gentle psychopomp, shunning all aspects of death as we seek eternal life. We rage against death, and we have turned the Hunter into a monster. In that transformation, in that denial of our own mortality, we have taken honor away from the deaths that feed us. And so we have become monsters.
This week I encourage you to think about what it is to be a hunter. What it is to be The Hunter. What it is to be a farmer with yearling pigs. What it is to be a living body. And when the wind blows a little colder, light a candle to honor the death that feeds life.
Wednesday Word
for 18 October 2023
hunter
You can respond in the comments below or go visit the All Poetry contest for October. Your response can be anything made from words. I love poetry, but anything can be poetic and you needn’t even be limited to poetics. An observation, a story, a thought. Might even be an image — however, I am not a visual person, so it has to work harder to convey meaning. In the spirit of word prompts, it’s best if you use the word; but I’m not even a stickler about that. Especially if you can convey the meaning without ever touching the word.
If responding on All Poetry, you are limited to the forms of that medium, though my contests are fairly open as to form. However, if you have something long, post it in the comments below. That said, please don’t go too long. Keep it under 2000 words. I’m not going to count, but I’m also not promising to read a novel.
Unless it’s really good!
If you have nothing to say, that’s fine. I know you all are busy and distracted. But if you’ve read this far, then I’ve made you think about… hunter.
remembrance
we clamor after infinity with braying horns and shrill exhortations we engrave names in granite and black ink against the forsaking future we dance around death denying her claim but even she will die this is the only nature of nature where there is stasis there is no life change begets conclusion how can these ephemeral symbols in sand withstand time one wave wipes all away only echoes in dark canyons endure and even so who will hear who will understand these words yes, even this little is lost in translation and so we fear her as she stalks backstreets and cradles taking back her own naming and claiming her children trailing annihilation in her train a thought expunged and we are left with the dirge of forlorn crickets we wail at black moons shedding tears for erased eternities and oh how we recoil from wizened flesh abhor the decay of regeneration setting gravestones against the sunset even as we absurdly revel in nativity delighting in firefly dance and butterfly wings and the wide-eyed wonder of infancy though we know all beginnings must come to an end and so we clamor declare i am in the face of all that was stake claims to clouds proclaim perdurable remembrance here were we and out brief candle we gather around the casket telling tales of the afterlife of flames cold comfort in these waning days no amount of nervous laughter will bend the laws of mater she herself is subject as all must be for at the end of time she will breathe her last as all beings will blowing out the light giving her body to the splendor of renewal the only truth and none will know her name but all will be as we her re-membered
©Elizabeth Anker 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 