🌕 The Moon is Fullest When the Past is Remembered

On Sunday night, the moon will swell herself to fullness. She will rise not as a flat icon on a phone screen, not as a Pinterest backdrop, not even as the gentle “self-care” symbol so many websites insist she must be. She will rise as she always has: vast, round, ancient, watching.

And here is the invitation, sweet one: slip out of 2025 for a moment, and try to imagine a time before the moon was flattened. Before she was merchandised into mood boards and hashtags. Imagine standing where your ancestors stood — in the hush of a Highland glen, beside a river where the Bean Nighe stoops to wash bloodied garments [29], or in the chill of an Icelandic night where Sköll and Hati, those spectral wolves, chase her silver body across the sky [35]. Imagine remembering her not only as gentle light but as a sovereign being, unpredictable, holy, and sometimes terrifying.

🌑 The Moon of Exile & Return

For many of our ancestors, the full moon was a threshold. Anthropologists like Victor Turner describe thresholds as liminal spaces — moments when ordinary order collapses and transformation becomes possible [27]. Folklore preserves this memory: Irish tales speak of the sídhe riding out on moonlit nights, not to comfort but to test, to take, to remind mortals of their fragile place in the weave of things [29]. Norse stories tell us the moon’s very body is always at risk, forever pursued by ravenous wolves [35].

To stand in moonlight was to stand at the edge of worlds. Awe and dread braided together. Safety and danger walked hand in hand.

🌕 Grief as Lunar Offering

Today, we’re told to write intentions on paper and burn them, to make moon water in glass jars, to charge crystals in her light. These practices can be grounding, even delightful. They are ways of slowing down and touching mystery in a busy world.

But older traditions remind us of another face of the full moon: grief. The banshee’s wail at night was not a curse but keening; a ritual lament, a sacred acknowledgment of death’s nearness [29]. Victor Turner saw such moments as liminal ruptures, spaces where grief becomes communal and transformative [27]. Trauma theorist Judith Herman reminds us that trauma itself is a rupture in connection — to self, to others, to meaning [27].

If the full moon wakes something restless in you — sleeplessness, memory, a gnawing ache — you are not broken. You are simply in rhythm with an ancient tide. What if we treated this not as a failure to be “high-vibe,” but as an invitation to let sorrow breathe in the moonlight?

🌙 Rhythm, Rest, and the Ecology of Light

The California poppy, fierce orange herald of spring, unfurls her petals to the sun each morning and folds them closed at night [30]. She teaches us that fullness is temporary, that blooming and retreating are equally sacred. In old European folk calendars, full moons were markers for planting and harvesting, reminders that growth is cyclical, not constant [30][34].

In our capitalist culture we are told to grow endlessly, to manifest without pause. But the moon and the poppy whisper: rest is part of the spell. To honor this, many folk left bowls of water out beneath the full moon, believing the light itself would bless it [30]. In the morning, they sprinkled that water on crops, thresholds, or children — a quiet act of reciprocity with the land, not consumption.

What if your moon practice this month were less about taking in power and more about noticing the rhythms of your own opening and closing, your own ebb and flow? This cycle, offer the water, the power, the charge back to the land or another living thing.

🌘 Shadows as Teachers

The full moon’s radiance seems eternal, but myth insists otherwise. In Norse cosmology, the wolves Sköll and Hati run tirelessly across the heavens, jaws snapping at the heels of sun and moon. On the night of Ragnarök — the great unmaking — they will finally catch their prey, swallowing both lights whole, and plunging the world into shadow before its rebirth [35].

This is not a tale of despair, though it may sound like one. It is a reminder whispered from bone to bone: fullness is always fragile. Every peak carries the seed of its decline. Every harvest carries the shadow of winter. The bright, round face of the moon looks eternal — but she herself is a cycle in motion, always waxing, always waning, always returning.

When we gaze up at her on a night like this, it is tempting to imagine she will linger in her perfect fullness forever. But the old stories tug at our hems, reminding us: tomorrow she will begin to fade. Just as every season turns, every triumph softens, every body changes, every bright flame must one day be swallowed.

And yet, there is strange solace here. To know that nothing lasts is to know that nothing — not even the ache of exile, not even the heaviness of grief — will last unchanged either. What disappears may also return, reshaped. The moon herself proves it.

So let Sköll and Hati run. Let them chase her silver body across the night sky. Their howls are not only harbingers of endings — they are reminders of the wildness at the edge of our carefully ordered lives. They urge us to honor what is shining while it shines, and to trust that even when swallowed by shadow, the moon will rise again.

🌑 A Reflection for You

🌕 What We’re Told vs. What We Remember

Modern magical influencers often offer lists of what to “do” under a full moon. These practices can be genuinely soothing and empowering. But alongside them, the folklore record whispers other possibilities.

Rather than choosing one or the other, what if we held them together?

🌸 Modern Influencer Wisdom	🌲 Folkloric & Anthropological Memory	Ways to Weave Them
Manifestation & abundance — write goals, call in blessings.	Agricultural calendars — in Europe, the full moon marked planting and harvest times [30][34].	Try writing intentions alongside noticing what is ripening in your literal or local landscape. Plant seeds, water them with moon-soaked water.
Release & cleansing — burn papers with what you’re ready to let go.	Banshee’s keen — the full moon as a time when grief surfaces, when the Otherworld leans close [29].	Burn your written fears, then sing, cry, or keen outdoors — let the moon witness both release and sorrow.
Charging crystals & tools in moonlight.	Offerings to land & water — bowls of water left out under the moon to bless crops and hearths [30].	Place your tools out with a bowl of water. In the morning, use that water to bless your plants or doorstep.
Dream work & intuition.	Liminal states — Victor Turner wrote of ritual thresholds as spaces of transformation [27]; Norse wolves threatened the moon’s light [35].	Invite dreams to show you what is “chasing” you. Record symbols or visions and ask what they are teaching.

The moon is not only for manifestation, nor only for mourning. She is both. She is the mirror that holds abundance and grief, desire and shadow, the joy of poppies in bloom and the howl of wolves at the horizon.

So when she rises on Sunday, perhaps try this:

• Write down what you long for, and what you are ready to release.

• Leave a bowl of water beneath her light, and in the morning, offer it to the land.

• Whisper the names of ancestors or past selves, letting your voice carry like a quiet keen.

• Rest if you are tired; dream if you can.
  

The moon is fullest when the past is remembered. May her silver light hold your grief and your growth in the same wide embrace.

References

• Bellah, R., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W., Swidler, A., & Tipton, S. (1985). Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. University of California Press. [27]

• Herman, J. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books. [27]

• Ó hÓgáin, D. (2006). The Lore of Ireland: An Encyclopaedia of Myth, Legend and Romance. Boydell Press. [29]

• Strömbäck, D. (1971). The Concept of the Soul in Nordic Tradition. In The Viking Achievement. [35]

• Hutton, R. (1996). The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford University Press. [30]

• Bergunder, M. (2020). “What is Esotericism? Cultural Studies Approaches and the Problems of Definition in Religious Studies.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 32(4). [34][35]