The Many Moons of February

The February Full Moon this year appears tonight.

Tonight’s lunar phase is often called the Snow or Ice Moon and Storm Moon for rather obvious reasons in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Tonight’s Full Moon is also called the Bone Moon, Famine Moon, or Hunger Moon. What do all these names have in common? It is a kind of harshness of the season. In Paradelle, February is usually the coldest month and often has the most snow. Last month, we had no snow here in the New York / New Jersey area and January was fairly mild. In the few days of this new month, we have dipped down to zero degrees.

The February Full Moon can also be called the Trappers Moon or the Raccoon Moon. that references animals and hunters. The Native American names Old Moon, (which can also be the January Moon) and Grandfather Moon suggest how this difficult month can make any of us feel old.

The unusual name of The Shoulder to Shoulder Around the Fire Full Moon comes from the Wishram people of the Northwest Coast and I imagine them huddled shoulder to shoulder around the fire when this cold Moon was full.

It was ten years ago that I discovered and wrote that the Finnish term for this month is helmikuu. It means “month of the pearl” and those pearls are not from oysters but from the image of snow melting on tree branches and forming droplets that freeze again like pearls.

Raccoon Moon

Tonight the Moon will be full but here in Paradelle is reached fullness at 11:57 a.m. EST. Names for the February Full Moon include Ice Moon, Hunger Moon, Grandfather Moon, and Storm Moon.

The Hunger and Bone Moon names come from a time when animals and humans in the north might and a soup made from only bones might have been all that was available. The Cherokee people called it the Bone Moon because animal bones as a soup or eating the marrow was the only source of nutrition in the dead of winter.

The full February moon is called Raccoon Moon by some Lakota cultures because as sap freezes, cracks branches, and perhaps begins to rise, so does the blood and urges rise in raccoons. Some people say they can hear them crooning their love at this time. Breeding peaks in February and copulation lasts up to an hour. Raccoons usually den in a hollow tree, culvert, or burrow, (or perhaps your chimney). They will leave those dens in April and do their night foraging for fruit, garden crops, fish, snakes, eggs, and small mammals.

Names for the Full Moons vary from place to place. This month is sometimes called the Snow Moon, but that name is also applied to the November Moon and December Moon. It depends on when snow hits your part of the country.

We must note that the calendars and Moon names used by ancient and native peoples were not as exact as our calendars. The Shawnee people used the Full Moons to create two seasons – summer and winter. Like our own modern calendars earliest versions, the months needed to be adjusted. One way to adjust the moon with the seasons was to add an extra month every second or third year. Their March Full Moon was when the sap would begin to flow. If the Moon was full but the sap was not flowing it was a signal that the moons were out of sync with the season. This month would have been their Crow Moon and the Sap Moon would be next month.

The ancient Druids called this the Storm Moon. In their calendar, this would be the fifth month of the year. The Full Moon is the start and it ends with the next Full Moon which is the Moon of Ice.

Feeling cold where you are? If you were in the Southern Hemisphere, this is mid-summer and this could be the Grain Moon, Red Moon, or Corn Moon. Location, location, location.

This calendar of the Moon’s phases this month is a nice illustration of how the Moon will look full on the 16, 17, and 18th – though it becomes full on the 16th.

A Little Famine Moon in Virgo

Tomorrow, February 27, is this month’s Full Moon. This Full Moon is usually called the Snow Moon and this year in Paradelle has been a very snowy month.  We had more snow in one big storm in December than we had all of last winter, and the storms keep on coming.

Snow Moon is one of the names that is attached to several different months depending on the group and geographic area naming the event. That is also true for some of the other names given to the February Full Moon.

Other names that I have written about in past years include the Ice Moon, Hunger Moon, Snow Moon, Old Moon, Grandfather Moon, Storm Moon, Bone Moon and the Shoulder to Shoulder Around the Fire Full Moon. The names certainly describe what was certainly a tough month, especially in the distant past. Even in places where there might not be ice and snow, there might be hunger and food in short supply.

The Choctaw Indians called this the Little Famine Moon. The Choctaw people originally occupied what is now the Southeastern United States in what is modern-day Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana. In the present day, they are organized as the federally recognized Choctaw Nation.

Like the names Hunger and Bone Moons (and sometimes the Wolf Moon), this difficult month for people living in the northern lands was once a time when a meal might be bone soup and eating the marrow from bones. The sound of wolves at the edges of villages looking for food was also something that might have been connected to this time of year.

Spiritually, the Moon and the Sun are on opposite sides of the zodiac during a Full Moon and that can create an intense aspect of energy. The lunar and solar energies are thought to be in balanced cosmic harmony. It is a good time to recognize the beauty of life and express creativity. Some people feel heightened sensuality.

In astrology, full moons are about endings as they shine their light on the past month. It is a time to take stock, spot problems, and tie up loose ends. This Midwinter Full Moon is in Virgo. The February Full Moon in your horoscope at 19 degrees Virgo, is especially significant if you have any planets in mutable signs –  Gemini, Virgo, or Pisces –  and its energy is mutable., soft-natured, and feminine.

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The Shoulder to Shoulder Around the Fire Full Moon

February is the snowiest month of the year in many parts of North America. February 9 is the Full Moon date for 2020. The Snow Moon is the most common name for the second Full Moon of winter.

The Moon enters its full phase early on Sunday morning (2:34 a.m. EST) but last night it would look full and tonight it will be 99% percent illuminated on the East Coast.

This is also considered to be a “supermoon” which is an unofficial name used to describe a larger appearing New Moon or a Full Moon. The appearance of a larger than usual Moon is when either phase occurs at roughly the same time the Moon is nearest Earth in its monthly orbit. That nearest occurrence is properly called perigee.

The Wishram people are Northwest Coast Indians who lived along the north bank of the Columbia River. They named this the Shoulder to Shoulder Around the Fire Moon, and I can easily imagine February as a time to huddle around the fire.

The Cherokee people called it the Bone Moon because animal bones were sometimes their only source of nutrition in the dead of winter.

Some other names for this month’s Full Moon that I have written about include Ice Moon, Hunger Moon, Old Moon,(which can also be in January), Grandfather Moon, and Storm Moon.

The Bone Moon of February

On February 19, 2019 at 10:53 am ET, we will see the February Full Moon. Often called the Snow Moon, that name for this Full Moon might not make much sense if you are in a climate where snow is rare or non-existent.

I have written about most of the Full Moon names below (click links for earlier posts). The Wolf Moon may be one English name for this month, but in the U.S. the January Full Moon is the one sometimes called the Wolf Moon.

American Indian tribes have the most variety in naming the Full Moons which were a very important way of marking the passage of time.

Transposing the Cherokee names for our Julian calendar months, our February would be Kagaʔli or Gŭgăli, the Bone Moon or the “month when the stars and moon are fixed in the heavens.” I couldn’t find the exact reason for the “bone” symbolism. Maybe the bare bones of a difficult time of year when it came to food? There might be little food and you might even gnaw on bones and eat bone marrow soup. This was the traditional time for families to mark those who had departed this world with a family meal with places set for the departed. Maybe it is the bones of the departed?

Other tribes called this Full Moon the “Shoulder to Shoulder Around the Fire Moon” (Wishram Native Americans), the “No Snow in the Trails Moon” (Zuni Native Americans).

In colder climes, Snow, Storm, Winter and Ice Moon were names that were used by Colonists.

Month	Colonial America	Cherokee	Choctaw	Celtic	Medieval England	Neo-Pagan	Wiccan	Algonquian	English
February	Trapper’s Moon	Bony/Bone Moon	Little Famine Moon	Moon of Ice	Storm Moon	Snow Moon	Storm Moon	Snow Moon	Wolf Moon

There is snow and ice in Paradelle at this time, but thankfully there is no famine or gnawing at bones or wolves waiting for me outside.

A Trapper’s Full Moon (and maybe even a Moon pillar)

February 3rd is the Full Moon for 2015.  For the Cherokee, it is the Bone Moon or “month when the stars and moon are fixed in the heavens” – even though we know that they are not fixed. On this site, I have called it by some of its other names: the Snow, Storm, Ice Moon, and the Hunger Moon.

It is a tough month of winter for most of the United States. This month’s Full Moon names were most associated with the harsh weather or depleting stores of food. It makes sense for a Hunger Moon, maybe even a Bone Moon, as the food and meat is gone and only the bones remain. When I am hiking in the woods, I sometimes come across the bones of animals that did not make it through the winter. White bones, picked clean by hungry animals, white on the snow and even more so in the light of the Full Moon.

Our Colonial ancestors called this simply the Winter Moon or the Trapper’s Moon, a name that came from eastern Algonquin Indian traditions. Though the tradition is (thankfully) not as common today, this would be the time when it was optimal for trapping beaver, fox, and mink as their fur would be at the fullest.

This is a good time to witness the phenomena of “Moon pillars.” I have never seen Moon pillars which are optical phenomena that are most likely to occur when the Moon is low to the horizon, the air is cold, and ice crystals are angled in a position in the atmosphere where there is direct light in a straight column directly above or below the moon.

A light pillar is created by the reflection of light from ice crystals with nearly horizontal parallel planar surfaces. The light can come from the Sun (usually at or low to the horizon) in which case the phenomenon is called a sun pillar or solar pillar. It can also appear to come from the Moon or even from terrestrial sources such as streetlights.

There are billions of micro-sized ice crystals in clouds (even in warmer weather) or in minute snow crystals, and as these column-shaped ice crystals drift earthward, they tip and tilt. There are “upper pillars” that are formed when light is reflected downward toward our eyes and “lower pillars” when light is reflected upward from the topmost crystal faces.

I have read that the best time to see them is at sunset when a storm front is approaching (there might be a veil of cirrus clouds in the west). If those crystals happen to be nearly perfectly horizontal, a narrow column is a result. If they are tilted at various angles to the horizontal, then a pillar of light spreads into what might look more like broad feathers to the Moon’s sides.

“Light pillars over Laramie Wyoming in winter night” by Christoph Geisler / Wikimedia Commons