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Why the New Moon?
Amy Kitchener, Executive Director
The New Moon, is the monthly e-newsletter of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts. In our work to “ensure California’s future holds California’s past,” sharing information in and about the folk & traditional arts in the state is a key to building a stronger network of artists, cultural workers, funders, non-profit leaders, curators, educators and supporters to nourish this field.
The title, The New Moon, carries multiple meanings – like this e-newsletter – you can expect it every 28 ½ days. From earliest times, the moon has served as a consistent method of measuring time. The lunar calendar continues to indicate the timing of sacred rituals in many world religions. In this way, it is a common denominator in the on-going practice of many traditional arts and cultures – a unifying symbol we can identify in this work to help sustain traditional cultural life by the peoples of California.
In many Native American cultures personification or deification of the sun and moon is usual and the two appear as characters in several Native American stories. Origin stories accounting for the moon are also prevalent. For example, in California Maidu cosmology, it was Creator who caused his sister the sun and his brother the moon first to rise.
Hindu, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Islamic, Theravadan Buddhist, Chinese, Pagan, Gregorian, Mayan, Bahá’í, Sikh, Japanese, Tibetan, and Jainist practitioners among others, follow lunar calendars to celebrate holy days and festivals. Festivals of the new moon are observed among many peoples, and thankful prayers are said for the reappearance of the extinguished light in the sky. The full moon is seen as a climactic period of the month; the Jewish Passover is celebrated at the full moon, and the Christian Easter, occurs on the first Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox. The Chinese lunar calendar consists of twelve months, or “moons,” each with particular sacred meaning. For example, the First Moon, the beginning of spring, is the time when the household gods and the spirits of the ancestors return home and are received with ceremonious offerings of food and drink.
Many farmers consult their almanacs for the moon’s phases before planting each spring. Some believe that the light of the moon is the time for planting crops that grow above ground and the dark of the moon is best for root crop planting. The full moon nearest the autumnal equinox is called the harvest moon; the full moon following the harvest moon is called the hunter’s moon.* Fishermen also gauge lunar cycles in which full and new moons are the most propitious times for abundant catches.
There is a plethora of examples about the moon’s relationship to the practice of traditional culture. We hope that ACTA’s New Moon will prove to be as constant as the lunar cycle in providing you with useful information about California’s living cultural heritage.
(*examples adapted from Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend, ed. Maria Leach)
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