Druid Journal

The moon was full this morning in Virgo — an earth sign ruled by the messenger god Mercury. What better time to bring the moon to earth? And by coincidence (?), just as the Earth was placed directly between the sun and moon, the sun reached out with a massive solar flare.

Moon comes from Proto Indo European meses or menses, the word used for both moon and month; and this in turn was probably derived from the root me, meaning “measure”. Menses (which of course is also the ancestor of Latin menses, “months”, now used to refer to uterine discharge) descended into Proto Germanic as maenon and Old English as mona.

Spiritually the word moon indicates an orb of manifestation and making, particularly the creation of of flowing, fast, wholesome energy which grounds and returns to Source. You can see this echoed in the sorts of idioms surrounding the word: shoot the moon, moon-eyed, over the moon.

The origin of the popular rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle” are completely unknown, though personally I’m inclined to the theory that it’s a mnemonic for remembering the some of the constellations.

There is an inn, a merry old inn
beneath an old grey hill,
And there they brew a beer so brown
That the Man in the Moon himself came down
One night to drink his fill…

–Tolkien