Full Hunters Moon – fire, feast, ancestors

Full Hunters Moon – fire, feast, ancestors

How time flies, summer has passed, leaves are blowing from the trees on gusty days, here in Germany we’ve had two weeks of surprisingly cold weather for this time of year. And now her she comes… Full Hunters Moon!

I gather that this is a very old vision of the moon, Hunters Moon. Among others, this moon is also known by the term Dying grass Moon. It is the full moon after harvesting corn and grain. For our hunter gatherer ancestors, it was the Moon after the grass dying, along with many herbs and seeds no longer being available. So it was time to hunt, to get well fed to get over the winter well, to have meat to dry, and tan new furs to keep warm.

So the crops have been cut, or in hunter gatherer times, the grass is becoming brown and blown flat by the wind and rain of autumn. Animals like deer would be well visible, out in the open, no longer able to hide among the high grasses of summer. They were collecting the goodness of fallen grains and filling their stomachs with the last green herbs and grasses, so as to have enough reserves for the winter. Around this full moon our hunter gatherer forfathers would be out in small groups, camoflaged and practically invisible, stalking their prey on their big hunt before winter would fall in.

The few especially bright nights around this moon would help provide abundance once more. People came together and feasted, celebrating life, strengthening their relationships and friendships. Large fires would burn through the night, burning the summer and carrying the light into the coming winter. It is around the time of Samhain, known better today as Halloween. In the old days There was not a calender saying `today´, people would go by the moon’s cycles.

Burning the summer and heading towards the darker period would also be a good time to remember ancestors, as at Samhain today. Ancestor beings play a great role in the lives of most indigenous tribes today, and would have thousands of years ago too. The relationships to ancestors were well looked after, for they could see what you couldn’t see, and protect and guide you through the night of winter.

Ancestors, who are we, where do we come from, where are we heading? This has always been a topic in my life. It has always dominated my art work and I have spent a lot of time asking myself how I can be a worthy ancestor of the future. For some years I took part in many archeological excavations on my quest.

To the left is a picture of me in 2006, at the bottom of a 3,5m deep Langobard grave in Szolad in Hungary. I excavated him during the summer campaign all on my own, layer by layer, carefully darawing and documenting every layer, slowly getting closer and closer to this Langobard warrior, buried with his lance and pots of food and other things he would need on his way to the underworld. He was once taller than me and I did my job with great respect. After exhuming himafter days and days of work, I washed and documented his remains and left a clay mask of him with two coins where his eyes were, as a Thank you give-away for this special encounter. As soon as I had climbed out of the grave, A sudden rain fall filled the pit with mud.

Get outside and move to your roots!

wild-horse 10/2016