Photo by Khoi Do on Unsplash
Hanging closest to Earth and Equinox, tonight’s Harvest Full Moon is one of a trinity of super moons circling the closing months of 2025. It is also known as the Hunter’s Moon, for ripened prey become more visible under moonlight after harvest has swept crops from fields and leaves from branches, the blood of the hunt swimming amongst reddened fallen leaves.
Hunt or be hunted is a primal question underlying our survival. Urban societies have exchanged wild predators for anxieties that chase us through the day as we hunt money, reputation, success or the elusive end of the to-do list. Our harvests have become digitised; instead of stacking crops, we are encouraged to clock up likes and followers in a swiping, scrolling pursuit of novelty. In the hunt for more, more, more, we may forget the harvest we already have at our fingertips before they touch the screen - our connection with ourselves, our loved ones and the natural world.
Diana Mourning the Death of Orion - Etienne Delaune, French Goldsmith (c 1519–1583) Wiki Commons
Since antiquity, cautionary tales have warned of the consequences of overzealous hunting. In Poeticon Astronomicon, Latin writer Hyginus recounts how Artemis, Goddess of the Moon and Hunt, is tricked into shooting her beloved Orion by her jealous twin brother Apollo. Needling her competitive streak, he challenges her to shoot a bobbing rock in the ocean, which is, in fact, the head of her bathing lover. In other accounts, Orion’s boast to hunt all living creatures results in his demise at the hands of Earth Goddess Gaia. Either way, he ends up immortalised in the sky as a constellation. Artemis undergoes her own metamorphosis, merging with Roman Goddess Diana, whose name, taken from words meaning to shine, adorned the world’s paparazzi-hunted Princess. Hunted to extinction by Christianity, a solitary column stands amidst the ruins of her Artemision at Ephesus, once one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
In the English folk song Molly Bawn, a young man shoots his beloved, mistaking her for a swan at twilight. Whilst I was recording it, the news broke of a two-year-old accidentally shooting his mother dead with a gun in the US. Of the many versions, I chose one where Molly returns as a ghost to intervene at her lover’s trial, insisting on his innocence. The power of her love redeems him, infusing the whole song with a transcendent sense of forgiveness.
As philosopher Alan Watts writes, forgiveness changes the meaning of the past - “it’s like, also, when you watch the flow of music: the melody, as it is expressed, is changed by notes that come later.” Whilst we cannot undo the damage the human hunt has inflicted on Earth, we may still be able to redeem it. In her final message to the world, pioneering English primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall, who died this week, implored us not to lose hope and to focus on the ripple effect of our daily actions.
Image: Krishna et les Gopi (MNAAG / musee Guimet) by dalbera
The abundant harvest that ensues from loving, devoted action is celebrated in the Hindu Full Moon festival Sharad Poona, also named Kojagiri Lakshmi Purnima. One legend tells that, guided by a sage, a troubled, childless King and Queen fasted and remained in continuous moonlit prayer to Goddess Lakshmi, who, moved by her sincerity, blessed them with a child. Krishna’s sacred Rasa Lila moonlit dance with Radha and the gopi’s (female cowherds) on the river Yamuna is also celebrated as an expression of the soul’s eternal union with the divine.
Because I’m still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I’m still in love with you
On this harvest moon.
Neil Young’s beautiful song Harvest Moon is resonant with Autumnal nostalgia. In the video, he sings to his loved-up younger self, whilst affirming the endurance of love in later life, ripening under the eye of the moon. There is no hunt, just a heartfelt invitation to listen, celebrate, feel and dance in the moonlight shining in the eyes of the beloved.
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