Honey Moon
The Honey or Mead Moon is now upon us. A Wiccan moon indeed. Crops are now close to their first harvest. Honey is abundant, and people make mead. A time of plenty and thanks. The power of the sun begins to decline. Candle colour for this moon is golden yellow, symbolic of the declining sun.
St John the Baptist, Scripture tells us, lived in the Wilderness where he subsisted on a diet of locust and honey. St John is, therefore, the patron of beekeepers. It’s around the time that we celebrate St John’s Birthday, June 24th, that the hives are full of honey.
And the full moon that occurs after Midsummer’s Eve & St John’s Nativity is called the Mead Moon, because honey was fermented to make mead. It is also called the HONEY MOON. [In 2009, this full moon occurs the first full week of July.]
It’s a time for lovers. An old Celtic proverb says, “Midsummer Night is not long but it sets many cradles rocking.” Midsummer dew was said to have special healing powers. Women washed their faces in it to make themselves beautiful and young.
Here’s a sixteenth century definition of HONEYMOON:
The first month after marriage, when there is nothing but tenderness and pleasure … originally having no reference to the period of a month, but comparing the mutual affection of newly-married persons to the changing moon which is no sooner full than it begins to wane; now, usually, the holiday spent together by a newly-married couple, before settling down at home.
According to some sources, the HONEYMOON is a relic of marriage by capture, based on the practice of the husband going into hiding with his wife to avoid reprisals from her relatives, with the intention that the woman would be pregnant by the
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