welcome to my world

August is the ideal month to bask under the night sky and dance with the stars. Meteor showers, comet trails, lunar phases, planetary alignments, asteroids and their near misses. The skies are putting on a stellar show.

concept art by BHAKTI creative design

The August full moon has been called the Sturgeon Moon, Red Moon, Green Corn Moon, and Grain Moon. It is a harvest moon that appears at the time of the year's first harvest, always shining by the stars of Aquarius or Capricorn. This year the full moon falls on August 3.

Loaf mass day, first fruits, summer harvest - Lughnasadh is one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals, along with Samhain, Imbolc and Beltane. It corresponds to other European harvest festivals such as the Welsh Gŵyl Awst and the English Lammas.

grain bundles celebrate the harvest

Where I was born and raised in the Philippine Islands, the people have many ancient myths and beliefs about these celestial bodies - they are studied with care and honored in reverence.

With over 7,600 islands, the Philippines is an archipelago of more than 100 different ethnolinguistic groups with early hominins living here as early as 709,000 years ago. We use the stars to navigate by, track time, determine fishing and farming cycles. 

Bakunawa, the Great Dragon that swallows the moon

We retell ancient tales, handed down in orall throughout the ages, perform time honored rituals dedicated to constellations and planets we value and tend as divine. Countless stories give each their own names, purpose and place in celestial and cultural hierarchy.

Aswang Project: Visayan Mythology | Philippines
featured - Santonilyo, Lidagat, Dalikmata by James Claridades | 

Even though most practices have vanished, faded or been forgotten, these beliefs are deeper rooted in our blood and bones. Carried in our DNA and memories of our ancestors and elders and handed down to us, their descendants. They remain in all our relations, definite and defined.