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The Moon in Bulgarian folk beliefs and calendar customs

In Bulgarian folklore the Moon is mesechina (“the moon”), the sister (in older ideas, the brother) of the Sun, and people planned their work around it. This article describes what ethnographic and folklore sources record about fresh starts, the waning phase, herbs and the “lowered” Moon. It is cultural memory, not advice.

One moon, many names

In folklore the Moon is mesechina (“the moon”), mesechinka (“little moon”) or yasen mesets (“bright month”). A museum publication from the Burgas museums says she is the Sun’s sister, but earlier ideas make her a young man. In a song from the Strandzha village of Varshilo the Sun is marrying a “girl from over the sea” and invites the Moon to become kum (the wedding godfather). Pavlina Damyanova, curator of “Spiritual Culture” at the Etar museum, told BTA that in folk ideas the Moon is the Sun’s sister or brother. She travels the Sun’s road but on a donkey, so she is slower. The “Dictionary of the Folk Spiritual Culture of the Bulgarians” also records the belief that the Moon is the mirror of dyado Gospod (“Grandfather Lord”), through which he watches the world.

What we see in the sky

Astronomy tells the other side of the story. At new moon the Moon turns its unlit side toward Earth and is invisible. The phases come from the changing positions of the Moon relative to the Sun and Earth. Earth’s shadow has nothing to do with them, and a lunar eclipse is a separate phenomenon. You can follow phases and dates on the Moon calendar page.

Beginnings, fullness and razsip (the waning Moon)

The clearest pattern in the sources is the division of the lunar month into two halves. The Burgas museums describe the time from new moon to full moon as especially favourable. It is the time to begin an engagement, a wedding, ploughing, sowing, harvest and threshing, to cut timber for a house, to enter a new home, to shear sheep or to sew a new garment. Damyanova adds setting hens on eggs, pouring brine over pickles, scalding wool and weaning a child. She also reports the belief that hair cut at full moon grows faster.

The opposite is the time of razsip and usip (the waning Moon). Starting new work then is not recommended, because it “will not prosper”. The site Balgarska Etnografia records a longer list: on the “old” moon one does not wash clothes or hair, plant “lest it stay empty”, warp or weave. Ivanichka Georgieva, in Balgarska mitologia (“Bulgarian Mythology”), writes that it is good to start new work on a new or full moon “so that it goes in full”. Details differ by region and by who is telling them, so it is more honest to read them as many local practices than as one universal law.

Herbs and St John’s Day

For “healing herbs”, the sources we found do not tie gathering to a lunar phase. They tie it to Enyovden (St John’s Day, 24 June). According to the Burgas museums, Enyovden is a turning point after which, in folk belief, summer begins to turn toward winter. Herb gatherers go out at the first cockcrow and to the most remote places so that nobody sees them. People also believe in the magical power of Enyovden dew. The Dictionary of the Folk Spiritual Culture adds that, in the belief, the fern blooms and fades at midnight on the eve of Enyovden and that herbs are gathered then. We therefore do not state any “lunar herb rules”. Astronomy gives no basis for promising results from gathering by phase, and this article is not a herbal guide.

The lowered Moon

The most colourful motif is the belief that sorcerers “lower” the Moon. According to the Burgas museums, it happens in the secret hour before Easter or Enyovden. According to the belief, nobody may see it: whoever looks will go mad or lose their voice. The ritual is described too: a cauldron of water and herbs, a new sieve, midnight. The Dictionary adds that the Moon is turned into a cow and milked, and a blood-red patch remains in the sky. According to Balgarska Etnografia, the same mythologem is how people explained a lunar eclipse. This is a folk idea. The scientific explanation is on the Eclipses page.

New moon and fate

The new moon also carried expectation. According to Ivanichka Georgieva, the new moon was greeted with divination about marriage. Damyanova describes the widespread belief that the Moon determines a person’s fate and that children born in the same month share the same fate. It is a worldview in which time has a rhythm and a visible sign in the sky. Astronomy does not confirm a causal link between phases and human destinies.

How to read these beliefs

For us they are a living account of how people arranged their lives around the most visible night calendar. They are not instructions for today. Astronativa does not claim that the Moon affects harvests, hair or fate. Modern “lunar gardening calendars” are a separate, recent phenomenon and we do not present them as folk tradition. For deeper reading, the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences is the country’s main scientific centre for this kind of research.

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