Darius Adel '24
Staff Editor
Pictured: The Blood Moon.
Credit: CNN.
You may have missed it, but we experienced the Beaver Blood Moon this month. It happened on Tuesday, November 8, early in the morning, and was one of the scariest things I have ever seen. That blood moon is the last one we will see until 2025, so I made a point of getting up in the middle of the night to catch a glimpse of it. I probably could have admired it through my bedroom window, but I decided to go the extra mile.
I drove north, following Barracks Road. It was around four in the morning, so the streets were pretty empty. After pulling off on a side road, I got out of my car and looked up at the night sky. Being out alone in the middle of a field late at night was already pretty scary, but watching the slow eclipsing of a red moon made it so much worse. I’m glad I got to witness it in an area without light pollution, but next time, I’ll definitely bring a friend.
I’m not sure what it is, but people just love looking into space. There’s something really primal about looking up and seeing the moon and stars on a clear night. So, once I got back to the safety of my apartment, I went down a Wikipedia blood moon rabbit hole.
First off, why was this month’s lunar event called a “beaver” blood moon? Supposedly, every November full moon is called a Beaver Moon in honor of those river rodents that go into hibernation this month. Personally, I would have preferred a Bear Moon if we were going with hibernating animals, but then again, I’m not part of the lunar cult they have up in Washington.
The fact that they went with beavers makes little sense to me, but one look at the moon three weeks ago would make anyone understand why they use blood to describe it. I wouldn’t say that it looked bloody per se—it was more of a bright orangey red. But, the thing was definitely scary, and I get why our ancestors wanted to put a sinister label on it.
In Hindu folklore, the blood moon during the eclipse is supposed to be a literal bloody moon. The demon Rahu stole and tried to drink the immortality elixir, amrita. The sun and moon were alerted to this, and Rahu’s head was cut off before the amrita got past his throat. Rahu’s body died, but his head did not. Rahu’s head now chases the moon around. When Rahu catches the moon and devours it, that is a lunar eclipse. When the moon exits through Rahu’s severed neck, it’s covered in that sweet demon blood, hence the red tinge.
In Mesopotamian mythology, a blood moon represented a celestial attack on their current king. Since the Mesopotamians were pretty savvy when it came to astronomy, they could predict when a blood moon was going to happen. Before the lunar eclipse happened, they would swap the king with a body double, Parent Trapstyle, to take whatever violence the stars had for the head of the kingdom. After the blood moon ended, the king would come out of hiding and take back his position.
It’s cool that the Mesopotamians could predict the blood moon to protect their king, but not everyone used that knowledge for good. On Columbus’s last voyage to the New World, he found himself in need of food for his crew. The native Jamaicans welcomed him, but after six months of hosting, their patience wore off. Columbus knew a lunar eclipse was approaching and so told the natives that God was angry with them and would cause the moon to disappear. When the eclipse occurred, the natives freaked out, and Columbus promised to appease God. When the eclipse ended about forty minutes later, he took all the credit and tricked them into sending him vast sums of wealth in exchange for God’s forgiveness. Truly a horrible dude.
Why does the moon actually turn red during the eclipse? I wish I could write my own fanciful explanation for it, but I have to maintain some semblance of journalistic integrity.[1] When the moon passes through the earth’s shadow during a lunar eclipse, the only light that reaches it goes through our atmosphere. The refraction of light causes the red color, which we then see when it reflects back off the moon.
Like I said before, the next blood moon isn’t until 2025. If you didn’t see this one, definitely catch the next one. The hi-def pictures you see online just don’t do it justice. We spend most of our lives thinking about issues that only really affect our little speck of the cosmos. Sometimes it helps to look outward just a little bit.
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dsa7st@virginia.edu
[1] The blood moon’s color actually comes from the celestial body’s soul. During an intersection of the sun and moon, we as mere humans are better able to read its energy auras. The fact that the moon has a red aura is a result of its low energy state, since it is only getting sunlight indirectly.