Night of the Wolf

What our full moon tells us.

Image created with Microsoft Bing’s Co-Pilot and edited by the Author

On the 12th of January, I stepped outside at midnight. I looked at the backyard. The treehouse. The garden. The watermelon vine that was giving up to the coming spring.

Then I looked to the sky.

There, in all its radiance, straight above my head was the moon. It glowed with a light that wolves would find divine.

My mom has had a thing for wolves lately. She tells me they are the only animals that raise their young and share in exclusive relationships with partners. She says they have emotions and a sense of inclusiveness with their packs. Of all animals, they are most human.

I wondered at that — thinking apes and primates could use tools.

But, what caught my attention, more than anything, was that the moon was straight overhead. At twelve o’clock. It stood at noon by the sun’s standards. Being midnight, that would mean that the sun should be on the opposing side of the earth, wouldn’t it?

But then I noticed the tiny sliver of shadow along the right side of the silver orb and I remembered my Druidic traini ng.

We were just past the winter solstice and moving toward Imbolc. Like the hundreds of tree and plant names I had been bombarded with over two summers, the longest and shortest days of the year were also a bit fuzzy in my memory.

I had spent countless hours memorizing what a birch branch smelled like. What it looked like. What its Welsh and Gortigern names were, along with all the other OGHAM trees. It would help me identify the ancient writing of the druids, which was forbidden during the time of our Christ in 400 A.D.

But I struggled to remember the Sun’s position; an even more prominent teaching of my very own religion.

What a terrible student I had been.

I sat in a chair by our long dead firepit and looked up at the heavens, remembering walking the trails of Newais. I had been there a week that summer and had spent hard uncounted hours moving stones into a circle where I could work. I was searching for the perfect tree to consecrate my speaking stones and ventured to ask my mentor a question. A bold thing, as most questions were answered with more questions, or at worst, a scoff at my ignorance.

“What element does this tree represent?” I asked the elder. The tall tree had a hole in the base with a pool of water that stood just waiting for my stones to be immersed. It stood majestically right outside of my working space and I was hoping it would be suitable for the ritual.

“What type of tree is it?” asked my teacher, with no less an air than I had expected.

At its base, grew tiny saplings with three leaves that looked like poison ivy.

“An ash,” I said confidently.

“Then for Bran’s sake use your head! What would logic insist would be its element?” I thought. Then thought of guessing. But I wasn’t sure.

He ignored me for uncomfortable moments, surveying my work so far.

“Fire?” I finally asked.

“Very good.”

Since that time, I have always tried to deduce things through logic first. Mostly because I hate being reprimanded. Or is it that I hate being proved inferior?

As I looked at the moon, from my place at our cold firepit, I asked myself, “If I can see the nearly full moon directly overhead, then why am I not seeing a total lunar eclipse?”

The answer struck me immediately.

The sun is not on the other side of the Earth, it is off to the side somewhere!

But that is not the exact case.

According to Planetary.org, it is the moon that is off to the side as it has its own orbit around the Earth that is slightly ajar due to both our planetary tilt and the moons unique orbit.

The Wolf Moon, which is the first full moon of 2025, will be at its peak illumination at 5:27 PM EST on January 13th, but tonight, on the 14th, it should be nearly full and straight above at midnight as well.

The January full moon has various names reflecting two main winter challenges: wolves and extreme cold. The timing is significant — due to seasonal lag, late January typically marks the year’s coldest period in the Northern Hemisphere, occurring about a month after the winter solstice. This lag becomes more pronounced closer to the poles, and interestingly, occurs on other planets too.

Different indigenous peoples named this moon based on their experience of deep winter. The Cherokee simply called it the “Cold Moon,” while the Haida named it the “Bear Hunting Moon” during hibernation season. Some Algonquian peoples referred to it as the “Sun Has Not Strength to Thaw Moon,” similar to the Cheyenne’s “Moon of the Strong Cold.” The Omaha called it the “Moon When Snow Drifts Into Tipis,” and the Arapaho named it the “Moon When Snow Blows Like Spirits in the Wind.” There’s even a Celtic name — the “Stay Home Moon” — which shares the theme of taking shelter from harsh winter conditions.

Don’t be surprised to hear the wolves calling to the moon while you stargaze.

They do, in fact, howl more often during the full moon, but only because wolves see better to hunt by the light of the full moon. Rather than changing into werewolves, they are likely calling their comrades to dinner!

Jay Horne is the author of the science fiction fantasy realm of Rootworld where magic came before science. His latest works explore the discovery of magic on the Earth when the first witch is born and turns water into wine. Now, both realms are trying to educate and acclimate their students into new subjects.

Jay is the father of four and works as a cardiac monitor tech while he writes. He has a newsletter at substack called Stories that Slap. The only thing he loves more than writing is fooling his children.

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