Vine Moon
Moon of Exhilaration
The 10th Lunar Month
September 2 - 30

Gemstone: Amethyst
Druid's Gemstone: Amethyst
Tribe: Manasseh
Color: Variegated
Animal: Snake
Bird: Tit-Mouse
Tree: Grape (Bacchus)
Ogham Symbol Name: Muin (pronounced "Muhn")

The Vine symbolizes both the heights of joy and the depths of wrath. It is the vintage season symbolic of peace and abundance.

The wild growing Vine rules inspiration, imagination, poetry and imagery. The essence of all contained within the Vine is retained, in strength, in her wine. It is sacred to Dionysus, Osiris, and Bacchus and its five pointed leaves are sacred to the White Goddess. Tonic healing is also related to the vine.

The Vine painting above was part of a series of silk paintings that I turned into a Celtic Tree Oracle deck that I currently use for Soul Readings.

My brother Gary Crabbe, a New Zealand vintner and wine maker - Grape Crushing Time

The Autumn Equinox is celebrated this month marking the point in the Wheel of the Year where the nights begin to grow longer once again. This is the harvest season, sacred to Demeter, goddess of the harvest.

This is an excellent Moon to gather knowledge and inspiration for a solution, direction or concept you are working on. Let us join in the harvest and share in the joy of the first wine of the season.

Ode To Wine
by Pablo Neruda

Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.
Wine
stirs the spring, happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.
A jug of wine, and thou beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.

My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your nipples are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.

But you are more than love,
the fiery kiss,
the heat of fire,
more than the wine of life;
you are
the community of man,
translucency,
chorus of discipline,
abundance of flowers.
I like on the table,
when we're speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Drink it,
and remember in every
drop of gold,
in every topaz glass,
in every purple ladle,
that autumn labored
to fill the vessel with wine;
and in the ritual of his office,
let the simple man remember
to think of the soil and of his duty,
to propagate the canticle of the wine.

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