Harvest Full Moon
As the Harvest Full Moon rises in the night sky, she casts her luminous glow upon the harvest of your life—illuminating what is ready to be gathered, honoured, and released.
The Full Moon closest to the Autumn Equinox is known as the Harvest Moon. It marks a transition as summer comes to a close and autumn makes its entrance.
The September Full Moon has also been known as the Corn Moon, reflecting a time of gathering and harvesting. Other traditions mark this Moon through ripening grain, falling leaves, nuts, or the preparation for winter.
Rooted in agricultural traditions and recorded in the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the Harvest Moon signalled the time of the final harvest. Before electricity, its bright light around the Autumn Equinox offered farmers precious extra hours after sunset, allowing them to gather crops as the days were already beginning to shorten.
Gathering Our Fields
Today, the Harvest Moon can invite us to turn our attention towards our own inner fields. To honour what we have grown and tended, to recognise what has come to fruition, and to gather the nourishment we will carry with us into the darker season.
What is ready to be harvested?
What has come full circle?
And what are we ready to release back into the earth?
The Harvest Moon reminds us that descent does not begin with emptiness. We enter the darker half of the year carrying the harvest of what we have lived, learned and loved.
Under the Full Moon, we gather what is ours — before returning it to the roots.
Abundance begins with receiving what is already here.
HARVEST FULL MOON MANTRA
“I honour what has ripened,
I gather what is given,
I give thanks for what is.”
Gratitude and Goodbyes
The Harvest Full Moon is a bittersweet symphony of gratitude and goodbyes. Gratitude for all the memories made during the summer season—the trips, the company, the souvenirs. And gratitude for stepping into a new season: the harvest season and all the bounty it brings.
This is a season for ripening as well as farewells. Goodbye to long summer nights and the energy of go-go-go. And perhaps also goodbye to an old version of yourself?
The summer months have brought a great deal of change. During this fast-paced period, we have moved through experiences that taught us not to settle in life. At the same time, we’ve caught glimpses of our near futures—the feeling that there is “something more” or “something else” for us to experience in this lifetime.
Perhaps it has been in our work lives, where we are refusing to feel enslaved to outdated notions of what it means to work. Perhaps in our personal lives, where certain relationships have shown us the need to step out or step up.
Or perhaps it has simply been our own precious souls, calling to us with strong voices from afar:
COME BACK, Lovechild
—come back to Everything you have left behind
in your busy, busy life.
Release to Upgrade
The Harvest Full Moon supports you in accessing your personal path to abundance through letting go and practising gratitude. Mother Moon reminds us that gratitude is not only a magnet for miracles—it is also the very path to upgrading yourself into a more abundant version of you.
However, gratitude doesn’t arrive in a busy life, where we are constantly looking ahead. We have to prepare the soil for gratitude to grow. We have to set time aside to invite it in: time to slow down, time to simply be in the moment, time to reflect. And the Harvest Full Moon is the perfect occasion to grant yourself a little gratitude time.
Remember, gratitude is not only about appreciating the good things in your life—material possessions, achievements, and relationships. It is equally about being grateful for the things that did not go as you wished, yet offered valuable lessons.
We, as human beings, are here to live and learn. The individual teachings we carry forward are some of our most valuable assets. When we recognise life lessons as the true value, it becomes easier to let go of possessions and relationships that have played their role in our lives, without regret.
As the trees begin to reclaim and draw nutrients back into their roots, preparing to release their leaves, we too can turn inward and reflect on our own root system.
What truly nourishes you?
What gives you life?
And what are you ready to let go of?
The Autumn season invites us to gather what sustains us, release what has come full circle, and return our energy to the roots.
This is a powerful time for letting go in order to enter a new cycle.
The Harvest Full Moon is a moment to pause, to reflect, and to give thanks for the lessons, the blessings, and even the challenges, as we let go of what no longer serves us and make space for how we want to move forward in right relationship with ourselves and the surrounding world.
Harvest Full Moon Blessings,
Sidsel Solmer Eriksen, Founding Editor
Corn Full Moon Practices
Feel the Feels
Under the Full Moon, let yourself feel what is here.
Quiet the inner critic and make space for your intuition, sensations and emotions to speak.
The Aries Moon invites you to lean into the wisdom of your own inner compass — to notice what stirs, what calls, and what you are ready to move towards.
You don't have to have it all figured out.
Sometimes the harvest is simply knowing what you know.
Listen beneath the noise.
Feel beneath the story.
Trust what rises from within.
Trust that your inner eye can see from a higher vantage point.
Trust your instinct. It knows the way.
Keep track of your personal unfolding during the lunar phases with SEMINE Moon Journal
Your Full Circle
The Full Moon brings a moment of illumination — a time to see what has come to fruition, what has come full circle, and what can now be released.
The Harvest Moon highlights the energy of fullness, release, closure and maturation, inviting us to reflect on themes of gratitude, harvest and abundance.
With the September Full Moon in Aries, we can look back to the beginning of the astrological year and reflect on what has unfolded since spring.
Where were you in March and April?
What were your intentions?
What were you longing for, beginning, or dreaming into being?
Some of those seeds may have taken root. Others may have changed shape, asking to be refined, released, or given another chance to grow.
Aries invites us to return to our own desire, courage and agency.
What do you want to choose for yourself now?
Where are you ready to trust your own impulse and move towards what calls you?
And before looking towards what comes next, this is the pause to recognise what has already happened.
Perhaps you have learned important lessons about your worth, your relationships, your boundaries, or the balance between giving and receiving. Perhaps you have made decisions that once felt difficult, or taken steps towards a life that feels more truly your own.
This Full Moon offers a moment to gather these experiences as part of your harvest.
Write down your wins.
The things you have overcome.
The dreams that have begun to take form.
The places where you have grown.
Sometimes, when we are focused on what is still becoming, we forget to honour who we have already become.
Let this be an opportunity to look back upon your own journey with gratitude and compassion — not to measure how far you still have to go, but to witness how far you have come.
This is a time to reflect on your own hero’s or heroine’s journey, as you draw circles and bind ties around the harvest of your life experience.
Create A Smudge Bundle
Around the Harvest Moon, I gather sage and wild herbs to make bundles for the year ahead.
I have collected wild herbs in Greece, as well as from my own garden in Copenhagen, around the Autumn Equinox, and left them to dry beneath the light of the Harvest Moon while reflecting on the gifts of my life at this turning of the season.
Later, I keep the sage in bundles to accompany me through moments of reflection during the months of Autumn and Winter.
Around the Spring Equinox, I do a spring clean and burn the bundle to mark the threshold of Spring, offering a smoky farewell to the dark months.
But for now, I keep the bundle close, drawing strength and power from the herbs gathered with the power from the fullness of summer.