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The Hawaiian Lunar Calendar
BY MARTHA CHENG
Sun, earth, water. It’s easy to see how these three elements factor into farming.What may not be so obvious—at least to those of us who rely on the widely used Gregorian calendar—is the importance of the moon in planting, gathering and harvesting food. If the impact of lunar cycles on farming seems somewhat… well, alternative, to put it gently… one doesn’t have to look far to see examples of the moon’s influence on our physical world.
Water, which flows through plant cell walls and tree sap, is subject to the moon’s gravitational pulls; this effect is most visibly manifested in the ocean’s high and low tides. There’s also the curious incidence of Hawai‘i’s box jellyfish, which tend to swarm Hawai‘i’s shores approximately 10 days after every full moon.
These days, biodynamic agricultural practices, which take into account cosmic forces such as the moon, planet and stars, are becoming more popular. But long before the principles of biodynamic farming were laid out, the Hawaiian lunar calendar guided all farming and fishing in the Islands. The Hawaiian lunar calendar, or kaulana mahina (literally, “positions of the moon”), detailed 30 moon phases, each with its own name (in contrast, most American calendars recognize only eight).
“Each [moon phase name] tells you what you can expect from that day,” said Kalei Tsuha, a Maui-born researcher whose work focuses on Hawaiian science, and in particular, the kaulana mahina, on which she wrote her master’s thesis while at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. “The moon traditionally told Hawaiians how to do what they needed to and when they needed to do it in order to make things efficient.”While the moon governed all activities, Tsuha helped me understand its importance as it relates to food:
“Certain phases, like the full moon phases, folks plant in the evening,” she said. “For daily phases when the moon was up during the daytime, then they would plant during that time.”
When Tsuha and I spoke, the next four days were kū moon phases, meaning the moon was going to be up the whole day. “We’re going to plant in the daytime and get the most mana that we can from the moon,” Tsuha said. “That’s basically what it is: trying to capture and harness the energies of the moon while it is up in our presence. And getting the most productivity from the seed or the tuber or the slip or the huli that we place in the ground.”
“In terms of farming, it really has to do with what the moon phase name means, and the luminosity of the moon, or brightness,” she said. For example, Tsuha said in the Kahalu‘u district of Hawai‘I Island, farmers will plant bananas by the evening moonlight of kulu, one of the last four full moon phases. “They believe kulu means ‘to drop’ and therefore the bunch of bananas will be so heavy that you’ll need to prop it up with a stick.” Tsuha emphasized that all her examples are extremely place-based. Each farming practice “was something that they learned over generations of time. And it differed from one ahupua‘a to the next, from one island to the next, from family to family,” she said. For example, people just up the coastline from Kahalu‘u will choose the night of mahealani, the third full moon phase, to plant bananas. “It’s the same practice—planting in the evening,” Tsuha said. “However, the reasons for why they would do it, the mana‘o of why they choose those certain moon phases is different. It’s all based on what they’ve learned over time to be efficient.”
The kaulana mahina as it relates to fishing is perhaps more obvious. Of particular importance are the tides and moon luminosity. Reef fish are generally gathered during the dark moons, whereas red fish and fish more accustomed to bright light would more naturally be caught during the bright moons. But just as with farming, “It made a difference from one ahupua‘a to the next,” Tsuha said. “Because if you’re on the eastern side of the island, you’re more concerned with when the moon is actually rising and how that is going to impact your tides and your landscape and your oceanscape. As opposed to those who are on the western side of the island who would be more concerned with when the moon would be setting because that is when the impact is greater.”
While some may be frustrated that the lack of universal rules precludes a “Lunar Farming for Dummies” guide, such a handbook would in a sense be in opposition to the very philosophy behind farming by the moon: being aware of our surroundings. This is especially important in Hawai‘i, given the number and variety of microclimates on each island; There simply isn’t one solution for all the islands.
In these days of Internet connectivity, where information from one corner of the globe can be accessed in another, it’s tempting to assume that knowledge is universal, but in the case of farming, it’s exceedingly place-based. For example, biodynamic farmer Richard Clark of O‘o Farm on Maui, says that while he does Internet research to learn biodynamic principles, he found “it’s all on [mainland] East Coast time. Even the moon phases information is one or two days off. So I have to go on my own observations.”
While the kaulana mahina was created long ago and has fallen out of Hawai‘i’s general consciousness, the principles it drew on are universal: “It’s all based on paying attention to your environment, which is something we lack today,” Tsuha said. “We’re so disconnected from it. If more people started paying attention to the moon phases, I think that helps us reconnect … to reconnect to wherever it is they’re living, to their ahupua‘a, to their geographical district. And help them learn more about their place…Then we’re a little more efficient about how we can live and sustain ourselves off of our own environment.”
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