Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

Maori and the Moon
Seven Sisters. The Maori called it Te Matariki.
A parallel mention to Pleieades appears in the Greek
poet Hesiod’s monthly calendar of Works And Days, written
seven years before Christ was born. This was a written
calendar, timed to the Moon phases for the whole year, and
describing weather, planting and social information. In it
one could find when to geld horses, when to hunt birds and
when the north wind would blow.
At the time when the Pleiades, the daughters of Atlas, are
rising begin your harvest, and plow again when they are
setting.
The Pleiades are hidden for forty nights and forty days,
and then, as the turn of the year reaches that point
they show again, at the time you first sharpen your iron.
But if the desire for stormy sea-going seizes upon you
why, when the Pleiades, running to escape from Orion’s
grim bulk, duck themselves under the misty face of the water,
at that time the blasts of the winds are blowing from
every direction then is no time to keep your ships on the
wine-blue water.
Other passages in Works suggest that the disappearance
of these particular stars around the Full Moons and
Perigees (Moon was closest to the Earth.) of October and
November was associated the deterioration of the weather,
with consequent danger particularly to sailors. The second
halves of those months were the worst
.
Oct: Do not sail
Nov: haul ship on land.
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