Buck Moon - July 29, 2026
Put on your flower crowns and your walking shoes - it’s time for the Buck Moon!
Buck Moon 🦌
The Buck Moon is the name given to the full moon in the month of July and is called this because at this time of year, the rack of antlers previously shed by male deer are beginning to regrow and harden in preparation for the fall rutting season.
Other North American Indigenous names for this moon include Salmon Moon (Tlingit), Berry Moon (Anishinaabe), Month of the Ripe Corn Moon (Cherokee), and Raspberry Moon (Algonquin, Ojibwe). The West Abenaki also call this the Thunder Moon in reference to the often-stormy summer weather. (This one is my personal favorite and the name appears in lunar calendars just as often as the Buck Moon.)
European names for the July moon include Hay Moon and Wort Moon, and it should be noted that the name Stag Moon does appear in some European sources as well.
This year’s Buck Moon will be at peak illumination at 10:36am EDT on July 29th, so the moon may appear to be full on both the 28th and 29th. Also, some of you may have summer harvest celebrations coming up this weekend, so plan your festivities accordingly!
What Does It Mean For Witches? 🦌
The July full moon continues June’s template of planning for the future, this time with a focus on your passions and ambitions. Reflect on what you’ve accomplished so far this year and plan your next step.
Dream big and plan big, but don’t give in to reckless urgency. Summer (and capitalist grind culture) gives us the urge to Go Go Go. Despite all this, it ’s important to take time to rest and recharge, lest we find ourselves burning out and losing our motivation.
Additionally, we've just come out of one stinker of a Mercury retrograde, so take a moment to breathe and recover before moving forward with your plans! (The next one is October 24-November 13.)
What Witchy Things Can We Do? 🦌
Celebrate your victories and revel in the abundance of the summer season. If you’re inclined to do so, take a page from the deer and do a bit of prancing around a bonfire or your favorite flower arbor with some festive flowery headgear.
Go exploring! Find a local park or garden and take a stroll among the greenery, or use TV and the internet to explore and learn about faraway places. This is another opportune time to go and check out pick-your-own farms and farmers markets as well. Sharpen your foraging and plant identification skills while you’re out and about!
If you’re tending a garden, harvest some herbs and investigate what you can make with them. Whether it’s seasoning for meals, homemade botanical products, or just helpful spell ingredients, many herbs and flowers have a plethora of uses. As an exercise, select three plants growing in your yard or garden, research their magical correspondences and botanical properties, and try to think of as many ways as possible to use each one for witchcraft and for practical purposes. For extra credit, pick something native to your area that doesn’t appear in the western magical canon and use its’ physical, folkloric, and historical associations to create something new!
(Safety Note: Always clean and prepare home-harvested herbs properly before using them for kitchen, bath, or medical preparations. Always be sure to properly identify any wildcrafted or foraged plants. Always consult a doctor before trying an herbal treatment and take all allergies, medications, and pre-existing conditions into account. Please also note that while herbal treatments can be helpful, it can have negative interactions and side effects just like any other medication, and it is not meant to be a replacement for modern medical care.)
Apart from the usual full-moon festivities, I’ve always found this is an excellent time for weather-witching. Summer weather is notoriously fickle, but it is also highly malleable - one recalls that old American Southern epithet of, “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.”
If you’re hoping to bring some rain to water your garden or break the back of a heat wave, this may be the time to do it. My personal favorite folk magic ritual for rain-calling involves going outside with a broom and a bucket of water, using the broom to scatter drops of water over your yard, and shouting up to the clouds, “SEE? IT’S NOT HARD!”
Make sure you take local weather patterns into account and try to draw on existing fronts and nearby precipitation to get the desired result. And keep in mind that with weather magic, less is more and one casting is enough. Asking for too much or asking too often can produce undesirable results. And if you manage to make it rain, be sure to collect some for moon water!
If you’re interested in weather-witching, I highly recommend checking out this masterpost by @stormbornwitch for a number of excellent articles and suggestions.
Happy Buck Moon, witches! 🌕🦌
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
