The Mystical Moon

If the sun is the most important of the celestial bodies for the inhabitants of the earth, the Moon is undoubtedly the most mysterious. As opposed to the life giving properties and warmth of the sun, the Moon is said to give out an occult power, and to rule over growth, the hidden processes of nature, the hollow spaces of the earth, and the movement of all the fluidic elements within and upon the earth's surface.

There is a magical power in the Moon for it is supposed to draw to itself the hidden potencies of the stars and constellations. It used to be called the "funnel of the earth" because it was said to receive and concentrate the radiant emanations from the other celestial bodies and filter and transmute them before pouring their bounty upon the earth. "If the Moon were to vanish, it was believed all mental activity would come to a standstill."

Like the sun and stars, the moon rises east and sets west, as an effect of the earth's rotation from west to east. But the Moon also revolves around the earth from west to east, and this reduces the apparent effect of the earth's own rotation. The result is that the Moon appears to wander across the sky perceptibly more slowly than sun and stars, and this makes it schedule rather erratic, at first glance. Everyday, it rises about 50 minutes later, on the average, than the day before and it sets accordingly later, too. This daily retardation, as this is called, brings the moon out of step with the sun and then into step again over a period of a month, or more exactly, 29 !/2 days from a Dark Moon to Dark Moon. There is a difference of more than two days between these two periods of time.  By the time the Moon completes one orbit, the earth has moved farther in space. The moon has not quite reached its Dark Moon phase yet. It must move a little farther around the earth before it is again between the earth and the sun. This extra distances accounts for the 2 extra days the Moon takes to change from a Dark Moon to the next Dark Moon. In earlier days, before man became afraid of the dark the New Moon we referred to as the Dark Moon and the first sliver in the sky was in deed, the New Moon. But because of man's fear of the dark and unknown, they did away with the dark and now call it New Moon instead of Dark Moon.

The Moon can be seen in bright sunlight unless it is "dark". In fact, the moon is not just a night fixture but its appearances are evenly spread over night and day.

• Eight Periods - Dark Moon Dark

• Dark Moon - Dark Moon

• Crescent - Waning Crescent Moon

• Crescent - Half Moon, first quarter

• Gibbous - Waxing Gibbous Moon

• Full Moon - Full Moon

• Disseminating - Waning Gibbous Moon

• Last quarter - Half Moon, last quarter

• Balsamic - Waning, Crescent Moon

The Moon always turns the same side to the earth, as is well known. That is not the Moon's doing, but the earth's. At the beginning of existence the moon supposedly rotated fast around itself, but the pull of the earth's gravity slowed that rotation down to 29 1/2 days, exactly the same as the moon's revolution around the earth and nobody could tell what the other side of the moon looked like until 1959 when the Russian space Lunik lll  took the first photographs of those regions.

The Moon and the Earth are both affecting each other. The Moon makes the earth slow down. The flowing of water through tides, caused mainly by the Moon, produces friction on the ocean basins, and this is decreasing the rate of the earth's rotation by one second every 450,000 years. That means that 400 million years ago, the days were around 22 hours long instead of 24. In another 35,000 years from now, there will be 25 hours in a day - a bliss for the workaholic!

We generally believe that we only ever see half of the Moon's surface. This is not strictly true. Although the Moon does keep only one aspect turned towards us, it swings slightly, both from east to west and from north to south as the moon's axis is titled as well. About 59 percent of the moon's surface is actually visible from Earth, over a period of time. The moon reflects less than one-tenth of the light that falls on it from the sun, although its brightness varies according to its phases because of the roughness of its surface and the consequent variable amount of shadow. The Fill  - when the sun, earth, and moon are in the same line - is ten times as bright as the moon at first quarter.