The lunar cycle and eclipses

A moon phase is how much of the Moon is lit as it orbits Earth, from new to full and back over about twenty-nine and a half days. At the new moon the Moon sits between Earth and Sun and shows no lit face, a dark, quiet reset traditionally kept for beginnings. About two weeks later the full moon stands opposite the Sun and is fully lit, when things tend to come to a head and into the open. The waxing and waning stretches between are read as building and releasing, and the sign the Moon is passing through tints each phase.

As it circles, the Moon makes a series of angles to the planets, then leaves a sign behind. The gap after its last major aspect in a sign, until it slips into the next, is called void of course. It is an old idea that plans set in that window tend to drift or fizzle, so tradition treats it as time to rest, tidy and wait rather than launch. It is one of the gentler pieces of astrology, a suggestion to pick your moment. Its timing shifts every day, so a live calendar is the simplest way to catch it.

The Moon's orbit is tilted, so most months it passes above or below the Sun. The two points where its path crosses the ecliptic are the lunar nodes, and only when a new or full moon lands near a node do the Sun, Moon and Earth line up into an eclipse. A solar eclipse is a new moon on a node; a lunar eclipse is a full moon on a node. Because the nodes sit opposite each other, eclipses arrive in pairs about six months apart, and they retell one story across roughly eighteen months as the nodes slowly move around the zodiac. The same nodal axis can sit across your own chart, which is why some eclipse seasons land harder for you than others.

The lunar calendar tracks every day's phase, the new and full moons, and the sign the Moon is moving through, all computed from real astronomy. For the deeper reading on eclipses, follow through to the Journal, and the birth chart calculator shows where the nodes fall in your own chart. Eclipses are read as louder, fated-feeling lunations, but the frame stays the same here: a timer to notice, never a fate to dread.