The moon’s simplest job is to reflect the light of the sun. For thousands of years men of different cultures have attributed qualities to the energy of this reflection. It is not just a matter of popular tradition; the Bible itself states that “God
showed Moses the new moon and said, ‘When you see the moon renewed [like this] consider that day the first day of the month.’”
(Rashi on Ex 12:12)

This gives us an understanding of the importance of the new moon and its cycle. A lunar month goes from the new moon, the first day of the month, to the full moon, the fifteenth day of the month, to the last day of the month when the moon is totally dark and ready to go back to the state of new moon.

As a more in-depth explanation, I will give a small mathematical example to explain the lunar calendar we will be using in our Astrological calculations. We know that the length of the moon cycle is approximately 29.53 days which means that we have about 354.36 days in a lunar year, if we count 12 lunar months in a year. However, this does not calculate to the actual year with the seasonal cycle of 365 days. Therefore, an adjustment is made so that in a cycle of 19 years, there will be 7 intercalate months, meaning every 19 years we will have 7 years of 13 lunar months. In this way our months-signs coincide with the seasons so that, for example, the month of Aries will always be in spring, Cancer in summer, Libra in the fall, and Capricorn in winter. This adjustment is made in order to follow what God told Moses, that the festival of Pessach/Passover should always fall in spring, in the month of Nissan, the month of ‘Aviv’(namely, the ripening of barley).

For those of you who are knowledgeable about the different lunar calendars, you will realize that this is the Hebrew Calendar, the calendar that we will be using for our Astrological Calculations where the each Hebrew month corresponds with a Zodiac sign as follows: Nissan-Aries, Iyar-Taurus, Sivan-Gemini, Tammuz-Cancer, Av-Leo, Elul-Virgo, Tishrei-Libra, Marcheshvan-Scorpio,
Kislev-Sagittarius, Tevet-Capricorn, Sh’vat-Aquarius, and Adar-Pisces.

During each Astrological month, that is, the amount of time the sun will spend on each sign throughout the year, there will be a full cycle of the moon; However, every new moon might not be under the same sign the sun is in. It could be in either the sign before, the same sun sign, or the following sign. This helps us understand why, for example, during the time of the year for the sign of Gemini, the energy around us could feel more committed than playful if the new moon happens in the sign of Taurus or more sensitive like a Cancer, although the Sun is still under carefree Gemini.

The moon in our charts represents emotions, feelings, motherhood. As the energy of motherhood is the manifestation of life and nurturing, so the moon nurtures us by diluting the radiance of the sun by not allowing us to look at him in the middle of the day with the naked eye, but yet allowing us to see that same radiance reflected in the face of the loving moon in the middle of
the night.

The energy of each new moon, according to its sign, brings a new spice to the sun sign; it helps us understand the energy around us and perhaps, for example, the strange behavior of our so lighthearted friend Pisces around the time of the energy of a new moon in Scorpio, or even the way we react to things at different times of the year.

Even we, as we try to understand our sign, could feel we do not completely match the description of the sign that has been established for us according to our birth, but if we go and do research according to the lunar calendar, we can see that the new moon on the year we were born was either in the sign before or after. This could explain why we are a blend of two different signs.

Spiritually speaking, the moon also acts as a key as it aligns with different signs during the year. It opens and closes cosmic gates that allow particular energies to manifest from a state of potential in the spiritual world and become manifested into our physical world. It also helps us understand the best times during the month to start projects, as the moon grows fuller from new moon to full moon, and how best to use the time when the moon decreases from full back to new as a period of reflection and planning in a more introspective manner.

Join me every new moon as we discover under which sign it occurs, what the energy available is for each lunar month, what the different cosmic gates are that open in each month, and how we can make the best out of that energy.