The Lunar Calendar – What is the actual meaning for us?

Undoubtedly, the history and the meaning of the lunar calendar is a very complex topic for discussion, as its importance for human beings is not so clear and understandable.

The lunar calendar became the basis of the calendars of the ancient Chinese, Babylonians, Greeks, and Jews. But, unfortunately, the humans of modern times have forgotten the lunar calendar.

During antiquity, the lunar calendar that best approximated a solar-year calendar was based on a 19-year period, with 7 of these 19 years having 13 months. In all, the period contained 235 months. Still, using the lunation value of 29 1/2 days, this made a total of 6,932 1/2 days, while 19 solar years added up to 6,939.7 days, a difference of just one week per period and about five weeks per century.

Even the 19-year period required adjustment, but it became the basis of the calendars of the ancient Chinese, Babylonians, Greeks, and Jews. The Arabs also used this same calendar, but Muhammad later forbade shifting from 12 months to 13 months. Hence, the Islamic calendar now has a lunar year of about 354 days. As a result, the months of the Islamic calendar and religious festivals migrate throughout the year’s seasons.

(For review, please see: History of the Lunar Calendar, Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/calendar/lunar.html#ixzz2ZY6fA9ab This website will provide you with more explanations and features of the lunar calendar.)

What is a lunar calendar?

A lunar calendar is a calendar that is based on cycles of the lunar phase. Because there are about twelve lunations (synodic months) in a solar year, this period (354.37 days) is sometimes referred to as a lunar year (for more information, please visit http://www.infoplease.com/calendar/lunar.html#ixzz2ZY6fA9ab ).

The Islamic or the Hijri Qamari calendar is a common purely lunar calendar. A feature of the Islamic calendar is that a year is always 12 months, so the months are not linked with the seasons and drift each solar year by 11 to 12 days. It returns to its position in relation to the solar year approximately every 33 Islamic years. It is used mainly for religious purposes and is the official calendar in Saudi Arabia. In other systems, a lunar calendar may include extra months synchronizing it with the solar calendar.

Most lunar calendars are, in fact, lunisolar calendars. That is, months reflect the lunar cycle. Still, intercalary months (e.g., “second Adar” in the Hebrew calendar) are added to synchronize the calendar year with the solar year. Some examples are the Chinese and Hindu calendars and most calendar systems used in antiquity.

All these calendars have a variable number of months in a year. This is because a year is not evenly divisible by an exact number of lunations. Without the addition of intercalary months, the seasons would drift each year. This results in a thirteen-month year every two or three years. Well, the Pagans and some other religions and spiritual traditions know about this phenomenon.

Some lunar calendars are calibrated by annual natural events, which are affected by lunar and solar cycles. An example is the lunar calendar of the Banks Islands, which includes three months in which the edible palolo worm gathers on the beaches. These events occur in the last quarter of the lunar month, as the reproductive cycle of the palolos is synchronized with the Moon.

Even though the Gregorian calendar is in common and legal use, lunar calendars serve to determine traditional holidays in parts of the world, such as India, China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and Nepal. Some examples include Ramzan, Diwali, Chinese New Year / Tết (Vietnamese New Year), Mid-Autumn Festival / Chuseok, and Nepal Sambat.

Lunar calendars differ as to which day is the first day of the month. For some lunar calendars, such as the Chinese calendar, the first day of a month is the day when an astronomical new moon occurs in a particular time zone. For others, such as some Hindu calendars, each month begins on the day after the full Moon or the new Moon. Others were based in the past on the first sighting of a lunar crescent, such as the Hebrew calendar.

The length of a month orbit/cycle is difficult to predict and varies from its average value. However, because observations are subject to uncertainty and weather conditions, and astronomical methods are highly complex, there have been attempts to create fixed arithmetical rules.

The average length of the synodic month is 29.530589 days. What does it mean? This requires the length of a month to be alternately 29 and 30 days (termed respectively hollow and full). The distribution of hollow and full months can be determined using continued fractions and examining successive approximations for the month’s length in terms of a day’s fractions. In the list below, after the number of days listed in the numerator, an integer number of months, as listed in the denominator, have been completed:

29 / 1 (error: 1 day after about 2 months)

30 / 1 (error: 1 day after about 2 months)

59 / 2 (error: 1 day after about 2.6 years)

443 / 15 (error: 1 day after about 30 years)

502 / 17 (error: 1 day after about 70 years)

945 / 32 (error: 1 day after about 122 years; expressible exactly in binary: 11101.10001₂)

1447 / 49 (error: 1 day after about 3 millennia)

25101 / 850 (error: dependent on the change of synodic month value)

These fractions can be used to construct lunar calendars or combined with a solar calendar to produce a lunisolar calendar. The 49-month cycle was proposed as the basis of an alternative Easter computation by Isaac Newton around 1700. The tabular Islamic calendar’s 360-month cycle equals 24×15 months minus a correction of one day.

A lunar phase or phase of the Moon is the appearance of the illuminated (sunlit) portion of the Moon as seen by an observer, usually on Earth. The lunar phases change cyclically as the Moon orbits the Earth, according to the changing relative positions of the Earth, Moon, and Sun. The half of the lunar surface facing the Sun is always sunlit. Still, the portion of this illuminated hemisphere visible to an observer on Earth can vary from about 100% (full Moon) to 0% (new Moon). The lunar terminator is the boundary between the illuminated and unilluminated hemispheres. Aside from some craters near the lunar poles such as Shoemaker, all parts of the Moon see around 14.77 days of sunlight followed by 14.77 days of “night” (the “dark side” of the Moon is a reference to radio darkness, not visible light darkness).

The Lunar phases result from looking at the illuminated half of the Moon from different viewing geometries; they are not caused by the shadow of the Earth or umbra falling on the Moon’s surface (this occurs only during a lunar eclipse).

The Moon exhibits different phases as the relative position of the Sun, Earth, and Moon changes, appearing as a full moon when the Sun and Moon are on opposite sides of the Earth and as a new moon (dark Moon) when they are on the same side. The phases of the full Moon and new Moon are examples of syzygies, which occur when the Earth, Moon, and Sun lie (approximately) in a straight line. The time between two full moons (a Lunar month) is about 29.53 days (29 days, 12 hours, and 44 minutes) on average (hence, the concept of the timeframe of an approximated month was derived). This synodic month is longer than it takes the Moon to make one orbit around the Earth with respect to the fixed stars (the sidereal month), which is about 27.32 days. This difference is caused by the fact that the Earth-Moon system orbits around the Sun and, simultaneously, the Moon orbits around the Earth.

The actual time between two syzygies or two phases is quite variable because the orbit of the Moon is elliptic and subject to various periodic perturbations, which change the velocity of the Moon. When the Moon is closer to the Earth, it moves faster; when it is farther, it moves slower. The orbit of the Earth around the Sun is also elliptic, so the Earth’s speed also varies, affecting the Moon’s phases.

It might be expected that once every month, when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun during a new moon, its shadow would fall on Earth, causing a solar eclipse. Likewise, during every full Moon, one might expect the Earth’s shadow to fall on the Moon, causing a lunar eclipse. However, solar and lunar eclipses are not observed every month because the plane of the Moon’s orbit around the Earth is tilted by about five degrees with respect to the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun (the plane of the ecliptic). Thus, when new and full moons occur, the Moon usually lies north or south of a direct line through the Earth and Sun. Therefore, although an eclipse can only happen when the Moon is either new or full, it must also be positioned near the intersection of the Earth’s orbit plane about the Sun and the Moon’s orbit plane about the Earth (that is, at one of its nodes). This happens about twice yearly, with between four and seven eclipses in a calendar year. Most of these are insignificant; major eclipses of the Moon or Sun are rare.

There are numerous websites related to lunar cycles, their significance, and their meaning in our everyday life. Personally, I like the website http://www.lunarium.co.uk/. I think it is professionally done, and it provides you with some essential data, such as the current phase of the Moon, the current position of the Moon in the Zodiac, and the current Moon void-of-course status (personally, I like this kind of data very much since I would not do some essential things in that particular period), the recent and coming Apogee and Perigee of the Moon, the current and coming Solar and Lunar Eclipses, and finally the recent and coming to “Retrograde Motion” of Planets. There is a universal Lunar Calendar that can provide beneficial information regarding the lunar status at any time, as well as a lunar conception calendar and gardening calendar. Of course, there is Moon phase software, and you can find information regarding the software at http://www.moonconnection.com/quickphase

Also, there is one more website that I personally think would be beneficial for getting more information, and that is http://www.moonconnection.com. This website will provide “the zillionth” information and almost everything you need to know at the introductory level regarding the Moon, its phases, mansions, and much more. These websites will guide you into the information regarding the Moon.

The question is if we have so many resources and sources related to the Moon, why do humans not use the lunar calendar for their everyday activities any more or less than it should or to solve major and minor problems in our lives? For example, such as finding a new job, getting over some financial issues, improving our everyday life on all plans and dimensions, curing diseases, alleviating some symptoms and signs of major and minor ailments, or simply preventing diseases and illness from understanding our individual physiology and psychology better, or to improve our circadian rhythms… All these questions and possibilities for improvement can be. They could be nicely managed by the lunar calendar and using it in everyday life.

Let’s be more practical and less descriptive. Here is the status of the Moon of one of my clients at her birth.

At the birth, there was a lunar eclipse, a full moon, void-of-course, just started prior to the birth, and the void-of-course ended after birth. The Moon was in Cancer, in the lunar station (mansion) 8, perigee, and the person was born on the 17^th lunar day. This is all the information I needed to analyze and develop some strategies for improvement for this particular person.

Why should we care more about the lunar calendar?

A long time ago, or perhaps better to say once upon a time… people lived in a lunar calendar. They knew how to “read” the lunar calendar and use its gifts for everyday life, work, maintain and promote health, and cure diseases.

During each lunar month, the Earth and each human lives one life circle; as I would say, “a little life.” If we know the energetic influence of each lunar day, we can do more; we can efficiently take all advantages and adequately take care of some disadvantages. Lunar energy gives a perfect rhythm to life on Earth. It serves as some kind of motor force with constant vibrations. Ancient people used to say that if you take seriously into consideration lunar rhythms, you will live in harmony with the entire cosmos.

The lunar calendar represents warnings and advice “and are not merely rough guidelines.” There are no good and/or bad lunar days; there is only poorly managed lunar energy by a human being.

You would say there is too much biology/physiology, astronomy, science, and philosophy in this entire approach to the lunar calendar. You are right, but for complete understanding, you will need only elementary knowledge of biology/physiology and science in general and goodwill to use the benefits of the lunar calendar.

Let’s start with elementary things such as our body’s electricity and electric charges. The surface of the Earth has a negative charge; the air we breathe has a positive charge. Our head has a positive charge, and our feet have a negative charge. The difference in the potential should be approximately 210–230 Volts. Our lower abdominal area should be neutral. Well, it is not a scenario for modern humans. The modern human is isolated from the Earth and its negative charge. Why? Because we use predominantly synthetic shoes, rugs in our homes and carpets represent barriers. Thus, most of us have a positive charge throughout our entire body. That is not good at all. Positive electricity can cause a lot of trouble.

Additionally, the pH shift towards more acidic, even just a bit, such as 0.4–0.5, can cause severe problems and the pathogenesis of numerous diseases. It kick-starts severe disturbances in enzyme activities, and the accumulation of harmful end products of metabolism causes the pathogenesis of multiple diseases. Unfortunately, pharmacological treatment of this state does not improve the condition, and one of the preventive strategies for cancerogenesis is to exclude these kinds of problems from our bodies.

Our body is made up of large molecules. All these molecules have a magnetic field and play a role as powerful magnets. When the entire body carries a positive charge, which is not a good scenario, for example, DNA molecules change their orientation, and they do not do properly even one of their function what they supposed to do.

Our body’s extreme positive charge causes disturbances in our organ systems’ coordinated functions. For example, you have probably noticed tension headaches or discomfort in the neck area every evening. That is the result of over-accumulation of positive charge in your body.

There are some very effective treatments for this kind of problem. First of all, the rhythm of day and night needs to be maintained strictly, and I would say almost blindly. Also, during the day, we should be cautious about regulating the general charge in our bodies. During the daytime, humans should not be in a horizontal position for a long time; we should walk without shoes as much as possible daily, shower each morning and/or evening, etc.

To be continued…

In the meantime, please take the time to listen to some beautiful music dedicated to the Moon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQru-FMGdug – Claude Debussy – Clair de Lune (Orchestral Version)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2N5iyQuFWI – Beethoven – Moonlight Sonata (Claro de luna)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evI-sCxYM3Y – Stasa Mirkovic Grujic – Claude Debussy – Clair de lune

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YVIPy2v0OQ – Maria Dolores Pradera — Luz de Luna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q4SR5mHlVw – Hijo de la Luna – Monserrat Caballé

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb4TTtbbrVY&list=RD02evI-sCxYM3Y – Claire de Lune – Debussy – London Philharmonic

Respectfully,

Holistic Healthful