This week the Moon comes to New Phase ~ for the second time this month ~ which makes it a good time to talk about how the Moon moves through our sky.
The Moon moves around the Earth in roughly a circular orbit, and it completes one orbit in 27.3 days. This is called its “sidereal period.” But just because the Moon has completed one orbitdoesn’t mean that it comes right back to the same phase again…this is because over that 27.3 days, the Earth has also moved, so you could say the Moon has some “catching up” to do.
If we measure from one New Moon to the next New Moon, we find that takes 29.5 days. This is called the Moon’s “synodic period.”
So we have the sidereal period and the synodic period, with a difference between them of about 2 days. This is what we should pay attention to each month, these two days. They’re known as the “dark phase” of the Moon, and it occurs every month. It’s the time when the Moon, having returned to the place where it started, is required to move along or wander alone through the dark, seeking to come into the same relationship with Earth and Sun it had a month earlier. This “dark phase” of the Moon has always been held as the sacred time, and it occurs this week from about sunset Wednesday the 28th until New Moon at 8:11 pm Friday, September 30th.
A great example of the kind of mood that can be stirred during the dark phase of the Moon is TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, which includes some magnificent images, including this one:
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.