You can use astrology to your benefit without knowing anything about signs, houses, planets, or reading an astrological chart. The cycle of the Moon is apparent to anyone who looks into the night sky (or who has a calendar with moon phases on it). Using the phases of the Moon’s cycle can really help you plan events or projects for their most productive times.
Every twenty-nine days, the moon moves from New through the Full Moon stage and back to New. The New Moon is a dark moon. It is associated with the very inception of a new twenty-nine-day cycle of activity. The two or three days of a dark moon is a good time for dreaming, for planting seeds in your subconscious, for daydreaming about new activities in a general way. It is not an effective time to implement something. Anything started now is likely to be premature or ill-conceived.
A week after the New Moon comes the first-quarter period. This is a natural time to begin projects. Dane Rudhyar calls this period a “crisis of action”, meaning that one is overwhelmed with the desire to act at the first quarter moon. It also means that the time for action is appropriate.
The full moon the next week is the period when one’s actions over the previous two weeks can be seen at full flower. The plans have been decided, the action of the first quarter has enabled you to develop the project, and you can finally see what it can look like. If all goes well at this point you are ready for the next step.
Just before the third quarter is a phase called the “disseminating phase.” Several days after the full moon is the time to tell the world about your actions. In practical terms, this is the best time to do a mailing that will be noticed, to place an advertisement, to mail the party invitations.
The third quarter is the time when you sit back and think about what you’ve done, the meaning and purpose of what you’ve done, or what could be improved if you were to do it again. Rudhyar calls it the “crisis of integration.” This is the “what does it mean” phase of the lunar cycle.
In the week before the next new moon, there is usually a sense of let-down. You’ve tackled the job and it’s either finished or not, but you need to sit and absorb what’s been done so far, or go around and put out a lot of fires if the project hasn’t gone well.
Of course, most projects aren’t twenty-nine-day activities. In longer cycles, you will notice the phases spiraling, with new impulses of action, new times of overview, new urges to communicate and re-evaluate as the next twenty-nine-day cycle unfolds.
The next time you have a task ahead of you, try matching your activities to the moon‘s cycles. You’ll find things go more smoothly and more successfully this way!
