LWTM Factoids Archives - Living With The Moon

Lunar and solar eclipses

by Jutta Russell | Oct 31, 2022 | History of the calendar, LWTM Factoids, Moon Science

Lunar and Solar Eclipses have been mythical events since the beginning of time.

Traditionally eclipses bring major changes, unpredictable situations, shocking revelations, and/or sudden endings. The advice used to be, don’t take too many risks or make too many changes during this unpredictable time. But eclipses can also be catalysts, showing up things that were hidden before which now are coming to light. For example, you become aware your partner is having an affair or a much more positive thought – for a while, your boss had you in mind for a promotion, but now it comes to light and you get the offer.

Some Ancient rulers took the prediction of eclipses and their linked fate very seriously as they believed an eclipse signaled a bad omen. Almost 4000 years ago the Chinese king Zhong Kang beheaded 2 of his astronomers for failing to predict accurately when the next eclipse would appear. The Assyrians and later Babylonians were more accurate in their predictions. One text mentions the solar eclipse during June 763 B.C. which was well observed and recorded.

Another connection often made with eclipses is the appearance of natural disasters. The archaeologist Bruce Masse claimed that an eclipse happened at the time of a major meteor impact in the Indian Ocean on May 10th, 2807 B.C., and subsequent floods and tsunamis followed.

Lunar eclipses:

There are total ( when the moon, sun, and earth practically align) and partial lunar eclipses – when only part of the sun is darkened. Lunar eclipses are always linked to New Moons and only occur during this time. When you see a full lunar eclipse the moon (normally invisible at New Moon) turns dark red as illuminated not by the sun, but by the light coming from the earth’s atmosphere.

Why don’t we see a lunar eclipse on every New Moon?

In fact, if the moon were to orbit in a perfect circle around the Earth, exactly this scenario would happen. But the lunar path is slightly tilted, in fact, leaning around 5 degrees, so it misses the perfect position by a bit. But occasionally the path slightly overlap (partial eclipse) and on rarer occasions perfectly align – that is then a full lunar eclipse.

Here is a clip that shows exactly what happens during a lunar eclipse

Solar eclipses

These only happen during Full Moon and we often speak of ‘eclipse cycles’. This means the planet’s parth rotate in a way that they align or overlap. On average 2-5 eclipses occur during one eclipse season, lasting around 12-16 months. Total eclipses are very rare astronomical events that have had historically immense meanings and have always captured our imagination. So it is not surprising eclipses have been linked to important historical events. There apparently was a solar eclipse when Jesus died and another when Mohammed was born.

In 1919 a total lunar eclipse blocked all sunlight for a full 6 minutes and 51 seconds, giving scientists time to measure the bending of the light from the stars. These findings were instrumental in the explanation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Find out more about historically significant solar eclipses

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Moon Guides

by Jutta Russell | Sep 30, 2022 | History of the calendar, LWTM Factoids, LWTM holistic life goal planner, LWTM Lifestyle Calendar

Moon guides have existed for thousands of years and below you can find out why they are still so important and how you can use them for your daily benefit. But at first, let’s look a bit at how they came into the world.

From as early as 30,000 B.C. hunter and gather societies have used the moon cycle to guide them through their life, give them light throughout the night, and scheduled their days. One of the earliest known ‘calendars’ was found in the Dordogne Region of France and consisted of animal bones. You can find out more about the origin of the moon calendar on this blog.

Many civilizations, more notably the Greeks and Romans scheduled their lives according to the path of the moon, and the first moon guides were established. Each generation added extra information and observations to these calendars. Eventually, this knowledge developed into an almanac.

What is an almanac?

Generally speaking, we think about an annual calendar publication that includes the movement of the sun, moon, eclipses,
black moons and blue moons, tide tables, planting dates, and various tips and lifestyle advice.

The first ever documented use of the word almanac was in 1267 by Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar and medieval English philosopher. He set out to publish a set of tables to detail the path of the moon and other well-known planets and referred to it as an almanac. The actual word almanac comes from the Coptic-Egyptian literature where these tables were called almenickiaka.

There are also other sources that claim it comes from the Arabic work al-manakh, but the exact origin remains a mystery.

But never mind where the word comes from, almanacs have been in use for thousands of years, giving structure to people’s lives, and highlighting good and bad days for agriculture, fishing, and hunting. Until not so long ago they were the backbone of the agricultural systems all around the world.

The Babylonian Almanac

These keen stargazers connected all sorts of events to the rhythm of the universe and collected this information in their own Babylonian Luni-solar Calendar. Still one of the most impressive examples of lunar guides. Their interpretations of certain star patterns, good and bad dates for certain activities were passed down through the generations.

Some examples of these handwritten moon guides have survived and can be viewed in the British Museum in London. When Guttenberg invented the printing press these guides were among the first commercially printed books and traveled on ships to the New World.

Poor Richard’s Almanack

There the imported European guides were soon superseded by homegrown US versions. The most successful was called Poor Richard’s Almanack which saw a yearly print run of nearly 10,000 copies a year and this publication ran from 1732 to 1758. It was written and published by Richard Saunders and sold exceptionally well. Apart from the usual calendar tips, it also contained puzzles, household tips, and amusements for the whole family.

Later versions added proverbs with life advice, stories on how to run the household, and tales of moral behavior. All delivered with a touch of humor, and a dash of cynicism.Not surprising as Richard Saunders was in fact the pen name of no other than Benjamin Franklin, who later became one of the founding fathers of the United States of America.

How can I benefit from an almanac today?

These valuable guides have not lost their benefits. In fact, with so many other news channels, TV, streamers, social media, etc vying for your attention, it is really important to have a constant guide in your life. It turns your focus on what really matters in your life.

Your health, your environment, your relationships, your career/vocation, and your spirituality. And as we saw in a previous article – where focus goes, energy flows.

Once you have these elements under control and in balance, you are able to take on the world with a positive mindset. And down-to-earth tips and recipes prove especially useful in a time when money is scarce and the future is uncertain.

I am in the process of publishing my very first almanac with useful tips and recipes, partly passed down from my grandmother and partly gained through my extensive research. And I can not wait to share it with you all!

mood guides

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Once in a blue moon

by Jutta Russell | Oct 1, 2020 | History of the calendar, LWTM Factoids, Moon Science

Have you ever heard the phrase – once in a blue moon. I should think so. So I delved a little deeper to find out what it really means and where it comes from

Four full moons in a season

The first definition refers to a fourth full moon in a season. The year has four seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter and normally each season has 3 full moons. So that brings the yearly total to 12 full moons. The same reason why the year has 12 calendar months.

The Ancient Roman year had 12 moon cycles and then a period of rest (roughly what we now call January and February).
The new year started again in March. This coincided with the start of the new military marching season, ruled by Mars, the God of war). To keep the year in sync with the seasons occasionally another moon cycle was added, which then brought the total number of full moons to 13. This meant that one season had 4 full moons instead of 3 and the 4th full moon was called ”a blue moon’. When Julius Caesar adopted the solar calendar model, he created 12 calendar months per year. (calendar comes from the Latin word for register) and abolished the13th month.

Although the sun calendar replaced the former lunar model for official duties and taxes, many pagan rituals were still celebrated in accordance with the moon cycle. When Emperor Constantin adopted Christianity as the ‘official Roman religion’ anything pagan got a bad press. The Catholic church rallied against the ancient pagan practices and the number 13 became the ‘number of witches’. It was hailed the unlucky number, especially if the combination fell on a Friday (the day of worship for Friga, the pagan fertility goddess). This lore is still alive in fairy stories. Do you remember the 12 good fairy godmothers in Sleeping Beauty and the 13th came to dinner and spoilt it all!

To give you an idea of how often this happens – The last ‘Blue Moon’ according to this definition occurred just recently on the 21st May 2016 and the next ‘blue moon’ will happen on 18th May 2019 and after that on the 22nd August 2021. So on average, a Blue Moon happens every 3 years, hence the saying ‘ once in a blue moon’, meaning an event which is very rare.

2. Two full moons in a calendar month

Another way of describing a ‘blue moon’ came later. Normally a calendar month has one New Moon and one Full Moon, but occasionally 2 of each can occur in the same month. From the 19th century onwards it became popular to call the second Full Moon in a given calendar month ‘a blue moon’. Although still rare, this event occurs more randomly than the first definition. The last time this kind of Blue Moon happened was in March 2016 and there were no Blue Moons in 2017. 2018 had a Blue Moon in January (31st), no full moon in February, and then again another Blue Moon in March (31st March). After that, the next Blue Moon happens in October 2020.

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The history of the calendar

by Jutta Russell | Jul 31, 2020 | History of the calendar, Moon Science

Our ancestors used the sun, the moon and the stars to measure time and form the very first calendars (meaning register). The earth orbiting the sun marks the annual year. The moon cycle was the blueprint for the month and the weeks (28 days dived by the 4 quarter of the moon cycle – 7 day week).

The Ancient Greek word for moon ‘mene’ is the root for minute, month, and even menstruation. Very early on the correlation between the timescale of the moon cycle and the female fertility cycle was well understood. Moon gods/goddesses were called upon for all kinds of fertility problems. These could be a lack of conceiving, problems with the menopause or failed harvests and food production.

The lunar month was the first properly understood time-measuring tool. It enabled hunter-gatherer societies during the Stone Age to forecast seasonal changes, schedule events/celebrations and stock up on food reserves for the winter months.

Animal bones found in the Dordogne region of France are believed to be the first moon calendars known to man. These archaeological finds date back to around 28,000 B.C. and show different patterns of notches that define the passing of time between the New Moon to the Full Moon. Find out more about the history of the lunar calendar.

The Ancient Lunar year consisted of 12 moon cycles, determined by the four cornerstones of the year, the winter solstice (21st December = the shortest day of the year), the summer solstice (21st June = the longest day of the year) and the spring and autumn equinoxes (21st March and 23 September = when the length of the day equals night).

But since 12 moon cycles fall a few days short per year (354 days), a solution had to be found. So every other year a leap year with 13th moon cycle was introduced to bring the seasons back in sync with the Ancient Lunar year. The Ancient Greek, Roman and Chinese calendars all operated this system.

When Julius Ceasar arrived in 48 B.C. in Egypt, he did not only fall in love with Cleopatra, but he also immersed himself into Egyptian science. He was particularly intrigued by the way the Egyptian calendar system worked. At the time the Egyptian calendar was the only purely solar calendar of its time. It counted 365 and 1/4 days per year. An astonishing achievement, considering it was first put in place around 4200 B.C.

Upon his return to Rome Caesar ordered a massive Roman calendar reform and the Julian calendar was born. The newly formed Roman year had only 12 months and the starting date (previously March, named after the War God Mars and the start date of the Roman marching season) was moved to the 1st January. Ceasar named his birth month after himself, now July. His successor Augustus did the same and modestly name August after himself.

But for all the yearly time-keeping improvement that the Egyptian calendar brought, Cesar wisely kept all the lunar festivals and names of the previous months intact. Otherwise, his reform would have been too radical and confusing. Can you imagine – September (previously the seventh month) would theoretically now be the 9th and should really be called November and so on.

Had it not been for Ceasar’s enthusiasm for the Egyptian culture, he would have probably chosen the most efficient calendar system of its time. The Lunisolar Calendar as operated by the Sumerians and later Babylonians, which combined the solar and lunar cycle.

Caesar almost got it right, but there was a slight miscalculation in the Egyptian calendar when it came to leap years. The solar year actually counts precisely 365 days, 5hours, 48minutes and 45 seconds. That difference would finally add up to 10 days!
In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII finally corrected this mishap and introduced another calendar reform which we still use to this day – the Gregorian Calendar.

But there was another error creeping in. The years (meaning the rotation of the earth around the sun) are slowing down – appropriately 1/2 a second per century. So in 1972, the answer was found by employing the ‘atomic clock’ and that is what all our computers, phones, alarm clocks use today for accurately measuring time. It is no longer connected to the stars, the moon and the heavens. We have disconnected ourselves from all these movements and now we follow the oscillations of atoms. This tool is called UTC – the Co-ordinated Universal Time.

I am happy to follow the UTC clock to time my zoom calls and alarm clock. But when it comes to structuring my own life, I happily revert back to the Lunisolar calendar (the calendar model the LWTM lifestyle calendar is modeled on). This calendar does not only measure time, but it also gives an insight into the ‘quality of time’, a fantastic tool to structure my life.

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What happens during a Summer Solstice?

by Jutta Russell | May 1, 2020 | LWTM Factoids

In the Northern Hemisphere, the night of the 20th to 21st of June marks the longest day of the year. Nowadays, in a time with an all-round electricity supply, this may not seem significant. But picture a day a few hundred years ago. There were no street lights, TVs, or other artificial sources of light. In the home candles and fireplaces were the only tools to illuminate the darkness. Outside however the only light sources in the night sky were the moon and the stars.

Having longer access to daylight was so significant that our ancestors worshipped the longest day of the year. It meant that the growing season was at its peak and the countdown to the shortest day of the year (21st December) would begin. This is of course only true when you live in the Northern Hemisphere. “Down under” the opposite happens and the December Solstice is the longest day in the year.

Monuments to worship the Solstice included The Karnak temple (Luxor, Egypt), Stonehenge (UK), Angokr Wat (Cambodia), and the Serpent Mound (Ohio, US).

On Serpent Mound, believed to have been built thousands of years ago, a large serpent and head are carved into the landscape. On the 21st June, the open jaws of the serpent align with the setting sun, as if the dragon is spitting out ‘fire’. This spectacle was even further enhanced by a large crystal (showing the eye of the dragon), which was situated in the serpent’s head. Unfortunately, this large crystal was stolen during the 18th century and the solstice effect is now only half as effective.

What happens during a solstice?

As the earth moves around the sun, its path resembles more of an eclipse than that of a circle.

When the path of the sun is at its most northern point in the Northern Hemisphere (which happens every year on the 20/21st of June) we see a summer solstice – the longest day of the year.

During the night of the 20/21st of December however, the sun lies at its most Southern point, therefore it is the longest day in the Southern Hemisphere and the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere. On the 21st of March and 23rd of September, the sun forms an exact 90-degree angle, therefore days and nights are the same – everywhere.

There are so many traditions that I can’t mention them all. One of my favorites is the ritual of the Baltic sun goddess Saule. Every day this tireless goddess rides her fiery chariot across the sky, from morning to nightfall, when she retires to her castle. Saule is the goddess of fertility and the land, a similar version to Demeter in Greece.

Farmers prayed to her to have a good harvest and around the Summer Solstice, the whole community celebrated by lighting bonfires. Partly to worship her and ward off evil spirits. Young people wore wreaths of flowers, leaped over fires, sang, and danced.

It is interesting that our forefathers paid much more notice to the winter solstice. The longest day had of course much less significance than the shortest day. The celebration concerned the re-awakening of the light. Growing sunlight meant that the climate was getting warmer and after the cold spell, another growing cycle would begin. The festivities around the winter solstice would eventually morphe into Christmas celebrations, showing a baby Jesus with a halo. The ‘growing little light’ was a powerful symbol. Longer days meant more growing time which eventually turned into the rebirth of the growing cycle and the start of a new year, celebrated by Passover or Easter and marked by the first Full Moon after the spring Equinoxe.

Today we are still singing and dancing and celebrating these yearly turning points. After the last two challenging years where people had to watch the last summer solstices online. But this year we can meet again in person to watch this spectacle in situ.

Here is a link to this year’s Solar Eclipse at Stonehenge . The first in history that takes place on Facebook instead of in situ. But this means that you can watch it now the comfort of your own home!

What is a leap year?

by Jutta Russell | Feb 21, 2020 | LWTM Factoids

The calendar reform and introduction of leap years

In the beginning, all calendars were lunar and guided by the monthly lunar cycle. When Julius Caesar visited Egypt, he fell in love with Cleopatra and immersed himself in Egyptian culture and scientific teachings.

When he returned to Rome, he brought with him the desire to correct the then outdated Roman Calendar and replace it with a model that followed the path of the sun. In this calendar the Roman astronomers inserted leap years, but they occured on average every 3 years. His new Roman calendar, also called the Julian Calendar was introduced in Rome on the 1st of January 45B.C. and for centuries this model stood its test of time. But during the Middle Ages, it became apparent that the Julian Calendar was no longer totally accurate. In the early 13th century A.D. an English friar named Roger Bacon calculated that the solar year was actually 11 minutes longer than Julius Caesar’s astronomers had calculated. By 1267 this had amounted to around nine days. Bacon wrote to Pope Clement IV and asked that the church should correct the calendar. If this issue was left unfixed the months would shift to such an extent that the holy days of Easter and Christmas would fall into a completely different seasons. Pope Clement IV was very interested and asked Bacon to send his findings to the Vatican. Over the next year Bacon set off to compose his theories in a manuscript he called Opus Maius (Major Work). In this work he set out (amongst many other topics) to prove that the current way solstices and equinoxes were calculated had gone completely out of sync with the true seasons and a calendar reform was badly needed.

Sadly for Bacon Pope Clement IV died in 1268 before he could read or evaluate this important document. His successor Gregory X was less sympathetic and Bacon’s book became largely forgotten. But the friar did not rest and kept publishing his demands for calendar reform. In 1277 these calls landed him in prison and his ‘dangerous teachings’ were deemed to be heretic and were largely suppressed by the Catholic church. It took almost another 300 years before Roger Bacon’s demand finally got taken seriously. Around 1573 Pope Gregory XIII appointed a calendar commission to look into the lost days. By this point it had amounted to 11.5 days. This commission was led by the mathematician Christopher Clavius who directed work on the commission, but the main author was a physician called Aloysius Lilius (sometimes referred to as Luigi Lilio) who comprehended the papal bull that Gregory would issue on 24 February 1582. Unfortunately Lilio would not see his work to fruition and passed away in 1576, leaving Clavius to credit his work and drive the commission to completion. The final product – the still used Gregorian Calendar – has now the correct length of year which corresponds exactly with the solistices and equinoxes and the year stays in complete sync with the season. The leap year correction added a day to the shortest month of the year – February – so every 4 years now February counts for 29days instead of the customary 28.

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Lunar and solar eclipses