moon science

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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Conceive with the moon

by Jutta Russell | Sep 30, 2021 | Female fertility, Moon Science

female fertility

Looking at the moon cycle can be very helpful if you are trying (or not trying) to conceive. All women are of course familiar with the female fertility cycle also known as the biological cycle. Mid-cycle a woman ovulates and can conceive. This always occurs 14 days before the next period.

But if this is the only time during the cycle that a woman can conceive how is it possible that so many women conceive outside these fertile days – at ‘ technically not possible’ times’? There has to be more to it!

This was the question that plagued the Czech doctor Eugen Jonas in the 1950ies. He was a psychologist and listened to many stories of his female clients, who either suffered from unwanted pregnancies or lack of conceiving.

He, therefore, decided to look more closely into the subject matter of female fertility. He unearthed fragments from Ancient Greek and particular Babylonian texts, where doctors successfully calculated the optimum time for conception and birth control using a method that overlapped the time of menstruation together with the path of the moon. Combining these old texts with his own research data he realized that each woman has a time in their cycle when she was more easily aroused and ready to conceive. This cycle varied from woman to woman, as it was dependent on the time she was born.

For example, a woman born on a full moon day would always find this time in the lunar cycle the easiest to conceive. He then named this second fertility cycle – the cosmobiological cycle.

Once both cycles are taken into consideration, they form a nearly perfect birth control system that has a success rate of over 98%, higher than even the pill. But this system is completely free and natural and once known how to use it, every woman can use this method to control her own fertility – whatever her circumstances and wherever in the world she lives.

I find it hard to believe that this system is not more widely known and available to all women.

Here is an example of how to use this method.

The first step is to mark the start date of your last menstruation on your calendar. Then count 15 days on and this marks your ovulation date. Mark this day with a cross. As sperm can last up to 3 days and ovulation does not always happen bang on Day 15, I suggest you cross off 4 days before and 2 days after your calculated ovulation day. This should give you enough safety margin.

So you should have crossed off Days 10 to 17 after the first day of your menstruation. This is the biological cycle and normally ‘natural birth control’ ends here with a success rate of around 55%. You can of course add additional measures like checking your daily temperature to make this method slightly more effective.

But adding the next step should bring the rate up to a whopping 98%.

The next step is to find out your cosmobiologcial date (the date within the moon cycle you were born). I am sure you can research what the moon was doing on the day of your birth. You would come up with a date like 3 days after New Moon, 6 days before Full Moon and so on.

Then check a current moon calendar and find which date corresponds to the current moon cycle. It may sound complicated, but once you know you are born on the 3rd day of the Waning Moon (so 3 days after Full Moon) you can just mark it on the LWTM lifestyle calendar for the coming month.

To make it easier here is an example of how to use the whole method:

We assume here that the first date of your last period was on the 1st of January, so you would cross off all dates between the 10th to 17th of January. If you were born on a Full Moon (and that month it was on the 24th January), then cross off the period between the 20th and the 25th Jan.

All the crossed-off days are the ones you can conceive, all other days should be safe for unprotected sex.

Many women ovulate in exact accordance with the lunar cycle and the times won’t change too much. But some have shorter or longer cycles and dates will slightly shift or even overlap. If this happens, then these days are super fertile days and are of particular interest if you find it hard to conceive.

With age or circumstances, menstruation cycles can change, but this method won’t as you will always count from the start of your last period and the date of your cosmobiological date.

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The Soil Revolution – part 1

by Jutta Russell | Jun 30, 2021 | Biodynamic way of life, Composting and soil tonics, Gardening With The Moon, Moon Science

The status quo –
where are we now?

As far back as 2014, Reuters reported that a senior UN official said, “If we continue with our intense farming practices and destruction of wildlife at the current levels – we have realistically 60 years of sustainable farming left. “ (source Scientific American)

This is a sobering thought. But what has happened on the official front since 2014?

Where are the school campaigns that explain to children that to make 3cm of topsoil takes the earth roughly 1000 years, but we only have 60 left. Where are the billboards and media campaigns to the same effect? I am interested in this topic and apart from the occasional scientific paper, it does not seem to be ‘newsworthy.

But this ecological wave is coming nearer and nearer and nearer. And the evidence is all too clear. Since 2014 we had more floods, bushfires, and heatwaves and the destruction simply moves on. First the coral reefs, then the icebergs in Antarctica, the increase of desert and soil destruction, and the massive, massive loss of wildlife. The last one is properly the most talked about topic. And it is lovely to look after the bees, but only bees and no other wildlife would never ever work.

I know it is not the best place we currently find ourselves in, but this blog series is not meant to be just doom and gloom. The essence here is – what can we do about it? And then act fast!

Luckily there are a few men and women around who really grasped this concept early on and started doing something about it. Some of these methods are really ingenious and we will hear more about their various projects over the next few articles.

But let’s start first at the beginning

When Rudolf Steiner first taught his first Biodynamic soil lectures – now almost 100 years ago – this topic did not seem relevant and he was called a deluded dreamer for most of the 20^th century. But not anymore. Ever since scientists discovered microbes in the soil and even inside us, the concept of ‘the living soil’ has moved from random fiction to fact.

The first Biodynamic lectures were held just after the First World War and this is by no means a coincidence. Although this war was short (1914-1918), the world saw chemical warfare used for the first time in combat. The real war benefit was only established towards the end of this war, but with peace on the horizon all these chemical plants had no longer any use. So a plan was hatched that these chemicals could in diluted form be brought out on the fields to get rid of ‘soil and leaf’ pests. This meant the farmer did not have to adhere to long-standing traditional methods of crop rotation, weeding and composting. The ‘miracle cure was of course much easier to administer.

And initially the farmers were enthusiastic. Who would not like more yield and less work? But after a few years, the quality of the soil and produce deteriorated and some farmers asked Steiner for advice.

Additionally, the first year a little bit of fertiliser did the trick, but with every subsequent year more and more fertilizer had to be used to achieve the same result. This is costly but after a while, there is not much of an alternative. left. The farmers can’t just stop the farm for a couple of years in order to wait for the soil to revigorate. This is not a sustainable business model and the trap continues.

What had happened?

Let’s look first at how the soil works. Compost material (waste from the previous growing season) together with compost tonics and manure are put onto the fields and reinvigorate the soil. This usually happens in late autum (the end of the growing cycle) and in early spring (the beginning of the cycle). This enables the billions of microbes in the soil to turn the compost into a fertile, nutrient-rich soil, ready for the next growing cycle. This humus is full of fungi, earthworms and insects. It is the ‘internet of the soil’, distributing moisture and letting plants almost ‘communicate’ with each other and certainly cross-fertilize each other (that is the principle of companion planting).

But artificial fertilizers destroy all these natural soil improvers, turning fertile, alive soil (there are billions of these creatures in just a handful of earth) into dirt= dead soil.

Lifeless dirt is then artificially fed to produce the next year’s crop, but there is no regeneration. Once this chemical is washed away by the rain, it is gone and more product has to be put on to replace it. But more importantly, the food you eat is ‘also dead’ as no or very few microbes survive. Dead food lacks nutrients and most importantly microbes. We need the soil and its creature for our survival, too. IPS, bloating and more severe health crises can often be traced back to food that gives us fuel (and puts on calories) but does not actually ‘feed us’. And that is not even taking obesity and diabetes into account.

I have often talked about the macro-organism and the micro-organism and how they work together. If you are new to this concept it is as follows:

The Macro-organism is the universe, the planets, stars and micro-organisms are all living creatures. Beetles, birds, whales, lions, trees, flowers, and of course us humans. It is like a huge clockwork, every clog and wheel turns individually, but when in harmony they feed and enrich each other.

Going back to the clock example. Taking a small wheel out of the clock may be ok, but destroying half of the clockwork – what do you think would happen? Most children could answer this.

But this is exactly what we are doing with the planet. Currently, we are losing about 30 soccer fields EVERY MINUTE!

We read above that the earth is capable of making 3cm of good quality topsoil in about 1000 years – please make the Maths.

Additionally, the soil is responsible for catching carbon and hanging on to water. Dirt can’t do that and the results are floods and climate change.

So, we are where we are, and no more gloom! From now on this series will turn to seek real, positive solutions. We need to make this positive turning point for the sake of our children and grandchildren. The Soil Revolution has started and we are all hell-bent to reverse this damage done over the last 100 years. Come and join in and do your bit!

Access here the second installment of the Soil Revolution series

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Halloween, witches and Samhain

by Jutta Russell | Oct 11, 2020 | Moon Science

This post will delve deeper into the subject of Halloween, where it comes from, and its significance.

The history of Halloween

Halloween has its origin in the Celtic festival Samhain, celebrated on the evening of the 31st of October. This symbolized the end of the harvest season and the ‘death of the seasonal growing cycle’. It was also celebrated on the eve before All Saints Day or better known as ‘ All Hallow’s Day’- the day of the Saints and the dead Ancestors.

The Celts believed in reincarnation. The highest honour was to die in battle. The body of a slain soldier or member of society was burnt on a pyre together with the corpse of their favorite horse. The cold ashes were collected in a clay jar and buried in a mound. For centuries these practices continued. The souls turned into invisible figures wearing cloaks with large hoods – just think of the grim reaper! These figures escaped in the moonlight to another world, unseen by those left behind and eventually reincarnated into another human, animal or plant.

Moon gods, bulls and horns

Many cultures, amongst them the Sumerians, Babylonians and Minoans worshipped moon gods and their sacred animals were the cows and bulls. Here is an article that explains a bit more about the Minoan culture and their practices with bull jumping, now believed to be a forerunner of the Olympic Games.

Bull horns represented the moon cycle and the cycle of life. The first cave paintings dating back to 30,000 B.C. depicted horned animals together with the cycle of the moon. Horns decorated helmets and found their ways into the graves of the dead. The moon, fertility, celebrations and horns – all are symbols of the moon gods, celebrating the rhythm of eternal life. Just like the seasons, we come, we go and we are reborn.

As Albert Einstein once said, ” Energy doesn’t get lost, it only gets transformed’. As the leaves sprout in spring and help the tree survive throughout summer and autumn. Eventually, they wilt and fall to the ground. But that is not the end. The dead leaves now have a new purpose. Rotted down, they produce precious compost which nourishes the trees and makes sure that the next growing cycle begins.

A practice of Biodynamic agriculture sees the farmer fill a cow horn with manure in autumn. This gets buried into the ground for around 6 months. In late spring it gets dug up and the now well-rotted manure is diluted into a spray preparation that fertilizes the new crops on the fields. As weird as it sounds these preparations produce excellent results. It is most likely down to the microbes that find their way into the soil and nourish it.

How come we dress up as witches at Halloween?

During the Middle Ages and even before, local herb women, so-called witches, ran the Ancient healthcare system. They delivered babies and attended to the sick and dying. They made concoctions and potions to give to their patients. They made these out of animal products and gathered herbs. Some medicines ask for blossoms, others for dried leaves or root extracts. Collecting roots usually happened during the evening or at night. The reason was that roots deemed to be less effective once exposed to direct sunlight. The logical time to gather these roots was around the Full Moon, as it provided the necessary light at night. Digging out roots at Full Moon and being connected to the dead (as some patients undoubtedly died) – the myth of the witch was born. It all fitted in nicely with Halloween, the festival of the dead.

The connection between witches and Friday the 13th comes from the pagan lunar year. The Ancient Calendar year followed the path of the moon. Normally 12 moon cycles with the occasional 13th cycle added in to align the year again with the seasons. Friday was the day of worship for the Fertility Goddess Frigga. Friday the 13th became synonymous with the forbidden pagan knowledge and a particularly unlucky day.

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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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Lunar and solar eclipses

Conceive with the moon

To make it easier here is an example of how to use the whole method: