A Simple Way to Instantly Understand and Track Lunar Cycles

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today I'm going to give you some simple tips and tricks for tracking lunar cycles and understanding them.

Lunar cycles are happening all of the time. Most astrologers are tracking them. I often will track new and full moons on this channel, not all of the time. I often spend more time on new or full moons that are particularly potent eclipses, for sure, but let's give you some simple tips for tracking them yourself.

Because if you are someone who is starting to track astrological trends, it's one of the best places to start is with the moon cycle. So I thought, hey, there's a little bit of a lull in terms of the intensity of astrology right now. Let's take a moment to learn something. So I hope you'll find this useful.

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Anyway, today, what we're looking at is a lunar cycle, and what I'm going to do on my fancy new program is I'm going to look at we're going to look at the planets first of all, and I'm going to eliminate everything but the sun and the moon from my view of the chart. And you can see, I've got the nodes kept in just for the sake of running some eclipses, showing you kind of what an eclipse might look like.

But here's where we're going to start. We're going to walk through an entire lunar cycle together. And I'm going to give you the basic logic according to the meaning of the sun and the moon in ancient astrology and aspect theory in ancient astrology, that can help you understand the basic archetypes of the major turning points of the lunar cycle.

Now, if you're interested in, like, a full breakdown of this cycle, by the way, if you go to the shop page on my website, there's a masterclass that I did looking at the cycles of the moon that takes you through what all 12 whole sign arrangements when the moon is in the first sign past the sun, the second sign past the sun, all the way around the wheel. That's a breakdown of every possible configuration you could see in a birth chart, and some of the archetypal meanings of all of those different phases. So that's like 10-12 hours worth of advanced content. Just in case you're interested. There is a resource like that. Go to the shop page and look for the master classes.

Okay, so anyway, every New Moon is a seeding point, and everybody knows that, right? I'm sure that no one in this audience has a problem understanding the basic meaning of a new moon, but the in fact, all synodic cycles in astrology are derived from conjunction with the Sun as the basic paradigmatic principle. Even if you're looking at a Saturn Neptune cycle, the reason that it starts with the conjunction is rooted in synodic cycles with the sun, the most basic and paradigmatic one being the lunar cycle, because we're talking about the luminaries getting together at the start of the cycle. So let me see if I can't get rid of that too.

So now at the starting point of the cycle, the two planets are conjoined. The moon is invisible. And the idea here is that, and I want you to imagine like one of the great analogies that we use as astrologers is the seed in the soil, or conception when a woman becomes pregnant. In either case, the seed is implanted invisibly.

And so when we think about spirit and matter, we're talking about the sun and the moon. We're talking about the kind of essential spiritual life force, energy, sort of pure consciousness, pure Yang versus Yin, which is the form and the gestation of the form and the diversity of forms, and the interrelating of forms. And the two principles are a sacred marriage: as above, so below, as within, so without, the sacred masculine and feminine. And that's not limited to sex or gender. We're talking about metaphysical categories that the tension and their interrelating is sort of fundamental to all of reality for ancient mystics. And this is consistent from east to west that we see this kind of thinking.

So the conjunction of these two planets, spirit and matter, let's call it coming together, one not better than the other. Both somehow co-present, necessary pieces of eternity. That's the starting point philosophically.

Now, when the two planets come together, the moon, which is the matter, is impregnated with the light of spirit. You can think of spirit as the seed, the seed that contains an imprint in it, like the acorn contains the oak tree. The seeding could be, for example, a seeding point in everyday karmic reality would be a choice, an action. An action takes something, some kind of life force, intention, we might call it, and it puts it into motion. It puts it into matter.

And as soon as it's in matter, it participates in a form that will gestate and take shape throughout the cycle. And it grows as cultivation and gestation happens through further choices and interactions with other things and so on. Just like a seed planted in a garden is not going to grow in abstraction, it grows in a garden. So the seed is invisible. Though it's beneath the soil, you can't see it, or it's within the woman. And a woman is often not where some women are, but often not aware that she's pregnant for a little while. It's very invisible. It's very almost like unconscious.

So this seeding point represents new beginnings, and you can almost always track the new beginning according to the whole sign house that it lands in. So you know, if it's Pisces here, and you're a Gemini rising, that's going to be your 10th house. For me as a Taurus, it's my 11th house. Friends, groups, allies, communities. You're going to see a strong lunar cycle playing out with those themes in mind. That's the seeding point of the cycle. It begins in the house of community. In my chart as a Taurus rising, or career for Gemini rising. And this is the basic way you start tracking. You think to yourself, seed here.

Now I'm going to show you something on a chip so that I think is pretty sweet. Let me just show you this. I'm going to expand this. I'm going to go to the home screen, I'm going to switch over to personal, and I'm going to open my nechepso journal. And I can do something really easy, like this, if I want a lunar track using the chip, so I can say New Moon in Pisces in the 11th house, seeding in friends, communities, allies, etc. Okay, so I'm just giving you an example, and then as the new moon cycle takes place, I can come back and continue entering journal. I can continue to work journal entries.

What's really, really cool about the AI that these guys are programming, a local AI built by astrologers, not taking anything from anyone, by the way, I want to make that just like abundantly clear, this is a really innovative kind of AI by astrologers, for astrologers, not meant to replace astrologers, not needing data centers, not taking your data, not stealing shit from people. I think it's the cutting edge. And like I've said many times, our field is being inundated by people who are going to pour capital into this and have zero concern for ethics. So check out the live stream I did with those guys, because they'll explain what they're doing, their friends, their colleagues, they're very spiritual people, and they're actual astrologers creating the specific AI that will run locally with just this program.

Anyway, that's an aside, but the point is that if you journal like this, the AI can get to know patterns, and potentially, if you want, you don't have to use any of this. It could also provide you with insights about the patterning of moon cycles, which is, like, so freaking phenomenal. Because if there's anything, I believe that AI could be useful for its pattern recognition with astrologers as an aid or a tool like, Hey, did you know every time there's a new moon in Pisces, you end up having something happen with a friend or whatever? To me, that's the exciting thing. Is that the creative companionship of a tool like this, but you know, we'll see it's all it's all like new pioneering territory.

Anyway, I digress, getting back to this talk, because you don't need to use any of that if you don't want to. The new moon landing in the 10th house. The new moon here seeding point, right? So that's the first stage.

Now we're going to take this forward, and we are now going to move just day at a time. Now from this point forward in the cycle, we're in the waxing crescent phase, which means the light of the moon is growing steadily every day as it separates from the sun. Know how it's going faster than the Sun? It moves out in front of the sun.

Now, when it gets to cancer here, and it's about 90 degrees in front of the sun, we now have the first quarter moon. That means it's half lit up and half dark. The aspect is coming off the right hand side of the sun. If you imagine the sun looking into as like a person that's looking into the center of the wheel, facing into the center, off the right hand side, to the right of their body, would be the aspect to the moon.

In ancient astrology, that means that the sun is in the superior position. You know, the one way that you can understand this very basically, if you're like, Well, what does that even mean? Where does it come from? In a 24 hour day, through the diurnal motion of the sky, notice how the sun is rising first. If I back this clock up, you'll see that, oh, look, the sun rises in the east. That's the ascendant prior to the moon. It then crosses the place of praxis, or action manifest visibility in the world. That's the 10th house in the midheaven, prior to the inferior planet in any aspect dynamic. This is true. So rising first is the sun. It's in the superior position, which means it sets the stage.

Now it's in the sign of Aries now. And so we have a moon cycle that has the sun has shifted signs into another house. And that can be an interesting thing to continue tracking the progression of the sun from one house to another. In a moon cycle, you can track that too, but either way, the seeding point, you can start with Pisces.

Now, in this dynamic the sun is in the superior position to the moon. So where we get this basic idea of the first quarter moon being about a crisis of action? This comes from Dana Rudyard. If you ever heard this before it was made famous. But there's it's actually very logical, and it completely coincides with the way ancient astrologers thought about things too, which is that the superior planet sets the agenda.

And so when the sun is in the superior position and the moon is in first quarter, let's think about the light of spirit as the sun pressing its agenda into the material environment that is the moon. So when you have a sun in Aries and a moon in cancer. The moon in the first quarter moon in cancer, it's going to be the moon in cancer. It's going to behave and act like the moon in cancer. But the moon in cancer has to deal with an agenda and a pre-existing set of circumstances that have been set up by the sun. In Aries, it's like the moon in cancer.

If you think of the moon in cancer, like a mom, just like a mom, she's gonna be a mom, but she's gonna have to walk into a house that has all sun in Aries circumstances going on. That could mean it's filled with angry, it's filled with like angry, belligerent men, and she's like, oh my God, this feels oppressive, or it could be a house full of unruly boys who need a little motherly care and gentle pacifying. Whatever the case might be. I'm messing around, obviously. But you get the idea: the first quarter moon in cancer is, in other words, that the environmental shape of the karma that's forming has to respond to, and is being shaped by the agenda set by the sun. And that's always the case for first quarter moon.

So when we say a crisis of action, what we really mean is that the light of spirit is demanding that the material circumstances acclimate, respond to, adapt to and consider or facilitate what the sun wants to do. So if you have some ambition, which is a very solar thing, some desire, some action, some motivation, some intention, all solar things, the moon, the first quarter moon in cancer, will be adapting, changing the environment and the circumstances of the material sphere in relation to the desires, ambitions, direction of the sun in Aries.

That's why we say it's a crisis of action, because it's something like the material environment has to change because of the dictates or ambitions or intentions of the sun. So you always feel that around a first quarter moon, like we got to do stuff, and who's saying what we've got to do, it's the sun, and who's responding to and what's, there's a word I'm looking for, who is responding to and sort of hosting or serving the agenda, right? It's the moon in the first quarter, so you can always think about it that way.

Now, when we advance this a little bit more, let's go. Let's continue. Now we're in the waxing gibbous phase, and we're continuing to build, and then we get all the way to the full moon.

Now, when the full moon comes about, in a way, we're talking about the maximum tension that exists between, you know, the seed, the roots, and the fruit. So you know, by the time the plant has grown all the way and has fruited, and it's like its blossoms are open and its fruit is heavy, it's ready, it's ripe. It's like, that's the full moon, and it expresses through the tension of opposites.

Now it's really interesting, because that tension can be read in a variety of different ways. Every full moon you can track across the two houses, and you can see the way that the root ambitions and desires of the cycle are manifest in the position of the sun. Often that'll still be in the same sign. In this case, like the sun has moved into Aries, but often it'll be by the time the full moon is there, the sun will still be in the same sign it was in at the new moon.

Now, when you so, you can feel like this is where the ambitions of the cycle and the seeding point in the direction of the cycle resides in the sun sign. However, the manifestation will pull in the opposite direction, the fruit will pull as something sort of separate and contrary to but complementary the sun. So Libra, so if Aries is, you know, action, direction, ambition, a bit of conquest and pushing with kind of a Mars energy, Libra is going to show fruit that's balanced, and it's going to have concern with equality and fairness and diplomacy and harmony and peacefulness, and the fruit of the cycle is going to be about the balancing of these opposites.

Every karmic action, in other words, has a reaction that is meant to hold a kind of balance, or to balance the karmic books, so to speak. So every full moon is like a karmic act of fruition and balancing out of where something started, and ideally if the cycle has been generated through consciousness, through reflectiveness, through stewarding of intention with care and awareness and humility and compassion and all of those things. Then often the manifestation of the karma at the full moon feels like fulfillment, relatively speaking. Anyway, it'll often feel very fulfilling.

Whereas, if there's been a lot of unconscious and destructive energies at play, the full moon will often feel destructive and that that's the tension of opposites. The full moon can pull us toward a karmic result that feels like it's balancing things out, but it's hard and heavy and stressful and maybe even feels a little destructive. On the other hand, cycles that have been stewarded with maybe some degree of awareness. I mean, we're not none of us are like Bodhisattvas. But some degree of awareness, you'll often feel that the cycle feels like something is reaching natural culmination, completion, closure, resolution, balance, harmony, etc.

So in this way, a full moon in Libra is actually a really nice example. And this is actually that example is rooted in the solar year, and the balance between the equinoxes, right? So anyhow, this Full Moon moment is a standoff. One planet is not superior to the other, and because of that, the two can be experienced as polarization or synthesis, and that tends to be reflective of what kind of karma is blossoming, and what lessons for the soul are there to be learned or experienced?

All right, this is why meditation and tracking means so much. Because they increase awareness. You could go back in your nechepso journal, and you could write down what's happening around first quarter, what's happening around full moon, and track these things. I think this is just very exciting.

Anyway, I lunar tracked for several years when I first started. Now, it's very intuitive for me to follow and pay attention to it's like second nature. But I had a journal for several years when I started.

Now, let's go forward a little bit more. We get to the last, this is waning gibbous now, and we get to last quarter. On the last quarter moon, the moon is now superior to the sun. The aspect is coming off the right hand side of the moon, hitting to the heading to the sun. And what this means is that now we have that kind of Rudyard crisis of consciousness. That's an interesting way of putting it. I don't disagree with it, but it's not always intuitive to people what it means.

Essentially, in a lunar cycle where an agenda set by the sun, words like again, ambition and desire come to mind, action and intention, when the moon gets all the way around and is now superior to the sun and the cycle is closing, we're talking about a square. So there's some tension again, but the tension is coming from the material environment, overwhelming or overcoming the original ambition or desire. This is a fancy way of saying that material circumstances are collapsing the original desire or intention.

What that means for many of us is that there is awareness crystallizing around the time of the last quarter, as well as circumstances conspiring to let go or release an action and intention and ambition and desire.

Let me give a simple example. First quarter moon, I'm building my career. Last quarter moon, I'm at the tail end of a process in which I'm realizing that all the ambitions I had that led me to that career I no longer have. And not surprisingly, the career is winding down.

First quarter moon, I'm getting married to someone because of a particular set of youthful ambitions that I had. Last quarter moon, and this often plays out in progress lunar cycles. By the way, last quarter moon, I'm recognizing that many of the ambitions that I had were tied to values that I no longer have. And surprise, surprise, the marriage is on the rocks.

So what happens under the last quarter moon is, again, there's a karmic measurement that's happening where there's been a lot of consciousness and a lot of learning and reflection and self honesty, the last quarter moon is like refining or replacing certain desires and ambitions with more evolved ones, you might say, or the next stage or step of a process.

In terms of there being a lot of unconsciousness, it's very common. I experienced this myself. I'm not, like, the world's most conscious person or anything, but like, the last quarter moon, you'll go like, okay, something that I've been on about. I'm getting some feedback, some really important feedback, and it's hard and I have to let go or surrender something, and I've had some ego investment in it, and it's a little difficult to let go of.

But where does this come from? That last quarter moon? It comes from the fact that the light of the moon, fortune, the world, material circumstances, are overriding the intentions or ambitions of the sun, because now fortune, rather than spirit, the moon rather than the sun, is in the superior position, and that tends to mean that the material circumstances are starting to overwhelm and redirect and impress upon the sun its agenda.

So think of again, like, the easiest way to think about it would be first quarter moon. I'm building a I'm going to med school. You know, it's a long, long process, going to med school. Last quarter moon, I'm starting to receive all the benefits and insights of that training. And now I have to let go of the training phase and move into the actual field of work.

The idea being that the set of ambitions that has been dominant, learning, growing, apprenticing, developing, gaining skills, gaining accreditation, gaining certificates, that that ambition is being released for a new one, which will be to enter the field and to serve as a practitioner, refined different set of ambitions or directions. And that's happening as the last quarter moon comes through, because you're training, the circumstance that was holding the development of the intention, the training is winding down.

So that's the circle. It's a very basic circle. It's actually so constant, and it happens in our lives so much. It's like one of the most basic rhythms in the world. Things grow and develop and evolve and expand and reach culmination or closure, and then suddenly they start to close down, and the initial excitement and direction refines or changes or is let go of. That's it. That's all we're really talking about.

So if we keep going with this, there's one other phase I want to mention really quick, because it's important, and that's when the sun comes to within about 30 degrees or the moon comes to within about 30 degrees of the moon. Can I talk it's the moon coming to within about 30 degrees of the sun. That last balsamic phase. People sometimes measure it 45 degrees out, 30 degrees out. I'm like, as soon as it's in the 12th sign relative to the sun, you're in the sphere. I think, anyway, this balsamic phase is a very deep level of relinquishing, surrendering and letting go. The old cycle is really shedding off, and a new cycle is beginning.

The balsamic moon can be very mystical and sometimes a little bit painful in so far as the deepest level of surrender is often taking place, but the veil is also sort of thinner during this phase. A lot of people like to talk about the balsamic. You're born with a balsamic moon. That can be a pretty powerful Moon signature.

But here's the last thing to say, which is just that all of these little nuances of the cycle can also be read in the birth chart. That's where that master class I taught comes in, if you're interested in how to translate these things in terms of the phase of the moon you were born with. That might be a master class worth looking into on my shop page. It's about, again, like 10 hours or 12 hours of content on the subject.

But basically, you end up reading the imprint of your lunar cycle as a kind of a picture of where the soul is at in different areas of life that are configured to one another at a different part of a process or cycle that's about the arc of a whole lifetime, rather than just a lunar month.

Now the last thing that I'll say is that it gets pretty interesting when we come to eclipse seasons. So if we I'm just going to back this up a little bit, and you can see that like right here, we had a full moon taking place in Virgo on March 3. That was a lunar eclipse when these points happen. What we're basically talking about is no longer just a lunar cycle. We're talking about a lunar cycle that is reflective of nine and 18 years worth of cyclical history in that area of your life.

And so eclipses are about much larger, bigger arcs of soul history that you're living out in this lifetime, where storylines that are much deeper and more powerful than one simple lunar cycle are delivering their results. That's why they're so epic, especially if they land on a planet in your chart.

Okay, well, that's it. I hope that you found that useful.

Again, one of the things that I love about this, and you can listen to the guys talk about if you're just like, completely allergic to the words AI, I get it. I really do. At the same time, I really urge you to listen to what they're saying about when astrologers build and develop the AI themselves, and when it's not stealing other people's stuff, when it's not running on data centers, and, you know, environmentally destructive when it's not taking your data right, and when it's just being used as a way of enhancing pattern recognition within a software program that can allow you to journal your experiences, log events and help with pattern recognition.

See, that's the stuff that I get really excited about, because I would rather see astrologers developing at this moment in history. Look, I get approached nowadays at least once a month by some kind of AI project that's trying to infiltrate astrology and asking if I'd like to be a part of it. Unanimously, it's been no for me, but I know Pat. Patrick, I know Nick, I know John. Now I've worked with them, and I see what they're doing is coming from a space that wants to be leading, rather than getting completely I mean, just being like no is not going to be enough, because our field will get overtaken by this technology, which is going to sweep the world like the internet did, and unless we sensitively go, what do we want? What matters to us as astrologers from within our own community, with our own care for the sacredness of this? Like if we don't do it, other people are going to try to take advantage of us. I believe that very firmly and deeply, which is why I'm supporting the cheps.

And it's why, you know, it's like, there I can be a part of that conversation and bring my care and love and deep feeling of stewardship for this field to bear on conversations about this technology and so can you. That's the point of using a program like this, is that these are astrologers who want the feedback of other astrologers. It's not just some corporation. Three guys who love astrology.

So anyway, very passionate about it. There's a link if you want. It's an ongoing discount. So it's like when you use the affiliate link, it helps Nightlight. It helps us keep astrology accessible for people. It helps the cheps. So keep doing their good work. You get 20% off monthly ongoing subscription. So yeah, check it out. I wouldn't be an affiliate for stupid shit, just so you know, because I've got, as I said, I've been approached. You wouldn't believe it. There's people who want me to pedal like beef jerky. I've been contacted by a beef jerky rep before, like, what? How could you possibly think? But anyway, all right, that's enough out of me.

I hope that this serves you. I hope you can use this, whether you've used the program or not, just for lunar tracking. I hope that it is a little bit enlightening and illuminating.

All right, that's it. Have a great day. We'll see you again later. Bye.