The Lunar Rhythm and Search for Joy
by Bob Makransky
It’s the personal conviction of the author that “if you want to get back to feeling as joyous as ancient people did, and take a short-cut to living out your true purpose in life, then quit using the solar calendar and start using the lunar one”. In this extract from his esoteric book The Great Wheel, prepare to enter the world of magical symbolism where ‘rationalistic’ expectations cannot be met.
On the afternoon of October 24th 1917, four
days after my marriage, my wife surprised me by attempting automatic
writing. What came in disjointed sentences, in almost illegible writing,
was so exciting, sometimes so profound, that I persuaded her to give an
hour or two day after day to the unknown writer, and after some
half-dozen such hours offered to spend what remained of life explaining
and piecing together those scattered sentences. ‘No,’ was the
answer, ‘we have come to give you metaphors for
poetry.
– William Butler Yeats, A Vision
A Vision has been something of a conundrum for astrologers (amongst others) for the century since it was published, because while it is ostensibly an astrological treatise, it nonetheless makes no sense. The reason for this is that it is a message from the spirit world, and as such it is couched in ‘spirit language’, which is far less linear than human language. As Yeats said,
Those who taught me this system did so, not for my sake, but their own. They say that only the words spoken in trance or written in the automatic script assist them. They belong to the ‘unconscious’ and what comes from them alone serves. My interpretations do not concern them.
On 31 July, 1989, two years after my wife taught me to do automatic writing, on a launch in the middle of Lake Atitlan, en route to a party at which I hoped and expected to meet a certain person with whom I was deeply in love (not my wife), I channelled the (spirit) message that I was to write an explanation of A Vision in plain English. I spent the next twenty-eight years working at this project (not continuously – off and on), with the same spirits who channelled the thing to Mrs. Yeats (or so they told me), providing me with hints and clues (rarely explicit exegeses) of what the nomenclature and ideas in A Vision were all about, and leaving me to work out the details for myself.
The result is my book The Great Wheel, an extract from which (albeit not specifically related to the content of A Vision per se) appears below.
The Lunar Rhythm
All early calendars were lunar, and have now been replaced by a solar calendar. This is highly symbolic. The fact is, the human race in its infancy was matriarchal – the female principle always precedes the male. When the human race invented agriculture and began to stabilise waking consciousness, it also passed its baton to the males. Heretofore, the males hadn’t done much of the work of keeping society glued together. What little ‘thinking’ took place was being done by the women. The culture – in the sense of religion, science, technology, crafts, literature, etc. – was in the hands of the women, who handed it all over to the men at the time agriculture was invented.
The calendar was originally invented by the women. The women made it lunar because it was precisely the ebb and flow of lunar rhythms that they were trying to track. You only need a solar calendar when you’re doing agriculture because the work you do revolves around the seasons. And although hunting and gathering were also seasonal (depending on what game and plants were available in what season), this wasn’t so much a part of primitive people’s existence. They were vaguely aware of the yearly cycle, but didn’t think in those terms much because they had no need to plan much of anything.
So why have a calendar at all, you might ask, much less a lunar one? The reason for this is because in those days, when women still ran the show, the human race was tuned in to certain vibrations, or laws of nature, which ebbed and flowed with the lunar cycle, just as agriculture revolves around the yearly cycle. That is, there are certain wavelengths of knowledge, or techniques for accomplishing things such as healing, music-making, hunting, fishing, gathering, weaving, love-making, etc. which oscillate on a lunar rhythm. Humankind has almost completely lost all of this knowledge; it survives in schemes of planting, etc., by the Moon. All of these schemes are valid even if they apparently contradict, such as Europeans planting on a Waxing Moon near Full, and the Maya planting just past New Moon. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that the Moon’s phase be taken into account consistently, to hook onto the body of memory that exists out there.
 |
Order at: |
The reason weekends are fun is because they tie people into their deepest memories of joy, from way back when humankind was still in its infancy. It isn’t that people have more fun at weekends because they’re free to do what they choose; rather, the cyclic nature of the weekend, based as it is upon the lunar cycle, is intrinsically a hearkening back to the primordial joy which is humankind’s true estate, when it was still attached to the rhythms of the Moon. Just tuning into the lunar cycle of the week guarantees some joy. Mondays exist for the same reason – if you’re going to have an up, you have to have a down – that’s the inherent nature of cycles.
The lunar calendar developed at different times and in different places. Depending upon the sophistication of the particular society, it may only have consisted of a 28- or 29-day calendar (i.e. 29-day names) repeated endlessly; or it may have been tied to the solar calendar with intercalary days. It began to be noticed that certain feelings or intents repeated (or better said, could be made to repeat) at certain predictable intervals according to the Moon’s phase; or in other words, that you could know what to do at a given time by observing the Moon’s phase in the sky, rather than just feel what to do directly using your own intuition.
You could use the Moon’s phase as a shorthand record or mnemonic device for the feeling or intent. It isn’t really an inductive process – it isn’t that they observed that seeds planted on the Waxing Moon outperformed seeds planted on the Waning Moon; rather, they identified the intent of “successful plants” with the Waxing Moon; they glued that feeling (of wishing their seeds the best of success) to the thought-form of planting on the Waxing Moon, just as Americans glue feelings of loyalty, gratitude, and patriotism to the thought-form of the flag.
What makes planting by the Moon ‘come true’ is the fastening of the intent to the power of the lunar rhythm, and it doesn’t matter how this is done – you could as easily determine to plant on the Waning Moon, as the Maya do. What is important is the intent, the symbolic act. It doesn’t even matter if the plants die, or if a rainstorm washes out all the seeds the day after they’re planted. That has nothing to do with it. The goal of planting by the Moon – and of all acting by the Moon – is joy, not maximum production.
So the lunar calendar is primordial – it existed in hunting times
in differing degrees of sophistication. It was the invention of
agriculture which brought about the solar calendar. This symbolic act
made humankind a waking or thinking species, which acted on mind and
reason rather than on intuition and feeling. The trouble is that in
switching calendars (modes of operating), the male civilisation also lost
a lot of the sheer joy which had undergirded the female civilisation
which preceded it. It was a very joyous thing, which the males had to
repress in order to stay awake and work all day long. And it is most
definitely and literally tied to the lunar calendar. So, if you want to
get back to feeling as joyous as ancient people did – as light and in
tune with your environment as primordial humans were – and take a
short-cut to living out your true purpose in life, then you should quit
using the solar calendar and start using a lunar calendar (not that there
aren’t other ways of doing this; but switching calendars is one
way).
Just start by using a lunar calendar, whether Jewish or Muslim or Chinese or whatever. Observe a seven-day weekly cycle of activity within a 28-day month. The week as a unit of measure is a survival from this early Goddess religion calendar. Seven and four are the two basic lunar numbers. Do the same things on the same days each week. Plan monthly activities by lunar phase and daily activities by Planetary Hour (which system is based upon the week symbolism). Schedule activities for e.g. the ‘second Tuesday’ each month. You’ll see a real difference in your feelings about yourself and the world, in particular, your sense of belonging to the universe – your sense that the universe is nourishing and sustaining you – if you plan your activities around the Moon’s phase and sign.
Women should plan their lives around their menstrual cycle and ritualise the time of menstruation (as the Hasids do). This is just a way of making a feeling or intuitive connection with a different channel of energy – a line of memory which is prior to the present waking line of memory – a truly joyous way of living your life.
The idea is to go wherever there is joy, and to do whatever is joyous. We’re not trying to recapture the feeling of the last few thousand years of hunting (just prior to the invention of agriculture), because that period was a bummer. We are not going back to a primeval state of humanity just because it was a primeval state of humanity; but because there was joy there. By living your life according to the Moon, you’ll automatically recapture a lot of this joy in your everyday life. You can make what to other people seems a sterile, boring routine a fulfilling life of joy, just by tying all your activities to the Moon.
Things to do by the Moon
Certain activities are intrinsically lunar: travel, sickness, prayer, lunacy: anything which means a vacation from the routine, workaday world are intrinsically a lunar activity. These especially should be regulated by the Moon. New projects and travel should commence on a new, Waxing Moon, during a Moon Planetary Hour. Sickness should be treated by the Moon by observing which treatments should be carried out under its phases and signs (which you can learn from books on medical astrology). Sickness is indeed the only respite that some people allow themselves from the driving urgency of everyday life – the only way they allow themselves to tune in to the lunar rhythm.
But there are more joyous ways of doing it than that; and in fact if it isn’t being done joyously, then there’s no point in doing it at all.
 |
Order at: |
For example, it’s best to wait until a Jupiter hour to call
or contact people who owe you money; best to make romantic plans during
Venus hours; and do rituals or healings during Moon hours; and so on.
The way to tune in to the joyous lunar rhythm in your astrology is to
add lunar elements to your charts, even if you continue to use a
solar-based horoscope. The Hindus do this with their twenty-seven lunar
mansions, but Western astrologers can do it any way they like, e.g. with
William Butler Yeats’ Great Wheel, Ronald Davison’s
Draconic Zodiac, lunar mansions, nodes, critical degrees or the Part of
Fortune. It doesn’t even matter how you compute these things –
whether you use tropical or sidereal lunar mansions, or which of the
various possible formulas you use to compute the Part of Fortune. All
systems are valid as long as you do things the same way consistently.
What you are trying to do is to use the lunar technique to hook up to an
intent; and I assure you, that intent will bring you joy.
The Power of Symbolism
All repetition is a manifestation of the principle of memory, symbolised by the Moon. When you use repetition in prayer, or incantations, or advertising, you are calling upon the power of memory to accomplish something in the world ‘out there’. Symbolism is a way of tuning into a feeling, of grabbing onto a certain intent. Memory (familiarity) is at the basis of all this – i.e., it provides you with a way of making something which happened once happen again.
As Dr. Marc Edmund Jones said, symbolism is more powerful than reality. It is more powerful because it is closer to the truth; and the truth is what you consider to be reality but is only a symbol. This is the basis of many magical acts, such as e.g., cutting other people’s light-fibres out of your body during recapitulation with a chopping motion of your hand in front of your navel. Magical acts are merely symbolic acts; but what they symbolise is the calling forth of irrevocable intent. The logic of magic – of tuning in to the fundamental rhythms of the universe – is very different from the logic of everyday society.
What magicians are out for is power. That’s what they’re getting with all their weird incantations and rituals. That doesn’t mean worldly power. Magicians don’t want anything that the ‘real’ world offers, since they know it’s all phony. What magicians want is power, which is obtained by putting as much feeling, energy, and importance behind something which is purely abstract and symbolical, as most people put behind their quest for money, or glory in the world, or love from the opposite sex.
The power of symbolism doesn’t depend upon the particular symbolism being used. Consider the power of the Moon. To time the affairs of your life according to the Moon is to hook yourself into the lunar rhythm. Whether you plant on the Waxing or Waning Moon; or whether you go by tropical or sidereal signs, is of no importance. It doesn’t matter which system you use, as long as you use one system consistently. This is what makes the rationalistic astrologers tear their hair out: they cannot reconcile these ‘blatant contradictions’ – that two competing systems could both be correct. This is because they are only looking at superficial appearances.
Similarly, the attempts to show statistically that plants
sown at different times respond in such-and-such a fashion, are doomed to
failure. You don’t plant by the Moon to grow a bigger, or heavier,
or even more nutritious (in the sense of what you’d find by
analysing the ash) plant. You plant by the Moon to grow a more
joyous plant. Gardens that are planted by the Moon are more
joyous, more vigorous, more alive than gardens which are not; and that
vigour is communicated to the people who eat those plants. You
don’t even have to garden organically: it isn’t the chemicals
which make supermarket produce unfit to eat; it’s the disrespect
with which those plants were treated (though the farmer who is respectful
of his plants is very circumspect in the kind and amount of chemicals he
uses).
To treat a plant with respect means to consider what it would like. It likes a little nitrogen now and then (for example) which all farmers know. But they don’t all know that it would also like to be planted with a consciousness of the rhythms of the Moon. The farmer, by observing the rhythms of the Moon, communicates a certain joy to his plants which they give back to him when he eats them. He hooks his plants up to a feeling (intent) of joy, even if he’s only doing the astrology thing mechanically. Agriculture is an intrinsically joyous occupation, which is why attunement to the lunar rhythm has survived there longer than elsewhere in our culture. Practically all farmers farm for the love of it (or did before agribusiness reduced them to slavery), and they are attuned to the lunar rhythm of joy even if they’re not consciously planting by the Moon. The rest of us are living off that love. That’s why modern society has been able to persevere in spite of all the denatured dreck people eat today.
Ancient people were intuitively attuned to the Moon. They didn’t need ephemerides to tell them when to do things: they could just feel it. For example, a hunter could just sense that tonight would be a good night to fish, or to hunt a particular type of game, or to visit other people and sing, or to just lie around. Modern people haven’t completely lost this facility to sense what they really feel like doing at any moment, but they tend to cut themselves off from this sense with their schedules and busyness and ‘important’ things which take precedence in their minds over their feelings. We moderns are too far away from our true feelings to be able to follow them now. We’re more comfortable getting information out of books than through our own feelings. That’s okay – that works too.
All life on Earth is attuned to the lunar rhythm, and the extent to which people are or aren’t in tune with this rhythm is the extent to which they are or aren’t in tune with their true purpose and feeling of connectedness to the world around them. For example, the easiest way to head off the impending environmental crisis would be to get everyone in the world to switch back from a solar to a lunar calendar.
Notice that by ‘the Moon’ we do not refer to the physical object in the sky subject to measurement. The physical Moon doesn’t have anything to do with anything. There are no ‘rays’ or materialistic causality involved. The physical Moon is just a symbol for rhythm, just as the Sun is a symbol for spirit. But both of these symbols are primordial – i.e. they meant what they mean long before there were humans on Earth; or before there were a sun and moon in the sky. All memory is impressed upon, or manifests through, the Moon, just as intent manifests through the Sun.
The Moon symbolises one aspect of the Spirit, namely memory –
repetition. Repetition, or rhythm, is eternality. This is just one aspect
of the Spirit: you can consider that the Spirit is made of light-fibres,
in which case you are considering its solar aspect; or you can consider
that it is made up of vibrations or sounds, and that is its rhythmic or
lunar aspect. The lunar aspect is the joyous aspect – indeed, joy is
rhythm, and rhythm is joy.
In traditional astrological symbolism, the Sun is male and the Moon
is female, but this is false. Actually, the Sun is asexual (or better
said, purely sexual); the Moon is female; and Mercury is male. This
corresponds to the three levels of dreamless sleep, dreaming, and waking.
It was the human males who, at the time of the invention of agriculture,
when they took over the reins of power from the females, shifted the
symbolism around to justify their repression of the females. This was in
turn a symbol for their repression of their own female sides (their
feelings) in order to put as much energy as possible behind the
development of their reason (their minds).
In any case, the men shifted the symbolism around. It was then that
the zodiac was invented, which glorified the Sun. Actually the zodiac
is valid, the Sun is a very powerful symbol, but it
doesn’t mean what the men think it means. Mercury is depicted in
the common system of symbolism as being sterile, sexless, androgynous,
and youthful. And that is quite correct: that is a valid description of
male energy. The point is, is that humankind has been putting most of its
energy for the past ten thousand years into developing mind (Mercury
principle) at the expense of intuition (lunar principle). It has been
developing reason at the expense of joy. And one way of getting back to
the original feeling of joy is to tune into the Moon once again.
How precisely you do this is irrelevant, so long as you are putting
energy into the project and are serious in your efforts to live your life
by the lunar rhythm.
Notes:
1
http://www.dearbrutus.com/body_planetaryhours.html
Extract taken from The Great Wheel by Bob Makransky
(published by Dear Brutus Press). Amazon price guide: Kindle £8.21; pb
£16.01.
Image sources:
Handwriting:
Image by Free-Photos
from Pixabay
Carrots: Image by klimkin from Pixabay
Lake: Image by James Wheeler from Pixabay
Published by: The Astrological Journal, Jul/Aug 2017
Author:
Bob
Makransky is a systems analyst, computer programmer, and
professional astrologer. For the past 35 years he has lived on a farm in
highland Guatemala, where he studied Mayan astrology and shamanism with
his teacher don Abel Yat Saquib until don Abel's death in 2009.
Email: bmakransky@gmail.com.
© Bob Makransky 2017/2019
