The Natal Lunar Phase and Compatibility

by April Elliott Kent

I was born with the Sun in Leo and the Moon in Gemini, so naturally, I’ve got to start out by telling you a story.

It begins on a hot, sweaty Saturday afternoon in August 1961. Dee was 8 ½ months pregnant. At the age of 27, she’d already had three children and hadn’t wanted another; after this one was born, she told her friend Helen, she was definitely going on the Pill. Just a couple more weeks of waddling around in this swampy Southern Indiana summer, and that would be it for her, pregnancy-wise.

But there were some things they needed for the coming baby, so she and her husband went into town to do some errands. A little after 1:00, as she stood there looking at receiving blankets in the middle of Tressler’s five and dime on Main Street, her water broke. “Bud!” she cried, and her husband tore himself away from a display of motor oil and hustled her out to the car. They tore off toward the nearest hospital at high speed, bumping along 12 miles of gravel road while she hollered at him to slow down and he hollered back that he knew what he was doing, thank you, and did she want to have this baby right there in the front seat of an Oldsmobile?

Well, they barely made it to St. Mary’s hospital and got Dee into a hospital gown before the baby was coming. “You’re lucky you’ve done this before,” a nurse told her, but lucky was the least of what Dee felt at that moment. She felt like she’d rather be anywhere else on earth, doing anything else, than here, having this damn baby. One last push and she heard the cry, and the doctor told her that it was a girl – and somehow, she thought to look at the clock on the wall. It read 3:01. A little nun whose name Dee didn’t catch bundled up the wriggling infant and handed it to her. And as Dee would later say to an interested party, “I hadn’t wanted another baby, but I fell in the love the minute I saw you.”

And that, kids, is how I met my mother.

Your relationship with the woman who gave birth to you was the first relationship you ever had. It set up your expectations about every interaction going forward. I met my mother at the Last Quarter Moon, and that’s a moment in each monthly lunar cycle when you’re like a pregnant woman in the throes of labor. You’re faced with something scary and painful, and you don’t want to go through with it, but you also don’t want to be pregnant for the rest of your life. Starting life in a phase like that says you don’t necessarily expect life or relationships to be easy. But you think that if at least you show up quickly and don’t cause a lot of fuss, the story can still have a happy ending.

We all have a birth story, and part of it, I believe, can be found in the lunar phase at your birth. In many ways, it’s the first love story of your life. The relationship between the Sun and Moon at your birth – the lunar phase – tells us how you are wired for the give and take of human relationship. I believe it gives us a sense of your expectations in relationship, and about the sorts of people you’re happiest hanging around with.

And which people are those? In this article, we’ll look at the four lunar phase quadrants and what they have to say about compatibility.

Now, you may wonder how any self-respecting astrologer could even think of discussing relationships while essentially ignoring Venus and Mars. Aren’t those two where all the action is?

Well, I mean — of course they’re important, but they’re not where ALL the action is. Venus and Mars tell a story of passion and desire. They tell us what you want and how you get it. In a romantic relationship, they’re the ecstasy of sexual attraction, the narcotic effect of hormones leaping to attention in another’s presence. They are nature’s way of getting us interested in and involved with others. One is tempted to say they represent nature’s way of perpetuating the species, but of course, that’s not their only role; it’s evolutionarily valuable for humans to be sociable and form networks of mutual interest – a good role for Venus; we like people because they make us feel good. And it’s useful, too, to be able to work together, to build a society and to protect it, which is at least part of the story of Mars.

But to say Venus and Mars are the entire story of relationship will bring a smile to the face of anyone who’s sustained a partnership over many years. Because after, say, 25 years with someone, you will hopefully still find them attractive and fun to spend time with. But you’re not going to faint with desire every time they walk into the room.

And that’s where the Sun and Moon come in. When the hormonal tidal wave of Venus and Mars recedes, the Sun and Moon are the relationship that’s left on the shore. And that, I believe, has everything to do with where you started out – and your relationship with Mom and Dad, the dazzling luminaries of your tiny world, and the relationship they modeled for you. These early relationships provide context to understanding your basic orientation toward the world, yourself, and others.

The lunar cycle shows a relationship between of the Sun and Moon. In real time, it spans 29.5 days. Every 3.5 days, it enters a new phase.

The first half of the lunar month, between New and Full moons, is the waxing hemicycle, as the Moon is gradually increasing in light in the night sky. (Remember it this way: when you wax something, it gets brighter.) The phases during this part of the cycle are New Moon, waxing Crescent, First Quarter, and Gibbous.

The second half of the lunar month, between the Full Moon and the next New Moon, is the waning hemicycle – this is when the Moon is gradually decreasing in light. The phases during this hemicycle are the Full Moon, the Waning Gibbous or Disseminating Moon, the Last Quarter, and the Waning Crescent or Balsamic Moon.

We can interpret the waxing Moon as a symbol of moving from subjectivity toward greater consciousness and objectivity. In the waxing hemicycle, the emphasis is on action – learning by doing – as it is in the first half of life, from birth to middle age.

In the waning phases, as in the second half of life, the emphasis is on learning from past experience and gaining understanding through reflection and life experience. In these phases, there’s a keener than usual awareness of the temporal nature of life.

Now, it’s not quite as cut and dried as that. Obviously, folks born during the waxing period can be reflective, too. But by nature, they tend to be doers. And waning cycle folks can by-God get stuff done, for sure; but they like to examine why they’re doing it.

The Natal Lunar Phase and the Zombie Apocalypse

A cousin of mine with a bit of a dour spirit and a pessimistic view of my character once compared me unfavorably to my sister, who was born at a waxing phase, while I was born at a waning phase. He reckoned that in the event of a nuclear attack or a zombie apocalypse, my sister would survive just fine, while I would be eaten by survivors. And while it wasn’t entirely kind of him to put it that way, I suspect he was right. If you look at pictures of us when we were kids, my sister is always staring straight at the camera with a big smile, totally present in the moment. On the other hand, I’m invariably staring up into space as though waiting for the mother ship to land. I’m focusing on the last moment, or the next moment. And while I do, the zombies are gaining on me!

It’s a basic orientation toward the world that’s the difference, really, between waxing and waning folks. I have friends and family in both camps. But when I go through the charts of the people with whom I’m very close – who felt like my kin from the moment we met – they are overwhelmingly from my own, waning, lunar hemicycle tribe.

If you go to my New Moon sister’s house for a gathering, you’ll find people playing cards or pool or video games. They are engaged in activities together. In fact, this is what happens for most of us in the first half of life — we make friends through shared activities.

But if you come to my house, what you’ll see is a bunch of people sitting around the fire and telling stories, or jokes, making music, and eating food and drinking wine. We are reminiscing about the past or imagining the future. We are making sense of the world.

And so, we’re at home with those who share our waxing or waning orientation. But they’re not our only tribe.

Darkness and Light

The waxing and waning of the Moon are analogous to the halves of the horoscope that lie above and below the horizon, in the northern and southern hemispheres of the chart. When we first waded into beginning astrology, we learned that a planetary emphasis in one of these hemispheres indicates an inward, private, subjective focus as opposed to an objective and external focus.

We also learned that there was a difference between having more planets on the eastern or left side of the chart vs. the western or right side. That one was always a little harder for me to understand.

It was reading Steven Forrest’s excellent Book of the Moon (Seven Paws Press, 2013) that helped bring this into focus for me. The hemisphere between Last Quarter and First Quarter, like the eastern side of the chart, has its reference point in darkness; we’re either moving into the dark (New Moon) or away from it, but darkness is the reference point. And the hemisphere between First Quarter and Last Quarter, like the right side of the chart, has brightness (Full Moon) as its reference point.

If you’re born between the Last Quarter and the New Moon, you’re in a phase where the nighttime Moon is moving away from full light and toward maximum darkness. You are attuned to the solitary, contemplative journey of a soldier returning home from battle. And if you’re born between the New Moon and the First Quarter, moving away from the dark, you are the soldier leaving for battle in the hour before dawn, as the sky grows slowly, almost imperceptibly lighter.

If you’re born in the hemicycle from First Quarter to Full Moon, you’re moving toward maximum light. From Full Moon to Last Quarter, the full light is behind you, but your path is still fully illuminated. In both of these quadrants, you are attuned to engagement with the world.

Just as you have kinship with those who share your waxing or waning orientation, so, too, you are drawn to those who share this orientation toward dark or light. Last Quarter and Balsamic people are of the same tribe with fellow waning Full and Disseminating people – but they also kind of understand where New Moon and Crescent folks are coming from. Because the four of them share a certain love of solitude that Full and Disseminating folks may not.

First Quarter and Gibbous do have an ease with fellow, waxing, New and Crescent folks, but they also have something in common with Full and Disseminating brethren: an interest in observing others and an intrinsically other-oriented disposition. Even if other features in their birth charts point to a more solitary nature, that quality of other-orientation will manifest itself. One of my best Disseminating Moon friends, as well as my Full Moon husband, have the Sun in the 4th house of their charts; they are just this side of being hermits. But my friend is a writer with a rare flare for communicating with others so that they feel like she is their best friend. And my Full Moon-born husband loves to have people around; he plans parties and then sits off in the corner to observe, a Full Moon peeking out of his little 4th house cave!

Birds of a feather

And that brings us, rather belatedly, to an important point: that the lunar phase is only a part of a complex whole. There are lots and lots of features in your birth chart that describe who you are and what you want from other people. In relationship, this means that some of us are drawn to friends or partners who challenge us. And some of us are happier when we spend time with people who see the world pretty much as we do.

But in general, birds of a waxing or waning feather, or of a bright and dark feather, tend to flock together. We share a basic orientation toward the world. We are comfortable with one another. We feel these people “get” us. This means you have a tribal kinship with those born under all but two lunar phases – those in the quadrant opposite your own. Those phases do not share either hemicycle in common with you.

• The phases of the First Quadrant, the New and Crescent Moon, are coming from a different place than the Third Quadrant - Full and Disseminating. They share neither hemicycle in common.
• Likewise, for the Fourth Quadrant - Last Quarter and Balsamic- the Second Quadrant folks - First Quarter and Gibbous - are hard to grasp.

Don’t take this to mean that you won’t or can’t have relationships with people born during these phases. You will almost certainly find yourself thrown amongst them in your family or at work, especially, where we have a lot less say over who we spend time with. You may be incredibly close to them. You may also be competitors, rivals; this is especially true of the phase opposite yours: New vs. Full Moon, Crescent vs. Disseminating, First and Last Quarters, Gibbous vs. Balsamic. Like people born with the Sun Sign opposite yours, relationships with those born under the opposite lunar phase can be some of the most magnetic, intense, and occasionally fractious relationships of your life. You see each other clearly – and that has its pluses and minuses.

So, in summary:

• Venus and Mars speak of passion, interest, pleasure, and the excitement that keeps us interested in another. But the Sun and Moon represent something deeper, more fundamental about our needs and expectations, and how that impacts our interactions with other.
• Generally, you share sympathetic understanding with those born in the same hemi-cycle that you were – either a waxing or waning, or light or dark oriented.
• Those born in the phase opposite yours are like an opposite Sun sign – you are either very close or mortal enemies, with little in-between.

Relationship astrology is a field that’s rich and infinitely vast. After three decades in practice, I’m finding myself attracted these days to the most basic of tools. Nothing is more fundamental than the lunar phases - astrology that you can easily view from your back stoop each evening.

But I do find that whenever I wade into the lunar phases, I get a little lost. The Moon represents something so deep and unconscious that it can be hard to put into words. In that way, it’s like the bond between a mother and her child – wordless, profound, and connecting us to an entire lineage of relationships.

Without these relationships, we wouldn’t exist. Your parents, their parents and grandparents, and all the way back for hundreds of years. Look back far enough and we’re all connected, sitting around a giant campfire together.

The lunar phase at your birth is like a torch lit from that campfire, from a very old flame. It puts out just enough light to show your path. It might burn as bright as a Full Moon, or smolder just hot enough to keep it burning, but not so much that it obscures your view of the stars. And however it burns, it’s a beacon that lights the path to your door, so that precisely the right friends and partners find their way to you. Keep the light burning, and trust that love is on its way.

Note:
This article is abridged from a lecture I presented at UAC 2018, “How I Met My Mother: The Natal Lunar Phase in Relationship.”

Published in: The Career Astrologer, June 2021.

Author:
April Elliott Kent has practiced astrology professionally since 1990. She’s the author of three books, including Astrological Transits and The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology, which has been named to best-of lists by Oprah Magazine, New York Magazine, and Business Insider. April served on the AFAN Steering committee, is past president of the San Diego Astrological Society, and is a member of ISAR, OPA, and NCGR. She’s a popular lecturer at conferences and for local astrology groups. April lives with her husband and two rowdy cats in San Diego. You can learn more about her work at https://www.bigskyastrology.com and subscribe her weekly Big Sky Astrology podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

Images:
Lunar Phases image: Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash
Graphic Lunar Phases: April Elliott Kent
Birds of a feather: Photo by Muhammad Murtaza Ghani on Unsplash

© 2021 - April Elliott Kent - The Career Astrologer

All articles at a glance