The moon cycle is the original calendar.
This is because, before artificial light or other modern day inputs, most women Bled with the Dark Moon and ovulated with the Full Moon.
This might be hard to imagine or believe, but if you’ve ever watched bugs get zapped in a bug zapper, you are actually witnessing the same phenomena that has women bleeding at all times of the month.
Biological things are affected by light. In fact, it is light that governs the reproductive, sleep/wake, and growth cycles of biological things. If you’ve ever grown weed indoors, you know this, too, as you’ve had to pay close attention to the light and dark cycles to get those sparkly purple flowers.
We are also biological beings, of course, and we are just as governed by light and light cycles. We are even imprinted with these light cycles as our most primary biological functions, including our feminine hormonal cycle.
We see this easily with the seasons, which show us the impact of the sun’s light cycle on Earth’s living things.
The moon is reflecting the sun’s light. So she is beaming a nice soft sunlight onto Earth, and she does this in this a growing and then pulling back pattern that we call the waxing and the waning moon. What’s happening is that, as Mama Moon moves around the Earth, she is projecting different intensities of sunlight down onto Earth, with the most intense light at the Full Moon, the “lunar summer,” you could say, and the least intense under a Dark Moon, such as today when the night is at its darkest.
Later on this timeline, I’ll talk more about how our hormonal cycle STILL carries out this lunar imprint, and how we can use the map of the moonlight to understand our feminine cycle, EVEN THOUGH today we are no longer collectively aligned with the moon phases, because we are now governed by many many light inputs that all affect us, rather than just the moon and sun and other stars, as were the Ancestors.
But for now, what I’d like you to take away is that this growing and fading light affects us the same as it governs all biological life on this planet – shaping our growth cycle.
And so, before the modern day glitters (this includes not just light but also things like artificial foods, contraceptives, and more), when women mostly all bled on the Dark Moon and ovulated on the Full Moon, this would have meant that our Ancestors’ lives were dictated by the cycles of the Moon in the same way they were dictated by the cycles of the sun. They marked time by the moon. The moon led them into Dark periods of rest and brought them into the Light for active work and building. When women bled and when they were fertile would also dictate the communities and even the traditions, many of which we still celebrate in various forms to this day, just as we still celebrate the solar holidays.
In a world where we’re supposed to keep everything even remotely suggestive of our Bleeding Time to a private, hush hush tone, and we’re expected to just keep it moving all the same all cycle long, it’s hard to imagine that the Bleeding Cycle dictated all human life and ongoings (not just for the women), community life, traditions and holy-days, and even represented what we think of as a calendar today.
But it was.
And the truth is that the moon is still our most innate calendar, and by learning and aligning with its rhythm and organic flow, we can know a different kind of life than feeling like we’re struggling upstream all the time, exhausted, sick, all kinds of feminine imbalances popping up here and there, living just to get by – rather than thriving and creating a life you’re excited to keep waking up for.
If you’re interested in getting to know your own cycles, follow along this timeline and watch out for the Lunar Forecast right here in 13Moons: Stories & Art each month. We’ll be taking a look at the rhythm of the moon through a different lens each cycle. Or dive full into the Lunar Living Lifestyle Stream on Patreon to stay in the flow real time and access tools, classes, and other resources for getting to know the language of your magical feminine cycle.
[IMAGE CREDIT: Ignacia Ossandón]
