Lunar Almanac
Moon Phases & Lunar Timing
Thirty nights ahead. Every day carries its phase, its sign, the practice that fits it, and the hours that suit the practice best.
🌗
Last Quarter
5 August 2026
in Taurus · today
🌑
New Moon
11 August 2026
in Leo · 6 days
🌓
First Quarter
18 August 2026
in Scorpio · 13 days
🌕
Full Moon
26 August 2026
in Aquarius · 21 days
Wednesday, 5 Aug
Last Quarter
57% illuminated · moon in Taurus ♉ · Earth
The crisis of meaning. What you built still stands but the reason for it has shifted, and this is the point to admit that out loud.
Moon in Taurus: slow, sensory and stubborn. The best nights of the month for rest, cooking and money matters.
Favourable
- ✦Cutting what is no longer working
- ✦Forgiveness
- ✦Clearing debts and inboxes
Avoid
- ✕Starting anything you want to last
- ✕Making it someone else's fault
Energy
Falling. Do not schedule anything requiring stamina.
Best hours
Workable at any hour; the classic slot is the hour after sunset.
Body
Earth moon: the body wants food, sleep and touch. Digestion and joints are favoured by slow movement.
15 minutes
The honest cut
Name one commitment that no longer earns its place. Write the message that ends it, and send it within three days. The waning quarter is the cleanest point in the month for this.
12 minutes
The written release
Write the thing you are ready to stop carrying on paper, read it aloud once, then burn or tear it. Naming and destroying is the mechanism; the paper is incidental.
15 minutes
Letter to next month
Write to yourself one lunar cycle from now. Describe what you hope will have changed and what you suspect will not have. Seal it and open it at the same phase next month.
In short
A rolling lunar calendar with daily phase insight, the sign the moon travels through, best-practice rituals, timing windows and what each night favours or forbids.
- Keep one intention per lunation. Two dilute each other.
- Write the intention at the new Moon and do not reread it until the full — the comparison is the practice.
- Waning quarters are the best days in the month for cancelling, cleaning and ending things gracefully.
- If you track nothing else, track how you sleep across a cycle. Most people find a pattern within two months.
Lunar calendars predate solar ones almost everywhere. The month is the Moon: twenty-nine and a half days from dark to dark, a unit small enough to count on the body and regular enough to plan a harvest around. Agricultural almanacs, monastic offices, fishing schedules and folk medicine all ran on it long before clocks.
The eight-phase scheme used here — new, crescent, first quarter, gibbous, full, disseminating, last quarter, balsamic — comes from that tradition, each phase carrying its own instruction about beginning, building, releasing or resting.
Questions Readers Ask
How long is a lunar cycle exactly?
The synodic month averages 29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes — the time between one new Moon and the next.
Why does the Moon look larger near the horizon?
The Moon illusion is a perceptual effect, not an optical one; measured, it is the same size overhead.
Should I start rituals at the exact phase time?
The traditional window is the whole day. Precision to the minute is a modern habit, not a requirement.