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.
🌕
Full Moon
25 September 2026
in Pisces · 4 days
🌗
Last Quarter
2 October 2026
in Gemini · 11 days
🌑
New Moon
9 October 2026
in Libra · 18 days
🌓
First Quarter
17 October 2026
in Capricorn · 26 days
Monday, 21 Sept
Waxing Gibbous
74% illuminated · moon in Capricorn ♑ · Earth
Almost full. The work exists but is not finished, and the temptation is to polish rather than complete. Refine, then stop.
Moon in Capricorn: cool and disciplined. The most productive lunar days of the month, and the loneliest.
Favourable
- ✦Editing
- ✦Rehearsing
- ✦Testing and adjusting
- ✦Preparing the launch
Avoid
- ✕Perfectionism disguised as diligence
- ✕Starting over
Energy
High and slightly anxious. Channel it into detail.
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.
5 minutes
Water charge
Fill a clear glass, set it on a windowsill for the night, and drink it in the morning while re-reading what you wrote. Under a Capricorn moon, name the quality you want it to carry: steadiness.
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
Threshold sweep
Sweep or wipe the entrance of your home from the inside outward, naming what you are finished carrying as you go. Physical clearing under a moon phase is the oldest and most reliable ritual there is.
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.