Moon phases

The eight phases of the Moon

Every month the Moon moves through the same eight shapes. Here is what each one looks like, and what the tradition makes of a birthday spent underneath it.

New Moon
A New Moon birthday means the Moon and the Sun stood in the same part of the sky when you arrived, so the face turned towards Earth held no light at all.
Waxing Crescent
A Waxing Crescent birthday means the Moon had pulled a little way clear of the Sun and was showing a thin curve of light on its right side.
First Quarter
A First Quarter birthday means the Moon stood at a right angle to the Sun and showed exactly half a disc, lit on the right.
Waxing Gibbous
A Waxing Gibbous birthday means the Moon was more than half lit and still filling, a swelling disc with one soft shadowed edge.
Full Moon
A Full Moon birthday means the Moon stood opposite the Sun, with the whole visible face lit.
Waning Gibbous
A Waning Gibbous birthday means the Moon had passed full and was beginning to give its light back, still bright but with one edge already in shadow.
Last Quarter
A Last Quarter birthday means the Moon stood at a right angle to the Sun again, showing half a disc lit on the left.
Waning Crescent
A Waning Crescent birthday means the Moon had almost finished its round, a thin curve of light on the left with the dark of the month just ahead.

Which one is yours?

Enter the day you were born and see the exact shape the Moon held that night.

Find your birthday moon

The Moon makes no light of its own. Everything we see of it is sunlight landing on one side of a rocky sphere, and the shape we call a phase is simply how much of that lit half is turned towards us on a given night. Over roughly twenty nine and a half days the angle between Sun, Earth and Moon works its way all the way round, and the familiar sequence follows from that geometry alone.

The tradition has always read those shapes as a kind of calendar of temperament. A birthday sits at one point on the round, and the phase you were born under is treated as a way of describing rhythm: whether you begin easily, whether you finish easily, whether you work best seen or unseen. None of that is prediction, and none of it is science. It is a reflective frame, offered as one.

Moon and Saturn

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