First Steps to Working With the Moon

Whether you’re interested in learning more about astrology, living in tune with nature or grounding yourself in an earth-based spirituality, working with the Moon can be extremely insightful. Because the Moon moves through the heavens so rapidly, completing a full cycle in just 28 days, it’s a great option for beginners and for those wanting to quickly get to grips with astrological cycles and their influence on our daily lives.

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By working with the Moon, you’ll quickly come to understand her affect on your moods and your emotions, and on each individual area of your life in turn.

Before you start, you’ll need to know a little bit about the astrological Moon and how its symbolism changes as it moves through the different zodiac signs and the different astrological houses of your chart.

The Astrological Moon

The astrological Moon’s energy is emotional, sensitive and intuitive. The Moon symbolically rules our feelings and how we react to the world around us on an emotional level. Just as the Moon changes, from our point of view, throughout each month, so the Moon’s energy is changeable and fluctuating, connected to our different moods. This responsive energy is easily shifted in one direction or the other, from great highs to great lows.

It follows that the astrological Moon also links to worry and anxiety, with our natal Moon showing how we react to stress and strain, and how we seek emotional security and stability – if indeed we do. The Moon’s energy is where we find comfort and protection.

The Moon’s energy also reflects our unconscious thoughts and our most instinctive reactions. When you bypass logical thought and have a gut feeling, that’s your Moon. What you think and feel in your own head is the Moon, as opposed to how you might react to something publicly. Much of the Moon’s energy is hidden and deeply personal to us, but in many ways the Moon shows us as we truly are, rather than the image or persona we project.

The Moon spends approximately 28 days in each zodiac sign. As it moves through the signs, it will also be moving through your own chart, and moving from one astrological house to another – astrological houses are the zones of your chart which cover different aspects of life such as love, study, career, health, spirituality and so on. By tracking the Moon through the year, you can gain insights into how your emotions and moods mesh with these different areas of your life, and how you can best use the energy of any given day.

To get started, you need to know the basics of how Moon energy is expressed through each zodiac sign and through each astrological house. This guide is a good starting point if you’re new to all this.

Keep a Moon Diary

All you need to keep a moon diary is a small notebook or any kind of standard diary with enough space to write. Get hold of a lunar calendar online, and in your diary note down the moon sign and phase for each day over the coming month.

Each day, jot down a few words to describe how you felt – elated, depressed, anxious, fearful, excited, confused, energetic? Add some information about what was most on your mind that day – was it work, your love life, the kids, the house?

Analyzing the Results

You can analyze your moon diary as you go along, if you’re familiar with astrology; if you’re not, it’s sometimes helpful to keep the diary for a month first and then look back on it all in one go as you learn to understand the astrology behind what you’ve been experiencing.

The Influence of the Moon Sign and House

If you know your own Moon sign, you should notice that you feel more emotionally empowered, and stronger, when the Moon is transiting that sign during the month.

The next step is to work out which house the Moon was transiting each day. To do this, you need to know either your Ascendant sign (preferably) or failing that, for less accurate results, your Sun sign. Write down the signs in a list, in order, from Aries to Pisces, and write a 1 next to your Ascendant sign or Sun sign. Working down the list, write 2 next to the following sign, then 3 and so on; when you reach the bottom of the list start again at the top until you’ve written 12 against the sign before your Ascendant or Sun sign.

This technique is called solar houses, and it’s part of how sun sign horoscopes are worked out. It’s a quick and easy way for beginners to get started, or if you don’t know your exact Ascendant position, just the sign. However, it is significantly less accurate than using your correct natal chart. To be truly accurate, you need to know the exact position of your Ascendant, and following on from that the exact division of each of the twelve houses – this won’t correspond to the divisions between the signs unless your Ascendant happens to be at 0 degrees of a sign, which it probably isn’t. The solar houses technique is, however, good enough to give you the general idea, which is why this article is called ‘first steps’.

Use this list to see which house the Moon was transiting on any given day. For instance, if your Ascendant sign is Aquarius and the Moon was in Taurus that day, then it was transiting your 4th house. The 4th house is the house of family in the astrological chart – did you find that family matters or domestic issues dominated your attention that day?

The Influence of the Moon Phases

The most significant Moon phases for our purposes are the Full Moon and New Moon. Full Moons bring about closure or endings, while New Moons bring excitement, new beginnings and new opportunities.

Find the date of the Full Moon in your diary – what sign and house was it in for you? Did something in that area of your life (as indicated by the house position) come to a conclusion, or did you try to finish up or end something? Was the lack of an ending causing you frustration?

Do the same for the Ne w Moon. Did you experience something new in that area of your life (as shown by the house position)? Are new beginnings underway, or have you formed a bright new idea which you need to work on?

These are generalizations, and you’d need to cast full astrological charts for each day to get the full picture, but this is an easy and useful way to start to understand how the cycle of the Moon affects you on a daily basis; once you get the hang of this, you can move onto more complex observations, and start to look out for patterns and trends.

Eventually, you’ll need to factor in your natal Moon position, ie the sign and house the Moon was in when you were born, and how the transiting Moon interacts with your natal Moon. You can also move on to looking at aspects (angles) the transiting Moon makes to other planets in your natal chart. However, this simple Moon tracking method will get you started down the path of astrological discovery – and hopefully intrigue you enough that you want to find out more.

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About the author:

Nikki Harper is a spiritualist writer, astrologer, and editor for Wake Up World. She writes about divination, astrology, mediumship and spirituality at Questionology: Astrology and Divination For the Modern World where you can also find out more about her work as a freelance astrologer and her mind-body-spirit writing and editing services. Nikki also runs a spiritualist centre in North Lincs, UK, hosting weekly mediumship demonstrations and a wide range of spiritual development courses and workshops.