If you research the benefits of sunlight, there are medical websites that tell you about Vitamin D, it’s mood-enhancing and bone-strengthening qualities, and the way it responds to every cell in your body. Information, stories and discussions on the absorption of moonlight is predominantly affiliated with folklore, tales of turning into a werewolf, tarot sites, spiritual, mystical, and ultimately, separate from the scholarly and scientifically accredited playing field. Hardly a trace of experimentation, research, or any sign of minute inquiry can be detected from academia and science, into how, and then why, we are affected by the moon.
There are Ayurvedic1 studies done on the cooling impact moonbeams have on our nervous system, moonlight being beneficial for inflammation, regulating menstrual cycles, lowering blood pressure, reducing stress, increasing fertility, and more. Ayurvedic medicinal practices and herbs are not recognized by the pharmaceutical world. Western medicinal practices relying heavily on pharmaceutical advancement do not highly favor or take seriously the traditions and holistic remedies of the earth. Where a bottle of turmeric powder says “anti-inflammatory”, “increases brain function”, “rich in antioxidants” there is a requirement by the Federal Drug Administration to place an asterisk next to those claims, disclaiming “This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease”, discrediting long lines of work done by medicine practitioners, not-so-coincidentally of indigenous and non-European origin. Where is the inquiry, or the tests run, or at bare minimum the acknowledgment of preventative and highly-effective medicine? At this point in time more people are becoming aware of the flaws in the FDA, the invalidity of claims made in the past, claims made only to further an economic agenda or government interest.
We absorb the particles of our environment–fumes, compounds in our water, the type of light we are exposed to. Our skin is an organ that is constantly taking in what we expose it to–even the soap we use to wash our sheets and clothes is taken in. Toxins are released and our bodies work hard to assign everything consumed, to where it would be most useful. Nothing goes unaccounted for, and everything matters. Therefore, the light of the moon, like the light of the sun, is no different. It’s silver blanket and hypnotic radiance is absorbed, and where does it all go? What role does it play in the cells of our bodies? Through the blood in our veins, to our nervous system, what effect does it have on our brain? It moves our wombs—but why, and how? As we gaze into the piercing white light what happens behind our eyes? Moonlight illuminates the plants as they grow, the soil, the earth, so by way of the food we eat, and water we drink, what role is the moon playing? What effect does it have on the animals of the sea, the desert, the birds in the sky?
For the last two nights I was with family tucked away with no street light to disrupt circadian rhythm, and took a significant break from the light of my phone, just letting it completely die without a sense of urgency to charge it up right away. The moon peaked over the mountain around 10pm, to reflect off the water and beat down like a stadium light over a football field. The brightness entranced me–every leaf on the trees around us were as visible as if it were sunlight. Quarter-sized translucent frogs could be seen along the banks of the river; I could read the notes in my music book, and if I wanted to could have written pages upon pages under her glow. With the safety of having family nearby, and being far away from the busy suburbia of my apartment, I slept outside directly underneath the moon, legs sprawled out, hands crossed under my head, as calm as the animals sleeping around me.
As a reiki practitioner of seven years, becoming more and more attuned to the way my body responds to the environment around me, to what I consume in any way, to the way various energetic exchanges make me feel, the moon was medicine I didn’t know I needed. Nothing in the world could have stopped me from laying there, open to receive, cradled in silver.
I was not expecting to start my cycle for at least another two weeks, but on the same day as my brother’s wife, on the night I laid so openly under the moon, I started my cycle significantly earlier than expected. Her daughter was also on her cycle at the time. Where is the scientific and “administrative approved” information on something so widely accepted amongst women as just “something we do”? If it were something happening so closely in the lives of men, would we have more answers? While I am not hurried or demanding in any way to have an explanation, I find it “funny” that in matters such as these, we sweep it into a box of phenomenon not worth serious pursuit, experimentation, questioning, diving into the root and connection it has to all living things. There is still no certainty as to why women sync cycles when in close proximity to one another, or how or why the moon correlates. Ironically, as far as the “medical world” goes, a study lead by a woman named Martha McClintock at Harvard in the 70s2, found that amongst her dorm-mates, they were indeed syncing up and sharing cycles, but for that to be the closest thing to accredited knowledge for something so common and a part of our lives, shows how much more we need women, and I will also say non-white women3, to be in high ranking medical fields. We still have little to no information on the female orgasm, or on the variations of experiences we have with our vaginas in general–from menstruation to sex to miscellaneous occurrences, women have vastly different experiences from one another, which we are constantly uncovering variations of. While men have a very concrete understanding of their genitalia, girls scramble to exchange lessons taught to them, things they read on the internet, experiences had–even in this age of information at our fingertips, nobody really has a handle on so many mysteries of the ins and outs of life with ovaries, the same way we don’t really understand what moonbeams are good for, how they dictate our cycles, what is happening in the body when we absorb her light.
If we are dependent on peer-reviewed articles, or FDA-approved information, we would think the moon to be non-essential, not a vital part of life, not worth diving into. But we know better. The undercurrents of the psyche, hormones, a woman’s womb–the cells and electric currents of our bodies respond to moonbeams. I know it because I feel it, my body responds to the silver blanket over me, and the grass underneath me. There is a kind of charging and cleansing taking place. Tides are moved by the ocean, and surfers are able to predict where to go based on the time of year, based on the moon. Growing up we always knew that beaches would be filled with Portuguese man-o-war jelly-fish, or “blue bubbles” around the time of the full moon. The ocean would come up into yards, filled with debris from the shore–rocky and spewing. Then as nights pass and there is less silver, the tides return to being shallow, calm and still. Our bodies, and our wombs of gushing current are directly affected by her in the same way, reminding us we are a part of the earth, made of the earth, and return to earth. Rain falls and basins are washed clean, valleys of mountains are cleared, veins of the earth in motion.
I am ever-leaning in, to the space between worlds–between words written, words left out, words extracted, and that which cannot be explained with them. Across landscapes and cultures the moon is associated with feminine nature, and the sun associated with masculine. “Mother Moon, Father Sun.” Yin, (feminine, dark, still) and Yang (masculine, bright, moving) represent the dualism that is inherent in every living thing. As we restore balance on earth, and within ourselves, we lean into knowledge that has never left us. This Inner Knowing has always carried us–advantageous and feared.
- Ayurveda is the traditional Hindu system of medicine, where everything you consume and absorb–every spice, herb, oil, and everything absorbed through the skin organ–is medicine and directly effects your organs and cells in your body.
- I say non-white because many women of color have experiences, outlooks on life and background knowledge to offer that differs from what we think of as “normal” or “accepted”–often times providing more holistic and thorough approaches of preventative care vs. symptom treatment. We as human beings tend to operate within and by the means of the structures we have in place that we accept as-is. There are things in place that we question and want to change, then there are things in place we cannot possibly question because we don’t even see them as being in place at all, so acclimated to their positions in our lives. When we have people from different backgrounds and ways of life in positions of power, what we find is a more thorough and in-depth account of the subject. To take things further, we should question why current “positions of power” are more respected than if we encountered a medicine person without degree or title, in a place where degrees and titles do not equate to respectability, but I digress, per usual.