Liber ab Luna (The Book of the Moon)^159
Month Gregorian Start Gregorian End God
Pausa December 22 January 20 Pusha
Magha January 21 February 19 Bhaga
Chaitra March 22 April 20 Vishnu
Vaisakha April 21 May 21 Aryman
Jyaistha May 22 June 21 Vivasvana
Asadha June 22 July 22 Amshumana
Shravana July 23 August 22 Parjanya
Bhardra August 23 September 22 Varuna
Asvini September 23 October 22 Indra
Kartika October 23 November 21 Dhatri
Agrahayana November 22 December 21 Mitra
Phalguna February 20 March 21* Tvashta* 21 on leap year.So just why is the moon found in so many different religions? The most obvious
answer is because it is there. That might sound like a very short answer, but the exist-
ence of a thing is all it takes for religion to address its existence because that’s one of
the primary functions of religion. Religion, science, and magick were for a time insepa-
rable subjects. They were separated by power structures that didn’t have much faith in
the religion they used to assert their authority. Fearing science might some day prove
the earth was not the center of the universe, they made the heliocentric (sun at center)
view of the universe illegal and imprisoned its teachers. It is not an unfamiliar story.
Remember the Scopes Monkey trial discussed earlier?
Like science, one of the roles of religion is to explain why things exist and what
their nature is. At the dawn of humanity, someone looked up and asked, “Hey, what’s
that?” Not long after that, someone came along and explained it: That is god. Some-
time before Newton, someone observed that the ocean’s tide rose and fell with the
cycle of the moon and someone said “That is goddess,” because they observed that the
tides of menstruation seemed to come and go with various stages of the moon, both on
a monthly cycle.
From observing those cycles, a pattern emerged to compliment the pattern of Sum-
mer and Winter. That pattern, the lunar cycles, served as a primitive calendar. I say
primitive because as we will soon see, the calendar was not all that accurate in keeping
track of seasonal changes. In short, the seasons are a function of the Earth’s relation-
ship to the sun. The cycle in which the Earth travels around the sun is called the solar
year. The lunar cycle (month) is a function of the relationship between the sun, moon,
and the Earth. The solar cycle (year) is approximately 365 days. The lunar cycle is 29q WB Chap 09.p65 159 7/11/2003, 5:53 PM