Precision Full Moon Timing

[labyrinth]

There seems to be confusion among many, myself included, about when the Full Moon actually occurs, based on the calendars. The Full Moon this month is being shown as Friday. Does this mean that you should do Full Moon work Thursday at midnight. (when Friday morning technically is) or Friday night at midnight (when it's actually Saturday morning). I'm basing this on modern astrological timing as opposed to the ancient art of dividing the day up between day and night hours. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[Phaedra B]

If you want to be very astronomically correct, the night of the full moon is the night closest to the "exact" full moon time given in the papers and on the calendar and in the ephemeris. For example, if the time given is 6 AM Friday, the full moon is the night of Thursday to Friday, the night before. If it's 3 pm Friday, the full moon is the night of Friday to Saturday.

When those sources give you the time of the full moon, they're giving you the time, astronomically, when the moon is exactly at the peak of its light cycle, precisely opposite of the midpoint of the dark of the moon.

You could make yourself crazy trying to do things just at that exact moment, but that is, IMNSHO, getting locked into the letter rather than the spirit.

Our ancestors celebrated the full moon when they looked up in the sky and the moon looked full, and that is good enough for me :uhhuhuh: . The moon will look full the night of the precise astronomical full moon, the night before, and the night after. So you actually have three days/nights in which to work full moon energy.

Then, of course there is the school of "closest convenient Saturday", but I really shouldn't go into that :p.

[labyrinth]

Thanks for the feedback on that. I probably overanalyze the astrological timing everytime I do this, but I will try taking the approach you mentioned and use more intuition when I decide when to work with the moon. True, the ancients did look up to the sky and know when the time was right which is probably what I should do, rather than study an astrological calendar.