The Goddess Dances By Moonlight

Imagine, for a moment, what it would have been like for the first sentient humans to look up at the night sky and to see the moon charting its way across the heavens. It must have been one of the great mysteries of existence, worthy of secrets and rituals, and later to become an object of worship and suspicion.

Across the centuries that separate then from now, we have believed many things about the moon. The Egyptians saw the moon as the god Thoth, who was responsible for giving humans the gift of writing. The Greeks worshiped the moon as the personification of Selene, and she was the sister of Helios, the sun god; and then later as Artemis, who was the virgin goddess of the hunt, as well as of healing and childbirth. To the Romans she was Diana, and she was as virginal and wild as Artemis, her Greek forebear. And to the Babylonians, the moon was Sin [1], and he was the god of wisdom, and eventually the creator of all things.

In those centuries and millenia, the moon has been a creator, protector, benefactor and guardian. But the moon also has a dark side [2], both literal and figurative, and the presence of a full moon hasn’t always been thought of as a blessing.

“Is it a full moon tonight?” someone asks, hanging up a phone.

“I don’t think so,” you reply. “Why?”

“Because that’s the third customer who’s yelled at me today for no good reason. It has to be a full moon!”

The Dark Side Of The Moon

Exactly at what point in human history it became common to believe that a full moon could affect our emotions and sanity remains a mystery that may well endure for the rest of time.

We know that we owe the English word ‘lunatic’ [3] to such a belief, and we can trace the word back through French and ultimately to Latin, where it was derived from the worship of the Roman goddess Luna, whose embodiment as the moon was thought to have an influence on mental stability.

We also know that in the folklore of recent centuries the full moon became invested with the power to force shapeshifters - people cursed to become creatures such as werewolves - to transform themselves into hideous monsters hungry for human blood, the ultimate embodiment of the loss of reason and sanity.

And we know that for hundreds of years a growing number of mystics, natural philosophers, scientists, and psychiatric professionals alike have searched for proof of a correlation between the full moon and the extremes of human behavior it has been thought to influence.

In Dark And Bright Of Moonlit Night

Of all the many and varied things we have believed about the moon, the conviction that it wields a sinister effect when it shines at its brightest has lingered longer than any other, and has in fact thrived to this very day.

And yet the question remains: is there any real justification to the belief that during the full moon suicide rates increase, assaults rise, hospital and psychiatric admissions soar, accidents abound, and people generally become more aggressive and unpredictable? Or is this simply a modern belief that hearkens back to a more superstitious time?

In an attempt to answer that very question, a number of studies have been conducted by researchers on either side of the ‘lunar effect’ debate, and reading any one of them, and the wealth of supporting statistics they include, you would be forgiven for believing largely whatever the author intended.

It’s only been in the last 10 or so years, however, that an effort has been made to go back to many of these studies to look at the methods they used and whether or not the results they produced can be considered reliable.

And the outcome? It seems that the most convincing arguments tell us that the full moon doesn’t have a noticeable effect on how we behave.

When The Full Moon Fades

Debate will almost certainly continue, and the future will hold more research studies, and even more contentious results.

But until some link between the full moon and our behavior can be demonstrated, we can explain the common belief in the ‘lunar effect’ in terms of how people tend to notice certain types of patterns.

In simple terms, it’s not a matter of the full moon making people behave in strange ways, but rather the fact that we notice these things more when the moon is full. Or, to put it another way, when we have a full moon we have an explanation for the unexpected or antisocial actions of others, and because we can match the one against the other, the fact that it’s a full moon feels significant. During other phases of the moon, we’d simply say, “Wow, that customer was a complete pain in the ass more annoying than Paris Hilton a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate that I love being yelled at!”, and we’d pretty much leave it at that.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, we only have a couple of weeks until the next full moon, and I need to make sure my health insurance is up to date and that I’ve replenished my supplies of shaving cream for the inevitable bout of hairiness…

Further reading

• Moonstruck! Does The Full Moon Influence Behavior?
• Full moon and lunar effects

Footnotes:

1.	Not the same connotation as the word ’sin’ implies in English today.
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2.	Intriguingly and tragically enough, the first two women to be tried and executed for witchcraft [4] by the Inquisition were members of a Milanese cult devoted to the worship of Madonna Oriente, a moon goddess.
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3.	Which first appeared in Old English as the word ‘lunatyke’ at some point during the 14th century, and literally meant ‘moon-driven’ or ‘moonstruck’.
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4.	Although, the Inquisition had sentenced many to death for other forms of heresy before it turned its attention to witchcraft.
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