Some members of our family are absolutely convinced that a full moon alters people’s behavior. They offer up changed behavior of other family members as proof. I don’t know if the moon alters behavior or not — a lot of people have believed it for a lot of years, so there may be something to it.
The influence of the moon and behavior has been called “The Lunar Effect” or “The Transylvania Effect.” The belief that the full moon causes mental disorders and strange behavior was widespread throughout Europe in the middle ages. The word “lunacy” meaning “insanity” comes from the Latin word for moon. If you’d like to check, you’ll find thousand of studies on the moon and behavior. If you look at them, you’ll notice that the results are inconsistent. Some studies show that a particular behavior will occur more often during the full moon and other studies show no relationship between behavior and the full moon. In my mind this inconsistency alone casts doubts on the theory that the full moon influences behavior — but if you’re someone that believes that it does, adjust accordingly around the full moon every month.
Anyhow, March’s full moon will occur in our area during the afternoon at 1:48 pm — about 13 hours before reaching perigee (the nearest it comes to the Earth during its orbit.) That will create a “supermoon,” a full moon that appears slightly larger than average. Supermoon isn’t a term used by astronomers, so whether a full moon counts as “super” depends of who’s making the call and how much “bigger” the moon appears to that person. A full moon occurs when the moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun and appears once every 29.53 days. Sometimes there are two full moons in one month. It’s possible to have a month without a full moon, but that doesn’t happen very often and can only happen in the month of February. The last time it happened was in February of 2018.
We’re still adjusting to the time change and experiencing the full moon tonight… that gives us three days to recover and prepare for Friday the 13th. Hang in there.
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