This blog post was originally published on December 07, 2019.
Since I was a young child, I have heard countless people utter the phrase “It Must Be A Full Moon”, when referring to weird and strange happenings. In Roman mythology, the moon was depicted as a female, as it was thought to possess the characteristic of being able to become pregnant and give birth. Luna is the moon Goddess, who was thought to have given birth to a new moon each month. Luna’s name is the prefix to lunacy - the state of being a lunatic (a mentally ill person).
Through its gravitational force, the moon is capable of controlling the tides by pulling the water in the oceans upwards, making the oceans bulge, which creates high tides in the areas of Earth facing the Moon and on the opposite side, and at the same time, in other parts of the planet, the ocean water drains away to fill these bulges, creating low tides. Some proponents, of the lunar effects, believe the pulling of water is also experienced in the human body, as it is composed of approximately 60 percent of water. This supposed pulling of water, in the human body, has created urban myths such as: increased violent or aggressive episodes among people suffering from schizophrenia; increased blood circulation helping to cleanse organs including the liver and the kidneys; and lowered rates of mortality, for heart surgery patients, on evenings when there was a full Moon.
