The Patriarchy of Time: How We Lost Lunar Living.

Life Before Clocks and Calendars

Once upon a time, long before alarm clocks, tax seasons and Google Calendars, people lived by the moon. The waxing crescent told farmers it was time to plant. The full moon was for gathering, feasting and celebrating. The waning phases for rest, reflecting and releasing.

The lunar rhythm shaped everything. Agriculture, festivals, fertility, even women’s cycles (which were literally called “moon cycles”) moved with her 29-day flow. Time wasn’t about deadlines. It was about seasons, tides, and cycles. Life was slower, circular, and deeply connected.

Julius Caesar and the Solar Shift

In 46 BCE, Julius Caesar decided the old lunar calendar was too messy. Priests were stretching months to suit politics (classic), festivals were slipping out of season and Rome wanted order. So Caesar introduced the Julian Calendar, based on the sun: 365 days, 12 months, and a leap year every four years.

On paper, it was practical. But in truth, it was also a power move. By replacing cyclical, feminine lunar time with linear, masculine solar time, even the way we measured life became indoctrinated by patriarchy. Time was no longer guided by mystery, intuition and flow, it was pressed into order, productivity and empire-building. Whoever controls time, controls life.

From Julian to Gregorian

The Julian calendar wasn’t working for state and church though. Over centuries it drifted, throwing Christian days like Easter out of alignment with the seasons. By the 1500s, Pope Gregory XIII stepped in and created the Gregorian Calendar, the one we still use today.

It corrected the math, but it also locked us even more tightly into solar time. The Gregorian system shaped our modern world: workweeks, school schedules, tax seasons, holidays. Efficient, predictable… but deeply disconnected from the cyclical wisdom of nature.

Why Lunar Time Doesn’t Fit

Here’s the thing: lunar time never stopped. The moon keeps waxing and waning each solar year. A lunar year is about 354 days, roughly 11 days shorter than a solar year. That means the two calendars don’t line up neatly. Some years fit 12 full moons, others squeeze in a 13th, the so-called Blue Moon. Lunar time simply doesn’t conform into linear systems.

And our bodies remember this. Women still bleed in a 29-day rhythm. The tides still bow to lunar gravity. Plants still respond to waxing and waning light. The Gregorian calendar may have silenced her, but the moon has never stopped shining.

Remembering Lunar Living

Across cultures, the moon was more than a timekeeper, she was a goddess. The Greeks called her Selene, the Romans Luna, the Mesopotamians Sin (Nanna). She was fertility, renewal, wisdom and the sacred feminine. Women once gathered in moon lodges during their bleeds to rest and receive visions for their communities.

That’s why lunar living matters today. To remember that we are not machines. We are cyclical beings. We bloom, we rest, we spiral, we renew.

Out of my love for this way of living, I created a guide: Lunar Living. Inside, I share how to work with each moon phase, rituals and habits for each phases, what it means when the moon moves through the zodiac signs and how to track which house she lights up in your chart. I also go even deeper into the moon’s history across cultures and time, exploring how she has always shaped our lives. It’s the roadmap I wish I had when I first started re-aligning with lunar time.

“The Moon can only fill up once it becomes empty. And it can only shine in all its glory once it’s gone through its darkest expression.” — Carl Jung

Lunar Living

$31.00

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