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I've been ruminating on this for a while and I'd like to share. Finding a way to cover a great many different aspects of the art without getting stuck on something or stagnating can be a problem so I developed a method to use as a guide. I hope this is of interest.
The moon has a very nice cycle from full through the waning crescents into the 'darkness' or absence of the new moon back through waxing up through crescents back to full. I'm sure all are aware of this but we city folk tend to find ourselves removed from the influence of the night sky (even though the moon is visible in the daytime!). The ancients so revered the night sky that they postulated systems of divination, etc for all manner of things being driven by the signs and events of the night sky.
The actual science of the moon and the interaction of the sun, earth and moon are fun and interesting topics but are not the topic I wish to mention but do encourage one and all to delve as one desires.
I propose to use the moon as a mundane time piece and to modulate ones training based on the phase of the moon. While it certainly seems overly romantic and possibly silly I hope to persuade that such can be quite practical and a useful tool to enrich and broaden ones training.
There are at least 8 distinct phases of the moon that are easily discernable by simple inspection that anyone can do. There can be finer gradations to perhaps 16 phases but it takes a trained eye to make such subtle distinctions. This
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11-04-2009 12:26 PM 
