Waxing and Waning: The Two Halves of the Month, and What Each Is For
Waxing means growing: the lit part is getting larger, night after night, from new moon to full. Waning means shrinking: from full back down to dark. That is the entire definition, and it splits the month into two halves that are genuinely good for different things.
Most people use the first half and ignore the second, which is roughly like using only the inhale.
How to tell which half you are in
Go outside and look. In the northern hemisphere, if the lit edge is on the right, the moon is waxing; if it is on the left, waning. A useful memory: a waxing moon makes the shape of a D, a waning one makes a C. In the southern hemisphere it is the other way round.
You do not need an app for this, and there is a reason to prefer the sky. Checking a phase on a screen is information; looking up is the beginning of noticing. People who look up start knowing roughly where they are in the month without checking, which is the point.
The waxing half — building
From the new moon to the full, the useful direction is outward: begin, act, ask, expand, tell someone. Energy that goes into starting things tends to find purchase here, and the shape of the sky agrees with what you are doing, which helps more than it should.
Practically, this is the half for the first phone call, the first draft, the visible action. If you have an intention set at the new moon, this is where it needs its small daily contact — not intensity, contact.
The failure mode of this half is scope. Two weeks of building enthusiasm reliably turns one intention into four, and four intentions is the same as none.
The waning half — releasing
From the full moon back down to dark, the useful direction reverses: finish, release, drop, rest. This is the half nearly everybody skips, because it looks like doing nothing and our instinct is that more effort is always available and always better.
It is not doing nothing. Ending things properly is work, and it is the specific work that makes the next beginning possible. The unfinished project, the commitment you have quietly resented for a year, the standing arrangement nobody has questioned — the waning half is when those are supposed to be dealt with, and they never are, which is why so many people feel crowded by their own lives.
The last two or three days before the new moon are the trough. Doing less then is not a failure of discipline. A cycle without a trough is a straight line, and straight lines end in exhaustion.
What this looks like in one actual month
New moon — name one thing
Write one intention, in specific language, somewhere you will physically see it. One, not a list.
Waxing — one small contact a day
Twenty minutes, one call, one page. Contact rather than intensity. Resist the urge to add a second intention around day six; that urge is boredom, not ambition.
Full moon — look at it honestly
Two minutes. Is this still what I want, and is the plan the right size? Shrink the plan freely. Do not shrink the want.
Waning — drop one thing on purpose
Something specific enough that someone else could tell whether you had done it. A recurring commitment, an account you keep checking, a conversation you have had eleven times.
Dark moon — do less, without apologising
Two or three days of deliberately reduced load. Schedule it before you need it, because after you need it you will not take it.
Wish & Witch runs this as a 28-day path — one intention, a morning and evening practice, and the release built into the second half of the cycle.
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Questions people ask
- How do I know if the moon is waxing or waning?
- Look at which side is lit. In the northern hemisphere, lit on the right means waxing (a D shape); lit on the left means waning (a C shape). The southern hemisphere is reversed. The moon is waxing for roughly the fortnight after a new moon and waning for the fortnight after a full one.
- How long does each half last?
- About fourteen and a half days each, since a full cycle runs roughly 29.5 days. The exact days shift each month, which is why a lunar month and a calendar month drift apart.
- Is the waning moon bad luck?
- No. It is treated as the wrong time to begin something outward, which is different. Endings, releases, rest and finishing are its work, and those are not lesser activities — they are the ones that make the next beginning possible.
- What can I do during the waning moon?
- Finish things. Close loops, end a commitment, clear the standing arrangement you have been carrying out of momentum, and take the last two or three days at deliberately reduced load.