On August 11, walking home from a party, Bryan and I marveled at the full supermoon, a giant golden orb which seemed to take over the sky.

It got me to thinking about how the moon affects our behavior – alone and collectively.

The received wisdom is that during full moons, we can expect a major increase in ‘loony’ behavior – violence, suicides, psychiatric disturbances and crime – and also a major increase in psychic ability.

Police steel themselves for a higher crime rate; psychiatric hospitals, for higher admission rates; hospitals, for a higher number of births; and teachers, for more unruly classrooms.

In fact, ‘lunar’ is where the word ‘loony’ comes from.

The general belief has been that any lunar influence is due to the gravitational effect of the sun and moon, as it is with the tides, and since we’re 75 per cent water, the moon affects us just as it does the ocean.

But the truth about lunar effects and their cause is real, but far more nuanced.

The most likely explanation is a subtle geomagnetic effect – some influence of the moon on the sun’s well-established geomagnetic effect on the earth.

The sun is a furious star. This huge ball of gases, with a surface temperature of around 6000 °C, is encased by strong magnetic fields in the outer solar atmosphere – a recipe for periodic explosions, as the gases build up and magnetic fields intersect on the sun’s surface.

At unpredictable moments, it hurls solar flares, gaseous explosions with the energy of 40 billion atomic bombs, likely caused by the ripping apart and reconnection of strong magnetic fields.

Electrified bullets of high–energy protons are picked up by the solar wind and flung towards earth at speeds of more than 5 million miles per hour, showering our atmosphere with radiation and ionization.

Storms in space transfer some of the energy of the solar wind to the earth’s magnetosphere, causing wild fluctuations of direction and speed in the particles in the geomagnetic field (GMF) that encases the earth.

This activity has a profound effect on all living things, particularly, in humans, the two major electrical centers of the body: the heart and the brain. During lots of solar activity, heart attacks increase, psychiatric disturbances increase, epileptic fits increase. We get energetically destabilized.

But there’s also evidence that our psychic ability increases during moments of geomagnetic calm.

During a full moon, the earth sits between the moon and the sun so that both enter earth’s GMF; during a new moon, the moon sits between the sun and the earth and is furthest away from our GMF.

It’s likely that the moon’s placement actually impedes or amplifies the geomagnetic pull of the sun and the earth’s GMF, making it stronger or weaker. It’s also wise to remember that the lunar synodic month (29.5 days) is approximately the same length of time as the full rotation of the sun.

Stanford University geophysicist Anthony Fraser-Smith has showed a relationship between the moon and the earth’s GMF during lunar eclipses. And studies of lunar samples brought back from the Apollo flights show evidence of strong magnetic fields in the rock.

Researchers believe that this material could cause a magnetic shift when the moon passes through the earth’s geomagnetic ‘tail.’

Dr Dean Radin, chief scientist of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, has conducted a great deal of research into the impact of the moon on psychic ability.

When he was working at the University of Nevada, Radin was ideally placed to examine whether payouts at a Las Vegas casino tracked any lunar cycle and whether this cycle appeared to influence the earth’s GMF.

In his research, he analyzed payouts from roulette machines, keno, blackjack, craps, slot machines and a combination of all five games.

First, he demonstrated a relationship between the earth’s GMF and the lunar cycle. At times of a new moon or a full moon, the earth’s GMF was at its quietest.

He then analyzed casino data during 50 lunar cycles to determine whether the highest payouts happened during days of geomagnetic calm and full moons and discovered a significant increase. Payout percentages were at their highest (78.5 per cent) during full moons, and at their lowest a week before and after the new moon.

On average, gamblers of all games received a return of $78.50 for every dollar they spent gambling on all five games.

“We found that the peak average payout rate for blackjack occurred three days before the full moon, for craps three days after the full moon, for keno one day after the full moon, and for roulette one day before the full moon,” Radin says.

For slot-machine winnings, the highest payouts occurred precisely at the time of the full moon.

Over four years, four of the six jackpots occurred within one day of the full moon.

“Gambling on or near days of the full moon, and by avoiding the casino on or near days of the new moon, over the long term, gamblers may be able to boost their payout percentage by about 2 per cent,” Radin concluded.

But this same effect did not occur when full moons occurred during a great deal of solar geomagnetic activity, such as occurs during solar flares. When Radin examined lottery winnings in years when the GMF was high during times of full moons, the winnings were not at their highest.

Russian research also shows a definite relationship between a calm GMF and higher payouts.

One other fascinating bit of evidence about the moon and our psychic ability concerns the effect of the moon’s cycles on the stock market. The Technical Securities Analysts Association of San Francisco gathered copious evidence showing that financial boom and bust crises follow a 56-year cycle, which closely correlates with the cycles of the sun and moon.

As it’s well known that a collective mob mentality (from buying frenzy to bearish hoarding) governs these boom-and-bust cycles, the TSAA authors argue that this cycle follows a predictable cycle of the moon and sun.

As it turns out, the angles (from 0–180 degrees) between the sun and moon also follow a cycle, repeating . . . every 56 solar years.

Yet more evidence that we are part of one giant intergalactic superorganism.

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Interested in finding out more about how you are affected by planetary, solar, lunar and other kinds of geomagnetic forces? check out EARTH ENERGIES, my 78-page downloadable abridged core course from Living the Field.