← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 149/235
Disseminating Moon
What it is
The disseminating Moon is the sixth of Dane Rudhyar's eight lunation phases: the stretch when the Moon is 225° to 270° ahead of the Sun — or, counted the other way, from 135° to 90° behind it. It begins about three and a half days after the Full Moon and runs to the last quarter, about seven days after the Full. It opens at the waning sesquiquadrate (225°) and closes at the waning square.
The name is Rudhyar's own, from the Latin disseminare, to scatter seed, and it is a phase of astrology rather than of astronomy. In the sky the same Moon is part of the waning gibbous Moon, which astronomers count from the Full to the last quarter: still more than half lit, bulging on both sides, but shrinking. It rises later each evening, a little after dark at first and then towards midnight, and lingers in the morning sky after sunrise.
How it is worked out
Measure from the Sun forward, in the order of the signs, to the Moon. If the arc is between 225° and 270°, the Moon is disseminating. A Sun in Leo with the Moon in Aries (about 240° ahead) is a disseminating Moon; so is a Sun in Aries with the Moon in Sagittarius. Because the phase is a relation between the two lights, it is the same in every hemisphere and every house system.
Rudhyar's own example shows how sharp the boundaries can be. The commonly used chart for the United States (4 July 1776) has a Sun–Moon arc of about 224°, technically the last degree of the Full Moon phase; Rudhyar judged it so close to the line that he read the country as a disseminating type. A birth within a degree or two of a boundary is usually read with both phases in mind.
How it is read
Rudhyar read the second half of the lunation cycle as the turning of what had been built into meaning. At the Full Moon the form is seen whole; in the disseminating phase what has been seen is put into words and passed on. It is the phase of the teacher, the populariser, the person with a message: the experience of the cycle becomes something to share, demonstrate and spread among others. Michael Erlewine and Tracy Marks keep this tone — the "aha" moment in which an experience is understood well enough to be owned and taught.
For the person born in this phase, Rudhyar described "the ability to demonstrate to others what you have learned or envisioned, to disseminate ideas", to take part in social and religious movements, "to fight for what you see as the right, to be a crusader and a disciple"; and at the negative pole, to become lost in social or moral fights, or to slide into mental confusion or fanaticism. Later writers put the challenge more mildly as proselytising: forgetting that not everyone wants to be taught.
In the month's rhythm the disseminating days are read as a time to share results, give thanks, give back, explain and distribute what the cycle has produced, rather than to start anything new. Calendars that follow the astronomical names give the same days much the same tone under the heading "waning gibbous": sharing and gratitude.
In secondary progression, the progressed disseminating phase is read as a chapter of a few years in which a person's experience of the previous decade or so is ready to be put to use for others.
In a reading here
Natal readings here name Rudhyar's lunation type, so a birth in this phase is called disseminating there. Progression readings use the same eight phases for the progressed Moon; the Almanac's daily Moon uses the astronomical names, where the same Moon appears as waning gibbous.