#phases

"Venus appears largest when in the crescent phase." Natural History. December 1949.

being born under a certain moon phase shows how you feel things, handle emotions, and go through life. it helps explain how you grow, deal with change, and what kinds of moments shape you the most 🌜

to find out which moon phase you were born under, here’s a simple way: first, get your birth date, then use a moon phase calculator — search for “moon phase on [your birth date]” or use sites like “yourmoonphase.com”

🌑 new moon

people born under a new moon feel like fresh starts in human form. they often carry this innocent, curious energy, like they’re always beginning something new or stepping into unknown territory. they’re instinctive, emotionally driven, and might not always know why they feel something. they just do. life tends to push them into situations where they have to learn by doing, even if it means starting from scratch over and over. they’re wired for initiation: first loves, bold ideas, trailblazing paths. emotionally, they might be more private or internal, but there’s a quiet intensity that pulls people in. they’re here to create beginnings, not follow what already exists.

🌒 waxing crescent

these people are dreamers, but with an edge. they’re fueled by the tension between “where i am” and “where i wanna be” so there’s always this soft urgency in their vibe. they’re full of potential and lowkey obsessed with growth: learning, improving, becoming. life often puts them in roles where they need to believe in something bigger than themselves. their emotional world is hopeful, but sometimes scattered; they crave reassurance but also space to figure things out. people are drawn to their idealism and quiet ambition, even if they don’t always shout it. the transformative energy is strong here. they’re not who they used to be, and they won’t stay who they are now for long.

🌓 first quarter

first quarter moon people come with a built-in fight. they live in the tension between what they feel and what they’re doing, so they’re constantly being pushed to act. they often come off strong-willed, passionate, and restless. they want change, and they want it now. life throws them challenges early on to build resilience and grit. emotionally, they can feel torn, caught between comfort and risk, but they’re very brave and keep showing up anyway. they’re the ones who take leaps even when they’re scared. people admire their boldness, though they might not always get how sensitive they really are underneath.

🌔 waxing gibbous

born under a waxing gibbous moon, these people have this deep internal pressure to perfect things. not in a superficial way, but like, “how can i make this better, deeper, truer?” they have a natural gift for seeing what’s almost there, and that makes them amazing at building, fixing, or refining. they’re emotionally deep, super reflective, and often get stuck in cycles of self-improvement. life tends to test their patience and faith in themselves. they’re the ones always searching for meaning behind the mess. people find their wisdom and attentiveness magnetic. they give “i see you” energy, and it’s powerful without being loud.

🌕 full moon

full moon people are walking contradictions, and they own it. they carry both light and shadow so visibly that it’s impossible not to notice them. emotionally expressive and highly relational, they often learn who they are through mirrors: friends, partners, and even enemies. life brings them intense relationships and moments of truth that push them to integrate their inner world with their outer reality. they might struggle with clarity in their early life but eventually become truth-seekers, bridge-builders, or natural therapists. people are drawn to their raw honesty and emotional insight, even when it’s messy. their presence is powerful. they reflect what others are scared to see in themselves.

🌖 waning gibbous

these souls are wise and generous, often feeling older than their age. they’re here to teach, not necessarily as formal teachers, but through storytelling, insight, and emotional truth. they’ve seen some sht, and they turn that pain into something useful. emotionally, they’re deep but not overly dramatic. they’ve already worked through a lot and want to help others do the same. life often puts them in supportive or mentorship roles, and people naturally open up around them. they might struggle with being “too available” or drained, but their heart is huge. their vibe is calm, knowing, and comforting, like someone who’s been through the fire and made it out.

🌗 last quarter

last quarter moon people have major “old soul” energy. they’re not here to follow the crowd; they’re here to break cycles, release what no longer works, and rewrite emotional patterns that go back generations. they often go through deep internal transformations and might feel like they don’t quite fit in with others. life pushes them to let go, forgive, or detach from things that used to define them. emotionally, they can seem distant or hard to read, but there’s a storm of insight under the surface. they carry wisdom through silence, and their energy is felt more than heard. people find them mysterious, thoughtful, and deeply impactful, like they’re always on the edge of something bigger.

🌘 waning crescent

born under the dark moon, these people are here to wrap things up, not just in their own life, but karmically. they might feel like they’ve lived many lives in one and tend to carry heavy emotional wisdom. they’re dreamy, introspective, and often need solitude to process their feelings. life gives them spiritual themes early on, like grief, endings, intuition, and they come out of it with a powerful softness. emotionally, they are like mystics or artists; they don’t always explain their feelings in words but express them through energy, creativity, or presence. people are drawn to their quiet depth and the sense that they “just know” things. they’re not here to chase attention, but instead they’re here to find peace.

These are not “Normal” and “Girl”. “Normal” is key to any reading of her stated aspirations to Girl-hood; but the title of “Girl” has two implications, which must be discussed separately. “Girl” of course relates to gender, but it also relates to youth.

Buffy Summers wants to be a Normal Girl: She wants to be the girl she was before she was the slayer. Before her life was a war, before she was doomed to an early death. But also: Before her parents got divorced. Before she lost her sense of safety. What she wants is a return to the comfort of childhood - given her life, that’s pretty understandable, but its a pretty consistent pattern for her: she comforts herself by regressing to when she was last happy. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to see Angel as a replacement for her father - it’s basically a cliche: a girl with abandonment issues around her father ending up with a much older man who makes her feel safe... come on, you see this too, right? And while the show mostly forgets about it in later seasons, Seasons 1 and 2 are very conscious of their age gap in their scenes together, and not just in a 'cool older vampire' way. But then, her relationships with Riley and Spike are comforting regressions to her relationship with Angel, maybe moreso than relationships in their own right. (Arguably, her relationship with Spike in S7 is a regression to her relationship with Spike in S6; in her self-destructive spiralling, she comforts herself by regressing to her self-destructive spiral a year earlier, which is an impressive turnaround time). Aside from all this, there’s her general tendency to adopt a consciously childish demeanour as a defence mechanism; she isn’t just trying to be A Normal Girl, but also Just A Girl, i.e. an innocent, a child.

But then, of course, there’s the other side of wanting to be a Normal Girl: the gender stuff. Buffy Summers wants to be a Normal Girl, i.e. she wants to experience normal girlhood/femininity, but also, she feels fundamentally alienated from it. She does not feel like a Girl in the Normal fashion.

Phases, being an episode all about gender, is an interesting place to look for this. In self defence class, she struggles to pretend to be, in her own words, a ‘meek little girly girl’. In this episode, Buffy strongly associates the violence of the werewolf with masculinity, but after Larry (or rather, the hyper-masculine facade he adopts to mask his queerness), the student that most fits the team’s profile of a potential Werewolf is Buffy herself. Regardless of her image of herself, from the outside she is intimidating, potentially violent, and disregards the rules of society – not just her slayer strength, but her behaviour as a slayer, are noted as distinctively Werewolf-y, which in this episode, means Masculine. But while being a slayer is, as Kendra says, what she is, being a girl - at least, a Normal Girl, a ‘meek little girly girl’ as she puts it - is something she does, a role she has to consciously perform.

In this light, there are two ways to read her desire to be a Normal Girl. One is that it is a sincere desire to be a Girl in ways that she has, by her slayer nature, been denied. She genuinely desires the femininity that she feels alienated from, but she has to make more of an effort than most girls to perform it. She does not easily fit into traditional ideas of Girlhood, and may need to expand that concept to include forms of Girlhood that are not Normal.

The other reading is that she wants to be (or be seen as) Normal, and part of this performance of Normality, for her, is a performance of Girlhood. Buffy Summers doesn’t want to disappoint anyone, she wants to be who her parents and friends expect her to be, and she always wants to maintain tight control of how people see her – and if her feelings don’t fit with the way she wants to be perceived, well, that’s what repression is for. (Hell, this is a girl who still, as of the end of the series, has not acknowledged her attraction to Faith. Her skills at repression are truly unmatched, even by Sunnydale standards.) In this reading, her expressed desire to be a Normal Girl is not an authentic expression of her true self, but a wish to not be who she truly is, to instead be Normal, which means being Girl.