The Moon’s Mysterious Reach: Everything It Touches, from Tides to Werewolves

The moon is full as I write this and because I work in a restaurant on the 59th floor and with floor to ceiling windows, I spend a lot of my shift staring at the moon. The moon is a beautiful light that shines in the sky and it’s so interesting to think about all the ways it impacts the day to day that goes on on the planet.

It doesn't demand anything from us, but it never fails to arrive, glowing above rooftops and treetops like an old secret returning night after night. Sometimes golden, other times it’s red or pink, sometimes bone white, sometimes it’s not even there at all, but it’s truly always influencing things, and always reaching down to us here into the ocean, our dreams, and even into our myths.

For centuries, we’ve believed the moon shapes more than just the tides. It stirs sleep, deepens longing, tilts moods, and in the more shadowy corners of legend, even awakens beasts inside us.

So what does the moon affect?

Science, folklore, biology, and imagination have all tried to answer that, and now here I come to do the same.
Through tide pools and midnight gardens, hospital wards and wolf-haunted woods, I want to trace what the moon moves.

Tides: The Moon’s Most Obvious Influence

Okay, so this one of obviously the most well known. The moon’s gravitational pull is strongest on the Earth’s oceans. As it orbits, it draws water toward it, creating a sort of bulge…a high tide. On the opposite side of the planet, inertia causes a second bulge. As Earth rotates, different areas move through these bulges, giving us two high tides and two low tides each day.

It’s precise and predictable, but also kind of magical.

Fishermen have trusted it for centuries, so have oyster farmers, surfers, sailors, the list goes on and on. The moon is an ancient clock set to oceanic rhythm, but it doesn’t stop there.

Gardening by the Moon

Yes…this is a real thing, and of course, I know all about it. I work nights when means sometimes I get home at midnight and can’t sleep until 4am. You know who loves to be visited at 2am? My tomatoes.

Lunar gardening is rooted in the belief that different moon phases affect plant growth.

New Moon to Full Moon (waxing) is supposed to be best for planting above-ground crops.
Full Moon to New Moon (waning) is the best time for root vegetables and pruning of your plants.
The Full Moon is rumored to encourage rapid growth and flowering.

While research is limited out there on the interwebs, many biodynamic farmers swear by it. They say plants drink more deeply during full moons. Seeds, like us, respond to moonlight with subtle, internal movement. The moon pulls water under the ground as well as above, which brings more water up to the roots of the plants.

It’s just farming, tinged with a little faith of the cosmos.

Sleep, Dreams, and Restlessness

Ever felt off during a full moon?

Science might not fully back the folklore, but studies have found that people actually tend to sleep 20–30 minutes less, as they experience reduced melatonin levels. A lot of people (like myself) seem to take longer to fall asleep, and report more vivid dreams or nightmares.

I used to keep a dream journal after my trauma and found some strange patterns. My night terrors were always particularly bad around the full moon and the new moon. No clue why, I didn’t even note the moon phases, but the dates. One day out of sheer curiosity when a coworker told me he had nightmares with the new moon I went back to check and found a strange pattern I hadn’t thought about before.

A 2013 study in Current Biology found that even in windowless rooms, people’s sleep cycles subtly shifted during full moons, less deep sleep, lower melatonin, and more restlessness. The scientists didn’t claim the moon caused it, only that something ancient and biological still seems to respond to it.

Mood, Madness, and the Word “Lunacy”

The word lunatic comes from luna…Latin for moon.

In ancient Rome, philosophers believed the moon affected the brain. The lunar cycle was linked to madness, melancholy, and divine revelation, and the idea stuck, especially during the Middle Ages.

Hospitals once scheduled extra staff on full moons, police departments braced for unpredictable behavior, teachers noted restless students, dogs barked longer, babies were born faster, and fights broke out more.

Scientific studies are mixed. Some show a slight increase in ER visits or psychiatric episodes during full moons, others don’t. But belief has never wavered. The moon seems to light up something deep and primal in us and stir a bit of madness.
As I mentioned, I work in a restaurant, and I can assure you that there’s a direct correlation to odd people and the full moon.

Because sometimes it’s not about what the data says, it’s about what we feel.

Bonus Read:

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Romance, Love, and Lunar Longing

The moon has long been a symbol of love…specifically, longing.

In poetry, the full moon is often a stand-in for a distant lover, a secret wish, or a shared night sky when two people are apart and the screen panes to each other both staring longingly at it.

In astrology, the moon rules our emotional world, our instincts, our reactions, and our inner child. That’s why full moons are often seen as peaks of passion, illumination, and even breakups. Lovers walk under moonlight not just for ambiance, but because it feels like something ancient is watching and maybe even approving, illuminating what the heart already knows. That they’re both perfect for one another.

Even Shakespeare called the moon "the sovereign mistress of true melancholy." He knew what I’m talking about.

Lunar Eclipses and Spiritual Beliefs

Eclipses are the moon at its most mysterious, when it steps into the Earth’s shadow and turns blood red.

To ancient cultures, eclipses were omens: the Maya believed they foretold disasters, the Chinese thought a dragon was swallowing the moon, and some Indigenous American tribes saw it as a time for quiet reflection, when the natural order paused.

Today, many spiritual practitioners still consider eclipses sacred. Some meditate. Others fast. A few simply listen, because sometimes, the moon doesn’t speak in words, but in absence.

Now we enter legend, because why not?

The myth of the werewolf (a person who transforms under the full moon) dates back to Ancient Greece. Lycaon, cursed by the gods, was turned into a wolf for serving human flesh. In medieval Europe, stories of men transforming into beasts circulated widely, especially during periods of full moonlight and plague.

Why the full moon?

Because it’s the most primal stage of the moon’s cycle, a time when beasts might wake and boundaries blur. Even now, pop culture keeps the werewolf myth alive. From horror films to Harry Potter, we still imagine that something ancient and animalistic howls beneath our own skin.

And sometimes, if you’ve ever looked in the mirror on a full moon night and felt a little wilder…you might believe it, too.

The Moon’s Quiet Reign

The moon doesn’t just pull water, it pulls stories, and even time.

The moon is woven into menstrual cycles (the word “menses” shares roots with mensis, Latin for month), religious calendars (like Ramadan and Easter), rituals, spells, and intention-setting circles, and even late-night walks and whispered promises.

It’s become a symbol for everything cyclical: birth, death, renewal. Wax, wane, wax again. And that makes it more than a rock in orbit, it’s our most poetic satellite.

Levitating 3D Moon Lamp
Why not bring the moon inside? This levitating moon lamp floats mid-air, glowing like a full moon at your fingertips. It’s a beautiful, calming gift for moon lovers, dreamers, and anyone in need of a little lunar magic!!

We aren’t the only ones the moon pulls.
In forests, in oceans, in deserts, and reefs…life rises and falls in quiet obedience to that soft silver signal in the sky.

While we stare up at it from our porches, wondering if it knows our secrets, animals already understand it. They live by its phases, time their rituals to its glow, and molt, migrate, or mate on its whispered cue.

Along salt-stung shorelines, fiddler crabs and mangrove crabs emerge and shed their shells…always, with the full moon.

They’ve evolved this way: waiting for the moon to lift the tide just high enough, masking their vulnerability from predators in a churn of salt and shadow. They molt, soft and defenseless, trusting that the water will cover them. And the moon delivers.

This isn’t instinct, it’s choreography baked into the blood of their species, passed down generation to generation.

In the Great Barrier Reef, once a year, the moon rises full and watchful, and every coral polyp releases its genetic material at once, turning the sea into a blushing cloud of possibility.

It’s a lunar love letter.
A single signal passed through an entire underwater city, time to begin the next generation of life. We call it spawning, they call it creation, potato, potato (just realized it’s spelled the same way, so hopefully you read it with the accent).

There’s a fish called the midshipman, and during full moons, it hums. No really not a metaphor here, it hums, vibrating its swim bladder in long, lonely notes to draw in a mate. Under a full moon, thousands of them sing together beneath piers and rocks in a haunting submarine chorus.

And then there are the grunion fish, who time their entire romantic lives to lunar tides. As waves lap up the sand, they rush ashore under the moon’s gaze, wriggling onto beaches, mating in the dark, and disappearing before sunrise. Gone before the world even knows they were there.

Migratory birds use the moon as a compass, especially during long nighttime flights. Under moonlit skies, they stay on course. During new moons (when the skies are darkest) they stray more often.

It’s the same moon we see, but to them, it’s a map. Some scientists believe birds also sing more under full moons, their voices echoing through canopies lit like quiet theatres.

Even prey animals change their behavior.
Rabbits, deer, and field mice become more cautious during full moons, pausing, hiding, waiting. When the world is too bright, they know they’re too visible. To us, a moonlit night is romantic, but to them, it’s dangerous.

The moon doesn’t just guide tides. It trains coral to bloom, coaxes crabs from their shells, calls fish to shore, and lights migration paths in silence, and still, we try to chart its influence like a scientist with a ruler.
But the truth is, the moon governs more than we can measure.

And Still, The Moon Reaches Further…

It’s not just tides and dreams and ancient wolves, the moon’s pull is wider, quieter, and stranger than you might ever know.

It brushes across menstrual cycles, syncing some bodies to its rhythm like secret clocks.
It shows up in delivery rooms, coaxing babies into the world with a gravitational whisper.
Some believe it nudges tectonic plates, stirring the edges of quakes and volcanoes when the world is already tense.
It may even shift the tides of our emotions, inspire art, or spark full-body cravings to rest, create, or completely collapse.

Holistic healers time their detoxes to it, traders whisper about stock market dips and full moons, and in certain corners of the world, people still cut their hair or plant their seeds according to its glow.

The moon doesn’t ask for belief, it just pulls, and we all respond…whether we know it or not.