The Major Lunar Standstill of 2025

Have you noticed how huge the Moon looks in these full Moon cycles?

There’s a reason — and it’s more than an illusion.

We are entering a rare celestial event known as the Major Lunar Standstill —a rhythm that unfolds only once every 18.6 years.

During this time, the Moon’s orbit reaches its greatest tilt, rising and setting at its most extreme points on the horizon —even beyond the Sun’s path at the solstices. That’s why the Moon seems unusually low, bright, and incredibly large right now.

The Major Lunar Standstill is not a single night — it’s a season in the Moon’s cycle.

The current standstill began in mid-2024 and will continue through mid-2026, with its peak intensity — when the Moon reaches its most extreme rise and set points —occurring between late 2024 and mid-2025.

The previous standstill peaked in 2006, the one we are living now spans 2024–2026, and the next will arrive around 2043–2044 —each a heartbeat in the Moon’s long rhythm through time.

During this standstill season, the Moon will also draw especially close to Earth. Her closest approach will occur on November 5, 2025, when she will be only about 356,800 km (221,700 miles) away. This will be the smallest distance of the year and a true supermoon moment. 

At that time, the Moon will appear roughly 14 percent larger and nearly 30 percent brighter than when she is farthest from us. So when you look up at the sky on that night, know that she is closer to Earth — and to you —than at any other time in the year.

Where Science Meets Spirit

The ancients knew this rhythm well. At places like Callanish in Scotland — the Temple of the Moon —massive stone circles were built at an ideal latitude to honor this very cycle.

Across the landscape, 24 stone circles are scattered like notes in a cosmic symphony, each aligned to the Moon’s northernmost or southernmost standstill positions — forming a celestial clock, a prehistoric calendar, an ancient observatory in stone.

Callanish was placed precisely where Earth’s telluric currents surge and weave.

The ancient Lewisian gneiss stones — among the oldest rocks on Earth — contain quartz, feldspar, and mica, minerals known to interact with electromagnetic energy. When under pressure or subtle vibration, quartz produces a measurable electrical charge — the piezoelectric effect — allowing these stones to naturally absorb, store, and transmit energy from the surrounding land. In this way, the circle becomes a kind of resonant interface between the Earth’s magnetic field and the bioelectromagnetic field of the human body.

Here, where the currents of Earth and sky intertwine, the Veil grows thin — perception widens, and the senses extend beyond the physical, inviting us to step gently into the dialogue between stone, stars, and Soul. 

At the center stands a 15.7-foot monolith, a sentinel of timeless awareness once crowned by a cairn aligned to the East —the direction of dawn, enlightenment, and rebirth.

A short walk from the central circle leads to Cnoc Fillibhir Bheag (Callanish III), where the deeper magic of Callanish reveals itself.

Beyond the stones lies the silhouette of a reclining mountain range known as Sleeping Beauty — a distinctive ridge on the Isle of Lewis that forms the profile of a sleeping woman when viewed from the stones. Locals call her Cailleach na Mointeach — the Old Woman of the Moors. From certain vantage points, she appears pregnant, her belly rising from the

land — a living symbol of Earth’s fertility and the eternal cycles of life.

The Sleeping Beauty — Cailleach na Mointeach

The Sacred Dance

Every 18.6 years, during the Major Lunar Standstill, the Moon performs a sacred act upon the horizon — a cosmic birth remembered in stone and sky.

From the ridge of the Sleeping Beauty, whose form mirrors a pregnant woman resting in the embrace of the Earth, the Moon appears to rise from her womb, newly born from the body of the land. She then glides low across the horizon, tracing the Sleeping Beauty’s heart woumb and arms, and from the vantage of Callanish III, seems to caress each standing stone in turn —one after another, in a luminous procession —before finally disappearing through the great monolith of Callanish I, as if returning once more into the Mother’s embrace, fertilizing the land with celestial light.

In this divine choreography, heaven and earth become one pulse, and the ancient stones bear witness to the timeless truth: that creation is a birth that never ends, and the feminine current of life continues to rise through all things.

The Moon disappears behind the hill, then reemerges through the stones of Callanish I,

a vision that once marked the union of sky and Earth, the re-awakening of the sacred feminine principle, and the return of cosmic balance.

To those who observed it, this was more than celestial mechanics —it was a ceremony of remembrance.

Even now, it reminds us that the forces of polarity — light and dark, masculine and

feminine — move as one living rhythm.

June 11, 2006, during the 18.6-year Major Lunar Standstill Cycle.

Today, as this standstill unfolds again, we are crossing another threshold —the shift from Pisces to Aquarius, from the Age of Faith to the Age of Knowing, from separation to resonance.

In the Dvāpara Yuga — the Age of Energy —we are remembering what the ancients lived by: that science and spirit are not separate but two languages of the same living universe.

So when you look up at the Moon tonight and feel her enormous presence, remember — you are not just witnessing a rare orbit. You are feeling the heartbeat of the

cosmos — awakening within you.

The Moon’s standstill is not just an astronomical event — it is an initiation.

“The Moon stands still… and so can we.”