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Only two moments in a lunar month carry a name of their own in the Greek material. One is the new Moon and the other is the full, and the second of them happens today at 16:49 UTC, with the Moon at three degrees of Aries and the Sun at three degrees of Libra, exactly across from each other. The word for either moment is syzygy, from the Greek for yoked together.
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Syzygy covers the conjunction and the opposition of the lights and nothing else. No other configuration qualifies, because the term is about the two of them standing in a line with the Earth, whether on the same side of it or on opposite sides. Everything visible tonight follows from that one fact. She rises as the Sun sets. Her whole face is lit. She is as far from him in longitude as she gets all month.
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The word did real work in judgment. Ptolemy uses the syzygy immediately preceding a birth as a reference point, on the reasoning that a chart is not an isolated instant but a moment sitting inside a cycle that had already begun. The Hellenistic writers generally treat the preceding new or full Moon as ordinary equipment rather than as an ornament. She entered Aries at 10:24 UTC this morning after a short void, and by tonight she has reached seven degrees. Aries gives her nothing of her own: it is Mars’s house and the Sun’s exaltation. She is brighter now than she will be for another month, and she holds no title in the sign she is doing it from.
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