moon (Urantia’s)

176:0.2In or­der to avoid the crowds pass­ing along the Kidron val­ley to­ward Geth­sem­ane, Je­sus and his as­so­ciates were minded to climb up the west­ern slope of Oli­vet for a short dis­tance and then fol­low a trail over to their pri­vate camp near Geth­sem­ane lo­cated a short dis­tance above the pub­lic camp­ing ground. As they turned to leave the road lead­ing on to Beth­any, they ob­served the tem­ple, glo­ri­fied by the rays of the set­ting sun; and while they tar­ried on the mount, they saw the lights of the city ap­pear and be­held the beauty of the il­lu­mi­nated tem­ple; and there, un­der the mel­low light of the full moon, Je­sus and the twelve sat down. The Mas­ter talked with them, and pres­ently Na­than­iel asked this ques­tion: “Tell us, Mas­ter, how shall we know when these events are about to come to pass?”

57:7.41,500,000,000 years ago the earth was two thirds its pres­ent size, while the moon was near­ing its pres­ent mass. Earth’s rapid gain over the moon in size en­abled it to be­gin the slow rob­bery of the lit­tle at­mo­sphere which its satel­lite orig­i­nally had.

49:2.13Be­ings such as the Uran­tia races are clas­si­fied as mid-breathers; you rep­re­sent the av­er­age or typ­i­cal breath­ing or­der of mor­tal ex­is­tence. If in­tel­li­gent crea­tures should ex­ist on a planet with an at­mo­sphere sim­i­lar to that of your near neigh­bor, Venus, they would be­long to the super­breather group, while those in­hab­it­ing a planet with an at­mo­sphere as thin as that of your outer neigh­bor, Mars, would be de­nom­i­nated sub­breathers.

64:4.13These early Ne­an­derthalers could hardly be called sun wor­shipers. They rather lived in fear of the dark; they had a mor­tal dread of night­fall. As long as the moon shone a lit­tle, they man­aged to get along, but in the dark of the moon they grew pan­icky and be­gan the sac­ri­fice of their best spec­i­mens of man­hood and wom­an­hood in an ef­fort to in­duce the moon again to shine. The sun, they early learned, would reg­u­larly re­turn, but the moon they con­jec­tured only re­turned be­cause they sac­ri­ficed their fel­low tribes­men. As the race ad­vanced, the ob­ject and pur­pose of sac­ri­fice pro­gres­sively changed, but the of­fer­ing of hu­man sac­ri­fice as a part of re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial long per­sisted.

66:7.17The time mea­sure­ment of these days was the lu­nar month, this pe­riod be­ing reck­oned as twenty-eight days. That, with the ex­cep­tion of day and night, was the only time reck­on­ing known to the early peo­ples. The seven-day week was in­tro­duced by the Dala­ma­tia teach­ers and grew out of the fact that seven was one fourth of twenty-eight. The sig­nif­i­cance of the num­ber seven in the super­uni­verse un­doubt­edly af­forded them op­por­tu­nity to in­tro­duce a spir­i­tual re­minder into the com­mon reck­on­ing of time. But there is no nat­u­ral ori­gin for the weekly pe­riod.

57:6.2The plan­ets near­est the sun were the first to have their rev­o­lu­tions slowed down by tidal fric­tion. Such grav­i­ta­tional in­flu­ences also con­tribute to the sta­bi­liza­tion of plan­e­tary or­bits while act­ing as a brake on the rate of plan­e­tary-ax­ial rev­o­lu­tion, caus­ing a planet to re­volve ever slower un­til ax­ial rev­o­lu­tion ceases, leav­ing one hemi­sphere of the planet al­ways turned to­ward the sun or larger body, as is il­lus­trated by the planet Mer­cury and by the moon, which al­ways turns the same face to­ward Uran­tia.

83:4.5Lucky days were sought out, Thurs­day be­ing most fa­vor­ably re­garded, and wed­dings cel­e­brated at the full of the moon were thought to be ex­cep­tion­ally for­tu­nate. It was the cus­tom of many Near East­ern peo­ples to throw grain upon the new­ly­weds; this was a mag­i­cal rite which was sup­posed to in­sure fe­cun­dity. Cer­tain Ori­en­tal peo­ples used rice for this pur­pose.

57:6.3When the tidal fric­tions of the moon and the earth be­come equal­ized, the earth will al­ways turn the same hemi­sphere to­ward the moon, and the day and month will be anal­o­gous—in length about forty-seven days. When such sta­bil­ity of or­bits is at­tained, tidal fric­tions will go into re­verse ac­tion, no longer driv­ing the moon far­ther away from the earth but grad­u­ally draw­ing the satel­lite to­ward the planet. And then, in that far-dis­tant fu­ture when the moon ap­proaches to within about eleven thou­sand miles of the earth, the grav­ity ac­tion of the lat­ter will cause the moon to dis­rupt, and this tidal-grav­ity ex­plo­sion will shat­ter the moon into small par­ti­cles, which may as­sem­ble about the world as rings of mat­ter re­sem­bling those of Sat­urn or may be grad­u­ally drawn into the earth as me­te­ors.

57:6.4If space bod­ies are sim­i­lar in size and den­sity, col­li­sions may oc­cur. But if two space bod­ies of sim­i­lar den­sity are rel­a­tively un­equal in size, then, if the smaller pro­gres­sively ap­proaches the larger, the dis­rup­tion of the smaller body will oc­cur when the ra­dius of its or­bit be­comes less than two and one-half times the ra­dius of the larger body. Col­li­sions among the gi­ants of space are rare in­deed, but these grav­ity-tidal ex­plo­sions of lesser bod­ies are quite com­mon.

85:5.2Moon wor­ship pre­ceded sun wor­ship. Ven­er­a­tion of the moon was at its height dur­ing the hunt­ing era, while sun wor­ship be­came the chief re­li­gious cer­e­mony of the sub­se­quent ag­ri­cul­tural ages. So­lar wor­ship first took ex­ten­sive root in In­dia, and there it per­sisted the longest. In Per­sia sun ven­er­a­tion gave rise to the later Mith­raic cult. Among many peo­ples the sun was re­garded as the an­ces­tor of their kings. The Chaldeans put the sun in the cen­ter of “the seven cir­cles of the uni­verse.” Later civ­i­liza­tions hon­ored the sun by giv­ing its name to the first day of the week.