Silent Moon

Slowly, silently, now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon

Walter De La Mare

6th april, 20:54

Whenever i hear the moon described as 'silent' i always ask the question, "but is she?" Many times i have written the same description & felt the same query come to mind. 'Silent Moon' sounds beautiful in a mysterious way... elusive somehow, as if i'm missing the point... that something is just beyond my grasp... and as i have looked & wondered she has continued to smile at me indulgently. 

There is no doubt that the moon communicates... we feel her pull on our bodies & the tides. Many times i stand bathing in her light, feeling her energy and begin to move to a rhythm that i feel rather than hear... to a music that infuses my body & soul... and as i dance i feel the pulse of the earth beating an accompaniment, two heavenly bodies in harmony... of course she's not silent, it's just that we need to learn to hear, to focus our 'inner' ear. 

8th april, 21:22

One night as i gazed & wondered, i distinctly heard the reply "No, she bloody isn't!" I laughed, thinking of what some people would say. I know i'm not alone in thinking this way... Aristotle said that the Pythagoreans " saw that the ... ratios of musical scales were expressible in numbers [and that] .. all things seemed to be modeled on numbers, and numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of nature, they supposed the elements of number to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number." I wonder how much further back in time this thought goes?

It seemed clear to the Pythagoreans that the distances between the planets would have the same ratios as produced harmonious sounds in a plucked string. To them, the solar system consisted of ten spheres revolving in circles about a central fire, each sphere giving off a sound the way a projectile makes a sound as it swished through the air; the closer spheres gave lower tones while the farther moved faster and gave higher pitched sounds. All combined into a beautiful harmony, the music of the spheres.

11th april, 21:31

Plato (in Republic) says of the cosmos;

". . . Upon each of its circles stood a siren who was carried round with its movements, uttering the concords of a single scale" 

and describes the circles of heaven subdivided according to musical ratios. (in Timaeus)

Kepler, 20 centuries later, wrote in his Harmonic Munde (1619) that he wishes 

"to erect the magnificent edifice of the harmonic system of the musical scale . . . as God, the Creator Himself, has expressed it in harmonizing the heavenly motions." 

and later said, 

"I grant you that no sounds are given forth, but I affirm . . . that the movements of the planets are modulated according to harmonic proportions."

Now nasa has shown that there is noise in space... we may not hear it as conventional sound but there are recordings of electromagnetic waves & such, converted into sound. I've searched... plenty of earth & other planets, but i've not found any of our moon... here are some sounds of the stars  

The sound of jupiter's moon Io