The cos­mic struc­tur­ing of the 28-day SydArthur Fes­ti­val oblig­es us to address the very enti­ty that dic­tates that struc­ture: the Moon itself. That Syd Bar­rett and Arthur Lee had, ten years ago, the poet­ic grace to die one full lunar month apart ensures that these great psy­che­del­ic artists were right­eous moth­er­fuck­ers even in death. Here­in, they become the sacred twins.

Let’s take the cos­mic oppor­tu­ni­ty to take it down an evo­lu­tion­ary notch. Can you see the moon from your home or your place of work? If not, could you search it out? Is there any way in which you could address it with a drink in your hand and stare up at its puls­ing, and con­sid­er that these impuls­es dic­tate our tides, that these impuls­es dic­tate men­stru­a­tion in women? We know how impor­tant the Lunar Cal­en­dar was to our ancient ances­tors. Before ego­tist Cae­sars insert­ed their own months – July for Julius and August for Augus­tus – our fes­ti­vals were none of them move­able feasts but fixed in time. The mod­ern indus­tri­al world of the 1930s even attempt­ed briefly to ease the lot of work­ers by return­ing to the Lunar Cal­en­dar. Hid­den behind the cityscape, the unseen Moon – whether we heed it or not – still puls­es out its influ­ence upon us all. So let us today address that bril­liant globe in its fullest phase, and raise our cups to its mil­len­nia-long irreg­u­lar path across the skies of our Solar System.