People want to control what they feel they have no control over, and we all know there are times when you are crafting, go 0/200 on a T1, and feel like you have no control.
There's a famous anthropologist namd E.E. Evans-Pritchard that wrote on the Azande and how they view witchcraft, in that it is essentially a way to control events that they feel they cannot control. The Azande basically built their entire culture around witchcraft in an attempt to control these types of events. I mean heck professional baseball players believe in crazy superstition because they feel they have no real control over their ability to hit the ball/throw the ball. Crafters use the same type of thought process when they attempt to control their synthesis by facing directions.
That being said, we like to believe in empirical evidence when it comes to these things and there is no empirical evidence to support Moon phases, days, or directions.