The Moon is all about the way we interface with the unknown, or the unconscious , or the astral plane, or the spirit world, or the realms of gods, daemons, and demons, or parallel universes. These are the strange and frightening worlds every hero must travel to complete his or her quest.
From Wikimedia Commons
Since the keys of the major arcana trace the story arc of this journey, The Moon is a pivotal card, casting its eerie shadows over many of the other keys.
The card most obviously connected to The Moon is The High Priestess because the planet attributed to this card is the Moon. To make absolutely sure you get the connection most depictions of this card are loaded with lunar images.
The High Priestess, by Cathy McClelland
The High Priestess is the guardian of the threshold between the known and the unknown, the conscious and the unconscious mind, the hero’s ordinary world and the world he must enter to complete his quest. She can either help or hinder him as he makes his transition. Her motives are inscrutable because she works from knowledge and understanding gained in the realms hidden by the veil draped between the two pillars—the place our hero is headed for but knows nothing about. Like these pillars, the two towers in The Moon key mark the boundary between the known and the unknown. Her sparkling blue robe shimmers into water and flows out of the card, becoming all the bodies of water pictured in the rest of the cards and gently reminding the reader about the ubiquitous influence of the realm of The Moon.
The Moon rules the sign of Cancer, the astrological sign that corresponds to The Chariot. The charioteer in the Rider Waite Smith deck has crescent moons on his shoulders to remind us of this fact. The fabulous Merkabah is often described as a chariot that will take a devotee to the higher realms, the territory of The Moon.
When we look at the numerology, the most obvious correspondence is with The Hermit; since 18, the number of The Moon, reduces to 9, the number of The Hermit. This is The Man who’s been there, done that, and gotten the T-shirt. He stands high on a mountaintop holding up his starry lantern to guide others. He can be a mentor to our hero or he can be our hero herself after she successfully returns from her journey.
When we divide 18 by 3, the number of the Empress, or the fertile, earthy counterpoint to the High Priestess, we get 6, the number of The Lovers. Aside from the obvious fact that the moon is always associated with lovers and romance, there is yet another connection. Most depictions of this card show a man, a woman, and an angel or higher being. This is symbolic shorthand that beautifully describes the way to the higher self or the divine. The man (consciousness) has eyes only for the woman (the physical world). But the woman (who is actually the unconscious) looks to the divine. To journey to the realm of The Moon, the conscious mind must be intimately connected with the unconscious mind.
The Lovers, from The Gilded Tarot
The next multiple of 6 is 12, the number of The Hanged Man. This is the card of the mystic who voluntarily sacrifices everything to gain enlightenment by traveling to the realm of The Moon .
The Moon, whose number is 9 comes just before The Sun, 10 (19 reduced). “The Perfect Ten” is the number of completion and highest excellence. To become whole and integrated, to become the best person we can be, we must become the hero who masters the strange and dangerous byways of The Moon and returns to tell the story.
I was just reminded in no uncertain terms that to become successful in almost any endeavor, it’s not just what you know, but who you know.
Back in December I wrote a post about possible reasons why over 44 agents have rejected my manuscript and ended with the thought that I might have to self publish it. A friend of mine, Kier Salmon, immediately e-mailed me. “Talk to me before you do anything,” she said. “I work in the business and it’s easy to get burned.” The next day I got another e-mail from her telling me that Linn Prentis, the agent she works for, loves tarot decks and wants to see the manuscript.
I was thrilled to the tips of my keyboard tapping fingers. I waited until after the holidays and then e-mailed it to them as an attachment.
And waited…
And waited.
Last week I finally found the reply in my in-box. It was a rejection letter, but of a very different sort. Both Kier and Linn had actually read the entire manuscript and they liked it!
This is huge. When a writer sends an agent an unsolicited manuscript, all the agent wants to see is the query letter, a synopsis, and the first ten pages. She usually only reads the first few sentences of the query letter and if it doesn’t pique her interest she goes on to the next query in her jam-packed in-box. If you’re lucky, she’ll read your synopsis before going on, and if you’re really lucky, she’ll skim over the first 10 pages. Most don’t even send a rejection letter.
When I printed out my rejection letter it came to nearly two pages, single-spaced in 12-point Gill sans font. It was packed with suggestions for improving the manuscript and making it publishable.
It isn’t formatted quite right. Easy to fix.
It is too long. Most editors/agents don’t want to plow through a massive debut novel. After trolling the web for acceptable manuscript lengths http://kidlit.com/2009/11/13/manuscript-length/, I found that the consensus placed a YA fantasy manuscript at 70,000 to 80,000 words-90,000 tops. My manuscript is 92,000 words. Many agents and editors will automatically reject a query if the word count is too high. I have some babies to kill—not an easy task. The prologue is a waste of space and the most poorly written part of the story. Can it, they said.
Molly’s age is unclear. This is not good, especially in YA. I know that Molly is fifteen, she’s been with me for years. I know everything about her. But the reader doesn’t. I do mention once on page 9 that she’s fifteen, but there are no other clues in the early chapters. Her actions could be those of a bratty eight-year-old or a sullen teen. Their fresh eyes caught a vital snag.
It is unclear how Molly’s grandmother feels about her and what her motives are in sending her only living relative into a dangerous alternate world. It’s made clear later in the manuscript, but the reader should have some earlier clues. “The situation at the book’s start doesn’t gel,” they said.
The tarot connection doesn’t work; take it out. This was hard news. But then I realized that the most important tarot connection is the fact that each chapter is a major arcana card. I had read that the tarot major arcana taken in order, 0-21, tell the story of the hero’s journey. My main purpose in writing the manuscript was to do this and I did. I am OK with taking out all the other tarot references.
The story drags in the first few chapters, and this is precisely where a story shouldn’t drag. It must grab the reader right at the get-go or he/she won’t continue reading. These are also the pages an agent/editor will read to judge the story.
Molly learns the art of sword-craft way too fast. I need to stress the fact that after three months of training she is good but still a beginner. That isn’t apparent in the story.
Kier and Linn essentially quick-edited my manuscript, a process that costs hundreds of dollars, free of charge. When I thanked them, Kier wrote back and said, “No problem. This is what we do.” But I’m quite sure that they don’t often do this for unsolicited manuscripts.
After ruminating over all this advice and how to go about fixing the problems, it came to me that I’d started Molly’s story in the wrong place. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the King in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland gave me my first and most potent bit of writing advice when I was just a child. “Begin at the beginning,” he said to the White Rabbit, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” This is the way most works of fiction are written because this is the way we live our lives. What comes before is the thing that causes what happens next. Most stories, especially those told by new writers, need to start early enough so the reader understands why the rest of the story goes the way it does and why the characters behave the way they do. This sounds like inanely obvious advice, but it is actually quite difficult to decide where your story actually begins. Hundreds of articles and blog posts and even a few books have been written about this. I hadn’t really started Molly’s story early enough, and so hadn’t given the reader time to get to know her and her grandmother before Molly lands in Damia, a parallel universe, and begins her journey.
So, it’s back to the drawing board for Forging the Blade. The second book in the series, Mainly by Moonlight, is as finished as I can make it. My first readers have read it and commented; and my writer’s group (headed by Jessica Morrell, my editor) has gone over the first third of it, and I’ve incorporated their revisions. In a few weeks Jessica will review the entire manuscript. The third and maybe final book in the series is plotted and I’ve started writing it.
Behold, my friends,
the Spring has come;
the Earth has gladly received
the embraces of the Sun,
and we shall soon see
the results of their love! Sitting Bull
I was writing the last installment about The Moon tarot card when the library notified me that I had materials on hold. Really? I couldn’t remember putting anything on hold. I opened the e-mail. The book was Proof of Heaven, a Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife. Ah, yes. I’d placed that hold over 4 months ago. There had been 32 people ahead of me. This is the longest I’ve ever had to wait for a book; stunning testimony to the fact that there are a ton of people out there looking for, well, Proof of Heaven.
Heaven is, by all accounts, a higher dimension. Which is, as you will recall from the previous posts, the realm of The Moon, the territory so carefully guarded by The High Priestess.
There are literally thousands of accounts of near death experiences out there, and almost everyone knows someone who has had one. So what makes this one so special?
Eben Alexander and Oprah
Dr. Eben Alexander contracted spinal meningitis caused by the gram negative bacterium E. coli. This is a fairly ubiquitous strain, commonly found in the human intestinal tract, which makes it very ubiquitous indeed. However, it is next to impossible for the bug to get into the cerebral spinal fluid and cause meningitis, especially in adults. This type of meningitis is usually lethal, and if it doesn’t kill you, it turns you into a vegetable. Not only did Alexander somehow manage to contract bacterial spinal meningitis, but he survived to tell the story and continue doing neurosurgery. A double miracle and a case for the medical journals. But the fact that he had a classic NDE during his 7 days in a coma was, as far as medical science is concerned, an even greater miracle.
Most NDEs occur when the heart stops beating, but the brain is still healthy. This is why the vast majority of
Ascent of the Blessed, Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1450 – August, 1516
doctors discount NDEs as hallucinations caused by decreased oxygen and nutrients to the brain or by the exotic pharmacopoeia of drugs released by the brain in times of stress and deficiency. But you need a functioning brain to have a hallucination, and Alexander’s brain wasn’t functioning. His disease killed the neocortex, the part of the brain that we use to think and sense things, the part that makes us human. In other words he was brain dead, unable to think, imagine, feel, or visualize.
So if his brain wasn’t thinking, imagining, feeling, and visualizing the beautifully detailed and emotional journey he experienced, what was? Any mystic will tell you that it was his soul or spirit, the essential, non-physical part of us, that made the journey behind the High Priestess’s veil. This is the only explanation our culture provides, and this is Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven.
His case isn’t unique, however.
In the 1990’s Dr. Michael Sabom documents a very unusual brain surgery on Pam Reynolds. The operation required that both her heart and brain be stilled. In other words, she was clinically dead, both her EKG and EEG were flatlined. And yet, like Eben Alexander, she had an intense, emotional NDE. Her experience in the operating room was meticulously documented.
So why all the hoo-haw over this book? Dr. Sabom is a cardiologist and world renown NDE researcher. Light and Death, the book that describes Pam Reynolds experience, was published in 1998 and has, as of today, has a 4 star rating and 17 reviews on Amazon. Dr. Alexander’s book was published in 1912 and has a 4.5 star rating and 3,437 reviews on Amazon.
It may be because of the title. Proof of Heaven is a very arresting but false claim—he has no more proof than Dr. Sabom. And then there is the obvious observation that his and all other NDEs are anecdotal and have no witnesses except dead people—they are impossible to prove.
But I suspect that the real reason the book is so popular is that it’s an up close, first person tale of the religious conversion of a scientist, the quintessential non-believer. Dr. Alexander was convinced, like the vast majority of his colleagues, that the body generates the conscious mind. He listened to his patient’s stories of their near death experiences with the smug certainty that they were meaningless hallucinations. An NDE could only be the wishful thinking of a moribund body. Then, in an elegant sequence of events that makes fascinating reading, the Universe slapped him up along side the head with an experience that totally convinced him that it is the conscious mind that generates the body, and we are truly beings of light. He felt the unconditional love and complete interconnectedness of the universe and released all fear and feelings of alienation.
He admits that his experience was so profound that it was impossible to adequately describe; and his account reads like those of every wanderer in the realm of The Moon—impossible, outlandish, and cliched.
To truly understand, you must go there yourself–and come back and try to convince the rest of us.
The Moon in a Tarot Spread:
When The Moon comes up in a reading, things become less certain, less concrete and less dependable. This is also a good time for the reader to remember that the moment she begins shuffling the cards she crosses over into the mystical, shadowy realm of The Moon, where magic shimmers in plain sight, the impossible is possible, and things are not always as they seem. Be very careful reading a spread where The Moon is present. It means that both the reader and the querent are seeing the world through moonstruck eyes.
The Moon is the card of the psychic, the artist, and the visionary. When these folks work, The Moon is their mistress. If The Lady is kind, their intuition is sound, their visions are inspiring, and they bring back amazing beauty and profound understanding from her realms. But often, like those who shop at the Goblin Market, the fruits they find there are deceptive at best, and deadly at worst.
This is why The Moon key has two layers of meaning.
It can mean working from within the realm of the unconscious with the goal of self understanding, developing and using psychic ability, astral travel, visions, introspection, successfully following one’s feelings and intuitions, inspired creativity, a sense of being guided, working with a karmic relationship, romance, joyous intoxication, or mysticism.
And it can mean illusion or deception. This is usually self-deception, but it can also be that the querent is being deceived by someone he trusts or is deceiving someone who trusts him. It may indicate mental and/or emotional confusion or fear of exploring inner motivations and the shadow. The Moon is also the card of addiction and insanity.
To discover what The Moon is manifesting in a particular reading you must not only look at where the card appears in the spread and examine the surrounding cards, but you must also examine the querent and the significator even more carefully than usual.
If The Moon is reversed, only your intuition can tell you how that affects the meaning. The Moon can be a land mine. Read it incorrectly and you will blow the reading. But if you get it right, you might be able to tell the querent something important about himself or a situation that he didn’t already know. This doesn’t happen in a reading very often.
The Moon and the Hero’s Journey:
Whenever we fall in love, dream, have a hunch about something, work with a mental health professional, use drugs to either alter our moods or take a trip, meditate, commune with our gods, deceive ourselves about someone or something, are deceived by someone, or are deceitful The Moon has touched our lives.
Romance novels, with bedazzled lovers groping in the strange territory of their lover’s feelings, impulses, and motivations, and murder mysteries, packed with deceitful villians and suspects trying to keep their secrets from the detective, are both creatures of The Moon.
Actually, as far as I can tell, The Moon shines in almost any work of fiction. Can you think of one where it doesn’t?
In the movie, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s entire trip to Oz is a dream that teaches her to appreciate her friends and family and understand that “There’s no place like home.”
In Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick, as soon as the Pequod leaves the dock, its crew becomes a part of their insane Captain’s doomed quest of the white whale.
In the classic comedy, Moonstruck, an Italian American woman falls in love with her fiancé’s brother and discovers her father is having an affair and her mother just manages to avoid an affair. Emotions run high when her fiancé returns and tells her that the wedding is off because he’s had a dream that if he marries her his mother will die.
The archetype most closely associated with The Moon is The Shapeshifter, a character who, like The Moon, deceives and changes, seeming to be one thing but turning into another, and often another. Shapeshifters add mystery, suspense, and uncertainty to the plot. This archetype can be paired with any of Christopher Vogler’s other archetypes. Heroes, Allies, Threshold Guardians, Shadows, etc. can all be Shapeshifters.
In Greek Mythology, Proteus, the oracular Sea God, was a shapeshifter. Both Meneleus, jilted husband of Helen of Troy, and Aristaeus, son of Apollo, had to hold onto him tightly while he changed into a series of terrifying forms. Eventually he became himself and answered their questions. The lesson being that if one perseveres with shapeshifters, the truth eventually comes out.
In the movie, Fatal Attraction, the hero has an affair with a seemingly normal woman who turns into a crazy woman who stalks him, threatens his wife and children, and eventually tries to tries to kill them all.In Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller, an acquaintance hires a detective to keep an eye on his wife, who he believes is posessed. Over the course of the movie the woman shifts from mentally disturbed wife, to the detective’s lover, to a dead woman, to a deceptive woman who hadn’t really died but was part of a plot to murder the acquaintence ‘s wife, back to a lover, then back to a corpse–a real one this time. Now that’s a Shapeshifter.
In Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller, an acquaintance hires a detective to keep an eye on his wife, who he believes is posessed. Over the course of the movie the woman shifts from mentally disturbed wife, to the detective’s lover, to a dead woman, to a deceptive woman who hadn’t really died but was part of a plot to murder the acquaintence
‘s wife, back to a lover, then back to a corpse–a real one this time. Now that’s a Shapeshifter.
In the movie, Romancing the Stone, Joan, a lonely romance novelist, constantly doubts and re-examines the motivations of Jack, a swashbuckling bird exporter who rescues her in the midst of a Colombian jungle and says he will get her to Cartagena if she pays him $375. He seems to shift constantly from swindler, to possible lover, to villain and back again.
Without The Moon, our lives wouldn’t be worth living, our literature wouldn’t be worth reading, our movies and plays wouldn’t be worth watching, and our art would be ever so dull.
The Hebrew letter Qoph, meaning “back of the head”, corresponds to The Moon. The letter even looks like a head atop a spine. If you think back to your high school biology, you will remember that the back of the head contains the parts of the brain that control the body’s basic, automatic functions, the emotions, and reflex responses—all those things we call “the unconscious”. Resh, the letter which means head, countenance, or face—the front of the head–comes right after Qoph. The cerebrum, which is responsible for conscious thought, is located at the front of the head.Resh corresponds to The Sun, the key of spiritual unfolding through conscious effort or will. The order of these two letters
image by ~anime-viewer
is saying in no uncertain terms that the realms of the subconscious (The Moon) must be opened and explored before true spiritual unfoldment and the mastery of any magical system, or even a successful spiritual life, (The Sun) can be attained. These two keys work together. The yin of The Moon and the yang of The Sun are both parts of an integrated, enlightened being. One doesn’t work well without the other.
There is another correspondence between The Moon and the back of the head. Dion Fortune , a member of the Golden Dawn in the first half of the 20th century, believed that to truly utilize the moon’s energy and stimulate the pineal gland, you must turn so that it shines on the back of your head.
Pineal Gland
When I was reading Dion Fortune, I was in college and my major was zoology. This idea was totally counterintuitive to what I had been taught. The pineal gland is a tiny, pine cone-shaped structure (hence the name) about the size of a grain of rice. It is photosensitive and thought to be a vestigial third eye. Melantonin, the hormone it secretes, helps regulate the sleep/wake cycle and the circadian rhythms of several biological functions. So, if it’s sensitive to light, why would I turn my back on light to stimulate it? But who was I to argue with Dion Fortune? I dutifully tried the experiment and did notice a tingle/pressure in the middle of my brain, which is where the pineal gland is located. It may have been wishful thinking, but I was still surprised.
As it turned out, there was method to her madness. Further research informed me that the pineal gland is only active, i.e. secretes melantonin, in the absence of light. So the best way to experience moonlight and activate the pineal gland is to sit with your back to the moon.
But why was Dion Fortune so interested in the pineal gland? All that medical science is willing to say about it is that it secretes melantonin, which can help with sleep disorders and jet lag, is a powerful antioxidant, and converts cholesterol to bile in the gallbladder. Hardly the stuff of moonlight and magic.
But if you are willing to ignore the scientists (those folks who up until the early 1900’s insisted that the pineal gland was a shriveled up, useless, vestigial organ) and look a bit further into the literature, you will come upon references to a drug called DMT (dimethyltryptamine). Rick Strassman M.D., the guy who literally wrote the book on DMT*, speculates that this ubiquitous chemical is made in the pineal gland, because that’s where all the chemicals needed to make it are located. Both DMT and melantonin are built from tryptophan. This is the infamous amino acid in turkey that puts you to sleep on the couch at Thanksgiving. DMT’s effects read like a mystic’s wet dream: profound time dilation, time travel, journeys to paranormal realms, and encounters with spiritual beings or other trans-dimensional entities. In other words, this is the god drug. Our government, in its wisdom, has made DMT highly illegal—right up there with heroin and meth. Go figure.
Mystics of many faiths have known for millennia that the pineal gland is responsible for our ability to navigate other dimensions and commune with the gods. Its symbol, the pinecone, appears in mythologies all over the world.
Osiris, the lord of Duat, the Egyptian underworld, carried a staff tipped with a pine cone and twined with serpents. A symbol of Kundalini (serpents) rising up the spine (staff) to the pineal gland (pine cone), bringing enlightenment.Dionysus, Greek lord of wine, ritual madness and ecstasy, death and rebirth, carried a staff tipped with a pine cone.Lord Shiva with a pine cone head dress. Note the crescent moon placement and the bindi, an ornament worn over the sixth chakra opening or third eye, the outward mark that indicates and stimulates the pineal gland. It is worn not only by Hindu deities, but also by people of all faiths and nationalities.
Even Christians believe in the power of the pineal gland. When Matthew lists Jesus’ teachings he includes “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness.” Matthew 6:22. Notice he doesn’t say eyes, he says eye, singular. Jesus is talking about the pineal gland.
And the Catholic Church has amplified this teaching. In the Vatican, in the Court of the Pine cone, there is the world’s biggest statue of a pine cone. In fact, it’s probably as big or bigger than any other statue in the Vatican, and after spending one awestruck day wandering through that amazing place, I can assure you that there are hundreds of statues there and lots of them are really big.
Vatican pine cone. Note the two peacocks, Christian symbols of immortality.
But the real eye-opener comes when you look behind the pine cone and see an open sarcophagus, symbol of resurrection and eternal life. And then there’s that reflective, silver globe in front of the pineal pine cone in the picture below. Could that be the Moon?
Not to be outdone by Osiris and Dionysus, the pope has a pine cone on his staff too.
Pisces.png
Pisces, the astrological sign of the mystic, corresponds to The Moon. This is also the sign of feelings, intuition and empathy. Those born under the sign of Pisces often have the ability to flip-flop between the conscious and the unconscious, the physical world and other worlds. This sometimes leads to disorientation, inability to deal constructively with the everyday matters, and what we perceive as madness. Pisces feels comfortable and often happier in the other worlds and is likely to use drugs to go there. They are also incredibly sensitive and sometimes use drugs as painkillers.
Yesod, the ninth Sephirah on the Kabalistic Tree of Life, is also known as The Sphere of the moon or the astral plane. It connects Malkuth, sphere 10, the physical world, to the rest of the tree.
In short, the Moon is the gateway out of our physical world and into all the other worlds of the Multiverse. It is also the gateway into our world from all those other worlds. Magical portals, mirrors, scrying tools, and crystals are creatures of the Moon and should be used with care. Sleeping and dreaming are also functions of the Moon, Every night our sleeping minds make healing journeys into the astral. When we travel the astral plane and the worlds beyond it is important to remember that we are strangers in a strange land. Moonlight hides some things in dark shadows and highlights others. We have no way of knowing if the things we do see are what we need to see.
The focal point of this card is, of course, the moon. But this isn’t just any moon. It is a full moon, crescent moon, half moon, and invisible dark moon all rolled into one. A woman’s profile on the half moon is the visual equivalent of saying “the Moon is a Goddess”. This way of drawing the Moon isn’t just Pamela Coleman Smith’s idea. Many of the earlier decks picture her this way.
Tarot of Marseilles, 18th centuryOswald Wirth deck, 19th century
The artist is doing everything she can to make the viewer understand that this is the quintessential, archetypal Moon. It carries not only the brilliant power of the full moon, but also the vital, initiating force of the crescent moon, the crescendo of the waxing moon, the ebb of the waning moon, and the quiet, regenerative power of the dark moon. It reminds us that lunar energy is ever-changing, rising and falling, ebbing and flooding in a rhythm as regular and nurturing as a mother’s heart beat. It reminds us that life is a cycle; we are born, we grow, we decline, we die, and we are reborn in the midst of the great cosmic dance.
The point of view of this card is from the surface of a pool of water, an accepted symbol of the collective unconscious. This is Carl Jung’s concept of the deep psyche, which is made up of all the accumulated experiences and archetypes of the human race. Our individual unconsciouses arise out of this all-inclusive cosmic soup while still, somehow remaining connected to it. And so the point of view of The Moon card is the beginning of the soul’s journey into life.
We step out of the pool of the collective unconscious and into the material world of animal (crayfish), vegetable (plants at the edge of the pool) and mineral (rocks at the edge of the pool). The crayfish also symbolizes our brain stem or “animal brain” which is responsible for basic life functions such as breathing, heartbeat, and digestion.
As we travel the path between the wolf (nature) and the dog (nurture) we develop our body, mind, and spirit. We learn to reason and deal constructively with our emotions. We become civilized.
We are shaped by Nature and Nurture
Two watchtowers guard the boundaries of the everyday, rational world. Beyond them, “there be dragons,” the places where moonlight is the only light. Wise folk avoid this realm unless they have the equivalent of a AAA map or at least something a bit more substantial than a trail of breadcrumbs. This is what gods and gurus are for.
InThe Devil’s Picture Book Paul Huson compares the two towers to The Pillars of Hercules that bracket the narrow opening into the Mediterranean Sea. Imagine being a sailor in ancient times. The Mediterranean was a known, and it was dangerous enough, but the wide, unknown ocean past the gates must have been terrifying. Very few captains had the courage to venture through them. Most of us take maybe one look into this beyond decide that there are enough amazing and confusing things in our everyday world to keep us busy for a lifetime and never venture past those ominous sentinels.
In his most recent novel Steven King returns to Mid-World, the setting for his Dark Tower series, and seems mighty glad to be there. I had never been to Mid-World before, but within a few deftly written pages, the master storyteller had me well oriented, introduced to the main characters, and ready for what would come next. He did cheat a bit and used a forward to accomplish this, but it got the job done and saved me a bit of puzzlement.
“And in the end, the wind takes everything–except the story.” Steven King, from “The Wind Through the Keyhole”
The Wind Through the Keyhole is a Mid-World fairytale. This gem of a story nestles snugly inside another story, which nestles inside another story. The reader gets three stories in one. But the heart of the book is the story of Tim Ross, son of Big Ross, the woodcutter. And like all good fairytales it begins “Once upon a bye, long before your grandfather’s grandfather was born, on the edge of an unexplored wilderness called the Endless Forest…” It is a tale of death and terror and heartbreak that would make the Brothers Grim green with envy. It features a wicked stepfather instead of a wicked stepmother, because the main character is a boy not a girl. It borrows gently from the King Arthur legend, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Babba Yagga, and Hansel and Gretel. And last but not least, it carries the same psychological punch as a well-crafted fairytale—Carl Jung would approve.
“In order to display the splendours of the sky, the Night plunges the earth into darkness, for the things above are not revealed to our sight except to the detriment of those below.”* Oswald Wirth
The Stars above give us hope in our darkest nights and inspire us to achieve goals that during the bright light of day seem impossible and perhaps even nonexistent. But, unfortunately, starlight is dim and very seldom serves to illuminate the below, or physical world. If we want to see both the above and below, we need the Moon.
But, as Wirth points out, we pay a price. The Moon hides all but the brightest stars and is very tricksy about the way she illuminates the Earth. Her palate is limited to silvery gray and white and deepest, darkest black. Her light is dim and confusing, often concealing or disguising dangers that would be obvious in daylight. We are handicapped in both the above and the below.
The Moon is the perfect metaphor for the problems physical beings have in visualizing and understanding their spiritual selves. The very sense that allows us to “see” spirit alters and confuses what we perceive as physical reality. “…we see through a glass darkely…”.** But without that glass, we would see only the glaring colors of the physical world and the crystalline, untouchable perfection of the stars. We need The Moon (or that darke glass) to give us clues about how to relate the above to the below, spirit to matter. Because without spirit (or Universal Energy, or Life Force, or Magic, or God–you fill in the blank) physical existence just isn’t worth it.
Or, as Paul bluntly states in his first letter to the Corinthians, 15:50, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.”
“Luckily others have gone before us in this dangerous exploration. Their steps have traced a path where drops of blood are seen. This painful track leads to a goal for him who preservers in spite of obstacles and threats.”*
And those intrepid explorers have left behind advice and guidance. To avoid the pitfalls of The Moon, it’s a good idea to study the religious texts of the world’s great religions and philosophers. They became great because they teach important truths. But which are the truths and which are just the opinions and viewpoint of the earthly author? We can guess, but only Isis or Demeter or God or Allah or Vishnu knows for sure.
The Tarot is another guide along this perilous path. Because a word’s meaning can be misinterpreted or warped to fit isolated circumstances, its authors have chosen to use archetypal symbols to teach the fruits of their explorations. There is no possibility of misinterpretation because nothing is written in stone. There is no set meaning to any key since each of the symbols has different shades and levels of meaning. The seeker reads in them the level and shade of meaning he or she needs at a particular time, but will find new meanings as he or she progresses.
Readers should heed the lesson of The Moon and remember that we are partially blind in the world where we go to interpret spreads. With study and practice our understanding and readings improve, but we still “see through a glass darkely…”
To be continued….
*From the chapter on The Moon in Tarot of the Magicians, The Occult Symbols of the Major Arcana that inspired Modern Tarot, by Oswald Wirth.
**The Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:12, King James Version
The Moon rules the sign of Cancer, the astrological sign that corresponds to The Chariot. The charioteer in the Rider Waite Smith deck has crescent moons on his shoulders to remind us of this fact. The fabulous Merkabah is often described as a chariot that will take a devotee to the higher realms, the territory of The Moon.
