March 5-7, 2014: XVIII. The Moon

Al-Shariyf

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XVIII
THE MOON
(Pisces)

“Claim me, O wife. Let thy veils open & thy veiling mists part to admit me to thy Mystery, to the unexplored wilds of thy being.”

MEDITATION COLOR: Red-violet.

HEBREW LETTER: Qof, back of the head, where brain functions are situated associated with sleep and autonomic functions. Symbolizes that which is “behind” or “at back of” the manifestation of Reysh. Qof also means “ape” or “monkey,” hinting at a primitive state approach full human potential but still requiring further evolution.

CARD NAME: “Moon” comes from Old English mona, from the Indo-European root me which means “to measure.” (Our word measure, comes from this, as do time and measurement words such as meal, dimension, immense, metric, month, menses, semester, geometry, and many obviously related words.) Most ancient versions of this Trump, however, bore titles derived from the Latin luna, from the root leuk-, meaning “light, brightness,” which also gave us the Latin lux, “light,” and its many derivatives. – Beyond this, the well-developed astrological, alchemical, Qabbalistic, and otherwise occult associates with the Moon should be considered.

ESOTERIC MEANING: The Corporeal Consciousness. It marks out the forms and the reproduction of all bodies that are incorporated under every cycle of the heavens.

TREE of LIFE: Malkuth to Netzach. (Links ‘the Kingdom’ and ‘Victory’; or ‘Physical Embodiment’ with ‘Desire.’ Leaving the limitations of matter behind to approach the irrational and instinctual.)

ESOTERIC TITLE: The ruler of the Flux & Reflux, the Child of the Sons of the Mighty

TANTRIC & ALCHEMICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Collecting the Elixir; the astral environment of the gestation.

DIVINATION: Illusion, bewilderment, dissociation from objective reality, dreaminess, error, misunderstanding, lying, falsehood, deception, hidden enemies. Dissatisfaction, the need for change; crisis, “the darkest hour before the dawn,” the brink of important change. A reminder not to stray from the path of True Will. (This card is very sensitive to dignity.)

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Danica

/I did not read the text from Liber Theta today, going from memory & with intuition, just looking at the card/

The color may be some “dirty blue”… but it doesn't feel right; I’ll work without introductory color/egg-of-Light.
“Dark Night of the Soul”
I feel there is an intimate, close relationship with this card now, there is no repulsion and uneasiness that I felt toward it before.
High tide & ebb tide, flux and re-flux, tides in general…
You have to come down, in order to climb up; “The only way out is through”.
Unfertilized egg, being thrown out periodically; the mystery of female menstrual cycle.
Amplitudes of cycles, down on the card: there are three of them; three main cycles of life – whose frequencies do not overlap, but are synchronized; perhaps: Earth’s rotation around its axis, Luna’s rotation around Earth, and Earth’s & Luna’s rotation around the Sun? Probably any other natural trinity, considered in its cyclicity.
Subconsciousness and biological life function in cycles, and these cycles contain in themselves dark and light phases – they consist of rotational switching of this; the Lunar cycle is the most obvious example of this.
This Path = knowing all of that, but not intellectually, but knowing through being in accordance with it “from inside”, biologically and at the level of automatic consciousness.
“Go with the flow”.

Whole of the picture in the upper part of the card seems like a reflection (a sort of play that the light makes, interacting with matter and thus shadows) of that which is below on the card.
“Do not turn left nor right”, as if the card says, “follow the Sun and the Moon in her persistent reflection of the Sun – this leads to fertility, to success”.
Instincts, basic drives; natural balance on instinctual level.
The light necessarily creates shadows in interaction with material phenomena (and the question is: is there light without that which we call matter?); looking at the shadow, you can find the source of the light; focus your inner attention to it!
The deep mystery of connected-ness and interdependence of Light and Darkness.
Female card. In divination: the root, origin, deep source of the question.

/Still did not read the ATU related text in Lib. Theta ; so going from memory of reading it before, and with the images on the card, again/

The color has to be some bloody red, but dark, as “dirty blood”, that from the veins (not the cinober and light one from arteries); this feel right, I’m doing the egg-of-light visualization with it.
“Follow the cycles” – the card seems to say.
Letters Yod above, nine of them – the “secret connection” of Yesod and Chokmah (2=9 & 9=2)
Is this Kephra, or some other bug? It does not look like Scarab. But – a bug is a bug – and this one carries the Sun-disk, so it’s definitely Kephra-symbolism what matters here.
Hind-head: autonomous nervous system; patterns of the sub-consciousness; the basic structures of that which governs the conscious everyday activities, which abide below the threshold of the conscious mind.
There is something very sexual in the flow represented as going down from the Moon to the halo around the Sun below; I’m associated of female ejaculation, or the flow of sexual fluids from vagina.

The two guardians look like pillars; they should be polarized, but they look the same, as if one is the mirror-reflection of the other.
Hind-head: place where the spinal cord and the brain meet! If the brain is as Luna, and upwards through the spine flows Solar power (Nuit & Hadit), hind-head is the place of their conjoining, their “kiss” & intercourse; Yod, Yod…x 9 = New Worlds are being conceived here! In the dark, in the fertile chaos of the deep, hidden and the un-known…
These guardians and the towers behind them now look like something serving to protect the Holiness of the Temple from the uninitiated and the intruding; the dogs, and the shadowy environment have the function of scaring them away.

/Finally read the text today; I’m pleased to see that the color I used yesterday is almost exactly right!/

Color: the flow of blood, release, dismission, relaxation, surrender… “Let blood flow to my name!”
In everything that is many-fold, there shines-works-emanates_through_it the One (here on the card, it’s the Sun, reflection of which is everything else portrayed on the card).
The patterns of subconsciousness that form the frame of our perception and thus in a hidden way mold the whole of our World and experience in it. The Initiate consciously enters this realm; learns to – by observing the cyclicity of natural processes, inside and outside – see that One which is in the essence of the phenomenal Many; adorations of Sol and Luna nourish conscious relationship with this; the whole of Initiate’s life becomes regulated – the aspiration is disciplined – through these daily Rituals.
Flexibility, elasticity.
Spiritual aspiration manifested through the impulses and drives of the body, and correlated aspects of the psyche; if they are not suppressed, but instead accepted, observed and respected – they reveal Magnificence, through the recognition of their Root (Sol).
O, my body – you are my Temple,
you tool for pain and pleasure,
you are my House!
In ebbs and flows of your changes,
in rhythmic cycles of your processes,
every chemical reaction and every cell-process
is a reflection of One Will;
they are nothing but the dance of Love,
the dance of adoration for Adonai!

Al-Shariyf

Day one

Blood, menstrual cycle & menstruation, mechanics of the body, activity of the automatic consciousness.

Tonight as I stare at the card I see it from a vantage point that I've never seen it from before - I see it from the POV of view of a woman looking down at her thighs as she is menstruating.

The two large hills look like thighs and the sun & light emerging from the valley looks like menstrual blood flowing - the 9 yods look like blood drops on a the floor.

I'm thinking about the menstrual cycle and how every month, the female body produces and egg to be fertilized and gets rid of the egg if it isn't fertilized - the beetle pushing up the sun reminds me of that unfertilized egg being ejected from the woman's body.

The waves toward the card symbolize the body's biorhythms.

I'm amazed by the female body and how it knows exactly what to do each month like clock work and how many different cycles can be observed all throughout nature

Day Two
The tower mark the path of the straight and narrow for the beetle to travel as it carries the sun from the waters onto the land and eventually into the horizon - staying true to the path despite distractions - staying on target because you know if you fuck up and stray off the path the dogs waiting on each side will tear your ass up.

ebbing and flowing, rising tides - riding emotional waves, mood swings, intense subconscious activity.

Day three
Lunar cycles, emotional tides, rhythms, ups and downs - such make up life- perpetual shifts and changes are what generates the stability of the system

Tonight the beetle represents that primitive aspect of myself, emerging from the depths of the pool of my subconscious mind to the surface where my conscious mind can catch glimpses of it under shallow ripples on the surface of the pool.

Gnosomai Emauton

03.16.14
19:26-20:03

Read over an account of card symbolism first this time through to see how it would change things, if at all. It gave me touchstones to latch onto as my eyes scanned over card. They still picked up on all the imbalances and weirdly shaped forms but having some symbolic knowledge did help to focus them to look beyond the flaws. The idea that the moon could only look like that during a lunar eclipse initially suggested that the blue was the shadow of the earth but then my mind wondered if we were, in fact, on the moon and the shape in the sky was the earth. We've landed on Yesod and the path home is guarded. Symbolism does seem a bit backwards but... possibly worth further meditation.
Symbols of Neptune and Pisces foreground themselves and cause a realization that Sol has just entered Pisces and we are heading towards one of the few remaining Vernal Equinoxes of the Age of Pisces (few, aeonically speaking). Reflecting back on the Piscian/Neptunian nature of the past two millennia. Mankind lost in the darkness, scared by the shadows, cowering from its nightmares. Cycles of life reflected in sine waves on card. All of them in unattractive, muddy colors. This Age has been demoralizing to say the least. What does it mean that I chose to incarnate as an Aquarian at the tail end of the Age of Pisces? Have I been paving the way through multiple Aquarian incarnations? Or is this just one variation as I work my way through all 12 possibilities? Or all 144? The snapping jackals nip at my heels and push me deeper into subconscious-land. The pearly whiteness of their skulls shows through their torn head-skin.
Closed-eye meditation drops me quickly and deeply into an envelope of deep dark crimson. This light, "red-violet", does not exist. It's a mental abstraction created from wavelengths longer than red and shorter than violet. Ultraviolet. Infrared. In either direction, the circle is not closed. It is a continuum and this world is a fiction created by the mind. The swirling color continues steady but does not seem to develop in any direction.
I approach the timeframe/feeling that I have been taking as the signal of the end of the meditation and, instead of opening my eyes, I allow my mind to relax and stop lusting for a result. I simply decide to sit for another 5 minutes with no expectations but that it will be another notch on my asana practice. As I sit, I notice whorls of a lighter blue-violet forming around the edges of my vision. Their shadows maintain the deep, dark infrared as the whorls begin to take on definite shape. It takes some effort to keep the analyzer shut down. He seems to be satisfied once the idea of two fish establishes itself as a description of the movements. The fish continue to chase each other, not vicious, but certainly not gentle. "Natural" might be the best description. As they leap and dive, I attempt to relax my mind even further. To drop down deeper. The bright blue-violet (periwinkle?) congeals into a pulsing, throbbing, amorphous blob that seems like it might, given the right leeway, continue to draw me into an astral journey of some sort. But I don't seem to have the right key. It sits there, waiting. Anticipating. Fading. Disappearing.

03.17.14
23:32-56

Red/gold slit foregrounds itself as a vagina. The blue waves are knees, the moon the face of a woman awaiting penetration by the sun/seed brought by Khephra. Links back to Universe as the vaginal gateway from Ruach/Yetzirach to Nephesh/Assiah/Guph. The underwater waves show the undulating natures of the material elements (Earth, Water, Fire) which must be guided by the golden sun (intellect/lantern) through the pillars towards higher consciousness. In the shadow on the moon, Earth (black) has balanced itself out and the three Yetziratic elements must now be equilibrated. Left Anubis guides with the sign of Mercury, Right Anubis confuses with the combined Venus/Neptune.
This card really is vile. The palette makes me want to vomit.
Red-Violet egg meditation doesn't add anything new.

03.18.14
23:44-00:10

The pillars are equivalent to the pillars in the Neophyte ceremony. The ultimate goal is to rend the veil and pass through them but, before that can happen, the elements but be solve et coagula'd. Anubis of the East (Mercury) guides (Kerux); Anubis of the West (Venus/Neptune) confuses (Sentinel). Khephra carries the lantern through the darkness, guiding the candidate. Did he replaced Anubis as the Kerux at the Equinox of the Gods? At the first step (Neophyte/Zelator), all four elements are in flux but the intellect/inner guide aims them towards the Middle Way. Up ahead, we can see the Moon/Yesod (Theoricus) at which point Earth has settled into a steady macrocosmic blanket of a wave while the other three remain to be balanced. The path from here to there is through the yoni of The Universe (XXI). The pillars therefore represent both the first pylon that must be crossed at the threshold and the actual pillars that hold Paroketh on the other side of Yesod.
Meditation tones on headphones seem to be making these meditations more difficult but audio distractions are tough to avoid. This meditation started out well without headphones but, just as I closed my eyes, my roommate got home. Put on headphones without sound just as a muffler but the distraction from without was still strong. Managed to create a reasonably strong red-violet egg and relaxed into it deeply enough for variations of shape and form to begin but the occasional aural invasion was just too much to allow me to maintain focus. Perhaps I should return to white noise and test that out for the next few.

Anael Lucis

Meditation 1

From above the bosom of Nuit, and in the midst of it the Moon, Luna affecting the Earth with its radiating energies, affecting waters and the minds of people
Two Anubis figures guarding the doorway into the subconscious; they hold Mercury sigil indicating them as the divine messengers. The rain of Yod letters reminds me of the concept often employed in Buddhist thought – “the rain of Dharma” – abundance of spiritual teachings which lead one to liberation. In this case it makes me think of the subconscious as the reservoir of images from which sacred knowledge can be extracted through spiritual insight.
For the first time ever I noticed that the two blue shapes behind the towers seem like the legs bent at their knees, with the nectar flowing in between them, pouring into the Sun that’s approaching the horizon - like Amrit of the subconscious that nourishes the spiritual insight symbolized by the rising sun.

Meditation 2

Underneath Anubis are two little dogs – makes me think of Diana’s hunting dogs indicating quality of alertness and swiftness, which can be attributed to the quality of mind itself.
The two towers in the background might be indicative of secret or shadow parts of oneself locked in the towers of the subconscious, hidden away from our conscious awareness and needing a special key or skill to unlock and unleash.
Between the Sun and the Moon are 9 Yods (9 corresponding to Sephiroth Yesod with its Lunar attribution) – reminding me that the light of the Sun the Father is reflected in the Moon.

Meditation 3

The image is symmetrical, split into 2 pretty much identical halves. This can correspond to our mind (and brain) being split into intuitive and intellectual sides. Also the two fragmented parts of ourselves that need to be united – as is done through Yoga (Yoga comes from the root “yog” meaning to unite).
The role of Anubis is guarding of the dead. In this case the dead might represent old, obsolete patterns of the self and one’s mind, hence the Anubis characters might be watchful servants of the Higher Self keeping the Qliphotic parts of the practitioner from arising to the surface and causing disturbances or even wreaking havoc.
On another hand, there is an announcement of dawn – the scarab is carrying the Sun upwards and soon the light will replace the shadow and the darkness.
This card give me associations with the ideas of mystery, magick, hidden and obscure landscapes of one’s mind, shadow work, etc. It has deeply psychological connotations for me especially in the realm of the unconscious. There is also a sense of stillness and quietude perhaps alluding to the solitary nature of working on one’s mind in stillness and silence through meditation and introspective tasks. Even though this card alludes to the unknown and obscure, for me there is a strong sense of safety and protection likely coming from the presence of the two Anubis figures.