When we see you

In a silver reflection

Dogs howl to raindrop tears

To connect, to be lost. to change

~

 A crayfish is lying still in a calm body of water. A dog and a wolf are nestled between two towers. A moon above is reaching the center of a beaming sun as large pointing beams radiate down. On the moon’s surface, a human face can be seen, looking down with a half-smiling expression. The animals are howling and feeding from raindrops falling.

~

I am sitting by an inlet of sea near my house in Bergen watching the sun reflecting on the water, forming prisms of light that bounce and mesh in the liquid fabric. I clamber in and duck my head under. The water is icy from the winter and I quickly climb up a rusty, uneven ladder feeling mollusks and clams huddled together in strands of seaweed. I read that the Moon in ancient astrology ruled fountains, streams, springs, docks, rivers, and lakes, among other bodies of water. I grew up near the sea, and often feel calmest by the blue of the ocean. Swimming in the cold water wakes me up, as I shiver and shake, the cold shock creates some kind of equilibrium in my body. Perhaps water immersion is a port-way to a connected, tidal state of being.

In the Moon cards symbolism, I have always felt some kernel of healing potential; a return to an embodied, cellular way of being perhaps, a way of being that water contains, that the body knows.

From crescent to waxing, to fullness, and waning, the Moon goes on a journey of changing appearances across the night sky, making contact with the planets and celestial bodies above. The changing nature of the Moon reflects the changing nature of our bodies, our emotions, and our lives. It is said that when the Moon meets a planet in the sky it amplifies and is coloured by that planet’s energy.

Like water, the Moon is an an emotional transmitter, a carrier of atmosphere. With a human face, it seems to guide us and console us in the darkness.

I remember following the Moon to Greece, when the world seemed like it was about to end. Everything was far away and the Moon seemed like a guide. Across the night sea it’s glimmering reflections seemed to light a way through caves and tavernas.

The Moon has been associated with the drifter and the seafarer. Lost moon buoys floating at sea. What happens to the lost drifters who follow the Moon? Where does the sea bring lost ships? Could the Moon be a misleading light?

Anonymous of Meditations on the Tarot writes of the Moon card as;

“the principal of reflection: just as it reflects the light of the sun, so does human intelligence reflect the light of conscience – and the latter is eclipsed when “materialistic intellectuality” prevails”

If the Moon’s face in this reading represents the human intellect, then the wild dogs and crayfish represent materiality, instinct, and intelligence. If the Moon covers the beams of the sun, with the reflection of a human face. It seems a warning is hidden in this card; Between two towers of perception, two towers of knowledge, we become howling dogs lost in our own reflection. Our intelligence becoming defined by our limited perception of the material around us. Like a crayfish stuck in a geometric stagnant pond of water, we move backward. The drops fall upward, in a retrograde movement.

But the Moon in this card could also be in union with Sun, in conjunction. giving it the potential to connect to and amplify the Sun’s energy. The Moon has the potential to connect the body, the human, and the material with the light of the sun – divine consciousness;

“The Eighteened Arcanumn of the Tarot: (The Moon) The arcanum of knowing how to pass from intelligence eclipsed by terrestrial “technicality” to intelligence illumined by the spiritual sun- i.e. to intuition.“

Intuition, as the Moon card shows is the combination of our consciousness, intellect, body, and instinct. Only when our human perception does not cover the light of the cosmic sun, but rather fuses with it can we move from ‘Materialistic Intellectualism’ to cosmic, connected intuition.

I’m back visiting my childhood home for a few days, crossing old roads as a different self. Returning here I feel a tinge of sadness, I no longer know this place like I did, I don’t know whos around anymore, there are new buildings and new streets that aren’t part of my memories. I pour a Guinness in my garden and pet my dog as the Moon finds her place in the early evening sky.

The colours of the Moon are light blue, white, pale green, silver. Tonight the Moon reflects back a silver-blue hue casting a spell over the darkness. I wonder what creatures are guided home by this light tonight: owls, cats, silverfish, mice.

I asked my friend Clea if she would like to make a Tarot card with me, last February, as a rainy mist came down over Bergen. We pulled a card to decide which, it was the Moon, she grinned ‘I knew it was going to be this one!!’ I had also in my mind been imagining doing this card with Clea, she seemed, like me, to be somehow ‘lunar’ in nature. Clea shows me what she makes for our collaboration: metal silver plates, with reflective hammered silver aluminum.

I remember hearing that the Moon’s metal is silver, as though the Moon’s rays fertilize a soil of rock and ore to give us silver. The silver night gifts lunar tears. Are the upside-down tears of the moon, silver jewels?

Jessica Dore writes of the Moon as a card that offers a balm of confusion to the demand of Western rationalities need to know, a demand which can ultimately ‘build a psychic wall’ guarding against anything which might have the power to open up a new way of being.

“To be in a state of not-knowing creates openings, illuminates new pathways, and this is ripe with potential.”

Every Moon is an illumination, a light in the dark; The Moon connects us to the transition from life to death, in the emptiness of a new Moon, to the growth and decimation of the lunar phases. Tonight the Moon will rise full in Saggitarius, the mythic sign of the centaur. At this moment, at this place in the tide, I don’t know what’s ahead. I wonder what mythic vision for a way forward could this Moon be signaling?

A Moon of mythic not knowing.

There is a boat that’s been circling Bergen’s contaminated waters all year. It pulls up rusted boats, trash, and barnacle-covered debris; treasures from the swamp. In the flickering Moonlight, I glimpse a floating crayfish drifting in the tide.

~~~~~~~~

Sources:

Helena Avelar and Luís Ribeiro On the Heavenly Spheres American Federation of Astrologers 2010

Anonymous Meditations on the Tarot TarcherPerigee. 1980

Jessica Dore Tarot for Change Hay House. 2021

Alejandro Jodorowski The Way of the Tarot: The spiritual teacher in the cards Destiny Books. 2009

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The artwork for this post was created in collaboration with Clea Filippa. Clea is a multi-media artist and performer currently based in Bergen, Norway.