TRUMP 18 - THE MOON

Here we come to the final enemy, the final obstacle, the final trial.  After the Moon, there are three stages left:  The Sun, Judgment and the World, all of which are glorious celebrations.  But, in order to gain them, we must overcome the final enemy.

The Moon is not a card of happiness.  It is not a card of blessing directly.  The Moon is the great ultimate challenge.

Upon the face of the Moon, we see a rather sour look with eyes closed facing the earth. 

There are 32 rays (22 + 10) emanating around the Moon.  The Moon is shown in phase. 

It is shown in its first quarter as the Moon is getting brighter.  There are 15 Yods between the Moon and the earth.  We see the two gray pillars that we first saw far on the horizon in card #13, Death. 

We have a hound and a wolf barking at the Moon on either side of a pathway, which leads from the ocean up into the hills.  And, beginning to crawl out of the water, is a lobster or crayfish.  What is this card, and what is it doing here?

You can tell by the scouring face and the posture of attack and the teeth-bearing scowl of the wolf, that there is little happiness here.  This may be a surprise to some students.  We have overcome death.  We have the experience of the Hanged Man.  We have survived the destruction of the Tower.  W have the morning star born and rising inside of us.  What is left to be a problem?

In order to discover the answer to this, we have to be very certain we understand what the Moon is.  The Moon is a dead, cold, lifeless piece of rock, trapped through gravity, in a orbit around the earth.  We saw in the previous card, that the Bible refers to the three lights of Heaven--the stars of the sky, the greater light to rule the day, and a lesser light to rule the night.  But the Moon is the great pretender.  The Moon does not give off any light.  It has none.  The Moon is only darkness. 

Inside of the earth, our actual physical planet, there is heat.  There is a molten fire.  The Earth is alive with energy.  The Moon is not.  The Moon does not give off any light of its own.  The Moon does not have any fire in its core.  It is one solid cold chunk of absolute base matter, and yet the Moon pretends to be the lesser light to rule the heavens by night.  The Moon is a liar.  The Moon is a pretender to the throne, because the Moon does not rule the night.  Only the Sun rules the night. 

The Moon is not a light.  The only light is the Sun.  The Moon goes through its phases.  When everything is properly aligned, the Sun is able to bounce squarely off of the face of the Moon, and we are able to see its entire face illuminated.  We call that the full Moon.  That only lasts for the briefest of times, and happens once every 29 1/2 days.  After the Moon is full, the right hand side of it starts to get darker and darker until it disappears entirely 14 1/2 days later.  We call that the New Moon.

The phases of the Moon are created through the different angles of observation, as the light of the Sun bounces off of the Moon.  When the Moon stands between Earth and the Sun, we have the New Moon.  When the Moon stands exactly between Earth and the Sun, we have a solar eclipse, and the light of the Moon actually blocks out the light of the Sun.

When the earth stands between the Moon and the Sun, we have a full moon, and when the earth stands exactly between the Sun and the Moon, we have a lunar eclipse and the Moon turns to darkness and a fiery, red, blood color.

Why do I give you this little lesson in astronomy?  Because without it, the symbolism of the Moon is absolutely meaningless. 

As I said earlier, the Moon is the final obstacle to be overcome.  The Moon represents our incarnation, the final dying gasp of our individual consciousness and of our ego.  For you see, the only light which the Moon has, is the light which it reflects.  And the night of the Full Moon has, throughout the centuries, evolved into a celebration.  Originally, it was a night of celebration because it was very bright outside and people, in the days before electricity, could dance and celebrate and harvest all night long.  They could actually work very efficiently by the light of the Full Moon.

But there is also a darker side to the Full Moon.  It is a scientifically verified fact that on the night of the Full Moon, people go crazy.  This is lunacy:  Mad Man Moon.  In hospitals, in psychiatric wards, in welfare offices, as the Full Moon approaches, the workers know it, because people just turn crazy.  There appear to be biological reasons for this, because at the night of the Full Moon, the earth stands between the Sun and the Moon.  The gravitational pull on both sides of the earth causes the waters of the ocean to so bulge, that their massive gravitational attraction, as it pulls upon the waters of our body, appears to create certain psychological and physiological imbalances in the human race.  (Remember, our bodies are approximately 80% water.)  No one understands this.  It is a great mystery, but it is a fact.  

Symbolically, the night of the Full Moon is also a paradox.  On one hand, the Full Moon represents the highest part of human achievement, wherein we are perfectly 100% reflecting all of the light of God and illuminating others.  At the same time, when the Moon is its fullest, the temptation is greatest for the Moon to proclaim itself the light of Heaven.  Look at me; see how glorious I am.  When it is full, the Moon is at opposite extremes from the Sun.  We can turn and look at the true light, the Sun, or we can turn 180 degrees opposite, and look at the false light, the Moon.  Just before sunset on the night of the Full Moon, and just after sunrise the next morning, you can see both the Sun and the Moon together.  You have a choice as to which you will look at.  You can focus yourself in the direction of the true light and worship the Creator, or you can turn you focus from the Creator to the creation and watch the Full Moon rise.  During the Full Moon phase, the Moon works opposite to the Sun.  As the Sun rises, the Moon disappears.  As the Moon rises, the Sun disappears. 

During the New Moon, when the Moon and the Sun are on the side of the earth, they work in harmony and conjunction.  The Moon does not attempt to shine any of the light onto the earth.  If you see the Moon, you are looking actually at the Sun.  The Moon is not attempting to usurp the Sun's position in the sky.  They rise together and set together.  The Moon goes through its phases because the Moon is out of synch with the earth.  The Moon is trapped in an orbit around the earth,  yet it is not fixed to the earth.  Therefore, the Moon does not rise and set at the same point or at the same time throughout the month.  The earth's rotation causes the phases of day and night.  The Moon's rotation around the earth creates the cycles of new and full. 

Symbolically, ladies and gentlemen, you could not possibly be given a clearer picture of the nature of the individual soul.  Our consciousness is trapped by the earth.  We spend huge amounts of our time thinking about our bodies, taking care of our bodies, mending our bodies.  Even when we are free, completely, utterly and totally free, from the confines of physical existence, our consciousness remains trapped on the earth.  When we sleep, when we dream, we can go anywhere or we can be anything.  As we sleep and dream, our consciousness is freed from the fetters of material physical existence.  Yet what do we dream about?  Eating, drinking, doing things with our bodies. 

The Moon remains trapped by the earth.  This is the final frontier.  We must be able to renounce the Moon and its illusory light and the illusion of ego--the illusion of consciousness trapped by matter.  In the stage of the Moon, we overcome all final limitations, and we become completely free from all ramifications of our divine consciousness being placed inside of the lower vehicles.

The Yods which we see here are not so much raining down from the Moon, as they are caught in between the Moon and the earth.  The Divine Word rains only from the light of the Sun, and these yods await us on the other side of the towers. 

What do the towers symbolize?  I think the best answer is to say that they represent our rational side and our creative side, both the left hand and right hand pathways of consciousness.  They stand guard to make sure that only if we are sufficiently purified, can we pass between them.  They are guard towers, because as we travel through this pathway that we see winding up into the mountains, we have finally reached our homecoming.  We return to the high mountain on which the Fool stood, so many cards ago.  We return to our home.  That’s what the next card is all about.  Until we get there, we must overcome.  We cannot be allowed to touch the Tree of Eternal Life with any trace of our space bound, physical bound consciousness still living.  To do so, would be to immortalize matter.  It would be to immortalize the flesh and all of its constraints.  We must overcome.

The dog and the wolf are shown baying at the Moon, and it is not by chance that the mythology of the werewolf has developed.  Our emotions do change with the phases of the Moon, and when the Moon is full, many of us turn into monsters, if not physically, then symbolically our ego’s rage.  We attempt to keep ourselves as the light.  The morning star is born in us, and what do we do?  Draw attention to ourselves to be worshipped.  We say to others, “Look at me.  I have the Son of God living inside of me.  I have the morning star.  I am the Full Moon.  I am the glorious one.”  And, this insanity leads us to immense ruin.

The crayfish, coming out of the waters, symbolizes the deep subconscious forces at work within us.  As I said at first, this is the final enemy.  This is the hardest battle to fight.  Here we are, dealing with overcoming the constraints of actual biology, the constraints of physical matter.  As the divine spark of God is placed within our lower vehicles, those lower vehicles begin to assert their influence and control the higher forms of God.  And even once we recognize the essential emptiness of our ego, and once we overcome and are the morning star, that morning star, as it dwells within us, is still subject to falling back down to the earth--to become trapped. 

The final obstacle to be overcome, the Bible says, is death.  And this space/time consciousness, as it exists apart from God, is death itself.  The Moon is dead.  Death is the final obstacle to overcome.  The Moon is a white washed sepulcher, complete total death and dirty nothingness, which nevertheless pretends to be the great light of Heaven. 

We can and we will overcome.  We have learned so much.  We will persevere, and we will eventually be welcomed home.