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The Moon
Tarot Card: Major Arcana Number: Sephirah: Sephirah Number:
The High Priestess 2 Chokma/Wisdom 2 cccccccc
The Moon represents the area of one's chart where there is much behavioral and psychic imprinting and programming, yet it is also where one may potentially feel the most emotionally safe and secure. The Moon is sequentially the first Feminine archetype of the Major Arcana and denotes absorption of one's environment, how one takes it all in on both emotional and subconscious levels. The Moon also, for obvious reasons, symbolizes the feminine cycle, and hence denotes fertility. In certain Tarot cards closely linked to the feminine principle there will be seen a Grail, chalice, cup, or bowl. These cards include The Moon, The Chariot, The Hanged Man, and The High Priestess. Within the Thoth deck, these cards have this imagery of the cup or bowl ingeniously fitted into the artwork. It may not be obvious at first glance, but it is there if you look. The cup alludes to, among other things, the suit of Cups, and hence to water, emotions, receptivity, impressions, creation, formation, and again, the feminine principle.
The Moon
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The Chariot
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The Hanged Man
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The High Priestess
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It could be said that the Moon placement is the area of the chart where one is the most impressionable, or is able to be impressed. One's emotional dispositions, and also what brings emotional comfort on deep levels, are indicated by the Moon placement. Due to the nature of this archetype, its placement may indicate areas which need to be outgrown. Early impressions or psychic imprints of the world may linger and even haunt an individuals emotional body unless they consciously move beyond them by supplanting the old impressions with new and improved impressions. It will be seen that the Moon itself fluxes and refluxes, phase after phase. This creates a kind of pulsating energy which leaves psychic imprints with each passing phase.
The High Priestess card shows this kind of pulse in the image of waveforms or ripples which expand out from Kether, the Crown. The outline of the Priestess and the net she holds vaguely resembles a cup or chalice which catches the ripples of light emanating from Kether. It has been said that the light itself experienced on this path acts as a veil for the consciousness or Eternal Spirit behind it, which is to say that all the forms and impressions encountered on this path are not to be mistaken for the Self, but as a veil or curtain which hides the ultimate Self which is, in fact, Nothing or No-Thing. The paradox is that only when one is completely empty may they experience the unconditional fullness of Being. This means not obsessively labeling and categorizing sense perception through the intellect. The Higher Self, for lack of a better term, cannot be strictly labelled in concrete terms, does not have a particular recognizable form, and is beyond one's accumulated psychic impressions. This higher consciousness can be thought of as the ultimate observer, that which has an untainted, unbiased perspective of all that transpires "below", being itself beyond space and time (the realm of the Zodiac). In Crowley's Book of Thoth, regarding the Moon and The High Priestess, we read:
The card represents the most spiritual form of Isis the Eternal Virgin; the Artemis of the Greeks. She is clothed only in the luminous veil of light. It is important for high initiation to regard Light not as the perfect manifestation of the Eternal Spirit, but rather as the veil which hides that Spirit. It does so all the more effectively because of its incomparably dazzling brilliance. Thus she is light and the body of light. Upon her knees is the bow of Artemis, which is also a musical instrument, for she is huntress, and hunts by enchantment.
On the Tree of Life diagram, one may notice that the Moon is attributed to the 9th sphere, Yesod, the Foundation. Through research it seems that the Moon is more harmonious within the 2nd sphere, Chokma, Wisdom, and the planet associated with the 2nd sphere Chokma, Neptune, is actually more harmonious in the 9th sphere, Yesod. There is a switch which one can either agree with or not, but I find that it works. The reasons for this switch are discussed in the Saturn section.
The High Priestess card shows this kind of pulse in the image of waveforms or ripples which expand out from Kether, the Crown. The outline of the Priestess and the net she holds vaguely resembles a cup or chalice which catches the ripples of light emanating from Kether. It has been said that the light itself experienced on this path acts as a veil for the consciousness or Eternal Spirit behind it, which is to say that all the forms and impressions encountered on this path are not to be mistaken for the Self, but as a veil or curtain which hides the ultimate Self which is, in fact, Nothing or No-Thing. The paradox is that only when one is completely empty may they experience the unconditional fullness of Being. This means not obsessively labeling and categorizing sense perception through the intellect. The Higher Self, for lack of a better term, cannot be strictly labelled in concrete terms, does not have a particular recognizable form, and is beyond one's accumulated psychic impressions. This higher consciousness can be thought of as the ultimate observer, that which has an untainted, unbiased perspective of all that transpires "below", being itself beyond space and time (the realm of the Zodiac). In Crowley's Book of Thoth, regarding the Moon and The High Priestess, we read:
The card represents the most spiritual form of Isis the Eternal Virgin; the Artemis of the Greeks. She is clothed only in the luminous veil of light. It is important for high initiation to regard Light not as the perfect manifestation of the Eternal Spirit, but rather as the veil which hides that Spirit. It does so all the more effectively because of its incomparably dazzling brilliance. Thus she is light and the body of light. Upon her knees is the bow of Artemis, which is also a musical instrument, for she is huntress, and hunts by enchantment.
On the Tree of Life diagram, one may notice that the Moon is attributed to the 9th sphere, Yesod, the Foundation. Through research it seems that the Moon is more harmonious within the 2nd sphere, Chokma, Wisdom, and the planet associated with the 2nd sphere Chokma, Neptune, is actually more harmonious in the 9th sphere, Yesod. There is a switch which one can either agree with or not, but I find that it works. The reasons for this switch are discussed in the Saturn section.