The Greater Trumps: (25) The Moon
Above all things beams the Moon. No innocent face this, but a face both wise and winsome, half in darkness and half in light. Twin pillars frame a gateway beneath it, and a river, its tide both rising and falling, runs through it. At the edge of vision, wolves howl, and odd creatures respond in their own peculiar ways. Everything is secret, and yet everything is seen; everything is possible, and yet everything seems impossible. This is the secret of the White Goddess.
Whether Selene, Diana, or Artemis, the moon in its phases has often been a symbol of fortune and of womanhood. But it would be unwise to see it as unrestrained and random fortune. Rather, just as womanhood is the source of birth, and the moon goes through both waxing and waning phases, the moon is generative and cyclical. You can ride it towards insanity or genius. In this light, the Moon therefore stands for Delusion (Deception?) or the creative productivity of the unfettered Mind.
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When I think of the Moon, I am irresistably drawn to the nightmare quality of Robert Graves's scholarship. In his odd anthropological opus, The White Goddess, he sculpts an image of mankind's religious history that is unsettling, and perhaps a little deranged. But oddly enough, I am drawn also to Khonsu, the Egyptian power of the Moon. Unusually, he is male, a god of knowledge and time. He was also a power of healing, and of madness. I think of Khonsu because, quite often, people tend to think of men as sane, stable and boring - hysteria, for example, comes from the Greek hystera, which means womb. But Khonsu shows that a male power can be pretty odd too.
Dylan Thomas was one for the odd visions. Here he is, in an excerpt from I See The Boys Of Summer:
But seasons must be challenged or they totter
Into a chiming quarter
Where, punctual as death, we ring the stars;
There in his night, the black-tongued bells
The sleepy man of winter pulls,
Nor blows back moon - and midnight as she blows.
It's hard to imagine that he could say more about the moon. But he did. You'll have to see for yourself.
Whether Selene, Diana, or Artemis, the moon in its phases has often been a symbol of fortune and of womanhood. But it would be unwise to see it as unrestrained and random fortune. Rather, just as womanhood is the source of birth, and the moon goes through both waxing and waning phases, the moon is generative and cyclical. You can ride it towards insanity or genius. In this light, the Moon therefore stands for Delusion (Deception?) or the creative productivity of the unfettered Mind.
=====
When I think of the Moon, I am irresistably drawn to the nightmare quality of Robert Graves's scholarship. In his odd anthropological opus, The White Goddess, he sculpts an image of mankind's religious history that is unsettling, and perhaps a little deranged. But oddly enough, I am drawn also to Khonsu, the Egyptian power of the Moon. Unusually, he is male, a god of knowledge and time. He was also a power of healing, and of madness. I think of Khonsu because, quite often, people tend to think of men as sane, stable and boring - hysteria, for example, comes from the Greek hystera, which means womb. But Khonsu shows that a male power can be pretty odd too.
Dylan Thomas was one for the odd visions. Here he is, in an excerpt from I See The Boys Of Summer:
But seasons must be challenged or they totter
Into a chiming quarter
Where, punctual as death, we ring the stars;
There in his night, the black-tongued bells
The sleepy man of winter pulls,
Nor blows back moon - and midnight as she blows.
It's hard to imagine that he could say more about the moon. But he did. You'll have to see for yourself.
Labels: Deception, Dylan Thomas, Goddess, Greater Trumps, Insanity, Khonsu, Robert Graves, Secrecy, Symbolism
etched with acid at 8:18:00 pm
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