Haindl Tarot
XVIII - THE MOON
HEBREW LETTER: KAPH, "BACK OF THE HEAD"
RUNE: OTHAL "PROPERTY"
ASTROLOGY: PISCES
ELEMENT: WATER
In the Moon, the Fool makes his most difficult journey. The Moon is the card of mystery, of travels through dream and myth. The Moon is the link between the ancientness of the Star and the bright new day of the Sun.
The number for the Moon card is 18, which reduces to 9, the Hermit, seen as a lunar card. Because 18 is also 2 x 9, it connects the Moon to the High Priestess, the third lunar trump. We can also form it as 3 x 6, relating the card to the Empress, the triple Moon Goddess, and the Lovers, a connection we see in the unicorn. Finally, 18 is 1 and 8, the Magician and Strength. The Moon is a realm of magic where we need strength to make the passage back to the light of the rational world. Part of the Tarot's own magic is the way one card can contain so many layers of meaning.
The Hebrew letter is Kaph, which means "Back of the head:" The next card, the Sun, bears the letter Resh, which means "Head," so that Kaph is literally behind it. Traditionally seen as the site of reason, the head symbolizes the rational and the known. The back, therefore, signifies the irrational or that which remains hidden, dark, mysterious. Even in a mirror we cannot see the back of our own head. The Moon's power opens up parts of ourselves normally kept hidden, at least from our conscious self image. Paul Foster Case, in his writing on the Moon, points out that the back of the head contains the oldest parts of the brain, the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata. These areas reach back in evolution to something more primitive. Case remarks that the medulla remains awake when the rest of the brain sleeps. In many traditional Tarot decks, only the Moon card among all of the trumps shows no human figures. (In the Haindl Tarot, however, there are six trump cards in which no humans appear: Justice, the Devil, the Tower, the Moon, the Sun, and the Universe.)
The Rune, Othal, or O, means "Property:" The meaning connects to the idea of a sacred enclosure. As a mystic card, the Moon takes us into a sacred reality beyond ordinary perceptions. At least one commentator on the Runes, Michael Howard, describes Othal as a sacred grove of trees where people became initiated into spiritual mysteries. We saw such a place in Strength, where the woman performed her ritual under the Moon.
Zoltan Szabo describes Othal as the Holy Grail. It symbolizes happiness through divine protection; the Rune was sometimes worked into the wood below the roof of a house. At the same time, Othal, or Odil, is one of the Runes directly associated with Odin. The Grail, as we have seen, is female, while Odin is male, the Father of the Gods. Haindl suggests that the Rune originally signified the unity of the creative force as Mother and Father. Over a long period, the patriarchal Aesir drove out the Goddess and claimed the Rune solely for Odin but, as Hermann Haindl says, the time has come for a correction.
The astrological sign is Pisces, associated with dreams and psychic experiences. In astrology, the Moon rules Cancer, whose symbol is a crab. Following a Tarot tradition, Haindl has changed this to a lobster. Both the crab and the lobster belong to a lower level of evolution. Usually we think of these kinds of animals as alien to us, and they are alien, at least to the rational, human cerbral cortex. The medulla, however, brings us closer to that experience of scuttling along at the bottom of the sea of the unconscious. The lobster symbolizes the Moon bringing up deep fears and anxieties, the same sort of feelings mastered by the willpower of the Chariot, whose sign was the Crab. the Charioteer did not turn around to look at them; he kept them, in other words, at the back of his head. In the Moon we allow them to emerge.
The lobster's claws can reach up out of the water and grab hold of something with an unbreakable grip. A powerful dream will sometimes grab hold of us that way. The Moon is the card of dreams, especially the very deep dreams that grip us with a physical force. The Moon is also the card of myth (symbolized by the unicorn). Like dreams, myths are truest when they touch us at some level beyond rational explanation.
The element is Water, the river flowing through the card. We see the lobster in the foreground. It actually floats in the air above the water, a surrealistic touch. In contrast, Hermann has painted the unicorn, a mythical creature, with realistic detail. Both the lobster and the unicorn have rough pitted bodies, indicating ancientness in the Haindl Tarot. The unicorn's body almost crumbles into the air. Beyond the lobster, we see the cliffs and the river, similar to the river in both the High Priestess and in Aeon, trump 20. The water is thought to be a stream until we notice that the size of the lobster puts the river at a great distance. The land becomes large cliffs, softer and more realistic than those on the High Priestess card. We can see waves on the water, a sign of activity in the unconscious.
Beyond the river we see the unicorn, rising up like a stone tower, or a column of dirt pulled up by a tornado. The air itself seems hard and rough, like the inner wall of a cavern. We find the same suggestion as in the Hermit; what appears to be outdoors may be inside a cavern or under the surface of the Earth.
In Plato's dialogue The Phaedo, Socrates says that while we think we live on the world's surface, actually we live under it. His detailed description of the outside world as a place of perfection shows that he does not intend this as a scientific account but rather as a metaphor for a powerful human perception: Our everyday world prevents us from experiencing a greater world - the one within us as well as beyond us. This is the world of the mystic, where God fills the universe and every particle connects us to all the rest in a great web of meaning and beauty.
Plato describes humanity as living in a cave, staring at the wall. When we think we see reality, we only see shadows of the true world outside. Going further back in Greek culture, we find an interesting detail about Hermes, the Greek God of thought and the patron of the Tarot Magician. The myths describe him as born in a cave from a sky nymph named Maia. This name sounds similar to the Indian Maya, which refers to the "illusion" of reality. The physical world is seen as false by Indian philosophy, which seeks to free itself by discovering the truth beyond the world. The Greek Maia, however, means "old woman," a figure of the Goddess that we have just seen in the Star. But the word maia also means something else - a large crab.
Medieval European cosmology referred to the physical world as "sub-lunar" or below the Moon. The universe, they believed, consisted of concentric spheres, with the Earth in the center and heaven as the outermost shell. The lunar sphere surrounds the Earth, so that if a human consciousness could ascend through the layers to God, it would first pass through the realm of the Moon. In the Haindl Tarot we find ourselves traveling in the Moon-land of myths, illusions, and wonders. But the Moon itself opens to a higher realm, from which light pours down on the back of the unicorn.
We can look at this in another way. If we wish to reach the mystic sense of perfect knowledge, we must follow the way that leads through the imagination, for the imagination gives shape to the unconscious. The Hermit and the Chariot, cards with a strong lunar influence in the Haindl Tarot, both took place in mythic worlds. But the Moon deals with myth itself. People have formed many definitions of myth; most think of myth simply as a false story. A skeptic might say of Noah's Ark, "It never happened. It's only a myth." Or, "the British stiff upper lip is a myth. They're actually very emotional:" But if we think of myth as a reflection of spirituality, we might better define myth as a true story. A mythic story or image (pictures and statues can serve as myths) gives us a sense of some truth we cannot express in ordinary terms. It leads us inward to the unconscious, and outward to spiritual awareness. "The myth is the penultimate truth," wrote Ananda Coomaraswamy. It is but one step away from revelation.
But why should the Moon symbolize such things? Two reasons really - an idea and an experience. The idea comes from the fact that the Moon emits no light of its own, but only reflects the light of the Sun. In the daytime, under the Sun, we see things clearly. Therefore, the Sun signifies truth. Myth reflects truth in the way the Moon reflects the Sun.
The experience comes from the fact that the Moon shines at night, with enough light to give objects a mysterious half-reality, but not enough to dispel the darkness. We all know, as well, the strange sensations and actions evoked by the full Moon. In earlier times (and in modern witchcraft), people sought the power of prophecy through rituals under the Moon. The police in big cities have learned to expect more violence and more bizarre behavior during the period of the full Moon.
The Haindl version of the card deals with these matters, but also stresses the mystic awareness that lies beyond the imagination. Thus, we see the Moon opening to something greater, the light streaming down into our world, while the bubbles rise up in an exchange of energy. Aside from the lobster, the picture does not carry images of fear, such as the dog and wolf of traditional versions. In the High Priestess, the river of the unconscious flowed dark and menacing through steep cliffs. In the Chariot, the boat protected the Charioteer from the foaming waves. Here in the Moon, the water runs through a soft landscape. When we reach the higher levels of the Major Arcana, when we achieve the peace and openness of the Star, then we can enter that lunar world and discover fear transformed into beauty.
The Moon is primal, not social. Perhaps the fears inspired by the Moon are common to all humanity, but we experience them personally and deeply in ourselves. And while the mystic understands the unity of all existence, he or she can never communicate this understanding except through inadequate symbols, such as myths, Tarot cards, paintings and stories.
The landscape represents peace. The lobster represents the fear. It floats in the air, like the kind of anxiety that does not belong to any rational cause. It comes from deep in the water - the unconscious - and rises into the air - conscious awareness. The image of a creature pulled out of its normal home suggests again the strangeness of this card. Under the influence of the Moon we find ourselves in extreme situations or peculiar mental states, and cut off from ordinary experience.
The unicorn replaces the traditional dog and wolf. This shifts the card from wildness to imagination, for while the wolf exists in the human mind (as a symbol) as well as in nature, the unicorn springs entirely from fantasy. At the same time, Hermann Haindl has painted this unicorn "realistically," with more detail than those on the Lovers and the Wheel of Fortune. Our tendency to reduce mythology to nursery tales (editing out whatever is disturbing or sexual) leads us to think of myth as vague and rosy. But myth is hard and real, dealing in the psychic facts of our existence and based on internal laws. For decades psychologists such as Carl Jung, philosophers such as Ernst Cassirer, and anthropologists such as Claude Levi-Strauss have attempted to discover those laws. They prove only that myth remains slippery, as impossible to define as the unconscious.
The unicorn is a sexual image, as we saw in the Lovers. This links dream and myth with that sexual-spiritual energy called the kundalini. Researchers have found evidence suggesting that dreams are sexual, not necessarily in their meaning, but in their very nature. For instance, during the rapid eye movements connected with dream sleep periods, the body is sexually aroused. This is not the case in the rest of sleep. Sometimes when we wake up from dreams we experience a strong sexual current running through our bodies, like the river in the card of the Moon.
All this means that dreams, and by extension, more conscious creations such as stories and art, come from the basic life energy called the "libido" in modern psychology. Dreams and myths are the shapes taken by the formless unconscious as it seeks to become known to us. If dreams really are sexual, then myths are both sexual and spiritual at the same time. While myths describe the Gods, they often do so in erotic (and violent) terms. In myth we find the energy in the process of transformation. We see this movement symbolized in the unicorn's spiral horn. We see it as well in the hole created by the Moon. The Moon is the only thing in the card depicted as eternal, without the erosion shown in the animals and even the air. When we pass through that hole, we pass beyond the lunar sphere, beyond images and words to the ultimate, rather than penultimate, truth.
DIVINATORY MEANINGS
The Moon signifies a time in the person's life when the imagination is very active. The person may be filled with fantasies, strong dreams, daydreams. Hopes and fears may become exaggerated or swing back and forth. In general, during a Moon time the emotions become heightened. People feel things more intensely; they concern themselves more with feeling and less with external activities such as work.
The person may wish to channel this imaginative power into creativity. The Moon means a surge of energy, but it may be chaotic and hard to direct, for the Moon takes us back to the sources of creativity. It does not concern itself with such things as artistic discipline. The ideal combination for creative work might be the Moon and the Magician.
Usually with the Moon we must allow ourselves to experience fantasies, strange feelings, even fear if the Moon brings that out in us. Yet the Moon does not have to be a fearsome experience. Think of the loveliness of the full Moon as it shines on a river or reflects its light off snow. The Moon can have a calming effect, especially when we do not fight against its dreams and visions. the Chariot in a reading recommends mastery over the roaring waters of emotion or deep fears. In the Moon we go into the experiences instead of trying to conquer them. As a result, the sea becomes a river. The water is active in the Moon, with small waves on the surface, but it does not threaten. If the Moon and the Chariot both appear in a reading, the reader needs to look at the other cards to see their direction. Do they imply that the person has gone through a lunar time and now needs once more to exert some conscious control? Or the opposite: Has the person been trying too hard to master his or her emotions and needs to sink into them? Or can the two work together? An easier combination with the Moon would be the Hermit, emphasizing the person's need to be alone and explore the lunar visions.
REVERSED
The reversed card may indicate that a Moon experience is passing and the time has come for the person to return to more "solar" activities, to become busy in the world again, or look at life in a more rational way. Other cards, such as the Sun, Justice, or the Chariot, might reinforce this interpretation of the up-side-down Moon. Remember that the Moon passes through phases, from new to full to old, and that this applies to people as well. In other words, Moon experiences will be stronger or weaker at different times in our lives.
Sometimes the Moon reversed may show that the conscious mind is blocking the unconscious. The person feels that lunar stirring of visions and emotions but fights it back. If the other cards indicate a successful outcome to the reading, then it is appropriate at the time for the person to suppress the lunar influence. Often, however, such an attempt to suppress dark emotions accentuates the fear or disturbance connected to the card. The Moon reversed may show a person who works hard, rushes around, goes out every night, or watches television until it is time to fall asleep - all of this to avoid letting out feelings, thoughts, and images from the unconscious. Such a person needs to seek the Moon's calm aspect, to let the unicorn of vision rise up from the water.
