Balancing the Arcana: A Sun-Moon Example
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Having returned to New Hampshire after a month in the Florida sunshine, I’ve picked up reading Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Way of Tarot again during my morning treadmill sessions. I’m now pondering his discussion of three-card combinations that exhibit a revolving, left-to-right order of presentation, in which the diversity of the three-way distribution alters the sequential interpretation of the set.
Although my focus here is on the Sun and Moon without automatically including the Star or Judgement, Jodorowsky’s premises can be applied to any alignment of trump cards beyond those that appear in a triple array. My approach is to lay two Major Arcana — selected either intentionally or arbitrarily — on the table, then randomly pull another card from a second deck and place it between them to suggest ways in which their separate influences might be blended, mediated and modulated within the area of life being examined. While this is primarily a learning exercise, it may also be informative in actual practice where acknowledged life-changing circumstances are afoot. If such concerns are evident or suspected but the powers at work are still obscure, it may be best to pull the two trumps randomly from a segregated trumps-only population to convey the emerging dimensions of the situation.
Jodorowsky notes that one must balance or harmonize the energies of the Sun and Moon in order to succeed in harnessing and commanding those forces. This concept is not dissimilar to the relationship between the Sun and Moon in natal astrology, in which the Ascendant is interwoven with them to produce the Arabic Part of Fortune and Part of Spirit, sensitive points derived from the shifting mathematical alignment between the three factors that denote a fourth meaningful parameter. In tarot terms, placing a third unknown quantity between two purposely chosen trumps can bring the abstract archetypes down to Earth in a pragmatic way, offering insights into how their frequently divergent objectives can be reconciled and anchored in mundane reality. Because the Moon as Water and the Sun as Fire are elementally uncooperative, it would be worthwhile to use Elemental Dignities in determining whether the middle card favors and reinforces one or the other, adding an additional layer of detail to the analysis. The goal is to explore whether the jarring dissonance can be transformed into an agreeable consonance (Jodorowsky’s harmonious “chord”) with the random middle card ideally serving as a fortuitous “bridge” between the two.
In describing the interplay of the Sun and Moon, Jodorowsky makes much of the “eternal river” that flows through so many of the Tarot de Marseille trump cards. In the Moon it pools to form a “reflecting pond” in which the Self can contemplate its deepest aspects as in a mirror before passing on into the egoistic domain of the Sun (although the imagery in the latter suggests that the river has evaporated in an exhalation of droplets that Jodorowsky views as “rising” toward the solar disk where others see falling sparks or flames.) Jodo fumbles a bit here in defining the dark-blue water in the Moon as conveying Freudian sexual implications whereas elsewhere he is consistent in treating shades of blue as emotional in nature. He typically relegates passionate sexuality to the dominant reds as exemplified by the Sun in its primordial ego-drive, where it seems to be more a matter of conquest than consensual union. The Moon also represents the Mother archetype as distinct from the Father-image of the Sun, and these polar opposites must obviously be integrated in the life to the extent possible in order to produce a healthy, well-adjusted personality.
In another context, Jodorowsky mentions that the feminine mind is the first to aspire to illumination, but the Moon is locked up in reflective navel-gazing from which the only escape may lie in evoking the caveat “That way lies madness.” Here the 4 of Batons suggests that persistence and optimism will be required to move beyond the emotional doldrums, out of the twilight and into the coming dawn. As a binary expression, Four is a passive and feminine number but in the occult purview of Wands it is also associated with masculine Aries, the sign of the Sun’s exaltation, while embodying Venus, which is exalted in Pisces, the sign corresponding to the tarot Moon. This would seem to make it the perfect intermediary in bringing the Moon and Sun together: on one hand it is sympathetic to feelings while on the other it is authoritative and ambitious, echoing the “IIII” of the Emperor. There is constructive stability here that the Moon can’t provide and the Sun welcomes, making Sol the dominant force in this series. Because the suit of Fire is inimical to archetypal Water, the 4 of Batons leans elementally in favor of the Sun while carrying the “seeds” of its fertile connection to the Moon. The green wands are constrained by the red bars, implying that the work of the Sun is to direct the creative impulse arising from the Moon and Venus. Since the esoteric title of the 4 of Wands is “Completion,” this would be a good combination for bringing visionary inspiration to fruition in a well-managed project, as long as the mystic vagaries of the Moon can be reined in and put to good use.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on March 6, 2023.
