Under the Moon
AUTHOR’S NOTE: As a “lunar” person born on a Full Moon I’ve always felt its pull, and this month is no exception. Although I was inspired in beginning this essay by my reading of Medieval cultural history, as I was writing it I was at least subconsciously aware that the Moon will be full tomorrow. When I got up this morning it was staring at me in all its glory from the northwestern horizon, accompanied by what appears to be Jupiter. (I had to consult an ephemeris to confirm my hunch that it will be at its northernmost declination on December 15, marking its “major lunar standstilll.”) I was immediately reminded of the Moody Blues’ image of the “cold-hearted orb that rules the night.”
Medieval thinkers had a fascinating opinion of the Moon; as the second most imposing body in the sky, it loomed large in their cosmology but had little in common with modern astronomical principles other than its cyclical impermanence.
They divided the heavens into two zones, one sublunary or between the Moon and the Earth, and the other translunary or beyond the Moon. The first was the realm of air, within which all living things beneath, upon and above the Earth’s surface (up to the celestial boundary marked by the Moon’s path) had their being, while the second was filled with a subtle fluid called aether, and it was the abode of superior entities (e.g. gods and angels) symbolized by or in tune with the planets and the stars. An unknown artist produced the “Flammarion engraving” that depicts this division, suggesting that we can aspire to transcend the sublunar region as an act of Will. Apart from the purely theological assumptions of the time, astrology was the primary adjunct to this quest.
The Moon of the Middle Ages was not the Moon of the Romantic poets and their prosaic greeting-card offspring; it was hardly a soothing purveyor of motherly affection, nor was it the Moon of natal astrologers that primarily reflects emotional character and public reputation, only secondarily referring to the mother. As poet John Gower had it, this Moon was more akin to that of the tarot:
“We that dwell under the Mone
Stand in this world upon a weer” (a doubt or uncertainty)
Being a footloose nomad when compared to the steady course of the planets and stars, the Moon was thought to cause wandering ways; Gower described those born under the Moon as “seeking many strange lands,” and the Moon was accused of bringing on “wandering of the wits” in the form of periodic insanity or “lunacy.” The Moon gave Chaucer’s Nature her mutable inconstancy, during which everything waxes and wanes and is therefore corruptible. Translunar Heaven, in contrast, exhibits neither growth nor decrease and does not succumb to vagaries of fortune. Whereas air can be tainted, aether cannot. In The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare speaks of “dangerous unsafe lunes,” and in truth many nefarious acts are performed under the half-light of the Moon.
For Aleister Crowley, as “the most universal of the Planets” it showed two sides: one “occupies the place of the Link between the human and Divine” (as we have just learned from C.S. Lewis, whom I’ve been liberally sampling*), and the other portrays “the waning moon, the moon of witchcraft and abominable deeds.” This is about as far from the romantic ideal as one can get.
In order for the translunar powers to impact human beings, they had to first cause modifications to the sublunar air through devolution or mediation; for example, it was thought that a communicable disease could only be spread if there was a conjunction (or “constellation”) of malefic planets that imparted its influence by permeating and thus being present in the air (which is the where the word “influenza” comes from). The “Medieval Model” put forward by Lewis did not share our modern understanding that “the heavenly bodies move in a pitch-black and dead-cold vacuity;” instead, they (and the stars) were perpetually awash in the light of the Sun, which “illuminates the whole universe.”
Everything in the sublunar sphere is regularly steeped in “the conical shadow cast by our Earth,” which we name Night. Lewis states it plainly: “When we look up at the night sky, we are looking through darkness but not at darkness.” Beyond what Milton called “the circling canopy of Night’s extended shade,” there is no night, “only happie climes that lie where day never shuts his eye.” As Lewis puts it, “The sky looks black only because we are seeing it through the dark glass of our own shadow.”
As depicted in many tarot decks, the Moon is the gatekeeper watching over the shadow-lands and the treacherous road that leads from the sublunar depths to the translunar heights. Its pallid luster is deceptive and invokes what Crowley rendered with characteristic perversity as “Such light as there may be is deadlier than darkness, and the silence is wounded by the howling of wild beasts.” I challenge any tarot reader to turn that vision into Hallmark-card sentimentality!
*The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C.S. Lewis, HarperOne, 2013
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on December 14, 2024.
