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When dealing with symbolism of the Moon in western culture, the popular image of this planet is largely feminine. Imagery of the feminine has gotten tied up with some traits usually regarded as weak, troublesome, or primitive: instincts, moods, tides, receptivity, sex, and emotional ups and downs. It is true that the Moon adequately governs these principles, but the occultist can gain deeper insights when he pursues the Moon as presiding over and representing the activities of the masculine. If he delves deeply, he may discover that the feminine is far more than the taciturn underling she is portrayed to be. She is the embodiment of the Divine, from which the masculine emerges. The Moon can be seen as a symbolic instrument through which the feminine encompasses and facilitates the evolution of the masculine.
To start with, a clue to the immense importance of the feminine is found in the first page of the Bible: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." Scholars believe that this reference to Darkness that precedes Light comes from religions in ancient Sumer. Sumerians believed that Light came from Darkness, day from night, Sun from Moon (Baigent 95). In the Jewish Kabbalah it is the same: Manifestation comes from Unmanifestation, visibility from invisibility, Light from Darkness. God created the Universe from His body of "no-thing-ness." The Darkness or obscurity, when it is regarded as female, produces some profound chains of association.
The concept of trinity may give a better perspective on this Darkness-Light duality. In Taoism, Yin is the dark, feminine principle. She is the silent potential of all that is, the invisible silence behind perceivable manifestation. Yang is the active, masculine principle which comes forth from this emptiness extending from Yin, like Light from Darkness.
Yang is made up of the "stuff" of Yin; therefore its Yang-nature is unreal of illusory. Objects and events are simply movements or vibrations on the surface of Yin. Yin is all there really is.
As a result, the question rises: without any real Yang activity, how can Yin's stillness be perceived to exist? How can a background exist without a foreground? These opposites are merely perceptual oddities depending on relativity for their distinctiveness. If Yang is unreal, then this fact destroys the duality of Yin-Yang, and therefore Yin does not exist either.
All that "remains" after this realization is Tao, the source of the illusions of Yin and Yang. Tao is indescribable unity, without quantifiable traits of any kind, beyond limited Earthly consciousness. Yin can be regarded as the medium through which Tao issues forth Yang (manifestation). When a man tries to see the source of his being, the image that Tao presents is that of the feminine darkness.
The cyclic nature of the Moon represents this voyage of the masculine, the going forth into manifestation and the return into the stillness of the Unmanifest.
Osiris, ancient Egypt's most famous Moon god, demonstrates the Taoist trinity quite well with the help of Isis and Horus. When Osiris was slain by Set, he sinks back into the waters of Nu or into the Underworld, where he lies helpless in the coils of the serpents of chaos. For convenience here, it can be said he disappears into Tao. The Egyptians say the his phallus was lost and swallowed by a fish after Set dismembered his body. This makes him conveniently androgynous, neither Yin nor Yang.
Isis, the great mother goddess, takes on the role of Yin by using her magical powers to conceive from Osiris's mummy and beget Horus. Horus is viewed as the active extension of Osiris into the manifest world. His triumph over Set is the waking up of Osiris, who formerly slumbered in the obscurity of Tao, beyond the darkness of Isis's womb.
The mystery traditions teach the importance of ones feminine side. Inside the depths of stillness is the source of all creation - the Tao. The masculine ego, when it is unable to feel its connection to this source, becomes lost and restless.
In a book on the Holy Grail, Malcolm Godwin writes, "There appears to be a deep imbalance in the male need to act, to prove that he is, while the woman is move balanced and still. Her womb is wholly connected to the life cycles around her" (242). Such statements point out the connection of the womb to the waxing and waning of the Moon. The menstrual cycle is approximately equal to the full lunar cycle.
At a time when the Grail legends first appeared in Europe, it was believed the menstrual blood was the medium of life. Even Aristotle, who influenced much of medieval thought, claimed that human life is the coagulation of this fluid (Godwin 200). This metaphoric insight demonstrates that the womb is the gate by which activity emerges from passivity. The passive Osiris becomes active via the cyclic powers of the lunar gate of Isis's womb. His material offspring, Horus, is analogous to an active wave on the otherwise passive sea of the invisibility.
Joseph Campbell echoes this idea:
A passage in the Corpus Hermeticum says that the Moon is the worker of change in mater and "the instrument by which birth and growth are wrought" (Scott 87). This illustrates that the lunar cycles represent the motions of life as they emerge from motionlessness. These tides are the source and "blueprint" of masculine activity. One could even say they are the moving boundary between the outer and inner worlds.
In the Aristotelian view of the Universe, the Earth is in the center of creation, surrounded by a series of such moving boundaries, concentric crystalline spheres. Each sphere rotates and has affixed to it a planet. The innermost sphere was that of the Moon, and it was said that every heavenly virtue must pass through its motion to reach and affect the Earth. The Moon acts as a gatekeeper of descending powers and likewise of efforts of man to communicate with heavenly spirits (Tyson, How to Make 28-29). Mankind is more-or-less at the whim of the flux and reflux of this process of manifestation represented by the rhythm of Lunar tides.
In speaking of the curious restlessness of the male principle, it is helpful to turn to mythology with particular emphasis on the voyage of the hero. The hero is so often presented as male, not because of chauvinism, but more likely because masculinity has a wayfaring quality to it. Some women like to refer to men as "lost little boys." Men tend to wander through the world looking for something that will absorb their restlessness. Sex is one way to temporarily quiet their plight - a symbolic reentry into the womb, whether they realize they are being controlled by this archetypal need or not. The real need behind this governing symbolism is for illumination, and the ultimate prize for the mythological hero is, no matter how it is disguised, is reconnection with Tao. Slaying the monster and "getting the girl" is a way of accomplishing this. Joseph Campbell says of the Hero, "The male usually has the more conspicuous role, just because of the conditions of life. His is out there in the world, and the woman is in the home"(The Power 125).
The Lunar cycles represent this restlessness quite well with their coming and going. The typical hero act consists of three stages: departure, fulfillment, and return (Campbell, The Power 123). The hero is dissatisfied, goes on a quest, obtains the prize, and returns more powerful than before. The moon echoes this process by waning until it vanishes into the emptiness of the sky. Then magically it returns to shed light in the dark of night.
Further identifying the Lunar cycle with the hero's voyage, Rosicrucian symbolism defines a connection between the sign of the crescent and the masculine soul. To Rosicrucians, the Sun ( ) is the emblem of eternal Light, a full circle. The Moon ( ), a broken circle, is a symbol of "that spark of light that slumbers in the soul of man." If the cross ( ) symbolizes penetration, then the alchemical symbol for Mercury ( ) can be explained-man connected to his essence (Silberer 189). Also, this demonstrates that the Moon ( ) is the means by which the masculine connects to the feminine ( ). The Moon represents a process by which unity can be achieved. Eliphas Levi writes that the Sun represents the Word of truth (the goal), while the Moon represents religion (skillful means) (252).
Why is this union necessary if separation is only an illusion? Why do people live under the hallucination that they are separate egos in a hostile environment? The need that a limited soul has is to realize its inevitable limitlessness. Earthly consciousness needs work to achieve this state, and the struggle requires observation, effort, and time because, at first, these are the only things with which it has to work.
Time originates in the realm of the masculine soul. The Moon is the lord of change and therewith the lord of time as well. The chief Sumerian god was named Sin, god of the Moon, Lord of Time. His crescent that appeared at Sunset, after the new Moon, heralded the beginning of a new month. He was considered to be the originator of the calendar (Baigent 96). According to historians, the Moon was one of the first means of measuring time (Limberg 33).
A Moon god presiding over the cycles of time also hints that the realm of measurement and quantities is governed by the Moon. The manifest universe is the arena of struggle for union of inner and outer life. Everything outside its ring is beyond the state of measurability. Everything within it is concrete and quantifiable. The word, Moon, can be traced back to an ancient Indo-European root meaning "to measure." In Old English this root became mona, from which "Moon" is descended (Limberg 33).
Science - effort and observation - is another of the restless activities of men involving measurement. It is a "skillful means" of acting on the desire to penetrate into the unknown, to re-enter the womb. Often it loses sight of its original purpose, but always it is driven onward by the archetypal need to connect to the source of creation.
The ancient Egyptian Moon god, Thoth, is a good representative of this path of science and measurement. God of wisdom, writing, invention, and science; he holds the keys to the greater mysteries (Reed 45). His role in the restoration of the Eye of Horus demonstrates the importance of his approach.
When Horus and Set fought for the throne of the two kingdoms, Set managed to tear out his opponents left eye and hurl it beyond the edge of the World. The eye is an archetypal symbol of awareness, and more specifically the left eye of Horus was considered to be the Moon (the right eye, the Sun). Thoth went and found it broken in pieces lying in the "outer darkness." Using his calculating abilities, he counted the pieces and reintegrated it, restoring it to its original brightness which is the form of the full Moon (Clark 224).
The disappearance of the eye represents a loss of the awareness of the connection with ones essence - loss of the Lunar gate. The resulting time of blindness and darkness is analogous, in this case, to the new Moon. Secondly, the counting and reassembling process finds its expression in the waxing Moon. And finally, the eye restored is the full Moon, Light shining in Darkness. The importance of the scientific approach reveals itself through the principles of analysis and reintegration. In fact, it should come as no surprise that Thoth is said to preside predominantly over the 0=0 Ceremony of the Golden Dawn in which the candidate's personality is supposedly broken up and reintegrated (Zalewski).
As a man struggles and strives and measures he forms in his mind, if he is astute, a composite paradigm capable of showing forth the impetus behind his plight, the ever-blossoming abyss of the infinite. There is a limitless number of paradigms possible, all of them potentially capable. They range from scientific models, to religions, to systems of mysticism. These mandalas of the intellect are composed of interacting symbols creating a context that conveys more than the mere components ever could. The symbols can be anything from scientific formulae, to geometric shapes, to images of animals.
A very pervasive symbol for the Moon is the Bull. One of the titles of Osiris is the "Bull God" (Ra Horakhty 6). The dead and resurrected god of Sumer, Dumuzzi, is also represented by the bull. These curiosities are easily explained when the horns of the bull are seen as emblematic of the "horns" of the Lunar crescent (Baigent 97).
In ancient Sumer, the Lunar Bull is a forever living, forever dying creature with a square beard, symbolizing male potency. He is consumed monthly by the lion bird of Sunlight. The horns of the waning crescent, close to the horizon, nearly consumed by the dawning Sun, indicate that egoic masculinity is consumed in the act of fecundating the body of the goddess Earth with life-restoring morning dew (Campbell, Occidental 56).
This reveals the meaning behind the notion that the initiate dies and is reborn. His consciousness penetrates into the timeless realm, leaving behind his fearfully time-bound existence. His restlessness is absorbed, resolved, and transformed. Fear is futile. All is One.
Sex is a direct reflection of this absorption and death. It is common to find that men who are unconsciously controlled by the archetype of sexual union tend to panic before their wedding ceremony. An initiation of this kind carries with it and echo of death. Such men, after marriage, are seen by their friends to have become docile and tame.
Another involvement of the Lunar Bull in ancient Sumer is in ritual sacrifice. An all -black bull was ceremonially killed, yielding up its skin for the cover of the temple's kettle drum. Here the bull is related to time. The drum is an instrument used to keep time, and the black hide that covers it symbolically represents the reverberation of the Darkness which creates manifestation (Campbell, Occidental 56).
Another Lunar animal that symbolizes masculine activity is the Serpent. It is by fare one of the most pervasive animals in mythology. Just the sight of a snake moving through the grass brings a fear reaction from people who are unconsciously controlled by its archetypal power. Such is its depth.
The snake is clearly phallic, and its connected to the Moon is easy to explain. The Moon presides over tides and over dew and moisture, as already mentioned. It is also regarded as the source of the Waters of Life (Campbell, Occidental 10). The moon circles the Earth in a similar fashion. As it progresses, it is swallowed by and reissued forth from Darkness.
The serpent as an animal which swallows up its prey can also represent the female sex organs (Campbell, Occidental 10). The snake has a wave-like oscillation coupled with its dual sexual nature make it a good representative of primal desire. At the beginning of creation the Unmanifest began to stir, the motion being more akin to desire than actual movement. This motion can be likened to that of a snake. Donald Tyson describes the God's need to know Himself in terms of these undulations:
Waves extended from the surface of a limitless sea of Yin are what comprise manifestation. The undulations of the serpent move along its body while the body remains in place. The progress of a wave along its body is a kind of illusion. Likewise, the clay that forms a man is animated by a wave or cycle of life. The man moves through life more-or-less on the crest of the wave, having the opportunity to act upon the desire of the Unmanifest within him. Inevitably, the wave passes, and the seemingly compartmentalized body crumbles back to mere components on the surface of the invisible sea.
So it is that the encircling path of the Moon equates with the uroboros and the surrounding waters of Unmanifestation. And likewise is the desire of God served in the evolution of man. Man, through his cultivation of conscious awareness on the crest of the wave, is developing the ability to serve God's desire to know Himself. The feminine Darkness is the means by which God encompasses man's activities and facilitates his evolution through the cyclic coming and going of the waters of the Moon.
Works Cited
Baigent, Michael. From the Omens of Babyon: Astrology and Ancient Mesopotamia. London: Penguin Group, 1994.
Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. New York: Penguin Group, 1964.
Campbell, Joseph and Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth New York: Doubleday, 1988.
Clark, R.T. Rundle. Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1959.
Godwin, Malcolm. The Holy Grail. New York: Penguin Group, 1994.
Limberg, Peter R. Weird: The Complete Book of Halloween Words. New York: Avon Books, 1989.
Levi, Eliphas. Transcendental Magic. 1896. York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1992.
Reed, Ellen Cannon. Invocation of the Gods. St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1992.
Scott, Walter (Editor and Translator). Hermetica. Lower Lake, CA: Atrium Publications Group, (no publication date given).
Silberer, Herbert. Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts. 1917. New York: Dover Publications, 1971.
Tyson, Donald. How to Make and Use a Magic Mirror. St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1990.
Tyson, Donald. The New Magus. St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1990.
Zalewski, Pat. "Ceremonial Magic: Demonstration and Instruction in the Performance of the 0=0 Ritual." Private Temple Retreat. Puyallup, WA. 18, Feb., 1995.
Copyright © 1997
