January 21, 2010 - The Moon

I love the moon. I search for it in the sky. I follow its cycles from waxing and waning. I always have, even as a child. One of my first memories is standing in my crib, moonlight streaming through a high window in my make-shift room (the second is of the sun, specifically a golden shaft of sunlight, dancing dust motes, on a back porch of a Wisconsin home, the short summer turning everything outside a lush, exuberant green). The Moon card in the tarot is a card of fears and illusions and dreams and sometimes it is hard to resolve these conflicting views, the love of the moon's beauty and changing face, and the less lovely aspects of this card.

When The Moon comes up in a reading it speaks of fearfulness, inner demons, a lack of courage, overcome by anxieties. I am fearful, especially of losing things that are precious to me. There's not much I hold that precious and have lost one of them. the world goes on. But then that wasn't my fear. My fear was living without and it has been, in many ways, as terrible as I believed it would be.

The Moon can also mean that you are believing illusions, yours or those spun by others. Again, this too could be true. I am a dreamer and I spin futures, invest in them as if they are nows instead of mere possibilities. I deceive myself and find sometimes I don't even know what was, what is, let alone what will be.

Another aspect of The Moon is opening up to the unconscious. It can be a time of vivid dreams, and an opening to a more magical, mystical world. Pacifica did that for me. I learned that I write myself, the my stories are the stuff of dreams and that I can plumb them for my growth and self-understanding. It isn't always pretty, but dreams know, stories know. They always have.

Finally, The Moon can signal a time of lost direction and purpose. You can be disoriented, confused, easily distracted. You wander aimlessly, lost, not sure of your way. This too resonates. I no longer spin futures but that has left me with no futures at all. I walk step by step but I never look up to see where I might be going. You cannot spend all your time with your eyes just on the horizon, just as you cannot spend all your time watching each step, never knowing where you are headed.

In the Jane Austen Tarot, The Moon card is depicted by Emma. It is night and she is standing before a basin of water. She is plagued by her own fears and foolishness, what she thought and she is realizing are her deepest feelings. She thought she was immune to love but comes in that dark night to realize she loves George Knightley and that she may have lost him already, so little did she know her own heart. The Moon card represents mysteries and their unfolding. It can also signify delusions and fears of the unknown. There is an aspect of psychic visions that comes with this card, but it demands a balancing act of being open without being carried away. Ah Jane, balance again and again, in any and every way. "When you receive The Moon, your feelings run deep and true. They are likely to be complicated, complex, and occasionally, overwhelming. On th other hand, they -- and you -- will never b accused of being boring."

What Would Jane Do?

"The point where our emotions are most engaged is often the precise intersection wherein our follies are most pronounced. Rationality is a quality to be striven for, but it is hardly the domain of those in love -- or those who believe themselves to be in love. For who can determine true love from false affection at the pinnacle of attraction?" p. 48