Illusion, deception, bewilderment, hysteria, even madness, dreaminess, falsehood, error, crisis, "the darkest hour before the dawn", the brink of important change.
ק
ATU XVIII
ATU XVIII The Moon
The Ruler of Flux and Reflux.
The Child of the Sons of the Mighty
The Moon
The Ruler of Flux and Reflux.
The Child of the Sons of the Mighty
The Eighteenth Trump is attributed to the letter Qoph, which represents Pisces in the Zodiac. It is called the Moon.
Pisces is the last of the Signs; it represents the last stage of winter. It might be called the Gateway of Resurrection (the letter Qoph means the back of the head, and is connected with the potencies of the cerebellum). In the system of the old Aeon, the resurrection of
the Sun was not only from winter, but from night; and this card represents midnight.
"There is a budding morrow in midnight", wrote Keats. For this reason there appears at the bottom of the card, underneath the water which is tinged with graphs of abomination, the sacred Beetle, the Egyptian Khephra, bearing in his mandibles the Solar Disk. It is this Beetle that bears the Sun in his Silence through the darkness of Night and the bitterness of Winter.
Above the surface of the water is a sinister and forbidding landscape. We see a path or stream, serum tinged with blood, which flows from a gap between two barren mountains; nine drops of impure blood, drop-shaped like Yods, fall upon it from the Moon.
The Moon, partaking as she does of the highest and the lowest, and filling all the space between, is the most universal of the Planets. In her higher aspect, she occupies the place of the Link between the human and divine, as shown in Atu II. In this Trump, her lowest avatar, she joins the earthy sphere of Netzach with Malkuth, the culmination in matter of all superior forms. This is the waning moon, the moon of witchcraft and abominable deeds. She is the poisoned darkness which is the condition of the rebirth of light.
This path is guarded by Tabu. She is uncleanliness and sorcery. Upon the hills are the black towers of nameless mystery, of horror and of fear. All prejudice, all superstition, dead tradition - and ancestral loathing, all combine to darken her face before the eyes of men. It needs unconquerable courage to begin to tread this path. Here is a weird, deceptive life. The fiery sense is baulked. The moon has no air. The knight upon this quest has to rely on the three lower senses: touch, taste and smell. [See the Book of Lies Cap.pb, Bortsch.] Such light as there may be is deadlier than darkness, and the silence is wounded by the howling of wild beasts.
To what god shall we appeal for aid? It is Anubis, the watcher in the twilight, the god that stands upon the threshold, the jackal god of Khem, who stands in double form between the Ways. At his feet, on watch, wait the jackals themselves, to devour the carcasses of those who have not seen Him, or who have not known His Name.
This is the threshold of life; this is the threshold of death. All is doubtful, all is mysterious, all is intoxicating. Not the benign, solar intoxication of Dionysus, but the dreadful madness of pernicious drugs; this is a drunkenness of sense, after the mind has been abolished by the venom of this Moon. This is that which is written of Abraham in the Book of the Beginning: "An horror of great darkness came upon him." One is reminded of the mental echo of subconscious realization, of that supreme iniquity which mystics have constantly celebrated in their accounts of the Dark Night of the Soul. But the best men, the true men, do not consider the matter in such terms at all. Whatever horrors may afflict the soul, whatever abominations may excite the loathing of the heart, whatever terrors may assail the mind, the answer is the same at every stage: "How splendid is the Adventure!"
Pisces is the last of the Signs; it represents the last stage of winter. It might be called the Gateway of Resurrection (the letter Qoph means the back of the head, and is connected with the potencies of the cerebellum). In the system of the old Aeon, the resurrection of
the Sun was not only from winter, but from night; and this card represents midnight.
"There is a budding morrow in midnight", wrote Keats. For this reason there appears at the bottom of the card, underneath the water which is tinged with graphs of abomination, the sacred Beetle, the Egyptian Khephra, bearing in his mandibles the Solar Disk. It is this Beetle that bears the Sun in his Silence through the darkness of Night and the bitterness of Winter.
Above the surface of the water is a sinister and forbidding landscape. We see a path or stream, serum tinged with blood, which flows from a gap between two barren mountains; nine drops of impure blood, drop-shaped like Yods, fall upon it from the Moon.
The Moon, partaking as she does of the highest and the lowest, and filling all the space between, is the most universal of the Planets. In her higher aspect, she occupies the place of the Link between the human and divine, as shown in Atu II. In this Trump, her lowest avatar, she joins the earthy sphere of Netzach with Malkuth, the culmination in matter of all superior forms. This is the waning moon, the moon of witchcraft and abominable deeds. She is the poisoned darkness which is the condition of the rebirth of light.
This path is guarded by Tabu. She is uncleanliness and sorcery. Upon the hills are the black towers of nameless mystery, of horror and of fear. All prejudice, all superstition, dead tradition - and ancestral loathing, all combine to darken her face before the eyes of men. It needs unconquerable courage to begin to tread this path. Here is a weird, deceptive life. The fiery sense is baulked. The moon has no air. The knight upon this quest has to rely on the three lower senses: touch, taste and smell. [See the Book of Lies Cap.pb, Bortsch.] Such light as there may be is deadlier than darkness, and the silence is wounded by the howling of wild beasts.
To what god shall we appeal for aid? It is Anubis, the watcher in the twilight, the god that stands upon the threshold, the jackal god of Khem, who stands in double form between the Ways. At his feet, on watch, wait the jackals themselves, to devour the carcasses of those who have not seen Him, or who have not known His Name.
This is the threshold of life; this is the threshold of death. All is doubtful, all is mysterious, all is intoxicating. Not the benign, solar intoxication of Dionysus, but the dreadful madness of pernicious drugs; this is a drunkenness of sense, after the mind has been abolished by the venom of this Moon. This is that which is written of Abraham in the Book of the Beginning: "An horror of great darkness came upon him." One is reminded of the mental echo of subconscious realization, of that supreme iniquity which mystics have constantly celebrated in their accounts of the Dark Night of the Soul. But the best men, the true men, do not consider the matter in such terms at all. Whatever horrors may afflict the soul, whatever abominations may excite the loathing of the heart, whatever terrors may assail the mind, the answer is the same at every stage: "How splendid is the Adventure!"
BORTSCH
[From: Book of Lies, Chapter 82]
Witch-moon that turnest all the streams to blood,
I take this hazel rod, and stand, and swear
An Oath-beneath this blasted Oak and bare
That rears its agony above the flood
Whose swollen mask mutters an atheist's prayer.
What oath may stand the shock of this offence:
"There is no I, no joy, no permanence"?
Witch-moon of blood, eternal ebb and flow
Of baffled birth, in death still lurks a change;
And all the leopards in thy woods that range,
And all the vampires in their boughs that glow,
Brooding on blood-thirst-these are not so strange
And fierce as life's unfailing shower. These die,
Yet time rebears them through eternity.
Hear then the Oath, with-moon of blood, dread moon!
Let all thy stryges and thy ghouls attend!
He that endureth even to the end
Hath sworn that Love's own corpse shall lie at noon
Even in the coffin of its hopes, and spend
All the force won by its old woe and stress
In now annihilating Nothingness.
This chapter is called Imperial Purple
and A Punic War.
[From: Book of Lies, Chapter 82]
Witch-moon that turnest all the streams to blood,
I take this hazel rod, and stand, and swear
An Oath-beneath this blasted Oak and bare
That rears its agony above the flood
Whose swollen mask mutters an atheist's prayer.
What oath may stand the shock of this offence:
"There is no I, no joy, no permanence"?
Witch-moon of blood, eternal ebb and flow
Of baffled birth, in death still lurks a change;
And all the leopards in thy woods that range,
And all the vampires in their boughs that glow,
Brooding on blood-thirst-these are not so strange
And fierce as life's unfailing shower. These die,
Yet time rebears them through eternity.
Hear then the Oath, with-moon of blood, dread moon!
Let all thy stryges and thy ghouls attend!
He that endureth even to the end
Hath sworn that Love's own corpse shall lie at noon
Even in the coffin of its hopes, and spend
All the force won by its old woe and stress
In now annihilating Nothingness.
This chapter is called Imperial Purple
and A Punic War.
| Also see ATU XVIII: The Moon according to: | ||||
| Tarot de Marseilles (Gebelin) | Eliphas Levi | Golden Dawn (Regardie) | Aleister Crowley | Frater Achad |
777 for key 29
I
Key Scale 29
II
Hebrew Names of Numbers and Letters Qoph
III
English of Col. II. Back of head
VI
The Heavens of Assiah Dagim
VII
English of Col. VI. Pisces
VIII
Orders of Qliphoth Nashimiron
X
Mystic Numbers of the Sephiroth 435
XI
Elements (with their Planetary Rulers) Mars Water
XII
The Tree of Life Pathjoins 7–10
XIII
The Paths of the Sepher Yetzirah Corporeal I.
XIV
General Attribution of Tarot The Moon
XV
The King Scale of Colour (y) Crimson (ultra violet)
XVI
The Queen Scale of Colour (h) Buff, flecked silver-white
XVII
The Emperor Scale of Colour (v) Light translucent pinksh brown
XVIII
The Empress Scale of Colour (#) Stone colour
XIX
Selection of Egyptian Gods Khephra (as Scarab in Tarot Trump)
XX
Complete Practical Attribution of Egyptian Gods Anubi
XXII
Small selection of Hindu Deities Vishnu (Matsya Avatar)
XXIII
The Forty Buddhist Meditations Conduct R
XXXIV
Some Greek Gods Poseidon [[Hermes Psychopompos]]
XXXV
Some Roman Gods Juno [[Æolus]]
XXXVIII
Animals, Real and Imaginary. Fish, Dolphin [[Beetle, Dog, Jackal]]
XXXIX
Plants, Real and Imaginary Unicellular Organisms, Opium [[Mangrove]]
XL
Precious Stones Pearl
XLI
Magical Weapons The Twilight of the Place and Magic
XLII
Perfumes Ambergris [[Menstrual Fluid]]
XLIII
Vegetable Drugs All narcotics
XLV
Magical Powers [Western Mysticism] Bewitchments, Casting Illusions
XLIX
Lineal Figures of the Planets, &c., and Geomany Laetitia
LI.II
Numeration of Col. LI. 90
LI.III
English equivalent of Col. LI. Q
LIII
The Greek Alphabet Ϙ
CXXXVII
Signs of the Zodiac ♓ Pisces
CXXXVIII
Planets ruling Col. CXXXVII. Jupiter
CXXXIX
Angel Lords of the Triplicity in the Signs by Day Ramara
CXL
Angel Lords of the Triplicity in the Signs by Night Nathdorinel
CXLI
The Twelve Tribes Simeon
CXLII
Angels ruling Houses Pasiel
CXLIII
Twelve Lesser Assistant Angels in the Signs Vakabiel
CXLVI
Angels of the Decantes (Ascendant). Bihelami
CXLVII
Angels of the Decantes (Succedent). Avron
CXLVIII
Angels of the Decantes (Cadent). Satrip
CXLIX
Magical Images of the Decans (Ascendant) A man with two bodies, but joining their hand.
CL
Magical Images of the Decans (Succedent) A grave man pointing to the sky.
CLI
Magical Images of the Decans (Cadent) A man of grave and thoughtful face, with a bird in his hand, before him a woman and an ass
CLII
Perfumes (Ascendant) Thyme
CLIII
Perfumes (Succedent) Coxium
CLIV
Perfumes (Cadent) Santal Alb
CLV
Goetic Demons of Decans by Day (Ascendant) Furfur
CLVI
Magical Images of Col. CLV. (1) Hart with fiery tail. (2) Angel.
CLVII
Goetic Demons of Decans by Day (Succedent) Marchosias
CLVIII
Magical Images of Col. CLVII. Wolf with a gryphon’s wings and serpent’s tail. Breathes flames.
CLIX
Goetic Demons of Decans by Day (Cadent) Stolas
CLX
Magical Images of Col. CLIX. Raven.
CLXI
Goetic Demons &c. by Night (Ascendant) Seere
CLXII
Magical Images of Col. CLXI. Beautiful man on winged horse.
CLXIII
Goetic Demons &c. by Night (Succedent) Dantalion
CLXIV
Magical Images of Col. CLXIII. book in right hand.
CLXV
Goetic Demons &c. by Night (Cadent) Andromalius
CLXVI
Magical Images of Col. CLXV. Man holding great serpent.
CLXVII
Egyptian Gods of Zodiac (Asc. Decans) Rephan
CLXVIII
Egyptian Names of Asc. Decans Archatapias
CLXIX
As Col. CLXVII (Succedent) Sourut
CLXX
As Col. CXVIII (Succendent) Thopibui
CLXXI
As Col. CXLVII (Cadent) Phallophorus
CLXXII
As Col. CXLVIII (Cadent) Atembui
CLXXIII
Genii of the Twelve Hours (Levi) Tarab, Misran, Labus, Kalab, Hahab, Marnes, Sellen
CLXXV
Hebrew Letters ק
CLXXVI
Numerical Value of Col. CLXXV. 100
CLXXVII
Geomantic Intelligences Amnitziel
CLXXIX
Numbers printed on Tarot Trumps 18
CLXXX
Title of Tarot Trumps The Ruler of Flux and Reflux. The Child of the Sons of the Mighty.
CLXXXI
Correct Design of Tarot Trumps The waning moon *
CLXXXII
The Human Body Legs and Feet
CLXXXIII
Legendary Orders of Being Phantoms, Were-wolves
CLXXXIV
Numeration of Arabic Alphabet 100
CLXXXV
Numeration of Greek Alphabet 90
CLXXXVI
Diseases (Typical) Gout