The Moon & its effects

Astral and paranormal experiences, dreams and visions.
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Nefastos
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The Moon & its effects

Post by Nefastos »

In another topic I mentioned the Blavatskyan idea of the Moon as a remnant of a past era of the world. Blavatsky sees evolution as cyclical emanation of spirit, densening & crystallizing first, and then spiralling back to subtler bodies, and that in this process the celestial bodies leave behind their once-inhabited husk just like a dead man does, & that the Moon is such a body.

One can take Blavatsky's teaching as an allegory, although in my own studies I've become to consider it as physical reality as well. Whichever way we choose, it illuminates the relationship of our Earth & the Moon. The latter is the source - or reflector - of our astral influence, which is like vampiric miasma to men: alluring, beautiful, dead & corrupting. Astralism is energy that has failed to find its mark neither in spirit nor in matter, & is thus left without its release. Eliphas Levi spoke a great deal about this astral (actually lunar) effect he called Devil and Satan.

But at the same time Moon has at least two other meanings in occultism as well.

It is also Magna Mater, our Great Mother, because it was the source or our energetical body or linga sharîra. This more fluid & more true physical body of ours is still connected to the symbolism of the Moon, although our present day Moon is not anymore nurturing it with the care it once did.

Thirdly, Moon is also a symbolistic name given to some very feminine & very fundamental energies. This is, in a way, accurate, since the seed of these energies dwell in the etheric body of man, wakening in initiations corresponding to them. And because these initiations are only reachable if we can conquer the lures of the "physical moon", i.e. the before mentioned astral atmosphere, the Moon, as Hecate, is three-faced. She has all these correspondences in human being:

- Our physical organism (actually linga sharîra, the true physical body)
- Our astral nature, especially its dark & obscure forms (where Mars governs its more open qualities)
- Our feminine side as a whole, ultimately in its best possible connotations

* * *

How do you see the significance of the Moon? Can you point out one of the three "faces" I mentioned what is most meaningful in your relationship with it, practically or symbolically? Do you consider the phases or nodes of Moon in your use of magic?
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Insanus
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Re: The Moon & its effects

Post by Insanus »

I have always thought of the moon as "the least relevant" of the planets (associating it with only astral qualities), but lately, thinking about those "three faces" of the moon you mentioned has unlocked a lot. Actually I just now understood that they are connected to the moon, but I've been thinking about "vampiric miasma" (using almost the exact same words!) which has had a corrupting effect on me, about Magna Mater & more serving (more feminine) forms of the work, in the sense of letting the inner work for the outer & also letting the outer to be worked for. Lately I've heard a lot of talk about ghosts & that's also a nice little synchronism. I don't really have much of a clue what I'm talking about in this topic :D Maybe I'll check what Levi has to offer and try to enlighten myself a bit.
Jumalan synnit ovat kourallinen hiekkaa ihmisen valtameressä
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Jiva
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Re: The Moon & its effects

Post by Jiva »

Nefastos wrote:It is also Magna Mater, our Great Mother, because it was the source or our energetical body or linga sharîra. This more fluid & more true physical body of ours is still connected to the symbolism of the Moon, although our present day Moon is not anymore nurturing it with the care it once did.
I'm curious: if you say the Moon is not nurturing with the care it once did, would you put this down to something like the Moon landings? After all, exploration and discovery frequently get described in terms of a masculine dominance over the feminine.

I'm not sure if I understood some of your post though. Are you saying that the Moon acts as an activator of our potential Astral energies?

This is a really difficult topic for me to post in as much of how I consider the Moon is purely instinctual. When I was at school I used to go out for walks or bike rides at night whenever it was a clear night. Especially if I went on a bike ride I used to take a route that meant the last 10 miles or so kept the Moon directly in front of me. Sometimes I went swimming in some nearby lakes during these trips. For years these were a source of a kind of ecstatic enjoyment, both mental and physical, and was amongst the few things I actually enjoyed.

Also, the staircase that leads to my bedroom (I still live in the house I grew up in) has a window at the top that causes the Moonlight to flow through at an angle that's pretty much perfectly parallel to the stairs. When I was looking through the records of my dreams during the writing for my SoA application I noticed that many of the dreams I consider important happened in series where the dreams occurred roughly 2 or 4 weeks apart. I've deliberately never checked to see whether they aligned with the cycle of the Moon though as I didn't want to get into the mindset of “ah, it's full Moon, something occult will happen tonight” :lol:.
'Oh Krishna, restless and overpowering, this mind is overwhelmingly strong; I think we might as easily gain control over the wind as over this.'
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Nefastos
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Re: The Moon & its effects

Post by Nefastos »

Jiva wrote:...I consider the Moon is purely instinctual. When I was at school I used to go out for walks or bike rides at night whenever it was a clear night. Especially if I went on a bike ride I used to take a route that meant the last 10 miles or so kept the Moon directly in front of me...


That sounds great. Also fits in how the practice of the Moon is always liminal somehow, more traditionally a Left Hand Path practice, or a practice of witchcraft - as opposed to more fire/reason kind of exact magic (in Zoroastrian or neoplatonic sense). Left Hand Path, the Path of the Moon, requires the practices of participation, wherein the Right Hand Path, the Path of the Sun, is about abstraction. The former one opens its arms to embrace matter, the latter one unites its hands in prayer to embrace spirit.

It's a strange if persistent idea that one can't, or shouldn't, do both at different times.

Jiva wrote:I'm curious: if you say the Moon is not nurturing with the care it once did, would you put this down to something like the Moon landings? After all, exploration and discovery frequently get described in terms of a masculine dominance over the feminine.


I meant a larger timescale, although as a microcosmic (down-scaled to our smaller time cycle) correspondence that is a good example.

Following the teaching of Blavatsky I believe that at the time ages ago, in a different birth of the world so to say, there was a full biosphere in Moon. But when the souls of that distant past developed into more rational beings, at the next manvantara (world-age) they - that is, us - did born to our Earth. So, our physical Moon is like an umbilical cord that unites our not-quite-so-born individualized monads to the macrocosmic unconscious via its emotional side, the astral.

Because of that, I don't think that the "nurturing Mother" would be angry with us because of our too masculine pride of seeking the physical limits of our mechanical ingeniosity. Rather, I'd say that moon landings are like a child's first attempt to make personal contact with parents that are much more greater it can yet even begin to grasp. It's not mankind's own fault (although it is our folly) that we're yet unable to adore the cosmic whole as it should. Still, "every day we make it, we make it the best we can", as Jack Daniels put it. Regrettably, that best we can is not yet very good. But it will be. We only need some small-ish corrections to our too-physicalist culture to steer it into something healthy & beautiful.

Jiva wrote:I'm not sure if I understood some of your post though. Are you saying that the Moon acts as an activator of our potential Astral energies?


Yes, we can put it that way. The "sublunar planes" are (paradoxically) the astral planes, namely, those which blend our immature subjective with the immature objective emotional/subconscious visions. (This is what the term "astral" has become to mean in later occultism.) Theoretically, I think that if the physical Moon was somehow done away with, our astral atmosphere would cease to be, left without the magnetical polarization it depends on. That, in turn, would drive the whole world to a new kind of cosmic insanity, because our lesser scale astral insanity protects the mankind like a womb.

Those energies that are actually "Astral" in the world's meaning of sidereal, Zodiacal or celestial, are always perverted when they must flow through our lower astral (actually Lunar) atmosphere. But the culprit is not the mother Moon, it is the mankind itself. For it is the mankind that creates the miasmic inspiration of the lower astral atmosphere to be reflected back to us from the moon's lower & dead principle, and that happens when - & at every single time - we can't grasp the spiritual (sidereal) inspiration to be channeled in a beautiful, truthful, compassionate form.

Like this:

1. Inspiration from the stars (spiritual, archetypical, benevolent: although some of it is often "too much" for us to handle, especially that of the planets Mars & Saturn, which we most often misunderstand) is being radiated to...

2. Our Earth, the "planet of thinkers" (Sanskr. Manu). Our minds process it, creating a radiance of our own.

2b. Part of that inspiration is realized (NB this word: "realized" is condensed from inspiration into practical manifestation) into Art, Science, true Religion; culture & individual giftedness & taking care as a whole.

2c. But since we are as, of yet, a bunch of egotistical and/or foolish bastards, much of that great inspiration is not grasped, and its energy is left unused. It, however, can't be undone: it is reflected to our atmosphere, governed by the magnetic moon very much like physical oceans. From that astral sea those ideas previously discarded have their second possibility to become realized, although in that form they become more ambivalent, often demanding some suffering or personal sacrifice in the process of becoming realized. (Cf. Kali's terrible countenance.)

3. Moon thus plays the role of our Earth's wicked stepmother & our antagonist, because it's her business to give us the possibility to deal with our neglected astral lessons. When that is no longer a case - perhaps a billion years or something like that will help us to move on - then the "undead" Moon can really be laid to rest once & for all. Of course, there's always a theoretical (!) possibility that we - the human race as whole - would learn to cleanse the astral atmosphere so much that the skull-face of mother Moon would give us her blessing much more gently. But it is no longer motherly nurturing, even in that case; she's more like a grand mother (Baba Yaga) than Mother to us, for the latter is our own overtly raped Mother Earth. We could even say it's her cry for help that awakens the Moon's malevolent side.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Jiva
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Re: The Moon & its effects

Post by Jiva »

Well, many modern theories of the Moon's origin consider it formerly a part of the Earth that was torn apart as the result of a collision between the Earth and some other planet-sized object. However, all are tenuous and perhaps point to the moon originally being a part of the other object that collided with the Earth or perhaps a mixture of the two. That's the closest I can come to viewing the Moon as formerly having a full biosphere.

And I've got even curiouser :P. What would be the significance to you of discovering extra terrestrial life on the classical planets of astrology (or one of their moons)? After all, water has been discovered on Mars... Additionally, do you think there is a possibility of the various planets and satellites of our solar system becoming normalised or having their psychic influences removed by advances in technology and resultant things like space tourism, possible permanent settlements etc.?
'Oh Krishna, restless and overpowering, this mind is overwhelmingly strong; I think we might as easily gain control over the wind as over this.'
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