Seven Keys Must Be Turned, Before the
Symbol of the Moon Will Yield Its Final Secret
John Garrigues
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Editorial Note:
The following article was first published anonymously
at “Theosophy” magazine, in May 1936, pp. 309-315.
An analysis of its contents and style indicates it was
written by Mr. Garrigues. Original title: “Moon-Magic”.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
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“That which we
call
the Self is a self-illuminated Sun
which reflects
itself - if we allow it
to do so - in our
lower, lunar nature.”
Moon-magic - who has not felt it? Perhaps it first
seeped into your consciousness in the silent stretches of the Libyan desert,
where the thin sickle of the crescent moon hung like a scimitar against the
indigo velvet of the sky. Perhaps it was in the dusk of a scented Persian
garden, where the ghosts of Omar’s roses played hide and seek beneath a
dreaming moon.
Perhaps it was on a winter’s night in Vermont, where the passionless
earth stared unseeing at the colder moon, and where the distant stars glittered
like diamonds bought with blood. Perhaps it was in some half-ruined Grecian
temple where we loitered, pagan-like, to make obeisance to the bright huntress
with her “bow new-bent in heaven”.
Moon-magic - who has not come under its spell as it filtered through the
lines of Byron, Shelley and Keats? Who has not been caught in the web of
cadenced moonlight so delicately spun by Debussy and Ravel?
The magic of the Moon has been sung by poets of every age. With the
exception of Russia[1], not a single
nation has failed to pay respect to the “Queen of Heaven” through the medium of
its literature. The myths and folk-lore of every land teem with moon-magic, and
the religious records of every race are filled with references to Moon-worship.
Sometimes the Moon appears as a male deity, as in the myths of the
Teutons and Rajputs, the stories of the Tartary and Arabia, the tales of the
Hindu King Soma and the Babylonian
god Sin. Sometimes the Moon is a
goddess, worshipped as Diana, Isis, Astarte, Artemis, Proserpine, Venus or
Hecate. But, whether masculine or feminine, the Moon still remains the mystery
of mysteries, a sexless potency which must be well understood if we would not
fall prey to its sorcery.
The influence of the Moon upon the Earth and its inhabitants cannot be
denied, however difficult the explanation may be. It is observed in the rise
and fall of the tides and in the growth of the plant life. It appears in the
cyclic changes of many forms of disease, and is particularly marked in the
phenomena of human gestation and generation. These facts were well known in the
past, and have always been the subject of much speculation. Aristotle discussed
the influence of the Moon upon the human body, and Hippocrates recommended that
no physician be allowed to treat disease without a knowledge of astronomy. As
far back as 1784 Dr. Balfour wrote a
book about the Moon’s influence upon fevers, and forty years later Dr. Laycock
testified that epilepsy, insanity and asthma were strongly influenced by the
lunar phases. It is a matter of record that the pestilence which devastated
Noyen in 1636 increased in violence as the moon waxed, and that nearly all who
contracted the disease during the full moon failed to recover. It is said that
Lord Bacon was peculiarly sensitive to lunar magnetism, always falling into a
syncope when the Moon was in eclipse. It is also a well known fact that old
people die most frequently on the day of the new or the full moon.
The curious relationship between moonlight and insanity has long been
the subject of scientific investigation. In 1791 Dr. Daquin discussed this
phenomenon, and in 1852 Guislain recorded that some of his patients became
violently insane every twenty-eight days, always on the day of the full moon.
The very word lunatic - derived from
Luna, the Moon - contains a hint of this relationship, one which is recognized
by poets as well as by men of science. Shakespeare call the Moon the “mistress
of melancholy”, and we find Othello, after hearing of Rodrigo’s murder,
exclaiming:
“It is the very error of the moon.
She comes more near the earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.”
The Moon’s influence upon the earth is usually attributed to the fact
that the Moon is the satellite of the earth. While this is undeniably true, the
relationship between the two is even closer than this. Instead of being the child of the earth, as is commonly
supposed, the Moon is in reality the earth’s mother, and is no more the earth’s subordinate than any earthly
mother would be who walks around her child’s cradle, keeping watch over the
infant. In one respect the human mother, as well as the Moon, may be considered
as the satellite of her child, but there is no doubt that she is older and more
experienced than her offspring.
According to the teachings of Theosophy, the Moon played an important
part in the formation of the earth and its inhabitants. At one time, it is
said, the Moon was as much alive as our own earth is today. At that time it was
a complete entity, energized by the soul and mind forces of the beings whose
habitation it was. Like all other entities, its life-term was limited, and
death eventually ensued. Then those energies which had made the Moon a living
body departed to form the nucleus of a new body, the earth. The Moon as we see
it today is therefore only a slowly decaying corpse, disintegrating like any
other form from which the animating soul-principle has departed. But Life still
works destructively among the
decomposing particles of this planetary corpse, and the emanations from these
particles affect everything they touch. Sometimes these emanations have a
beneficent effect. At other times they are maleficent. In the case of many
forms of plant-life the Moon’s rays are helpful to growth, while these same
rays are poisonous, if not fatal, to some human organisms.
The maternal relationship which the Moon bears to the earth reflects
itself in the mother-function of women. The feminine physiological function is
governed by the Moon. The “period of visibility” and the period of parturition
are likewise determined by lunar calculations. Conception is regulated by the
Moon, as every real astrologer knows. The Greeks and Britons advocated the
full-moon day for marriages and births, and weaned their male children during
the waxing of the moon and their female children when the moon was on the
wane. Diana, the Moon-goddess of the Greeks,
presided over child-birth and, as the Cretan Diktynna, wore a wreath made from the magic plant diktamnon. During childbirth the women
of Crete were covered with this plant, whose roots were first placed within the
precincts of the goddess, if possible under the direct rays of the resplendent
daughter of Jupiter.
As the Moon is so closely connected with the process of physical
generation, it is easy to see how it became the symbol of generation on a
cosmic scale. As a matter of fact, the whole history of Moon-worship centers
around the mystery of lunar phenomena. The rites were based upon a knowledge of
physiology, mathematics and astronomy, and were records of observed natural and
scientific facts. The ancients were well-aware of the fact that life on this
planet is generated, preserved and destroyed by lunar magnetism, and this may
help to explain the thousand and one images under which the Moon was
represented and venerated.
Although the actual beginnings of Moon-worship are difficult to trace,
there is no doubt that it is one of the oldest forms of worship in the world. Krishna
himself is said to have belonged to the Yadu branch of the Chandravansas, or “Lunar Kings”, a fact which is of deep
significance. When these “Lunar Kings” left India, they took with them the
worship of their fore-fathers, of Soma
and his son Budha. Babylonia happened
to be situated on the line of this emigration, and the Babylonians were one of
the first peoples to profit thereby. Although comparatively little is known of
Chaldean Moon-worship and the Babylonian god Sin, it is not impossible to trace the gradual transformation of
this abstract symbol into the Hebrew creative God Jehovah.
When the clay tablets of Hamurabi (2250 B. C. E.) were deciphered, the
noted Assyriologist Professor Delitsch translated one inscription: “Yahveh is God”. Professor Chamberlain
insisted that the correct reading should be “The Moon is God”. This indicates how closely Jehovah and the Moon
were connected in those days. In the Hebrew Scrolls Jehovah is called The Lord
of the Moon, while Maimonides speaks of Adam (who in one sense is the same as
Jehovah) as the Prophet of the Moon. In
the Kabala the Moon is called the Ark, which contains the seeds of material
life and is closely associated with Jehovah. This idea appears again in the story
of Noah and the Ark.
The Israelites considered child-giving
as chief function of Jehovah, as a well-known scholar points out:
“I had worked it out by original search that the great distinctive
function of the god-name Jehovah was designative of the influence of the Moon
as the causative of generation, and as of its exact value as a lunar year in
the natural measure of days.”
In this connection, it will be remembered that Sarai, Abraham’s wife,
could not bear a child until she had come under the Moon’s influence by
changing the name to Sarah, and that both she and her husband came from the
city of Ur, which was the great center of Moon-worship. Mount Sinai, the name
of which is derived from the Babylonian Sin,
means literally The Mountain of the Moon,
and contains a reference to the lunar of Metonic cycle of 19 years, as does the
name of Hagar, the bondwoman whom Paul identified with Mount Sinai.
The Hebrews based their astronomical calculations upon the Moon, which
accounts for the frequency of the number seven
in their exoteric religious observances, and their adoption of the seventh day
as the one sacred to the God Jehovah. The worship of the lunar God descended
through the Mosaic and Kabalistic Jews to the Christians, although the
Christian world may be unaware that the God they inherit from the Jews is but a
symbol of the reproductive and generative power in nature. But, if the works of
the Church Fathers Clement of Alexandria and Origen be consulted, it will be
found that the Moon was still used as a symbol of Jehovah in the early days of
the Christian Church.
Must we then conclude that the Jewish concept of Deity was fundamentally materialistic? The answer
must be in the negative. For although the exoteric
teachings centered around the lunar god Jehovah, the secret and esoteric worship was the same Pantheism that
lies at the root of every truly philosophical system of thought. Jehovah was a substitute used for exoteric purposes,
and every initiated priest knew that behind that substitute there stood the
unknown, incognizable deity, the kabalistic Ain-Soph,
a concept as metaphysical and philosophical as that of the Hindu Parabrahman. The materialization of the
Hebrew religion began when the substitute was accepted in place of the
Ever-Unknowable, and will end only when the substitute is replaced by the Ever
Living Reality.
The Christian Trinity is another example of this same materialization of
a metaphysical concept. With the philosophical ancients, the Trinity
represented the abstract qualities of creation, preservation and destruction.
The Christian Trinity, from one point of view, is but a copy of the Egyptian
Trinity of Ammon, Mouth and Khonsu, whose common symbol was the Moon. But the
average Christian has never considered the symbolical meaning of the Trinity,
and has debased it by separating his personal God into three persons.
The worship of the Virgin Mary is another example of an ancient lunar
rite. All the lunar goddesses of the ancients were pictured as Virgin Mothers
of immaculately begotten Sons. The Virgin Mary, represented as the “Queen of
Heaven”, on the crescent moon is but a copy of the Egyptian Isis, or the still
earlier Neith. As the great Roman
Catholic historian de Mirville has pointed out:
“We (Christians) can understand now why Neith throws radiance on the
sun, while remaining the Moon, since the Virgin, who is the Queen of Heaven, as
Neith was, clothes herself in her radiance and clothes in his turn the
Christ-sun (….). We understand also how it is that the famous inscription as
Sais should have stated that ‘none has lifted my veil’, considering that this
sentence, literally translated, is the summary of what is sung in the Church on
the day of the Immaculate Conception.” (Archeol.
de la Vierge)
A definite order of Moon-worship was formed in the fourth century of the
Christian era, and the lower classes of the Middle Ages openly worshipped the
Moon, identifying her with the Virgin. Even today some of these relics of
Moon-worship still appear.
“In Scotland generally, and particularly among Highlanders, it is a
custom for the women to make a curtsy to the new moon. English women also have
a touch of this, sitting astride a gate or stile on the eve of the new moon and
saying: ‘A fine moon! God bless her!’ ” (Antiquarian
Repertory)
In the Austrian Tyrol the peasants still consult the moon before
commencing their tasks in the field, the stall or the house, and always cut
their hair on the wane of the moon so that it will not grow too quickly. In
Scotland it is said that some women will not even comb their hair during
certain phases of the moon. These relics of the Moon-worship are by no means
confined to the ignorant peasant. Every time a person celebrates one of the
“Moveable Feasts” he is unconsciously perpetuating a lunar rite. Any one who
hesitates to look over his left shoulder at the new moon is tacitly confessing
that for him, at least, Moon-worship is not yet extinct.
Many of our well known nursery rhymes contain a wealth of lunar
symbolism. The apparently senseless jargon, “Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the
fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon”, is one of many examples. The association
of the Cat with the Moon dates back to Pasht, Isis and Diana. The Cow was
connected with and symbolized by the Moon for the simple reason that the period
of parturition in cow and women is the same, both being governed by the Moon.
The story of Jack and Jill is only a lunar myth in modern dress. It comes from
the Scandinavian story of Hjuki and Bil,
Hjuki referring to the waxing of the moon and Bil to its waning. The pail
of water which they carried up the hill refers to the rising tide, while their
subsequent downfall pictures its ebb.
And so we see how Moon-worship still persists even in this scientific
age, and how the ancient lunar myths still continue to be perpetuated from
generation to generation. But let us not conclude that the symbol of the Moon
is but a fantastic relic of ancient “superstition”. Nothing could be further
from the truth. This symbol is of profound significance to the scientist, the
anthropologist, the astronomer, the ethnologist, the philosopher, the poet, the
artist. Seven keys must be turned before the symbol of the Moon will yield its
final secret. The Anthropological or physical key has already been suggested.
The astronomical key is hidden within the symbol of the Cat. The astrological key may be discovered by studying the
twenty-eight mansions of the Moon as found in the Zodiac of the Copts,
Egyptians, Arabs, Persians and Hindus. The racial key is found in the records
of the races which preceded our own. There it will be discovered that in the
third race the male Moon was
worshipped, becoming “male-female” only after the “fall into generation”. When
our own race appeared, lunar-solar worship divided the nations into distinct
cults, ending a strife between the Suryavansa
or “Solar Beings” and the Chandravansa
or “Lunar Beings”.
This strife can be observed in every individual. For, in the final
analysis, each one of us is a solar-lunar being. That which we call the Self is a self-illuminated Sun which
reflects itself - if we allow it to do so - in our lower, lunar nature.
Whenever we think, act or speak independently of the Solar God within,
we become worshippers of the Moon in ourselves. Every time we instigate our
actions from within, we make the Moon
in us subservient to the Sun, a true reflection of the solar light of the Self.
This is the secret of true spiritual growth.
NOTE:
[1] Garrigues wrote the present article in
1936, during Stalin’s reign. Perhaps in saying Russia is an exception he was
ironically referring to the materialism and atheism of the Marxist Soviet Union.
It must be said, however, that Russia and Slavic countries are in fact no
exception to the general and traditional worship of the Moon among all nations.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica is one of the numerous sources about that. (CCA)
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The above article by John Garrigues was first
published online in February 2013.
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On the role
of the esoteric movement in the ethical awakening of mankind during the 21st
century, see the book “The Fire and Light of Theosophical
Literature”, by Carlos Cardoso Aveline.
Published in 2013 by The Aquarian Theosophist, the volume has 255 pages and can be
obtained through Amazon Books.
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