XVIII La Lune...

...is one of the most mysterious cards, and alongside XII Le Pendu one of the most perplexing. A one-word, very general interpretation might be "reflection," as the moon is, astronomically speaking a gigantic reflector of the sun's light. It's the cosmic eye of the soul reflecting upon itself.

The moon was also the most important deity of the matriarchal neolithic societies. In her, our prehistoric ancestors saw their triple goddess: as maiden when new, as nyph when full, and as crone when waning. Her 28-day cycle also connected her with the universal female in the most concrete way.

The earliest moon cards we have are the uninspired Visconti products -- full-length portraits of a woman holding a crescent -- as discussed in the Star thread. But woodcut artists producing crude editions of tarocchi for mass consumption came up with a more appropriate pictorial treatment perhaps as early as the latter decades of the 15th century. Moon cards from a single set of blocks, housed today in New York's Metropolitan Museum and also in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts show a putto holding up a full moon which contains a single gigantic eyeball. (See attached.) This shows a wonderful, instinctive grasp of the celestial object's symbolic meaning, one with roots older than time and sunk deep in the collective unconscious of the race. We look at our whole, entire beings in the full faces of our own internal moons, living out the words of the old nursery rhyme: "I see the moon and the moon sees me."

(to be continued)

The evolution of the Marseilles version of this image, which I find unparalleled in terms of mystery and pictorial beauty, was fairly rapid. Here again, the Cary Sheet, or a Milanese deck very similar to the one partially produced on the sheet, was the seminal picture providing the starting point for the Marseilles' subsequent codification of tarot. In fact, there is no better proof of this than the Cary Sheet's versions of Moon and Star (the Moon is attached).

The Cary's Moon picture (of about 1550) has all the elements so familiar to us today -- the moon simultaneously presented as full and crescent, the "lobster by moonlight," the twin towers -- except the dogs. These were apparently added by the French artists who adopted these images, early in the 17th century if Jean Noblet's deck is an accurate indication.

I wouldn't even want to try to say what the individual details of the card mean. They have always been, and will always remain a mystery to me. That's part of the appeal of the card. I look at the crayfish reaching upward toward that shining disk, at the baying dogs singing out the animal portion of the nature of the human subconscious, and those silent, foreboding towers. I feel these images, but can't intellectually grasp them.

I'm in awe of this card. I don't think I'd want to fully know what it means.

cary yale visconti

kaz

visconti sforza

kaz

soprafino

kaz

edited

I seem to have dreamed time away!

For me, this card has had one of the clearest possible Astrological association. I have seen a number of early representations of Cancer which look very similar indeed, including one, which I just cannot re-locate, even having two Towers. Having said this, I do not consider the card's position in the sequence as necessarily indicating Cancer - even if the Towers are also a clear sign of human habitation.

On a different aspect of this card, I had, many years ago, hesitated about whether the two dog-like animals were in fact canines (whether of the wild or domesticated variety), and much later came across the following, from W. J. Stein's The Death of Merlin (p156)

The waning moon works on the degenerative forces of the sense-nerve system, that is on the upper man. The waxing moon works on the regenerative process, on the lower man. The middle ages symbolised this polarity in hare and hound. The hound, the animal of the senses, barks at the full moon, while the hare as metabolic animal gambols in it. The hound is for ever hounding the hare, as degeneration follows regeneration.

Click to expand...

Attached is the 1701 Dodal version, upon which the identity of the two animals on the far side of the pond, though canine-looking, are a little ambiguous - with possibly the right-hand one being hare-like in especially head appearance.

Diana said:

Does that mean we are the lobster! Eeeek!

Click to expand...

I have always identified with the lobster. It reminds me of Kafka's "Metamorphosis." One night I went to sleep, and when I woke up, I was a lobster, submerged in water. As I flailed around with my claws, they touched bottom, and I scrambled up out of the water onto dry land. Ahead of me I saw a long path, winding its way between two towers. I decided to crawl along the road, despite the two animals lurking on either side. After all, what else was there to do... ?

-- Lee

edited

I'd also like to say that I don't think any modern deck has improved upon the Marseilles Moon, although they have certainly tried. Several decks have a human on the card, which I think negates the whole point.

I share Dave's fascination with the Cary Sheet Moon as pictured in Kaplan's Encyclopedia. I have often taken the book off the shelf and opened it up, for the sole purpose of looking at that one illustration.

-- Lee