Baroque Bohemian Cats Study Group -- The Moon

The Flame point Siamese lady stands in her purple & ivory dress, holding a large owl on her left arm, two cartoonish dogs at her feet. A naked man swims under her paw in the background, adn there are two lighthouses in the back under a cresent moon.

Lighthouses signify danger and safe harbor, you navigate by them in the dark hours of the night to stay away from rocks, shoals and other dangers lest you become shipwrecked. There is danger at sea when you've gotten too close to land again.

Is the naked man the 'crawfish/crab/lobster/crustacean' in the regular Moon card? Or is he someone lost and floating, looking for help?

The dogs are staring caricatures of themselves, dream symbology. The whole card is full of dream images that aren't quite based in reality, all except the cat herself. She walks in a dream landscape. Even her owl is stone. She's got two gray/purple decoratived flowers on her dress, they look like buttoniers, though she's got the two of them--it reminds me of the old joke about the pirate that was so bad and piratey that he was a two parrot pirate....and the owl perched like that on her arm reinforces the parrot thing for me. Is she so bad she's great? She's a two buttonier lady? Does she control the dreamworld? She certainly has her toes spread in pleasure, claws just hinting at coming out. Mine do that when they're comfortably asleep and I slowly rub their sides just once, they stretch without opening their eyes, doing that toe thing, and sigh and go back to sleep.

I think I'm getting a little too stream of consciousness here, but feel free to join in.

This cat seems to enjoy her night. Seems to be a vivid dream to me. Or maybe the cat is having a sleepwalker episode?

Although Athena was not traditionally a Moon Goddess, we see her symbols of the owl and the sea in this card.

There is a dream, fantasy, topsy-turvy feel to this card. Like my relationship with the entire deck, it's telling me that there is fiction in truth and truth in fiction.

Ah, the Moooooooon...

This card has such a bewitching quality to me.

I don't think of the building as a lighthouse, per se. I see two towers, on different shores, both far off enough to be dreamlike. The dogs look goofy, and anyone with pets knows that animals do indeed get wacky during certain moon phases. The contrast of their graphics and the rest of the card adds to their cartoonish look. One of them is in a "play bow" position, and both of them seem very lighthearted to me, in comparison with the dog and wolf from other RWS Moon cards. In fact, this card as a whole seems far less sinister than some other Moon cards.

The man swimming reminds me of the story from which it came (Hero and Leander, if I remember well) but the man also seems 'moonstruck', out skinny-dipping in the night waters. Is he striking out for one of those distant towers? Does he even know where he's going? This is a good representation of the confusion/illusion aspect of the card--it's not that he CAN'T get anywhere, he just needs to be aware of what is going on, to see things for what they really are, not what they look like in the moonlight.

The stone owl strikes me as an enchanted beast, and one who is always watching. But he looks as if he also has something to say! Meanwhile, the lovely cat stands serene and knowing while the dogs bark and play and the owl speaks. She's not menacing, she's not nurturing, she just IS. And she knows, she knows so much.

Stregaverde said:

The man swimming reminds me of the story from which it came (Hero and Leander, if I remember well) .

Click to expand...

It's taken from a tapestry of Hero and Leander - as are the towers. Wonderful tapestry.

The dogs are also taken from an old fabric - we wanted them to be "flat" not quite real, a bit silly almost - yes "goofy" is a good word for them.The Moon Cat is of course indifferent to them, she is closer to her screech owl, who is almost her equivalent of the witch's cat.

I have to say that although the Tarot of Prague Moon card is a beauty It took Alex many hours of work and the final figure is totally his creation) and works (and is many people's favourite card in that deck) I actually relate more to this Moon. It's one of the ones in this deck that has the sense of oddness and dreams and things turned upside down (an Alice in Wonderland quality?) that we wanted for this deck.

This is a great card because it sums up all of the feelings I have for the moon card in general; here it is conveyed by mood - the colours, that kind of half-light when you can't determine whether something is real or not. It reminds me of 'drinking too much' - a feeling of not knowing what is going on and losing control. The cat seems to offer her paw to the reader but the claws are there, suggesting to me that in this light, she can not be completely trusted. Which tower/lighthouse would you swim to? Neither offer much guidance, it seems. Maybe this is not a time to make any kind of radical decisions; a time where you could be taken advantage of and a deception could be in place. I think I would wait for the light of the sun to emerge and the clouds to pass before I made any important decisions under the influence of this card. Looks can be deceiving; people may not be as interested in your needs as you think; things are not quite as they seem, so be cautious.

LB

A few thoughts from a recent reading ...

The buildings in this card are not seen through a window, or in a painting. They're out in the ocean, surrounded by rocky shores and open to the rain and cold. This is a card of stark, inner reality. Issues stripped bare and hung out to dry on the barren rocks. This is a card of honesty, of facing those things that others might turn away from. This is a card of facing one's fears, one's inner demons, one's hesitations, and about making a conscious choice to deal with them. Making the unseen seen. My eye keeps being drawn to the man swimming in the ocean waters behind the Moon. Why is he out there? Why does he wear no clothing? What about his life has been stripped bare? And where is he going? The lady's hand reaches out toward him, as if to bless him with her wisdom. What will he learn from her? And how will it aid him?