The Moon: Association with Pisces?

Thirteen

Is Pisces anywhere in that iconography?

I think it has to do with the myth of the scarab as Khepri rolling the sun, pushing it into and through the underworld each night to be reborn each morning. More "dark night" symbolism. You can see the beetle holding the sun disk on the Thoth Moon card.
Yes. Excellent point. I was wondering about that as well. The myth isn't about the moon, but about nighttime and where the sun goes during the night. So, yes, it works very well for the Moon car which is really the "Night" card. And, though I totally get the similarities of beetle to crab and skuttling across the sands, this does pair the moon-ruled (water/night) crab with the sun-ruled (land/daylight) beetle. So I could understand the argument that the scarab should not be viewed as the Egyptian Cancer.

That said, I could actually see how the crab/beetle connection would make sense for the Chariot, which is both sun/moon, land/sea, black/white. Uniting of opposites to travel speedily from one plane to the next.

But it doesn't make nearly so much sense if it goes to the Moon; I can't see any connection between beetle and fish, outside of the "baptism" element where the dung goes into the water to birth the beetles. If there is a strong connection between beetle/crab, however, a better one than beetle/fish, why put the beetle in the Moon card? And how about the twin Anubis in the Thoth deck's Moon? Don't those relate to Scorpio? :confused: What I'm saying is, having given the Moon card Pisces, for whatever reason, why litter it with Cancerian references and symbols (Waite's crayfish for example) and/or Scorpio-seeming symbols? Where are those fishes? And doesn't this just suggest that the card creators fell into the same trap as the beginners who sent me looking for answers?

The card isnt' *really* about the Moon; it's about nighttime. Yet references that relate the reader back to Cancer and it's ruling body, the moon, do make it about that celestial body. Also, in regards to those Anubises, death--which, again, totally goes with the "sleep" and night as a kind of death with ressurection in the morning. It works with the meaning of the card. But if the card is going to be defined and interpreted in terms of Pisces, shouldn't Pisces-centric imagery rule it?
 

Babalon Jones

To confuse things even more the beetle is also given to scorpio, due the association with corpses and death.

I guess the confusion just has to be transcended - another meaning of Pisces!
 

Michael Sternbach

About the symbolism of the beetle in connection with Khepri, this is quite conclusive:

http://blavatskyarchives.com/mackeysd/mackeysd.html

Quoting from the linked text:

As was pointed out earlier, the ancient Egyptians divided the time between two successive risings of the Sun into 24 hours, like we do today. In certain representations and texts, like the "Books of Day and Night" (Fig. 7), where the journey of the solar deity is divided in two portions of "Day" and "Night", the figure of Nut is also duplicated in order to accomodate the portrayal of the Solar deity's cyclic path in it's entirety (both in the East-West and the West-East directions). In these cases, each Nut figure is allotted 12 hours. Furthermore, the part of the picture where the two Nut figures' heads converge is the "turning point" from Day into Night (see Fig. 12), and the part of the picture where the Nut figures' feet converge is the "turning point" from Night into Day.

Once past the "turning point" shown in Fig. 12, the “Book of Night” begins, detailing the course of the solar deitiy's "barque" through the 12 consecutive hours of the Night.
At this point, it is significant to return to what E. A Wallis Budge tells us about Khepri:
“Khepera is a phase of Tmu [Atum], the night-sun, at the twelfth hour of the night, when he "becomes" the rising sun or Harmachis (i.e., Horus in the horizon)“. [EBD, p. 246]

In analogy to this, Pisces is the last sign the Sun traverses in the astrological year, just before he reaches the Spring equinox whence the days start getting longer than the nights. It is also the sign which is ascribed to the feet in the human anatomy.
 

Thirteen

I guess the confusion just has to be transcended - another meaning of Pisces!
:p Phooey. Just like Pisces to be untidy :D
About the symbolism of the beetle in connection with Khepri, this is quite conclusive...Pisces is the last sign the Sun traverses in the astrological year, just before he reaches the Spring equinox whence the days start getting longer than the nights. It is also the sign which is ascribed to the feet in the human anatomy.
Don't know where the feet come in (outside of signifying the end of the cycle), but I get what you're saying as to the relationship between beetle and Pisces. It's certainly a more convoluted connection than just "both are armored."

And I still do have to wonder why, with so many fishy mythic symbols available and unused, the ambiguous beetle/crayfish was picked. I would have thought someone would go for a mermaid ;)
 

Babalon Jones

And I still do have to wonder why, with so many fishy mythic symbols available and unused, the ambiguous beetle/crayfish was picked. I would have thought someone would go for a mermaid ;)
Look again at the card attached which before was labeled "moon for AT" (which is from Tabula Mundi deck)
The figurehead of the barque is certainly mermaid like (though it is also a bat winged and crayfish armed Oneroi) and the card has the fish, beetle, jackal headed owl and a lunar moth. A Moon menagerie!
 

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Babalon Jones

New Moon (dark moon) solar eclipse at 18 degrees Pisces today, so Sun and Moon conjunct in Pisces :livelong:
perfect for all this Moon card discussion
 

Thirteen

It's very nice of you to hand me all these clues, but is there some reason you can't just say what you're trying to show me with them? I'm not a member of the Thoth club and haven't the scholarship to get what you're telling me without some help :)

So far as I can see, these references (1) tell me little to nothing about the beetle except that it might resemble the "fish bladder" shape. (2) Indicate that the relationship between the moon and Pisces is even more convoluted and requires way more knowledge than most beginners have, and so will continue to confuse. (3) Doesn't explain why the deck creators went for moon-related iconography more in tune with Cancer/Scorpio instead of Pisces. (4) Does suggest that the Moon card is the moon in eclipse (fish bladder shape) which is interesting and might help with the beetle connection. (5) And thank you very much. I now get the World card much better! I didn't know that Yoni was a Free Mason symbol.
 

Thirteen

New Moon (dark moon) solar eclipse at 18 degrees Pisces today, so Sun and Moon conjunct in Pisces :livelong:
perfect for all this Moon card discussion
I guess my instincts and unconscious were guiding me to post this thread at about this time :D Cool! And an added "Thank you very much!" to you all. It's great to kinda-sorta understand how this event all relates to the Moon card, it's astrology and it's iconography.
 

Thirteen

Look again at the card attached which before was labeled "moon for AT" (which is from Tabula Mundi deck)
The figurehead of the barque is certainly mermaid like (though it is also a bat winged and crayfish armed Oneroi) and the card has the fish, beetle, jackal headed owl and a lunar moth. A Moon menagerie!
Once again, awesome card! I don't think I'd have had to ask about the Pisces-Moon connection if this had been the card image rather than the usual Rider-Waite or even Thoth for that matter. I'd probably have come here asking for help with the iconography, but I think it'd be easier to point out that mermaid and dark moon and say "that's more Pisces than Cancer..."

Though I think they'd still be confused by the claw arms. Most people can't tell crayfish claws from crab claws.

And I very much love the bat wings on the Mermaid. It absolutely fits. It's hard to tell if those are fish about the moon, and I'd never have known that was a jackal-own if you hadn't said, but I appreciate the owl as emphasizing the night-bird aspect.

What's up with the hand?