The Moon (XVIII)
The Sun and the Moon as the central motif. From The 1909 tarot.
Key · 1 motif
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
The picture
A crescent moon with a face in profile set within a full disc, rays and falling drops; a path between two towers; a dog and a wolf howling; a crayfish climbing from a pool; the Moon as the central motif. By eye
Readings quoted
Waite, 1911 “The card represents life of the imagination apart from life of the spirit. The path between the towers is the issue into the unknown.”
Waite, 1911 “The dog and wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of that place of exit, when there is only reflected light to guide it.”
Waite, 1911 “It illuminates our animal nature, types of which are represented below--the dog, the wolf and that which comes up out of the deeps, the nameless and hideous tendency which is lower than the savage beast.”
Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The composition, the picture read whole, comes with the entry.
Gold, the perfected metal, and the illuminated intellect. The most overloaded symbol in the tradition.
By eye The central motif, the moon in profile within the full disc.
Waite, 1911 “The distinction between this card and some of the conventional types is that the moon is increasing on what is called the side of mercy, to the right of the observer. It has sixteen chief and sixteen secondary rays.”
Waite, 1911 “The intellectual light is a reflection and beyond it is the unknown mystery which it cannot shew forth.”
Waite, 1911 “The face of the mind directs a calm gaze upon the unrest below; the dew of thought falls; the message is: Peace, be still; and it may be that there shall come a calm upon the animal nature, while the abyss beneath shall cease from giving up a form.”
Also carrying the Sun and the Moon
15 works, 5 with it as the central motif. The symbol.
In the same series
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