Excerpt from Meditation on the
Eighteenth Major Arcanum of the Tarot
THE MOON
______________
LA LUNE
God forbade Lot and his family to look back:
but Lot's wife behind him looked back,
and she became a pillar of salt.
(Genesis xix, 26)
David's heart smote him
after he had numbered the people.
And David said to the Lord,
"I have sinned greatly in what I have done." ...
So the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel.
(II Samuel xxiv, 10, 15)
Our intelligence, as it leaves the hands of Nature,
has for its chief object the unorganised solid..
Of the discontinuous alone
does the intellect form a clear idea...
Of immobility alone
does the intellect form a clear idea...
The intellect lets what is new
in each moment of history escape.
It does not admit the unforeseeable.
It rejects all creation...
The intellect is characterised
by a natural inability to comprehend life...
But it is to the very inwardness of life
that intuition leads us
by intuition I mean instinct
that has become disinterested,
self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object
and of enlarging it indefinitely.
(Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trsl. A. Mitchell, London, 1964, pp. 162-164, 174, 186)
Dear Unknown Friend,
The prohibition to Lot and his family against looking back, David's sin in having numbered the people of Israel, and the characteristic traits of human intelligence (as opposed to intuition) formulated by Henri Bergson, have this in common that they relate to the problem of the inversion of the forward movement of life, i.e. they relate to the problem of retrograde movement. Now, it is the problem of retrograde movement, contrary to that of life, which is suggested spontaneously by the Card of the eighteenth Major Arcanum of the Tarot — "The Moon". It is the antithesis of the seventeenth Arcanum "The Star". For if the latter evokes ideas, feelings and impulses of will relating to the evolution of life and consciousness, concerning their infinite development, the former evokes ideas, feelings and impulses of will relating to the inversion of the evolutionary movement of life and consciousness, i.e. to their envelopment, arrest of movement, and retrograde movement. Instead of the current which flows and the verdant shrubs of the Card of the seventeenth Arcanum, we find the stagnant water of a swamp and two rigid stone towers in the Card of the eighteenth Arcanum. Instead of the naked woman who makes the current (which continues In its flow) emanate from the two vases, we find an image of the most enveloped or shielded creature - the crayfish - at the bottom of the swampy basin, and two dogs (or a dog and a wolf) which are baying at the moon above. Lastly, instead of the radiant constellation of eight stars, we find the darkness of a total eclipse of the moon.
Through the totality of the context of its Card, the eighteenth Arcanum of the Tarot invites us to a spiritual exercise - to a meditation on that which arrests evolutionary movement and tends to give it a direction in an inverse sense. And just as the dominant and principal theme of the seventeenth Arcanum is the agent of growth, so is it a matter in the eighteenth Arcanum of the special agent of diminution — the principle of the eclipse. In the case of the eighteenth Arcanum it is a matter neither of temptation from outside, which is the subject of the sixth Arcanum, nor of the devil and demons — the intoxicating and enslaving forces — which constitute the subject of the fifteenth Arcanum, nor even of the presumptuous tendency to build "towers of Babel", which is the subject of the sixteenth Arcanum, but rather of something which is there, which is given and imposed on every incarnated human soul by the very fact of being incarnated, i.e. which the fate of being incarnated entails with necessity. The principle of the eclipse or the "agent of diminution" would be present and active in us even if the devil and all demons resigned, and even if all human beings learnt the lesson of humility and abandoned the desire to build "towers of Babel".
The eighteenth Arcanum of the Tarot is the arcanum of the twofold current that Henri Bergson designates as "Intelligence — matter" or "materialistic intellectuality", contrary to the twofold current "duration — spirit" or "intuition — conscience. For the current "intellectuality — materiality" that Bergson portrays like no other thinker is precisely this "agent of diminution" or "eclipse principle" that is suggested by the context of the Card of the eighteenth Arcanum. Because the moon is the principle of reflection: just as it reflects the light of the sun, so does human intelligence reflect the creative light of conscience — and the latter is eclipsed when "materialistic intellectuality" prevails. just as man's will to master Nature sets "materialistic intellectuality" in motion and prescribes it the "rules of the game" for its work, so is the moon of the eighteenth Arcanum in eclipse, I e. it is only fringed by rays of reflected sunlight, whilst the surface of the moon itself reflects only the image of a human face in profile. Further, just as the crayfish moves backwards in swimming, so does human intelligence move backwards, i.e. in the direction "effect — cause", when it is engaged in the act of knowledge that is proper to it. The other details of this Card — the coloured drops which are falling upwards, the two towers, the two dogs which are baying, the stagnant water of the swamp — only make more specific, as we shall see through the following meditation on the central theme of this Arcanum, further aspects of the current "intellectuality — materiality" that is contrary to the current of creative evolution or "duration-spirit".
The sun, moon and stars are — according to Genesis — lights "in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth" (Genesis i, 16-17), whose creation constituted the fourth day of the creation of the world.
Now, human consciousness is the field where three kinds of light are manifest:: creative light, reflected light and revealed light. The first participates in the work of the creation of the world such as it has continued since the sixth day of creation, which we now call "creative evolution"; the second illumines the dark field of action of the human will, which we now call "matter"; the last orientates us towards transcendent values and truths which constitute, as it were, the supreme court of appeal, the ultimate criterion, of all that is of worth and of all that is true in space and time. It is thanks to these three types of light that man is at one and the same time a creator participating in creative evolution, a master of matter — author of the work of civilisation — and that he is a kneeling worshipper of God, capable of orientating his will towards the divine will. Creative consciousness, reflecting intelligence, and revelation from above are the three lights of the human microcosm — its "sun", "moon" and "stars".