The symbolism of the Moon
W B Yeats Collected Poems, from the Wanderings of Oisin
Men’s hearts of old were drops of flame That from the saffron morning came
Or drops of silver joy that fell Out of the moon’s pale twisted shell
The Moon can take the symbolism of the paired Sun and Moon.
But it is also treated astrologically as a ‘Planet’
an Intelligence providing certain key traits of Personality
The original names of these Intelligences were Helios
(now called the Sun) and Selene (now called the Moon).
It is this renaming that has caused great confusion
The Moon [Selene] is a feminine symbol associated with emotions,
the subconscious and intuitive behaviour
The Sun [Helios] is a masculine symbol associated with conscious thought,
reason, rational behaviour and Intellect
Ideally, the two should be in balance, as emotion without reason;
or reason without emotion can cause problems [Libra]
When paired with the Sun, the Sun is the Father and creator of Ideas,
whereas the Moon is the ‘Great Mother’
who gives birth to the physical forms on earth
The Moon thus ‘reflects’ the functionally based creation
by giving birth to the forms that will enact those functions
The Rider Waite Tarot card shows the Moon giving birth to souls [Yod],
who, via a symbolic river descend to be tested by the Scorpion on Earth
In ages past, the Mother was revered the most, as she created life on Earth
Notice the beehive as a symbol of a Bee goddess
The Moon is associated with the symbolic Flood.
All major and minor changes in the evolutionary process
are achieved via the Moon
and why she is often looked on as a Water symbol.
Eclipses when the Sun appears to overpower the Moon,
or the Moon eclipses the Sun
were once considered extremely unfavourable symbolically
signalling times of massive upheaval as major evolutionary changes were made
Symbolically the Moon receives the immortal souls of those
who are to reincarnate
For those who have escaped the Wheel of Life,
the Sun becomes their symbolic home after death
The Moon swells during the month as if pregnant with the souls of those
who have died and of those to be returned to earth , until she is full...
And then as the immortal souls rain down to Earth ready to start a new life,
the Moon becomes new and slim again
The Moon spends roughly 2 ½ days in each Sign of the Zodiac
and takes 28 days to circumnavigate the Zodiac.
As such the 28 day cycle of the Moon matches the menstrual cycle,
adding to the symbolism
The Phases of the Moon are derived from W B Yeats’s "The Vision"
They are neither astrological or astronomical.
Each phase is associated with an ‘archetype’, a role in life,
taken on each incarnation
"Athene takes Achilles by the hair, Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born,
Because the Hero’s crescent is the twelfth"
W B Yeats from The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
When have I last looked on The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark leopards of the moon? All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.
The holy centaurs of the hills are vanished; I have nothing but the embittered sun;
The Full Moon is the Mystic
When the moon’s full, those creatures of the full
Are met on the waste hills by countrymen
Who shudder and hurry by: body and soul
Estranged amid the strangeness of themselves, Caught up in contemplation
And sometimes their emergence is the result of suffering
The song will have it That those that we have loved,
got their long fingers From death, and wounds, or on Sinai’s top,
Or from some bloody whip in their own hands.
They ran from cradle to cradle till at last
Their beauty dropped out of the loneliness Of body and soul.
Hunchback and Saint and Fool.