Practically Spiritual.

The Meaning of the Moon Card, Pt. 2: Moonstruck Love

It is difficult to tell from the drawing in the Rider-Waite deck (I see the Rider-Waite as something akin to the King James Bible -- flawed in many ways, very much a product of times, but also the gold standard of the genre) but one of the dogs above is supposed to be a wolf, the other a family pet. Yet they both howl at the moon. The image suggests that, whether we consider ourselves domesticated or wild, at our roots we are pulled by the same instinctual urges. 

The Moon card is not an obvious romantic card, but clues to its true nature can be found embedded in the idioms of our language, which developed hand-in-hand with the symbolic language of the Tarot. Moonstruck. Over The Moon. Mooning over someone. Even though one of these creatures is wild and the other is tame, it is not inconceivable that -- like so many of the other characters one meets in the Tarot --these dogs are mates.

Of all of our inner forces, love is one of the shadowiest, and The Moon card rules all mysteries and ancient patterns. Sometimes love causes us to leave our safe warm homes in the middle of the night and meet with someone whom our friends might think is utterly unlike ourselves, but may happen to be a perfect match.

The Moon card suggests that opposites are meant to be drawn, inevitably, together. And sometimes it's thrilling and deeply spiritual to allow the tide to carry one along to a seemingly inevitable destiny. But left on their own, without the light of consciousness, Moon energies can also be a fearsome trap. The Moon card rules illusion as much as it does instinct; what may seem like a magnetic lover in the shifting light of the moon may also simply be the ancient predator in a fresh disguise.

Lost In Space: How My Faith Got Misplaced

I was twenty-six. I had just gone through a bad breakup and, to compensate, I was dating too much. My still-coalescing sense of identity was beginning to smear. I worried I'd get these guys' names mixed up if I had too much to drink. I didn't come home a lot. My roommate worried about me.

I was wobbly like a poorly-made three-legged stool, hungry for something I couldn't name, so light and insubstantial that a harsh word could tear me apart like vapor.

I have always taken solace in my faith, and I turned to it again during this time. What would the gods want? I decided to swear to a vow of celibacy. One year of just me, on my own. I was dedicating to myself, I thought, trying to summon up a sense of my own solidity.

I lit a lot of candles, like you do, and gathered together the few pitiful artifacts of my life that I felt were purely my own, that had never been introduced to me by anyone else -- because during that shaky time, it felt like cheating. This was me: an old Frank Zappa album and a novel about an astronomer that I had read so many times it was falling apart. I had discovered these treasures on my own. I figured this was all I had.

I propped a Tarot card featuring Viviane, the chaste and mysterious and always self-possessed Lady of the Lake (at least, according to The Mists of Avalon) on my dresser, and solemnly took my vow.

I'm now experienced enough in the ways of the world to know that taking a vow of celibacy is probably the number one way to find a man. The universe adores reverse psychology.