Howling with the Moon

Welcome to the third part of “Inner Work with the Planets”. If you’re new to the series, you can read part 1 here, and part 2 here.

Two weeks ago, we discussed the role of the planets in Hermetic thought and in the Hermetic worldview, and their potential for self improvement inner work – the seven classical planets, that is.

In today’s essay, we’ll have a detailed look at the planet closest to us… the Moon. But the Moon is not just the planet nearest to earth, her influence on our lives is also the most obvious to us.

I’m saying “her” here, btw, as the Moon is classically viewed as female rather than male, although gender really is a bit fluent in the case of planetary spirits… 😉

(As an aside, calling the Moon “her” also makes for some funny conversation in certain gendered languages like German, where “der Mond” = “the moon” is male.)

In any case, if you’ve ever been close to the sea for a few days, the Moon’s strong influence on life on earth has been more than obvious to you as you were watching the tides roll in, and then back out again.

But there are other, more subtle influences tied to the Moon as well: Maybe you’ve heard of people reporting changes in their sleep patterns around the full moon. Or you’ve read about studies of plants who are directly influenced by moon phases, or have learned of age-old practices of planting or harvesting by the phases of the moon.

All of these things are cyclic, a constant rolling back and forth, left and right, a constant motion of waxing, cresting, waning, and bottoming out – just like the illuminated shape of the Moon in the sky.

In fact, all life on earth is subject to such constantly shifting cyclic patterns, from the highest and most obvious levels down to the tiniest and nonvisible, from the seasons of the year down to the molecular level in living bodies.

In Hermetic thought, such cyclic motions come to us courtesy of the Moon, whose cyclic up and down in the sky they mimic.

That’s why, of all the planets, the Moon’s influence isn’t just the most obvious to us – it’s also the most intrinsically woven into the patterns of our lives, and of live on earth in general.

But the Moon also plays another, crucial, role in our relationship to all the planets: As she is most intimately tied to us, she also mediates the influence of the other planets, and of the fixed stars above them. Any influence percolating down to us from, say, the Sun or Saturn, is reflected off the Moon into our lives.

In the physical sky, this is quite obvious: The moon does indeed reflect the sun’s light – that’s why we can see it in the first place.

But there are other, more subtle, implications here in Hermetic thought. For example, if you were inclined to produce a planetary talisman, i.e. a talisman produced and consecrated at a certain point in time which is particularly conducive to the energies of your planet of choice, a talisman enlivened with a spirit of said planet, then one way to go about this is to pick a time when the Moon conveys the influence of your chosen planet to you in a benefical way.

(Among other things, that’s also why planting and harvesting according to the Moon works. It’s not just that her waxing and waning exerts a force on all liquids, as evidenced by the powerful effects it has on the sea. It’s also that the Moon reflects the influences of other celestial bodies and phenomena down to us. This includes not just her fellow planets, but also e.g. the signs of the zodiac – hence the Moon’s influence on your plants is subtly different, depending on which sign of the zodiac she is in.)

Thus in Hermetic thought, the Moon is not just the appendix which reflects the Sun’s light and tumbles about waxing and waning, but she has a tremendous influence on our lives – and she is both an important ally and a potential stumbling stone for us in our inner work.

The Moon, important as she is as a mediator between us and the more distant layers of the Universe, is more than just a liveless reflector. Much more, in fact…

Think back for a moment about the characteristics of the Moon as they are reflected in her own influence on earth.

In the tides, for example, there is a constant flowing motion. An underlying rythm. It’s not a rigid, standardized rythm, though, but a living, breathing rythm, one with variations. A rythm which is able and willing to adapt to other forces, and to integrate them. (That’s why, when the Sun and Moon are aligned, we see spring tides.)

The influence of the Moon on our lives (or rather: on all life on earth) has a lot of similarity with the sea and its tides.

She imposes rythm, but a flexible rythm. Things which aren’t static, but move up and down, back and forth, are her domain. This includes such vastly different things as stock market cycles, the subtle growing cycles of plants, and the variability in how awake you feel when you drive to work each morning.

But the Moon’s influence doesn’t lead to rigid, fixed patterns. Rather, she is adaptable. Flexible. Accommodating.

Just like the incoming tide flows around any obstacles, so does the Moon.

And just like the outgoing tide carries old, stagnant, polluted water away from the shores, and the incoming tide nourishes it with fresh, clear water, so do the cycles of the Moon clear old stuff away from us, and nourish us with new energy.

If you’re well aligned to the Moon, your life is flowing like the sea.

You’re aligned to a constant tidal rythm which carries good things towards you, and bad things away from you.

Instead of being fazed by obstacles, you simply flow around them and integrate them into your motion.

You accept life as it is, align yourself with whatever is coming your way. You don’t get hung up on trivialities.

If you’re well aligned to the Moon, you don’t just live like that – you feel it deep in your core. You feel the obstacle you’re moving towards in the oh-so-subtle change of life’s flow, and elegantly move around it without ever getting dangerously close to it. You’ve got a deep-rooted intuition for life’s ups and downs, its ebbs and flows, and react almost effortlessly to them.

Forget about intellect and careful planning. The Moon is pure emotion. And not the rigid kind of emotion, not the hurt feelings that people still cling to decades after the insult – but the constant mellow flow of our emotions in their ever-changing up and down.

The Moon is adaptable. Laid-back. Relaxed. Intuitive. She’s in tune with the underlying rythms of life. She knows intuitively how the currents will be moving – and effortlessly flows with them.

Are you feeling properly mellowed out by leaning into these feelings? Well, congratulations – you’ve just attuned yourself to the energies of the Moon! 😉

Switching our mind and critical thinking skills back on, though, you might remember something I mentioned last time: Namely that the planets can bestow virtues upon us – or vices. Or rather, it’s not just that they can bestow them upon us, but also that we pick them up when we descend into incarnation, on our way down through the planetary spheres.

And nope, that’s not necessarily an either-or, as in “either the planets do it to us or we do it to ourselves”! Both things can be true at the same time. Life is a complex process, and so is getting into incarnation. 😉

(Btw, these planetary influences, whether we picked them up or they were dumped on us, are also reflected in our astrological birth charts. I’m not going to go down this rabbit hole today, but maybe I’ll expand a bit on this topic in one of the later essays.)

Now, the important thing to note is that there are no “good” planets or “bad” planets.

In popular astrology, people love to be scared of certain boogeymen (well, in popular anything, people love to be scared of certain boogeymen!): Saturn and Mars are the bad guys, Venus and Jupiter the good guys (think Star Wars, only without the funny helmets).

From an Hermetic point of view, this is nonsense.

The Hermeticists knew that not only is there something like “too much of a good thing” – there are also, always, two sides of the coin. Let me explain…

Take the adaptability of the Moon, for example.

This can be an incredibly helpful thing – without our ability to adapt, humanity would have died out a long time ago. And even in your personal life, a little adaptability goes a long way to make certain situations more bearable, to have lasting relationships, and to help you pick the fights which are relevant to you and ignore the others (and thus spare yourself a lot of raised blood pressure).

On the other hand, there is something like being too adaptable. Would you really want to end up as a faceless doormat, as somebody who accepts everything, never takes a stand, who doesn’t communicate their own needs or wants – maybe not even to themselves?

And just as adaptability is a coin with two sides, so are the other virtue-vices of the Moon.

A healthy intuition is great, as is listening to your emotions. But constantly being turned inward, constant navel-gazing will detach you from everybody else and from the rest of life.

A keen sense of rythm is a useful thing, as is flowing with the ourward rythms of your environment. But it’s equally important to know when to do something a-rythmic and go against the tide.

And being relaxed and laid-back is nice and well, and a lot of people in our society would do well to relax a bit more – unless you’re so relaxed that you never get anything started, or never pull through with anything, and instead spend your life hanging out on the couch.

I think you get the idea, don’t you?

The Hermetic planets don’t rule over vices and virtues – they rule over vices-virtues. Whatever they rule over is a coin with two sides, a virtue and a vice at the same time.

Please take a moment to let this sink in – it’s a really important concept.

In fact, it’s not just important, but also a highly underrated concept, at least in our society, where we like to sort things into neat drawers: good vs. evil, light vs. dark, friend vs. foe.

If you take nothing else from this essay series but this one thing, then it has been well worth reading for you (and writing for me…).

And I want to encourage you to not just store this concept away in your mind, as an intellectual tidbit, but to actually try it on as a worldview:

The next time you get all worked up about a character trait of somebody, put this view on for size and ask yourself: “What is the other side of the coin? What makes this a potentially worthwhile and productive trait or behaviour?”

(Bonus points if you do it with one of your own annoying traits or behaviours!)

Or if you catch yourself ranting about a certain kind of people, ask yourself: “How are we two sides of the same coin? How does my own position depend on the existence of this kind of people and their position?”

And, in general:

“What if I flip this coin? How does the other side look like? What makes them two sides of the very same coin?”

If you do this for a little while, you’ll notice that most people (yep, you and me very much included!) tend to strongly identify with just one side of each coin.

Looking at the Moon’s coins, maybe we’re proud of how laid-back we are – but fail to ignore that we sometimes lack the drive to take action.

Or we might bemoan the fact that we let others run roughshod over us far too often – but fail to see how the same trait, applied in a productive way, would allow us to consciously choose just the battles which are worth fighting, while walking away from the others without wasting any energy on useless fights.

Both sides of these coins are “gifts” of the Moon – vices and virtues we picked up while descending through her sphere. It’s up to you which side you want to place up, and which side down, in any given situation – or if you keep the coin spinning and put both sides to good use.

While this awareness has a direct effect on the way we lead our lives (and on how we see ourselves), there is an even deeper, even more important truth hidden in this Hermetic story of the descent:

Much as people like to identify with the heads and figures on certain sides of their various coins, in Hermetic thought, they are just that: Coins we picked up and put into the pockets or our soul’s trousers on our way down to earthly incarmation.

It’s not your real You who is laid back or who lacks drive. It’s a role you put on for this life. You can toss away these coins at any time.

And while completely letting go of them might be hard to do now, during your earthly life (in fact, it might be far beyond what most of us are capable of), Hermeticism tells us that if we prepare for it during our lives, we’ll have the ability and the opportunity to do so after death, when we ascend through the spheres again, upwards to The Source.

Emptying our soul’s pockets then, casting off these planetary coins, doesn’t mean we’ll be poorer. It means we’ll be lighter, and all the more able to rise up to where we belong.

We’ll talk about both the descent and the ascent in more detail later, though. But at this point, you might be wondering what the purpose of this exercise is in the first place. I mean, why step down into incarnation and burden ourselves with all these vices and virtues, only to then dump them while re-ascending and become our true selves again?

It’s because of this issue (and because of our society’s bias in Christianity, of course) that earthly incarnation in Hermeticism has often been interpreted as just another fall from grace, as earthly vale of tears, and the sooner we can rise up again, the better.

I have a somewhat more differentiated view of what the Hermetica are trying to tell us, and if there is some space left in one of the next essays, I’ll get into that as well.

But for today, we’ve discussed the Moon, her character and specific energy, and her vices and virtues – and in about two weeks, we’ll rise up one sphere and take a closer look at the second planet, at Mercury.

In the meantime, I invite you to reflect a bit on yourself and your life: Can you relate to the energies of the Moon? And do you recognize any of her vices or virtues in yourself, or in others?

---

Image: Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash