THE MOON

The Moon has been coming up in a lot of readings lately, so I've spent a lot of time groping for a way to express the peculiar and irrational shadow this card casts over an issue. Our own moon acts as a mirror, reflecting slivers of sunlight -- a reminder to nighttime travelers that the sun is still out there somewhere, and will be returning shortly. Except when the moon reflects no light at all, and then we just have to remember on our own.

In the Tarot, the Moon indicates the dark passage we must travel through our unconscious mind in order to emerge as a whole, fully conscious being on the other side. It's a period during which everyday logic fails us; our illusions become more real than the ground under our feet. What once seemed safe now seems threatening, and vice versa. This moon too acts as a mirror, except it is our own distorted face we see in it -- a face which we gradually recognize and accept as we apprehensively travel toward the source of the light.

The mirror pictured above is one that I made. My grandmother lives in rural Montana and sometimes sends me some interesting bones she finds out in nearby fields. I decided to use them to build beautiful artifacts as a bridge between her world and mine here in New York. I mounted a magnifying mirror on the shoulder socket handle, rimming the glass with horse teeth salvaged from an old necklace, which I re-strung with beads and gemstones. I encrusted the back of the mirror with colorful shards of glass and rusted bits of metal from the banks of the East River. I made a matching fan with wine-stained feathers, and when I was done I took photographs to send to my grandmother with a long letter explaining the entire process, which she greatly enjoyed.

And then about a week later I had a friend over, and my guest's sleeve snagged on the mirror as he passed by its shelf. It fell face-down on the floor and broke, a huge crack marring its face, and immediately all the magic and beauty this object had become infused with instantly drained away. It became lifeless. My brain writhed. At that moment, what was important? The work I'd put into it, the fantasies I'd built around it, the actual physical components? My guest felt terrible, so I focused on putting him at ease, trying to remind myself that the mirror had already served its purpose-- but that hollow, senseless feeling took a long time to go away. I still have the mirror, but to this day I can hardly bear to look at it.

If this seems like an oblique way of discussing The Moon's influence, perhaps that's appropriate. Perhaps this Sylvia Plath poem, "The Mirror," will fill in some of the blanks:

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike .
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.