Because the summertime is grand, I had the occasion to perform some situationalist divination into The Moon. I was shootin’ hoops, and the moon was up in the sky—a faint crescent amongst the sporadic clouds. I spontaneously decided to shoot from a point where the moon was positioned about a foot above the pole that the backboard and hoop are attached to and I continued to shoot from a similar positioning for twenty-one shots: one for each numbered arcanum. Here are the results:
0, the Fool: no shot taken (how does one take a zero shot, after all). Reflects the insight that in the Fool there is wisdom and folly yet to be born upon the step over the cliff (into existence)—flight or fall has not yet been decided.
1, the Magician: miss.
2, the High Priestess: miss.
Interesting that these would both be misses, esp. wrt the High Priestess. I think the Magician miss might speak to the fact that s/he is willful creator and maintainer of a world of illusion for the mere whim of investigation and curiosity. The High Priestess’ miss was a little puzzling until I thought about how it is a typical standard that she is often associated with Luna, so perhaps it’s a call to see beyond the obvious?
3, the Empress: hit.
4, the Emperor: hit.
5, the Hierophant: hit.
6, the Lovers: hit.
An neat little run here. Empress and Luna obviously for their mere feminine powers and associations. The Emperor perhaps in reference to ordering: the Lunar calendar has been and could be again a reasonable way to order the passage of a year. The Hierophant—if nothing else—simply because of his role in perpetuating the illusion of a Holy Land and Hell: his two keys that actually open the same door. The Lovers seems obvious as well: Luna has often been associated with love and romance. What is really interesting is the run of these four in a row: it marks out the traditional circle of marriage—love between a man and a women who are conjoined by a Holy servant of the divinity. As well, from the conjunction of Empress and Emperor, the idea that every human—no matter sex—has both animus and anima currents in his or her psyche (we are each one of us truly bisexual &/v androgynous): our physical bodies are part of the land of illusion, after all.
8, Strength: miss.
9, The Hermit: miss.
10, The Wheel: miss.
11, Justice: miss.
Now, I really am not surprised by these misses except I kinda’ figured the Hermit might have been a hit because of his lamp. Again, see past the obvious and results are often not what we expect.
12, the Hanged Man: hit.
Figures, really. Willful immersion into the world of illusion—PKD’s notion of the creator of the projection machine lost in the projection without recollection that the machine is both hir own creation and malfunctioning.
13, Death: miss.
14, Temperance: miss.
15, the Devil: miss.
16, the Tower: miss.
17, the Star: miss.
18, the Moon: miss.
The only interesting one of this run of misses was the Moon itself; however, I feel that this reflects ideas I’ve expressed elsewhere.
19, the Sun: miss.
Again, see past the obvious.
20, Judgement: hit.
21, the World: hit.
Hmm, Judgement day as illusion in the sense that it isn’t in the future or to be accomplished by some being removed from ourselves in space and time: we are the ones who sound the horn that calls the dead (our memories and expectations) to rise from their resting places at the end of time (which is NOW: between the past and the future, time ends in the moment) and proceed to judge and value (which is, really, the death of the moment). The World as illusion, but as has been discussed earlier, a seemingly necessary illusion: if there wasn’t the busted projection machine of our own willful making (if there wasn’t a Fool—a nothing—to be filled), then there would be no manifestation whatsoever; thus, there would be no void, but there can’t be no void, so there must be a void, and hence, manifestation.
The Moon—we can’t live with it, we can’t live without it. |
