In this divination I recount a profound experience I had while backpacking through Yosemite National Park. Half-asleep, I found myself in the midst of a near full moon that illuminated my surroundings with a haunting beauty and intensity. Inspired by this memory, I trace the archetypal landscape of lunar consciousness from the Moon tarot card to the alchemical stage of the albedo.
Here are the 3 quotes I reference in the recording:
“...The situation is now gradually illuminated as is a dark night by the rising moon. The illumination comes to a certain extent from the unconscious, since it is mainly dreams that put us on the track of enlightenment. This dawning light corresponds to the albedo, the moonlight which in the opinion of some alchemists heralds the rising sun.” - C.G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis
“The alchemical albedo is hardly a shadowless innocence. Tho' the sigh of despair may turn to a sigh of relief, the blue stain remains. There is now more psychic space to carry the shadow's full, mysterious structure, a higher sky and deeper sea. The soul whitens as the shadow comes out of the repressed and is aired in life.” - James Hillman, Alchemical Psychology
“The white world is called albedo. Its metal is silver. The heavenly body of the dark night is the moon. The albedo is a moon consciousness, light cast in the darkness, the cool, reflecting light of the eye of night. It is not a sharply circumscribed world with clear forms, but a consciousness of imagination and adaptation to darkness. Mercury, god of thieves in the night, he who accompanies souls to the underworld, is at home here like a night wind by a full moon….Reflecting in a dawning consciousness of fluttering night moths, here everything that had been taken literally now becomes metaphor. It is a world of poets, thieves, lunatics, an figurative language; an intermediate realm between bright, clear daylight and pitch-black night; the mediumistic world where one thing can also be another.” - Robert Bosnak, A Little Course in Dreams
Join me in the comments section
How do you typically interpret the Moon card? What are your thoughts on the albedo stage of the alchemical opus? What does developing lunar consciousness mean to you?
Watch my class on tarot and alchemy
If you’re curious to explore the bridge between tarot and alchemy further, you can check out the recording of my class on the subject here:
the moon card, for me, makes me wonder about potential relationship with the subtle body, though this remains rather a mysterious concept for me. Maybe the development of lunar consciousness is also caught up awareness of, and strengthening a connection with the subtle body, I don't know. Thank you for sharing the personal experience. It is so helpful to have the ideas of the podcast grounded in that way.
Hey Deryn, thanks for this great comment. Love the connection between the moon card and the subtle body. I'm curious how you define subtle body in this context? Some thoughts come to mind like the chakra system or the astral body, etc.
As the subtle body is seen as a sort of "liminal space" between concrete reality and spirit, I think it certainly can relate to the moon card. It is a card of liminality, and finding ease with being in that subtle realm.
Thanks Alyssa. I don’t have a working definition as I’m already stretched to the edge of my capacity to just have the notion of the subtle body - its possibility is hovering there, just on the cusp, as a possibility. The Moon card seems to speak to that feeling of being in a waiting room and the image in the Wildwood tarot casts a strange aura of potential. I need to read more of what von Franz has to say about it.
Here's a quote from Jung via Daryl Sharp's lexicon:
"The part of the unconscious which is designated as the subtle body becomes more and more identical with the functioning of the body, and therefore it grows darker and darker and ends in the utter darkness of matter. . . . Somewhere our unconscious becomes material, because the body is the living unit, and our conscious and our unconscious are embedded in it: they contact the body. Somewhere there is a place where the two ends meet and become interlocked. And that is the [subtle body] where one cannot say whether it is matter, or what one calls "psyche."[ Nietzsche's Zarathustra, vol. 1, p. 441.]
I like his emphasis as the place where "the two ends meet and become interlocked" - where matter and psyche are intertwined. Gives one a lot to reflect on!
It certainly does. Thank you for the reference, much appreciated.
You're welcome :)
one other thought. My most recent day of intensity was meeting a therapist for the first time yesterday. We talked about a sibling relationship that had been abusive. Last night, I woke up dreaming that my brother walked across the space between us with his arm outstretched and his hand grabbed my throat and squeezed. What was odd that there was no affect in the dream at all. I felt nothing and just let him strangle me. No doubt I dreamt this because I'd been speaking about him that morning, but it also seems like an image the unconscious has conjured to indicate he does not want me to talk.