Meditation: The Moon
This has really been a two part meditation, one I began nearly a month ago, I believe, but finally completed the other day as I was doing an exercise for Tarot For Your Self. The first time I attempted it I made some progress, but failed in the end.
I picked the Moon because that was the card that interested me the most, drew me in, and I wanted to understand it. The first time was a fairly disappointing experience…Though, now that I remember it, even the first time happened in two parts. I had been thinking about the Moon card while I was in a non-talking part of one of my guided general meditations, about how the crab, which is supposedly suppose to represent your fears from the deep, murky water, wasn‘t really all that scary. My mind focused on the water from the card for a second, seeing nothing else, and suddenly a form that looked something like a feminized form of the Creature from the Black Lagoon bobbed up out of the water and swiped at me, startling me quite badly, and then sank back in. That kind of broke my concentration, so I went back later to re-explore the card. Nothing spooky with the water happened the next time, instead at the edge of the water I met with a black wolf, friendly enough, who stayed with me at the waters edge. Then I turned and noticed the Towers up the path, and noticed someone was in the left tower, looking out from the window. I walked up the path, the wolf following along behind me, and when I eventually got there I knocked at the door and the wolf turned back, disappearing elsewhere in the landscape. A man answered the door, bright red hair, who looked exactly like Li….To which my basic response was, “Wait…What the hell are you doing here?”
He scowled at me and said, “You’re not ready,” before slamming the door in my face. I called for him to wait, slammed my fist against the door to no answer, and eventually came back out of my meditation feeling rather depressed and a little upset with myself.
The other night, at the prompting of my exercise, I decided to try again. I almost picked another card, the Emperor, but remembered my unfinished business with the Moon and thought it might be a good opportunity to finish it. In this meditation I was instructed to picture the card growing larger and larger until I could ‘step through it’, like a picture frame come to life. I did so, ended up jumping in the shallow edge of the water and then again on to land, with the perturbed crab snapping at me angrily. I paid no attention to him. A coyote and hound was there, their yipping interrupted for the moment. I didn’t interact too much with them, I was focused on the towers. I could see them ahead, and people in either tower, red haired person in the left tower, brown in the right. I began running up the pathway, but at this time my mind kept wanting to ‘leap’ forward, wanting to picture things out of place, so I had to sit on the side of the path, feeling the grass beneath my fingers, breathing the night air, feeling the air across my skin, not too cold, a lovely night in all, until I felt grounded again. At this point to prevent my mind from leaping ahead again I began narrating to myself, “Approach the tower, feel the wood grain on the door, open the door, walk up the steps”, picturing myself always, almost like I was following a guided meditation. It helped, I was able to get to the top of the tower, taking my time to really see things.
The man who looked like Li was at the top, sitting at a pale wood table. The meditation stated that the person I met would have a gift for me, and there was a box there, but first we talked. I sat down beside him and asked him what he could tell me about the Moon. Here’s as much of what I can remember, paraphrased.
“I can’t teach you anything about the Moon.” I frowned at this, but he went on, “The Moon is mystery, and it’s our fears. It’s making yourself less known, hiding, letting people wonder. It’s using your intuition.” He reached forward and circled his finger over my ‘third eye’, and it immediately felt warm and more ‘open’ somehow. “It’s having faith that morning is just around the corner. The Sun is the next card turned over.”
At this point he asked me to open the box, I remember it was white. I did so and inside was a crab, writhing and snapping and wet with its claws flailing about outside of the box. I was startled and leaned back, but then leaned forward again and the crab seemed to turn into a scorpion…Eventually, like a dream, the two stopped fighting to be one or the other and the box was filled with both a scorpion and a crab. Not exactly a very pleasant ‘gift’. I looked up at him and he explained…I can’t remember the exact words, but it was something along these lines.
“These are frightening creatures, they are your fears. But they can also be cooked and eaten, used for nutrients. You should use your fears and consume them, use them to your benefit, don’t let them consume you.” At this point I thanked him and left and ‘woke up’ from my meditation. I definitely think I learned a lot from it.