Yael Dragwyla First North American rights

email: polaris93@aol.com 17,300 words

NEW MAGICKS FOR A NEW AGE

Volume II: The Magickal Sky
Book 2: The Planets
Part 2: Luna

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Chapter 1: General Discussion

Astrologers call the Sun and the Moon as the Lights rather than referring to them as Planets. There
are several reasons for this. First, no other bodies in the Solar System have the importance They do for
us, on either the Inner or Outer Planes. Compared to Their influence upon us, that of any of the other
members of Sol’s family is relatively minor. Second, no other body in the Solar System has an apparent
magnitude (brightness) or size that even begins to approach Luna’s -12.5 and Sol’s -26.8 apparent
magnitudes1 and Their 0.25-degree angular radii. 2 Therefore They are categorized differently than all
other celestial bodies, underscoring Their importance for all the living world.
And though Luna emits no light of Her own, shining only because She reflects so much of Sol’s
light, Her luminosity is many times greater than even that of Venus, Whose maximum magnitude of -4.4
makes Her the brightest of all bodies in the Solar System save Luna and Sol Himself. Further, Luna is
closer to us than any other celestial body of significant size. And She more than makes up for what She
lacks in terms of intrinsic heat and self-luminosity, as compared with Sol, by the strength and power of
Her gravitational influence on us.
At certain critical times such as New Moon in early Winter, when we are closest to Sol, and Luna is
directly between us and the Sun, Her gravitational field, combined with His, can have an overwhelming
effect on our psyches and our behavior. Her gravity pulls on every molecule of water in the body of
every living being on Earth with irresistible effect. At times of New and Full Moon, this effect can in
fact be strong enough to overcome the normal, delicate, neurochemical balances of the endocrine and
central nervous systems, which are utterly dependent upon water-based chemical processes for their
healthy functioning, mediated by the interaction of various types of liquid suspensions in the body. As
the old saying goes, psychiatric technicians, cops, and bartenders are all too aware of the effects of the
New and Full Moon upon us all; every day, they have to deal with people whose emotional states are at
best highly volatile, subject to change without notice. At New and Full Moon, the emotional volatility
even of “normal” people increases markedly, while the emotionally disturbed and the habitually violent
tend to go ballistic at these times. Normally timid people may suddenly erupt into berserker rage for the
first time in their lives; seemingly happy, stable people with everything to live for attempt or succeed at
suicide; and the daily quota of fights, breakdowns, crimes of violence, and chaotic behavior of all kinds
goes through the sky. The word “lunatic” says it all.
Luna’s effects upon the living aren’t restricted to those whom we smug urbanites are pleased to call
“unstable” and “insane,” either. Her power is felt by the whole living world at each Lunation – every
New, Full, and Quarter Moon – in very marked ways, effects which are often not evident at other times.
At the Lunations, all animal life displays a marked increase in emotional volatility; passions run high
among many species at these times. Everything from rape to murder among human and non-human
animals alike may be initiated by a Lunation. Knowing this, from Paleolithic times down to the present
“primitive” hunters often time their hunts to correspond with various phases of the Moon. Paleolithic
hunting-and-gathering cultures worship the Moon, incorporating Her lore and rituals into the very heart
of their lives, for She is Queen of the Night, when pack-animals such as Homo sapiens often do their best
hunting – not to mention their mating, that most primordial of all animal-life’s rituals.
Luna’s effects upon the living world aren’t exactly insignificant during the rest of the Lunar month,
either. The tides which She raises twice daily in the world’s waters, has done so ever since our world
cooled enough to have oceans, have been among the major forces shaping the evolution of life on Earth
since its beginning. Clams taken from Pacific waters and kept in tanks in Kansas will, after about a
fortnight of readjustment to their new environment, suddenly begin opening and closing their shells two
hours earlier than they did back in their native habitats, even though they are now in waters that are
totally calm and waveless. These displaced mollusks are tracking Luna’s gravitational pull upon the
Earth, responding to its ancient rhythm and its tug upon the water in every cell in their bodies as She
moves Westward across the sky each day, just as their ancient ancestors did in the early Cambrian and
even the late Precambrian periods of the evolution of Earthly life, perhaps as much as two billion years
ago. Like those clams, we ourselves are also tied to the ancient rhythms She creates and maintains.
Though we like to think of ourselves as special, set over and apart from and above all other living beings,
the immemorial ebb and flow of the hormones and fluids in the body of every human woman mutely
testifies to our oneness with our living world and all Her life.
Sol’s influence upon us is based almost entirely upon His titanic electromagnetic fields and their
continuous flux, which is due to the ever-changing gravitational field of the Solar System as a whole
together with those of the individual bodies within it, as the latter continuously tug and haul the
molecules of Sol’s vast heart and flaming photosphere now here, now there. Even when, relative to our
position on Earth, Sol is “down,” below our horizon, those almost inconceivably vast, puissant
electromagnetic fields still affect us along with all the rest of Earth’s life, for the entire bulk of our Planet
is a tiny and nearly ineffective shield against the fields accompanying the raw radiant energies and titanic
sprays of subatomic particles moving at near-relativistic speeds that are hurled out from His mighty bulk
every instant. These fields act on every molecule of our bodies, in particular those in our central nervous
systems, and the delicate, critical electrochemical dance of those molecules that constitutes the
functioning of brain and body. Ions flow through our bodies at all times, the oxygenated hemoglobin in
our bloodstreams, the calcium, magnesium and potassium ions that flash along the neurons of our brains
and peripheral nervous systems, and all the other charged atomies whose traffic through our bodies is the
sine qua non of life and mind. After all, an electrical current is really a flow of ionized material, whether
it consists of raw electrons or heavier, ionized molecules, and all electric currents are strongly affected by
the presence of any externally applied magnetic field, particularly one undergoing rapid change. So the
functioning of the bodies of all living beings is critically affected by whatever Sol’s electromagnetic
fields are doing, as previously discussed, in other chapters.
But Luna’s influence upon us is almost entirely gravitational. She doesn’t shine by Her own light.
Instead, She does something at least as important to us: Her gravitational field affects the shape of Sol’s
electromagnetic fields and the burden of hot ions from the Solar wind accompanied by them as the latter
envelops and streams past our world. In this respect, Her influence is far, far greater than that of any of
the Planets could possibly be, as distant from us as they are. Luna’s gravitational field in effect functions
as a very physically real lens, focusing the Solar wind and its accompanying electromagnetism as these
pass by and impact the Earth. The shape and behavior of that lens determines in great part what Sol’s
effects on us will be, not only on a purely physical level, but also on the esoteric levels, as these induce
or are induced by the physical events and processes taking place in our environment. Anything that
affects Her influence upon us thus heavily affects the way in which, in turn, Sol and, through Him, due to
Their affects upon His enormous electromagnetic fields, the Planets influence us.
For those living on Earth, the ability to influence Sol’s electromagnetic field by biophysical,
parakinetic means will be the ultimate key to Magickal power in the same way that nuclear energy and
computer sciences have become keys to political, economic, and military power. But the nature of that
key involves the biophysical control of the gravitational fields of extra-terrestrial, physical bodies. The
first such we ever knew, the first that ever influenced life on our world, is Luna. The Mother of all
Earthly life, because of Her gravitational effects upon the early Earth and the infant Gaia, She is likewise
the Mother of Magick, for the same reason. The light of our Father Sol is the Seed of Magick, but Luna
is its Womb, and the provider of its Egg. To understand Her influence upon our world and its life is to
possess the ultimate keys to the heavens and all the Planes, and the destiny of Gaia and all Earthly life.
For this reason, the First Magickian, the Lord of Magick, the Divine Hermaphrodite known variously as
Thrice-Great Hermes, Djehuti, Isis, Hekate, Raphael, and all the other Lunar-Hermetic Gods of Magick,
is Lord of the Moon. Homo sapiens seems to have been the first mammal to gain anything like such a
fine-tuned control over Lunar influences; our species-name sapiens indicates not so much intellectual
superiority as it does an exquisite sensitivity to Luna’s power and our species’ astonishing ability to
manipulate Her influence by biophysical means.
What, then, is the nature of Luna’s physical avatar, that it has such a devastatingly powerful
influence upon us and all the rest of Earth’s life? In its characteristics are clues to Her esoteric nature
and power, so let’s take a look at them.
First, Luna and Earth together constitute a double-Planet system. Relative to Earth, Luna is so large
that She could be Earth’s sister. Only one other Moon in the Solar System, Charon, Who shares Pluto’s
frighteningly lonely orbit billions of kilometers starward from Sol, is as large in comparison to His
primary as Luna is to Hers. To be sure, many of the Solar System’s Moons are far larger than Luna in
terms of absolute size. But only Charon comes close to being as proportionately large compared to His
primary as Luna is to Hers. Our world has a diameter of 12,756 km and a mass of 5.97 x 10 24 kg, while
Luna has a diameter of 3,476 km and a mass of 7.3483 x 10 22 kg. Her diameter is therefore more than a
quarter that of the Earth, while the ratio of Her mass to that of the Earth is about 1:81. She orbits our
world at a mean distance of 384,392 km, less than 10 times the Earth’s circumference, the distance
between Her center and that of our world ranging from 362,105 to 406,479 km. No other Moon of any
appreciable size orbits its primary so closely. It is because Luna is so massive and so close to us that She
has such an overwhelmingly powerful influence upon us.
Luna’s ellipticity, the proportionate difference between Her diameter as measured between Her poles
of axial rotation and that measured across Her equator, is 0.002. Her volume is 2% that of the Earth, Her
density is 3.34 times that of water, and Her escape velocity is 2.37 km/s, only about 20% that of the Earth
– exiting Luna’s gravitational field only requires about 4% the energy necessary to escape Earth’s.3
Luna’s axial inclination is slight, about 1-1/2 degrees, and Her albedo, the proportion of the light which
She radiates back to space from all the light falling on Her surface, is only about 7% (in comparison,
Earth’s maximum albedo is 29%).
In many ways, Luna’s physical characteristics are diametrically opposed to Her esoteric ones. She
rules water, and all things that live in water, yet She is physically barren, lacking all but mere trace wisps
of atmosphere, having at best only tiny amounts of surface water. What little atmosphere She has is
essentially devoid of oxygen, and what little water does sometimes appear on Her surface during one of
Her frigid, fortnight-long nights is instantly flash-boiled away to space by Sol’s furious heat come Lunar
dawn.
Because She essentially lacks an atmosphere which would otherwise shield Her surface somewhat
from space, She is covered by a wealth of meteor craters, some of them billions of years old. Her surface
also contains vast plains formed of sheets of magma that escaped from Her interior as a result of damage
from some of the heavier meteors and other space garbage that have bombarded Her over the Aeons.
Most of the craters on Her surface are essentially just as they were formed by whatever impacts created
them. Because She lacks an atmosphere and free-flowing surface water, there exist none of the forces of
weathering of the sort that have created the rolling contours and graceful forms of Earth’s land-surface to
gentle the knife-sharp escarpments of Luna’s craters or conceal the other signatures of the cosmic
disasters that formed them. Only the relatively minor effects on crater walls and slopes of the sharp
temperature gradients formed in them by the confrontation of Sol’s savage, unshielded heat and the
unspeakable chill of outer space and occasional later bombardments of space junk come to alter what was
first tattooed into Luna’s skin by the Arbalest of God.
Yet Luna is not a dead world. There is still heat flowing out of Her interior, a finding of the Apollo
XV and XVII missions, the source of which is probably radioactives such as potassium, uranium, and
thorium deep in her core. The Apollo landers also carried seismic detectors which clearly recorded
Moon-quakes. Some of these were due to meteorite impacts, while others were produced artificially,
either by experiments using various explosives or by the crashing into the Lunar surface of the IV-B
ascent-stages of the Saturn rockets used for the Apollo missions. But a significant number of those
quakes were clearly due to movements deep within Luna’s interior.
Luna has a complex physical structure. The “regolith” – a word that means “broken, crushed,
tumbled, without clear structure” – that constitutes the outermost layer of Her crust, equivalent to the
epidermis of the body of a vertebrate, is only about a kilometer deep. Underlying this planetary
epidermis, at depths of 2-20 km, is most probably a form of fractured basalt; below that, at depths of 20-
60 km, is an anorthositic gabbro composite, something like basalt but much more granular, consisting
largely of pyroxene and plagioclase. This material resembles that of Earth’s mantle, and is today much
as it was at Her birth from the primordial nebula of hot gases and assorted other material that gave rise to
the Sun and Solar System, some four to five billion years ago, undisturbed by all save the most titanic
meteoric impacts on Luna’s surface. Luna’s crust ends at about 60 km down, where the relatively dense
mantle, rich in pyroxene and olivene, begins.
Beneath the mantle is the lithosphere, solid and rigid, extending to 1,000 km below Luna’s surface;
major Moon-quakes have their origin near its base. Below the lithosphere is the aesthenosphere,
extending down as far as 1,200-1,800 km below the surface . Exactly where the lithosphere ends isn’t
certain; it probably consists of liquid or at least partially molten material from Luna’s core. Finally, at
Luna’s hot heart, lies Her true core. The composition of this core is uncertain, and a great many
mysteries still remain concerning its nature.
The thickness of Luna’s crust on Her far side, perhaps as much as 70 km or more, is significantly
greater than that on that side of Her that is nearest to Earth. This may be due to the fact that Luna’s
rotation has been locked to that of the Earth, for at least half a billion years, or possibly even a billion and
a half, so that for all that time She has turned only one face toward Her primary, the other forever gazing
outward toward the Stars, unseen by human beings until the late 1960s and the Apollo Lunar missions.
This came about as a result of the interaction down the Aeons of Her gravitational field with that of the
Earth. In the remote past, She was far closer to the Earth than She is now; at that time, the terrible
gripping talons of Earth’s gravitational field caught Luna up and bound Her forever in one attitude to our
world. In return, Her gravity has acted as a continuous brake on Earth’s rotation, so that Earth’s day is
now about three hours longer than it was at that time, and Earth’s year some 40 days shorter.
As our world’s rotation is slowly, inexorably slowed by Luna’s gravitational pull upon Her, the
energy associated with Her angular momentum is transferred to Luna, accelerating Luna in Her orbit,
causing Her distance from our world to increase. Strong as Luna’s influence is upon us today, it is
almost insignificant compared to the terrible forces She once exerted on our world. When She was at Her
closest to us, some 0.5-1.5 gigayears ago, the remorseless pull of Her gravitational field broke open
enormous, world-girdling cracks in our world at 45 degrees North and South of Earth’s equator; as a
result, vast floods of magma from Earth’s deep crust and upper mantle spewed out through these cracks.
It is very likely that there was life on Earth even then, a flourishing biosphere completely unlike
Earth’s current one, Gaia. Perhaps a good name for it is Nykte, “Night,” Who, according to the Greek
Orphic creation myth, was courted by the Wind and laid a silver egg in the Womb of Darkness from
which hatched Eros, Who created all things. 4 If so, only a few sad, mysterious revenants of that early
world remain today, in the form of microfossils found in the desolate wastes of Antarctica and, possibly,
descendants of those early, pre-Gaian forms of Earthly life found within the cells of today’s living
eukaryotic organisms, ourselves included, cellular organelles such as chloroplasts or mitochondria. It
was the close approach of Luna to the Earth that destroyed that world – and gave birth to Gaia, our own
living world as we know it today. The ghosts of that long-ago cosmic catastrophe which simultaneously
conceived Gaia and made us possible, are the tidally locked rotation of Luna and the disproportionate
thickness of the crust on that part of Her surface that is always turned away from the Earth.
Luna’s surface is highly varied. In addition to the countless craters that cover so much of Her
surface, She also possesses vast mare basins, depressed plains notable for their relative lack of cratering.
These mare basins differ from the heavily cratered highland regions in that they are smoother and
generally darker in color than the latter, and contain features not generally seen in the highlands. These
features include sinuous rills, wrinkled ridges, and dome-like features with summit craters. The rills may
be lava channels; the wrinkle-ridges are thought to be the result of folding in the surface layers of the
maria.
Luna’s regolithic surface polarizes any light falling on it, so that it vibrates in one plane but not
another. Polarizing filters can therefore “tune” Luna’s light in or out as desired, depending upon how
they are oriented. This type of process is the precursor of the means by which light is cohered into a
laser. Luna polarizes light in two dimensions, while the crystals or gems used in lasers polarize it in
three dimensions. It is this polarization of the light falling upon and reflected back from Luna’s surface
that gives Moonlight much of its Magickal quality, robbing it of most of its color but leaving a blued or
silvered quality to it that causes all it illuminates to seem enchanted and fey.
Concerning Luna’s physical origin, there are three basic theories. These are the fission theory, the
capture theory, and the binary accretion theory.
The fission theory holds that originally Earth and Luna were one body, which was completely molten
and rotated quickly. The speed of its rotation made it pear-shaped, then dumbbell-shaped. Finally, the
neck of the dumbbell became so long that it broke, and Luna moved away from the Earth as an
independent body.
The capture theory holds that Luna was originally a separate body following Her own trajectory
through space, independent of the Earth. Passing near our world, She was permanently captured by
Earth’s gravitational field, and became Earth’s Moon.
Finally, the binary accretion theory holds that Earth and Luna were formed in the same way, in the
same part of the Solar System, at about the same time. Because of this, they have always been
gravitationally linked. One modification of this theory proposes that a ring of material formed around the
nascent Earth, gradually collecting to form Luna.
The first of these three theories has now been generally abandoned because of serious mathematical
objections to it. The second is much more viable than the first, but involves some very special,
unconfirmed assumptions, and thus challenges the principle of Occam’s Razor: “Do not multiply
assumptions unnecessarily.” The third theory is the one most likely to fit the facts, especially because it
is now clear as a result of the Apollo missions that Earth and Luna have very similar chemical
compositions.
Even though Luna’s barren, airless, desiccated surface is extremely hostile to Earthly life, without
Her constant near-by presence and the Precambrian Catastrophe of long ago caused by Her close
approach to the Earth, our own living world, Gaia, could not have come into existence. We ourselves,
like all other forms of modern Earthly life, could not have existed save for that ancient cataclysm, which
gave birth to Gaia in the process of destroying Her predecessor, Nectys. Luna’s gravitational
modifications of Solar light and Her direct gravitational effects upon our world constituted the matrix in
which all modern Earthly life evolved. Luna rises Earth’s tides, and directly shapes our weather. She
has an irresistible effect on the moods and behavior of all the life of our world. We ourselves are
conceived, gestated, and born according to the rhythms of Her tides, and our lives go out at last with
those tides, as well. Thus in spite of Her apparent barrenness and hostility to life as we know it, She is
actually the very Egg of that life, Her gravity the Womb in which it formed, Her influence upon it the
bedrock of all Magickal action. The understanding of that influence is the master-key to knowledge and
control of the Inner Planes and all they hold, and all her astrological influence comes from that. 5
Better than anyone else writing in modern times, Dion Fortune6 said of the Spirit of Luna:

I am She Who, ere the Earth was formed,

Was Rhea, Binah, Ge.
I am that soundless, boundless, bitter Sea
Out of Whose Deeps life wells eternally.
Astarte, Aphrodite, Ashtoreth,
Giver of life and bringer-in of death;
Hera in Heaven, on Earth, Persephone;
Kali and Black Isis, dancing on Their hills of skulls,
Mikhail and Ezeli, Black Mary and Athena,
Battling demons in the sky,
Star-flecked Nuit, o’er-arching all the world,
Diana of the Ways, and Hekate:
All these am I, all are found in Me.
The hour of the high full Moon draw near;
I hear the invoking words, hear and appear:
 ShaDdaI EL ChaI, Kether, and Rhea, Binah, Ge,
And ELITh, self-creating Creation
In Aspects three,
I come unto the one who calleth Me.
§
O Isis Veiled and Rhea, Binah, Ge,
Lead us to the Well of Memory,
The Well-Head where the pale white cypress grows,
By secret twilight paths that no man knows,
The shadowy path dividing into three –
Diana of the Ways, and Hekate,
Selene of the Moon, and Persephone,
Mother Mary, Lilith, and T’sou-Mou,
Kali-Shiva-Chandi-Durga, Parvati,
And the Lord of Magick, Djehuti,
Thrice-Great Hermes, Psychopompos
And Divine Hermaphrodite.
The high full Moon at the zenith shines clear!
O hear the invoking words, hear and appear!
ShaDdaI EL ChaI, Kether, and Rhea, Binah, Ge!

§
Sink down, sink down, sink deeper and sink deep,
Into eternal and primordial sleep.
Sink down, forget, be still and draw apart
Into the Inner Earth’s Most Secret Heart.
Drink of the Waters of Persephone,
The Secret Well beside the Sacred Tree.
I am that secret Queen, Persephone.
All Tides are Mine, and answer unto Me.
Tides of the Airs, Tides of the Inner Earth,
The secret, silent Tides of Death and birth:
Tides of men’s souls, and dreams, and destiny –
Isis Veiled, and Rhea, Binah, Ge –
ELITh, self-creating Creation
In Aspects three.

§
I am that Star that rises from the Twilight Sea,
Bringing men dreams that rule their destiny.
I bring the Moon-Tides to the souls of men,
The Tides that flow and ebb and flow again,
That flow and ebb and flow alternately:
These are My Secret, these belong to Me.

§
I am eternal Woman, I am She –
The Tides of all men’s souls belong to Me.
The Tides that flow and ebb and flow again,
The secret, silent Tides that govern men:
These are My Secret, these belong to Me.
 §
Out of My Hands he takes his destiny,
The touch of My Hands bestows serenity.
These are the Moon-Tides, these belong to Me.
Durga in Heaven, on Earth, Persephone,
Diana of the Ways, and Liberty,
Athena-Medusa, Aphrodite from the Sea,
All these am I, and They are found in Me.

§
The high full Moon at the zenith shines clear;
I hear thy prayer of invocation, and appear:
ShaDdaI EL ChaI, Kether, and Rhea, Binah, Ge,
I come unto those who call upon Me.

§
Sink down, sink down, sink deeper and more deep
Into eternal and primordial sleep.
Sink down, be still, forget and draw apart
Into the Inner Earth’s Most Secret Heart.
Drink of the Waters of Persephone,
The Secret Well beside the Sacred Tree.
Waters of life and strength and inner light –
Eternal joy born from the Deeps of Night.
Then rise, made strong, with life and hope renewed,
Reborn from darkness and from solitude,
Blessed with the blessing of Persephone
And secret strength of Rhea, Binah, Ge.

§
Persephone, O Moon of men’s desire,
Thy lambent light illumines with cold moon-fire!
Persephone, Persephone,
Moon of the night, we long for Thee.
In Outer Space, the Springs of Being arise;
With tidal sweep, Life streams across the skies,
And in men’s hearts awake the slumbering fires:
Thou art the Queen of Dreams and of Desires.
Persephone, Persephone,
Moon of the Night, we come to Thee!

§
The Moon is riding high and clear,
O Lovely One, draw near, draw near;
To lonely ones on lonely ways,
Come down in dream of silver haze.
Persephone, Persephone,
All in the end shall come to Thee,
Radiant ELITh, self-creating Creation
In Aspects three. 7
 In Section 2 of this chapter, we will examine the psychospiritual and astromythological aspects of
Luna, touching again from time to time on some of the material covered in this chapter as a basis for
esoteric analysis model-building. In Section 3, lists of some of the more important and useful Qaballistic
and Magickal correspondences for Luna are given.
 Chapter 2: Astromythology and Psychospiritual Aspects of Luna

Perhaps it is the memory, biochemically embedded in the tissues of all modern Earthly life, of that
ancient world-cracking catastrophe, the close approach of Luna to the young Earth, that accounts for so
much of Luna’s power over us and Her central place in so many of our mythologies, religions, and
Magickal systems. Were the echoes of that cataclysm sensed by Hans Horbiger when, inspired by the
sight of molten metal falling upon frozen mud, he had the mystical vision out of which evolved his
infamous Welt-Eis Lehre or “World Ice Theory”? This theory, which asserts that our world and all its
life were the products of a series of catastrophic interactions between cosmic fire and cosmic ice,
eventually became the quasi-official cosmological doctrine of the Nazi Party in Germany during Hitler’s
chancellorship of that unhappy nation. Were Herr Doktor Horbiger and his followers, all unknowingly,
acting on an immemorially ancient memory locked into the tissues of all Earth’s modern life?
The ancient Greeks believed that in the beginning, Eurynome, the Goddess of All Things, was born
of Chaos into the Void. Finding nothing substantial for Her feet to rest upon, She therefore divided the
sea from the sky, and danced all alone on the waves of the sea for unknown Aeons. Dancing toward the
South, She set in motion a wind in her wake that seemed to be something new, not part of Her, suitable as
raw material for Her to begin the work of creation upon it. Wheeling about, She caught hold of this
North wind, rubbed it between Her hands, and thereby created the great serpent Ophion. Coupling with
Ophion, She gave birth to the Cosmos – the Sun, the Moon, all the Planets, the Stars, and the living Earth
with all Her creatures, plant and animal and all else.
But there was one school that believed that black-winged Night, a Goddess of Whom even Zeus
stands in awe, was courted by the Wind and laid a silver egg in the Womb of Darkness. Eros, Whom
some call Phanes, was hatched from this egg, and set the Cosmos in motion. This silver egg was of
course the Moon, Who is thus the Grandmother of All Things.8
In such origin stories, are there echoes of an ancient, world-cracking catastrophe without which all
modern forms of life could not have come to into existence? Is it possible that, knowingly or otherwise,
we are able to access all the biological information in all the components of our living bodies, including
all the “silent” DNA in the nuclei of our cells, or even the extra-nuclear DNA of the mitochondria and
other organelles of those same cells? More and more, current biological theory holds that modern
eukaryotic 9 cells – including those of our own bodies – are the descendants of ancient compacts among
unicellular organisms of the early Earth, by which various types of cells banded together to form the first
complex cells, ancestors to those in the bodies of all modern eukaryotic life. According to the work of
Lynn Margulis et alia,10 the organelles of modern cells, each of which has its own compliment of DNA,
separate from that of any other organelle in the cell, including the nucleus (which is an organelle in its
own right), were originally free-living organisms which somehow came together to form obligate
symbiotic partnerships. These partnerships did so well that they have persisted right down to the present
day, billions of years later, comprising all modern Earthly eukaryotic life.
Are some of those organelles remnants of Earth’s life that existed prior to the cataclysmic near-
approach of Luna to Earth and the world-rending trauma that were the consequences of that approach? Is
it somehow possible, consciously or otherwise, to commune with the organelles in the cells of our own
bodies, including those outside the envelope of our cellular nuclei, which may be the descendants from
beings that existed before that unthinkable catastrophe, and learn from them something of their ancestry
and history? Is it possible in this way to catch glimpses of the way our world was before Luna’s close
approach to us – or of the shattering horror which destroyed Nykte, Earth’s pre-Gaian early biosphere,
several billion years ago?
Is this what happened to Hans Horbiger, accidentally or otherwise, consciously or not? Did he
somehow establish a rapport with the Noachian 11 minds and memories in the living machineries of the
cells of his body, thereby receiving a fragmented vision of their origin and the catastrophe that gave rise
to them and, ultimately, all modern Earthly life? Did he then take this mysterious intelligence, strained
as it was through the veils of his own emotional make-up and history, his education, and his cultural
conditioning, to be a mystical revelation about cosmic events taking place over a far shorter span of time
than was actually the case, concerning the origins of just one kind of life – our own – instead of the
ancient ancestry of the entire modern biosphere, the true source of the cellular memory from which his
vision came? Did his seemingly completely crazy World-Ice Theory actually contain fragments of truth,
snatched haphazardly and ignorantly as they were from a distorted glimpse through a dark glass of
biochemical memory, of a world-maiming cataclysm that took place billions of years in our past?
 Perhaps something like this is responsible as well for the enormous seductiveness of many forms of
insanity, especially religious manias and psychotically intense paranoid political fanaticisms. Perhaps all
such seeming insanity nevertheless contains at least seeds or fragments of truths about things of
tremendous and ultimate importance not only to the individual but to us all, as well. It is known now that
paranoid schizophrenia in adults is born of relentless, mind-twisting persecution of the children those
adults once were by the adults who once had them in their complete power; and a tremendous number of
case-studies makes it clear that multiple personality syndrome is the result of real horrors visited upon the
sufferer by others when he or she was very young. Isn’t it possible that strange visions such as Horbiger
had, and the weird fanaticisms they so often give birth to, which so many cling to, so foolishly, may grow
out of misunderstood, biochemically-induced glimpses of real events by untrained, badly skewed minds
which have little or none of the training necessary for a useful understanding of what it is they are seeing
or what it means?12
If so, as we call Earth’s modern biosphere “Gaia,” just so, perhaps we ought to call that primordial
biosphere that preceded ours on Earth Nykte (“Night”), from the Greek Orphic creation myth, a version
of the Pelasgian origin story. For in that story, it was Nykte Who laid the silver egg of the Moon from
which was born Phanes or Eros, the Creator of all modern Earthly life, just as Luna may have been the
“grandmother” or midwife of the latter because of the catastrophic consequences of Her close approach
to the Earth, long, long ago. 13
Whatever the origins of Her vast power over Earthly life, Her influence is second only in importance
to that of Sol in the natal chart. She is the Receptive Principle, of Whom Alan Oken tells us:

If the circle of the Sun [Sol is symbolically represented by a circle with a dot in it]
represents the infinite and unmanifested source of energy for the entire Universe (the
macrocosm) and for each human being (the microcosm), the semicircle of the Moon [a
crescent opening to the right] reveals the finite and manifested. The Moon absorbs the
light and heat emanating from the Sun’s rays (the dot in the circle) and gives this
creative force [Chokmah, Neptune, ruler of Pisces, esoterically ruled by Sol] form
[Binah, Uranus, the “Winter Sun”]. The Moon, therefore, is emblematic of all that is
receptive in human nature: the subconscious, the emotions, and the behavioral
instincts. In short, the Moon is the Soul, while the Sun is the Spirit [Will,
Intentionality, purposiveness, biological directedness, etc.].14

(Italicized items in brackets in the above are mine, not Oken’s.)

According to Robert Hand, “. . . Mercury modulates the energies of the Sun, while the Moon does
the same for the Earth.” 15 He tells us:

The Moon represents two basic archetypes. First, it is the archetype of the medium
or container in which an energy may become manifest. It is also the archetype of the
matrix, source, or origin of all things. . . . .16

In the natal chart, the Moon shows the native’s probable instinctive emotional reactions to the
various situations and stimuli which he or she encounters in life. She also shows the sort of attitudes that
are likely to be instilled in the native by his or her family during childhood, and the way in which early
experiences tend to color the native’s emotional outlook. Luna determines how the native is likely to
react to external influences and the behavior of others, and by far and away likely exerts the single
greatest astrological influence over an individual’s development when it comes to the way in which the
native will conduct his or her domestic affairs as well as the way in which his or her relationships with
women in general and his or her mother in particular are likely to go. She shows the way in which
native’s public life is likely to go, the nature of his or her attitudes concerning everyday matters, eating
habits food-preferences he or she is likely to have, and the way in which his or her gastrointestinal tract is
likely to function through life. 17
Luna is the co-ruler of all astrological charts, whether they have the Signs of Her dignities on the
Ascendant or not. Her placement and aspects in a chart have at least as much influence on the outcome
or general delineation of that chart as any other factor in it does. As She passes through the Zodiac, Luna
takes on the character of those Planets having dignities in the Sign, Lunar Mansion, or Constellation She
occupies at any given time. For example, in Aries She is assertive, martial, and “masculine” in Her
general influence, like Mars, or primordial, Magickal, and a harbinger of radical changes and new things,
like Pluto, the mundane rulers of that Sign. In Taurus, Her influence is receptive, “feminine,” and
fecund, like Venus, and powerful in her ability to nurture life and guide its growth, like Hera, the
mundane rulers of Taurus. Thus the character of Her influence is transformed by the nature of the Signs,
Constellations, or Lunar Mansions which She occupies. In horary charts, since She is the fastest-moving
of all cosmic bodies, always in direct motion, Her influence is stronger than that of any other celestial
body, even the Sun. The sequence of aspects which She makes as She moves through the Sign of Her
placement at the time for which such a chart is erected, together with the nature of that Sign and its
rulers, shows what action in general to expect in connection with the outcome of the question. If She is
voice-of-course in a Sign, so that She will make no aspects of any kind, not even a parallel, to another
celestial body or to the Part of Fortune before She leaves that Sign, it is likely that nothing will happen
concerning the matter of the question.18
In a natal chart, Luna’s influence is only less great than Sol’s. It is Her influence upon the light,
heat, and magnetism of Sol that determines the final form in which they reach us here on Earth. And in a
horary or event chart, Her influence is probably the most important factor in the chart, for without Her,
there can be no action, and all decisions and actions with which the question of the chart might be
involved can only come to naught.
This may be illustrated by means of one or two useful analogies. The first is based upon the idea of
the stage, or the cinema: if the Ascendant of the chart – the Sign and degree of the point due East at the
time and place for which the chart is erected – and its Planetary ruler represent the stage upon which a
life is to be played out, or the consequences of an event or outcome of a question unfold, then Sol is the
light used to illuminate that stage, and Luna represents the lenses and colored gels through which that
light passes on its way to the stage.
Another useful analogy involves the nurturance and care of infant children. Here, the Ascendant and
its ruler represent the supportive environment of the mother’s arms and lap; Sol represents the milk of
her breasts, from which the infant nurses; and Luna represents the breasts themselves, as well as the
mother’s maternal instincts and her love for her infant, as well as the infant’s hunger and need to nurse.
In any event, clearly there can be no understanding of or skill in astrology, Magick, or any of the
other esoteric disciplines without an understanding of Luna and Her influence upon us and all the rest of
Earth’s life. Knowledge of the things and processes with which She is associated and which She governs
is the Royal Key to the secrets of these, the Great Arts and Sciences. What, then, is Her influence upon
us?
In a sense, Luna is a reflection, on the level of the Personal and Everyday, of the things ruled by the
Outer Planets, the Collective, Eternal, and Infinite. For example, in Her higher octave, Pluto, Luna is
expressed as Shakti, that avatar of the Great Goddess that manifests as sexual ecstasy (cf. New Magicks
Vol. I, Part 2, Chapter 3, Section 1.2.1.2.1). Luna serves to particularize and individualize these
Plutonic energies in a way that makes successful Magick possible. She reifies and makes manifest the
processes set in motion by the Plutonic power of Magick and Alchemy.
She is also a lower octave of Saturn. Luna represents the activity of the individual, as Saturn does
that of a generation, for in the secondary progressed horoscope, Luna advances through the Zodiac at
about the same speed that transiting Saturn does through the sky, an average of about 12.5ø per day.
Traditionally, memory as a function is ruled by the Moon. But Neptune rules the Unconscious and
Pluto rules both psychoanalysis and the Magickal or Deep Mind. So the domains of all three of these
bodies have their intersection in memory. They include the Signs Cancer, ruled by Luna, which has to do
with ancestral or group-memories, ancestral titles and inheritance, land passed down by ancestors, and so
on; Scorpio, ruled by Pluto, associated with biological memory, all the way back to the beginning of life,
as accessed e.g. by DNA; and Pisces, ruled by Neptune, associated with memories from past lives as
well as the Unconscious in this life, both individual and collective, the personal history of the individual
soul as well as the collective history of the matrix of that soul throughout its existence from lifetime to
lifetime. In the individual chart, the Houses of Memory are the Fourth, Eighth, and Twelfth, i.e., the
Houses of Endings. (These Planets, Signs, and Houses thus are also the rulers of the Past, just as the
Houses of Life, Fire Signs, and their Planetary Lords are those of the Future, the Houses of Relationships,
Air Signs, and their Lords are those of the Present, and the Houses of Manifestation, Earth Signs, and
their Lords are those of the physical realm and physical reality here-and-now. Thus, e.g., Saturn is
exalted in Scorpio, as is Uranus, for Saturn rules Time, the Past, and Age, and Uranus rules Technology
and Science, and both of these have to do with the origins of life on Earth.)
But even more than Her function as a sort of lower-power Avatar of the Outer Planets, Luna is also
Sol’s Twin Sister, a celestial mirror held up to the Light of Spirit He represents. Luna in Leo, Sol’s
traditional dignity, represents Magickal and spiritual creativity, as Luna in Cancer does emotional,
physical (child-bearing) and aesthetic creativity. In Leo, Luna is Shakti, the active, female partner in
Tantric ritual (see Volume I, Part II, Chapter 3, on the nocturnal mundane rulerships of Sol and Luna and
the diurnal esoteric rulership of Pluto).

Luna in the Signs:

Aries: The infant, newly come into the world:

“I have no name:
“I am but two days old.”
What shall I call thee?
“I happy am,
“Joy is my name.”
Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy but two days old,
Sweet joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while,
Sweet joy befall thee!19

Taurus: Ceres, the fecund Earth, Goddess of the Corn, loving mother

Gemini: Hanuman, the Wise Little Monkey of Far Eastern lore; Djehuti, Lord of the Moon, the
beautiful, sacred, albino cynocephalic baboon of Egypt (Whose Star, incidentally, is Sothis,
today called Sirius, found in roughly the same reason of the sky in which the Constellation
Gemini is located); the ever-curious young student who hates school but loves to pry into every
secret of nature and man with unswerving diligence, whom Shakespeare portrayed as

. . . the whining school-boy, with his satchel, And shining morning face,
creeping like snail Unwillingly to school.20

Cancer: Selene, the Matron – physical creativity (conception, gestation, birth), emotional creativity
(drama), aesthetic creativity; Mary, Mother of Jesus, the Loving Madonna; Great Isis, the
Mother Goddess of much of the Old World prior to Christianity

Leo: Shakti – Magickal and spiritual creativity.

Virgo: Koré, the fertile young Maiden, holding up Her spear of wheat that is capped by the Benefic
Star Spica, one of the most fortunate omens in the Heavens; the Nurse, Whose Earthly avatars
include Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton

Libra: the intricate dynamic homeostatic balances that are the hallmark of life, or the almost
inconceivably rapid cyclings within molecules or even the nuclei of atoms, by which the
stability of physical form and substance is maintained

Scorpio: Diana Far-Shot or Hekate, the Hag or Crone, 21 the power of the post-menopausal woman,
the super-grandmother, guardian of the community; Hades, Pluto, Persephone, the Grim Reaper,
Anubis, Baron Samedhi – all the Gods and Goddesses of Death and Endings; Baba Yaga in Her
little hut that hops about on one great chicken-leg in the middle of Russia’s Taiga forest; the
Devil’s Grandmother, to Whom mortals appeal for rescue from the shenanigans of Her less-than-
honorable son; Kali and Mikhail, Defenders of the Throne of God, Protectors of the People,
Defenders of Widows, Orphans, Victims of Injustice, Demon-Slayers

Sagittarius: Diana, Guardian of Women in Labor and of Midwives; Johnny Appleseed, a real man
who trekked across America to teach Swedenborgian ideals to the people and who, in the
process, gave America the priceless treasure of countless thriving apple-trees and orchards;
 Daniel Boone and all other explorers and wanderers, and their Patrons Hermes, Raphael, and
Anubis, Gods of Travelers

Capricorn: Jesus of Nazareth as the kind and loving neighbor and friend

Aquarius: the Spirit of America, the Changeable Land, where whim and fad and revolutionary zeal
together determine the course of history and the will of the American people; the Magus and the
High Priestess, using Luna’s power to bring about change in conformity with Will; Shiva, Who
saith: “I am become as Death, Shatterer of Worlds”

Pisces: Artemis, the Maiden – the young virgin, ripening into womanhood; Psyche, wife of Eros,
determined to be reunited with Her beloved Lord in spite of all the tortures which Aphrodite,
Her mother-in-law, visits upon Her as conditions of Psyche’s return to Her divine husband

These are just a few of the astrological correlates of Luna, enough to give an idea of Her influence in
each of the Signs. Others of Luna’s more important Magickal and Qaballistic correspondences will be
covered in more detail in the following section.
 Chapter 3: Correspondences
Gods:

Luna rules the womb – and the tomb. Thus while one face of Luna is the gentle, nurturing Madonna
Mary, Mother of Christ, or Kwan Yin, Queen of Heaven and Mother of Mercy, Her other face is Kali,
Avenger of God and Defender of the Throne of Heaven, Black Isis, Venus Victrix; Hekate, the Crone,
the Dark Goddesses. In particular, some of Her avatars in various world cultures are as follows:

Egyptian: Djehuti, Isis, Shu, Chomse. The Egyptian Crone aspect of Luna is “Black Isis,” bearing
much the same relation to Isis that Kali does to Durga (see below).
Greek: These include Artemis; Selene; Koré’, Persephone, and Hekate; and Hermes, the Thrice-
Great, Who is not only the Greek equivalent of Djehuti, Egypt’s Lord of the Moon, but is also
often associated with Hekate in doings involved with black Magick and sorcery. Anciently, the
trio including Koré, Persephone and Hekate respectively represented the Maiden,
Nymph/Matron and Crone aspects of Woman, which are in turn associated respectively with the
New, Full and Waning or Dark Moon. Artemis also represents the Maiden, and is as well the
Protectress of Women in Childbirth, while Selene represents the Matron, Woman in the prime of
her life. Astrologically speaking, Artemis, Koré and other representations of the Maiden are
associated with the Moon in Cancer; Selene and other Goddesses representing the Matron, with
Luna in Taurus; and Hekate, Persephone and other aspects of the Crone, with Luna in Pieces.
Roman: The Roman aspects of Godhood, at least during Rome’s Imperial Period (before
Christianity became the official religion of the Empire), were more or less makeovers of the
Greek Gods and Goddesses. Thus Diana Many-Breasted, originally a powerful Goddess of
fertility and Magick, eventually became a clone of Artemis; likewise, Luna finally came to be
another name for Selene, the Matron. For the Crone aspect of female divinity, the Romans
simply appropriate Hekate whole-cloth, Greek name and all.
Szekeli (Romany Gypsy): The Romany Gypsies are descended from that segment of India’s original
Draviddian population that left rather than be conquered or assimilated by the invading Aryan
peoples. Their Great Mother Goddess was She Who is now also worshipped by Hindus today in
the avatars Kali, Chandi, and Parvati, Who are all considered by Hindus to be aspects of Durga,
their Queen of Heaven. When the Gypsies reached Europe, eventually they had to adapt to and
accommodate the ways of other peoples in the area, who ultimately included Christians. They
therefore became nominal Christians, but much as the Egyptians did, kept the Goddess in the
form of Mary, Mother of Christ. Statues of the “Black Madonna” still found all over Europe
may be effigies created by Gypsies in honor of Kali-as-Mary – the same Great Goddess, but with
a cultural expression originating among ancient natives of the Indian sub-continent.
Hindu: Durga, Queen of Heaven, India’s Great Mother Goddess; Kali, Goddess of the Eclipse and
Battle-Aspect of Durga; Parvati and Chandi, other Battle-Aspects of Durga, bearing much the
same relationship to Her that the Archangel Michael does to Mary, Mother of Christ in Christian
hagiology; Shiva, Lord of Destruction (Who is the Full Moon or the Power of the Sun that Kali
eclipses).
Chinese: Kwan Yin. This Goddess of all-encompassing compassion and love was originally a
Buddhist God imported from India Who somehow changed sex in the process of being
assimilated into Chinese Buddhism.
Japanese:
The French Enlightenment: Liberté
Sumerian/Babylonian: Astarte.
Christianity: Mary the Mother of Christ; God the Holy Spirit, as impregnator of Mary – a male
ro1e, but definitely a Lunar function and one traditionally associated with Yesod, the Sephirah of
boundless fertility; the Archangel Michael, a Battle-Aspect of Mary, Defender of the People and
the Throne of God, Captain of the Hosts of Heaven; the Archangel Gabriel; Sofia.
Judaism: Michael, Gabriel, Tabitha (consort of JHVH)
Islam:
Norse: Hel (as Crone); Heimdall, Who gives the alarm as Loki and the other enemies of the Gods
approach Aesgard, and battles on the side of the Gods during Ragnarok (He is thus an analog of
Gabriel, Angel of the Last Trump, Who is associated with Luna)
Africa:
 Southeast Asia:
Celtic:
Russian:
Hungarian:
Polynesian:
Native Australian:
Central America: Our Lady of Guadalupe
Voudon: Yemanja; Oya.
American Indian:
American folklore: Slewfoot Sue, Pecos Bill’s girlfriend
Science-fiction:
SubGenius: Eris, Goddess of Chaos and Discord (see entry under “Discordianism,” this section);
Connie, Primary Wife of “Bob”; Nunu, an incredibly ancient Sex-Goddess Who gave birth to
all Creation (and bitches a lot about the way most of it turned out).
Discordianism: Eris, Goddess of Chaos and Discord, chief deity of the Chaos Pantheon; Petunia
Pig; Tweety Bird
H. P. Lovecraft Mythos Cycle: Shub-Niggurath, “Goat With a Thousand Young”; Cthulhu
LaVeyan Satanism: Lilith.
The Land of Oz:
Stephen King: Female characters in general; It (spider-villainess in his novel It)

God-Name in Hebrew:

ShDI AL ChI (Shaddai El Chai, Immortal God)

World Religions:

All Goddess cults, Wicca, cult of Diana, SubGenius Cult of Connie (under the aegis of Nuit)

Archangel:

Gabriel

Angelic Choir:

Kerubim

Angel:

Gabriel

Angels given by Barrett, et al.:

Olympic Planetary Spirit:

Phul

Intelligence:

Malkah be Tarshisim ve-ad Ruachoth Schechalim

Spirit:

Spirits given by Bardon, Barrett, et al.:

Name of Planet in Hebrew:

LBNH (Levanah)

Commandment from Exodus:

Don’t lie about your neighbor (above all in a court of law).

Exodus 20:16

Ten Plagues of Egypt:

Plague of Frogs (Exodus 8:1-7)

Verses from Creation Story in Genesis:

And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it
separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the firmament and separated the
waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above it. And it
was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening, and there was
morning, a second day.

Genesis 1:6-8

Cantos from the Inferno of Dante Alighieri:

Canto III: The Vestibule of Hell

Cantos from the Purgatorio of Dante Alighieri:

Cantos I-III: Purification and the Base of the Cliff

Cantos from the Paradiso of Dante Alighieri:

Cantos II-IV: The Moon

Orders of Qlippoth:

GMLIAL (Gamaliel, “The Obscene Ass”)

Qlipphotic Spirit (from Kenneth Grant):

Gargophias, a Lunar Qlippoth associated with Key 13 and the third Tunnel of Set. Her named should
be vibrated or “howled” in regular repetitions in the key of G sharp. 22 Her sigil is painted in silver on a
black circle. Her number is 393.

Article of Bill of Rights:

AMENDMENT IX

Rule of construction of constitution

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to

deny or disparage others retained by the people.
General astrological classification:

Fruitful, benefic (when favorably aspected), cold, nocturnal, moist, magnetic, feminine

General Qaballistic classification:

Luna’s Sephirah is Yod, located at the intersection of the Second Plane and the Middle Pillar of the
Tree of Life. Her Path is Gimel, connecting Kether with Tiphareth.

General attributions of the Tarot:

Luna’s cards include the four Nines and Trump II, The High Priestess.

Title of Tarot Trump:

The Priestess of the Silver Star

Correct design of Tarot Trump (Golden Dawn):

A crowned priestess sits before the Veil of Isis, between the Pillar of Seth (Boaz and Iachin)

Titles and Attributes of Court Cards:

Titles & Attributes of Numbered Cards of the Tarot:

Nine of Wands: Strength

Nine of Cups: Happiness
Nine of Swords: Cruelty
Nine of Disks, Coins, or Pantacles: Gain

Alchemical and Pythagorean Associations:

Attributions from the I Ching and Taoist Cosmology:

Attributions from Ninpo (Way of the Ninja, Way of Wisdom) and Shinto (Way of the Kami or
Gods):

Other Magickal Correspondences, according to Barrett, et. al.:

Day of the Week ruled by Luna:

Geocentric: Second day of the week (Monday)

Heliocentric: First day of the week

Hours of the Day ruled by Luna:

Geocentric: Traditionally, the first, eighth, and fifteenth sixty-minute period after dawn and the
third, tenth, and seventeenth after sunset on the second day of the week; in general, on any day,
any hour preceding one ruled by Saturn and following one ruled by Mercury. Also, the third,
tenth, and seventeenth sixty-minute period after sunset on Saturday (the seventh day of the
week), and on any night, any hour preceding one ruled by Hera/Durga (second hypothetical
Planet beyond Pluto; see Part 12 of Volume 2, Book 2 of this work) and following one ruled by
Saturn.
 Heliocentric: The first, eighth, and fifteenth sixty-minute period after dawn and the third, tenth, and
seventeenth after sunset on the first day of the week; and, on any day, any hour preceding one
ruled by Venus and following one ruled by Mars.

Grade of the Temple:

2° = 9Theoricus

Colors:

In Liber 777, the following associations are given respectively under the King, Queen, Emperor and
Empress Scales of color: For Key 9, Yesod, the Realm or Orbit of Luna, Her colors are indigo; violet;
very dark purple; and citrine, flecked azure. For Key 13, Gimel, representing Luna Herself, they are
blue; silver; cold pale blue; and silver, rayed sky-blue.
De Vore gives white, pearl and opal; light, pale blues; and iridescent and silvery hues.23 Oken adds
silvery gray, pale greens, and opalescent hues.24 Davis adds “light spotted cream color.” 25
Luna’s colors also include red as well as silver, purple, indigo, etc. The color of the dead and the
things of the dead in Egypt was red, because the Egyptians embalmed the bodies of their dead by
painting them with red ochre, as a preservative, along with packing them with spices and myrrh and other
techniques. Djehuti, Who was the Psychopompos and Judge of the Dead, was also Lord of the Moon.
So red was both His color and that of the Moon.

Patterns:

Shiela-na-Gig (Celtic luck/fertility figure); Crescent Moon figures

Forms, shapes, lineal figures, geomantic figures, figures related to pure number, and numerological
associations:

Liber 777 gives the Creek Cross, the Plane and the “Table of Shewbread” (Col. XLVIII, Key 13);
and the Enneagram (nine-pointed star) and the Geomantic Figure for Luna (Col. XLIX, Keys 9 and 13).
De Vore gives irregular curves and crooked lines.26 Crescent figures, shapes like cups or chalices, and all
concave polygons and sets are Lunar, as are Triangles (3-sided figures) and 13-pointed stars.
Numerologically speaking, the numbers 3, 9 and 13 are all associated with Her. In addition, the
Mystic Numbers of the Sephiroth associated with Her are

1 + 2 + 3 = 6, 1 + 2 + . . . + 9 = 45, and 1 + 2 + . . . + 13 = 91.

The 9 x 9 Magick Square is associated with Her. It has the following form:

37 78 29 70 21 62 13 54 5
6 38 79 30 71 22 63 14 46
47 7 39 80 31 72 23 55 15
16 48 8 40 81 32 64 24 56
57 17 49 9 41 73 33 65 25
26 58 18 50 1 42 74 34 66
67 27 59 10 51 2 43 75 35
36 68 19 60 11 52 3 44 76
77 28 69 20 61 12 53 4 45

The Seal of Luna:

The Seal of the Intelligence of the Intelligence of Luna, ChAShMODAI:

Stones, gems, and metals:

Her archetypal, traditional metal is silver; others of Her metals are aluminum <the atomic or 7-
number of which is 13), lithium (the Z-number of which is 3), and selenium (because of its association
with the Lunar goddess Selene). Any ores of these or minerals incorporating those elements are also
ruled by Her. So is the viciously active gas fluorine and its compounds, since the Z-number of fluorine is
9, another Lunar number. She also rules all milky or nacreous stones; any white, round stone; any
round stone which is half-white and half-black; or any other stone or gem that by its form and color
suggests the Moon in any of Her phases.
Liber 777 gives quartz, moonstone, pearl and crystal as precious stones associated with Her. The
first and last of these are ruled by Her because of their appearance as well as their use in scrying, a Lunar
activity; the second, because of its appearance; and the third, because it is formed in the sea, in the
oyster, both ruled by Luna. Coral could also be considered to be a lunar stone, especially those varieties
that are light in color, because of its origin in the sea.
Kunz adds to the above the following stones: Selenite, sarcophagus, white Arabian, androdamas,
silver-colored and tin-colored pyrite, and calatia. 27

Herbs and Trees:

Luna rules plants that resemble her in shape and/or color, such as the banana, gourds, mango,
melons, pumpkins, and such white or yellow flowers as opium poppy, orris root, sweet flag and water-
lilies; plants with high water-content, often with soft, juicy leaves, such as cabbage, cucumber, lettuce,
and other leafy vegetables; and plants that live in or near the water, or under moist, wan conditions, such
as seaweed and watercress. Of trees, She rules all those with rich, abundant sap, such as the maple and
the olive. As Queen of Night, She rules all night-blooming plants, such as night-blooming jasmine. She
also rules anything common, as well as anything involved in cooking; therefore She rules all common or
familiar vegetables, and all herbs used in cooking and flavoring food.
The Moon is also the Triple Goddess, Maiden/Nymph/Crone (or Virgin/Matron/Warrior-Queen). As
Koré or Diana, the Maiden, She Protects women in childbirth. Its Selene or Hers, the Matron, She is
Queen of Fertility. And as Hekate, the Protector-Crone, She is the powerful, post-menopausal specialist
in Magick of all kinds, particularly Tantra; the Destroyer of Demons; the Well of Wisdom; and the
Mother of Last Things, the one who tenderly and lovingly bathes and clothes the bodies of the beloved
dead for their long, last sleep. Thus as Diana, the Maiden, She rules any plants used to keep pregnant
women and their unborn children healthy; and those that make childbirth easier and safer for both
mother and child. As Selene, the Nymph, She rules those plants that promote fertility; and those that
increase sexual attractiveness or desire, in order to promote sexual reproduction, such as damiana, garlic,
ginger, and the mandrake. And under Her aspect as the Crone, Hekate, She rules all plants growing in
graves or cemeteries; all herbal medicines and all poisonous plants (since these are dispensed by village
wise-women, who are ruled by Hekate; also, Hekate rules works of maleficent Magick, and anything that
kills, and thus all poisons). As the Medusa or Kali, the Crone aspects respectively of Pallas Athena and
Durga, She also rules the same plants that are used to enhance sexual attractiveness and drive that are
ruled by Hera, but for use in Tantra rather than for the purpose of physical reproduction. In particular, as
Hekate, She rules the willow, because willow-bark is used to reduce the pain of cramps during
menstruation, also ruled by Hekate. Thus She rules the white rose, both because it is white and thus
resembles Her in color, and because it simultaneously represents death (the Chinese color for death is
white) and sexuality (the rose represents sexuality).
Liber 777 adds to these the banyan (Key 9); and the almond, mugwort, hazel, moonwort and
ranunculus (Key 13). Oken adds rosemary, chickweed, and iris. 28 De Vore adds adder’s tongue, clary,
coral-wort, cuckoo flowers, dog tooth, duck’s meat, hyssop, herb mercury, mouse-ear, pearlwort, privet,
purslain, rattlegrass, spunks, wallflowers, white saxifrage, whitlow grass, wild wallflower, and
wintergreen. 29 According to Goldstein-Jacobson, Luna also rules common vegetables and mild herbs.30

Animals and Other Organisms:

 Luna rules all marine life, such as teleost fish (those with scales), turtles, sharks, and shellfish. All
glabrous (naked-skinned) mammals, and those which like to live or spend much of their time in the
water, are Hers, including porpoises, dugongs, manatees, otters, seals and sea-lions, pigs (the pig is also
sacred to many of the different personifications of the Goddess, such as Ceridwen of the Celts),
elephants, hippopotami, and human beings. She rules all domestic and common fowl, cattle and sheep.
She rules the dog, and in particular the bitch, a familiar of the Goddess Diana/Artemis. One of the
more terrible, and more ancient, of the Greek myths concerned these hunting-bitches, which were always
with Diana on the hunt. On one occasion, Acteon, son of Aristaeus, was discovered spying on Her and
Her nymphs as they were bathing naked in a river. To punish this desecration of Her Mysteries, She
changed Acteon into a stag, and set Her bitches upon him. The bitches tore the sacrilegious young man
to bits.
Owls, dung-beetles and all other animals that live their lives by night or in darkness are Hers. In
particular, such animals include the dung-beetle, which promotes the fertility of the soil through its
activities. Another animal especially beloved of Luna is the cat, a semi-nocturnal predator, because the
pupils of its eyes suggest the Moon’s ever-changing shape, waxing and waning.
She rules the Sphinx. The story of Oedipus’s journey to the Sphinx, and his answer to the Sphinx’s
Riddle, concerns the three ages of Man – childhood or youth; prime maturity, with its peak: of fertility;
and wise old age, followed by death. These are respectively ruled by Artemis, Selene and Hekate, the
Maiden, Nymph and Crone Aspects of the Triple Goddess.
She rules all things that swarm or breed in vast profusion, such as bees (especially because these are
completely ruled by their Queen Mother), cod, flies, ants, and termites. The last two, in particular, live
underground, in moist, dark, warm conditions, especially favorable to Lunar things and processes. Also,
termites are white in color, like the full Moon.
She also rules all fungi, especially the mushrooms, the color and shape of which are often very like
Hers. The Death-Angel mushroom combines many of Her characteristics. Interestingly, many species of
termites and ants, which are Lunar animals, cultivate underground fungal gardens.

Ecological domain or process:

All rivers, streams, rills, brooks, lakes, ponds, pools, seas, and oceans are ruled by Luna, and co-
ruled by Neptune, considered by some to be one of Luna’s higher octaves. Bacterial and viral
populations are ruled by Her and co-ruled by Neptune, as are the impacts these have on other forms of
life.

Legendary orders of being:

Lemures, ghosts

Foods, drugs, flavors, and perfumes:

Liber 777 gives for mineral drugs, lead; for vegetable drugs orchid root (Key 9), and juniper,
pennyroyal and all emmenagogues (abortificants) (Key 13); and for perfumes, jasmine, ginseng and all
odoriferous roots (Key 9), and menstrual blood, camphor, aloes, and all sweet, virginal odors (Key 13).
It also gives sugar and sweet things, since these are liked by children.
Goldstein-Jacobson gives under Luna’s governance such foods as water, milk, beer, and whatever is
brewed or stewed. 31 Since all foods are also drugs, because their ingestion always alters the biochemistry
of the body through their assimilation and the physical work that entails, these same foods would also be
Lunar drugs.
De Vore, quoting Sephariel, tells us that odorless and insipid flavors are Lunar.32
Lunar foods include, e.g., chocolate, loved by children; sea-foods and marine vegetables; and
nutritional supplements that nourish tissues ruled by Luna, such as calcium, vitamin E and vitamin A.
Lunar drugs include homeopathic tinctures of the metals, stones, gases, liquids, tissues of Lunar plants or
animals, or other substances ruled by Lune; all poisons; drugs that produce insanity or frenzy (in fact,
the word “estrous,” which we use to refer to the menses of women, literally means “frenzied”); drugs
that promote sleep and/or enhance dreams, such as the neurohormone melatonin the amino acid L-
tryptophan; hormones that affect the menstrual cycle, fertility, or pregnancy; aphrodisiacs; and tinctures
made from actual rocks from the physical Moon.
Clothing, Magickal Weapons and other objects, phenomena and processes:

According to Liber 777, Her Magickal Weapons are the Perfumes and Sandals (Key 9) and the Bow
and Arrow (Key 13); Her Magickal Powers are the Vision of the Machinery of the Universe (Key 9) and
The White Tincture, Clairvoyance and Divination by Dreams (Key 13); Her Virtue is Independence;
and Her Sin is Sloth (not so much physical idleness as anomie, one of the Seven Deadly Sins, spiritual
stagnation, a complete lack of desire for further spiritual attainment).
According to Goldstein-Jacobson, She rules chinaware and kitchenware; any objects of everyday
use; containers of all kinds; collections; articles of sentimental value, e.g., keepsake albums and family
photos; badges of servitude; plain and common clothing and materials; ordinary furniture; nursery
equipment; all furnishings for the kitchen, laundry and bathroom; and household linens.33
De Vore gives utensils in common use in the laundry or in the silver-smith’s trade; soft, smooth
substances; fluctuations of popularity and changing fortune; the ocean, and voyages by water; water
and liquids in general; removals, mystery and romance; crowds; subjects or objects of particular
interest; water-transport conditions; and Land and crops.34
Barbara Watters gives function, i.e., how well or badly anything works; the measure or progression
of time, particularly in horary charts; imagination; fertility; assimilation, particularly of nourishment;
anything with a reflective surface, such as a mirror, and the principle of reflection itself (thus She rules
the opacity of any surface to any form of energy, whether radiant or any other); anything that has a
regular ebb and flow, like the tides; servants; anything commonplace; embryos and embryonic stages of
development; and missing persons, animals or things.35
Because She rules all things that circulate and flow, She rules the flow of money in a society and the
flux of economic energies which it represents and measures. She therefore rules coined money and
monetary bills of all types, as well as checks and credit-cards as highly liquid credit media. In fact, the
term “liquid,” applied in accounting theory to all assets which are readily traded for others, especially
cash and readily negotiable instruments such as checks, is a reflection of Her influence over monetary
matters and the economic aspects of human ecology. Money and monetary matters are of course ruled by
Mercury as well, But whereas Mercury rules all transactions, both legitimate, such as mercantile (!)
transactions, and illegitimate, such as theft and fraud, which can be carried out rapidly, and the
instruments involved in these, Luna rules the general ebb and flow of economic energies through a
civilization, regardless of their velocity, and money and credit as a measure of that flux. You could say
that Mercury represents the digital and Lune the analog aspects of monetary transactions and what they
represent of human economies. (It is no accident that Mercury’s metal, the element mercury, is also
called quicksilver.)
Finally, Luna is one of the primary rulers of astrology end Magick. As previously discussed, to
attain competency in these requires a profound understanding of Her nature and influence.

Anatomy and physiology:

Liber 777 gives the lymphatic system. This system is a primary part of the body’s immune system;
hence Lune ruler; the body’s immunity to disease, particularly virulently infectious diseases, e.g.,
virulent tuberculosis, hantavirus, infection by flesh-eating bacteria (virulent strep infection), ebola, etc.,
and degenerative conditions such as cancer, which the T-cells of the immune system normally track
down and devour.
De Vore gives the tissues of the body, as opposed to the vital energies that inform them; the
gastrointestinal tract; the womb and its functions; the sympathetic (excitatory) portion of the autonomic
nervous system; the cerebellum, 36 located at the rear of the brain, above the brain-stem, which has to do
with learned physical skills such as manipulating machinery, etc.; and “the lower ganglia,” presumably
the reflex ganglia of the lower spine.37
Ungar and Huber add blood plasma, brain, eyes (i.e., left eye of male and right eye of female), lungs,
and spinal fluid.38
According to Oken, Luna rules the ovaries, uterus, breasts, stomach, tear-ducts, sympathetic nervous
system, and the lymphatics. She is also closely associated with impregnation, menstruation, the flow of
bodily secretions, and the general rhythm of the body.39
Because She rules change and variation of all things, She facilitates emotional excitement and
responsiveness. This is the reason for Her rulership of the sympathetic nervous system, which adjusts the
body to adapt itself to strong stimulation and gear up behaviorally to deal with it appropriately.
 She rules ingestion in all its aspects, including the taking-in of air and water. Thus She rules the
hypothalamus, which is involved in or regulates the appetites and the primordial biological drives. It is
for this reason also that She rules the stomach, and co-rules the lungs with Mercury.
Because She rules the tides and the ocean, She also rules the production of fluids in the body, and
their functions in physiology. She and therefore rules urination, lachrymation (the production of tears),
lactation (production of milk) and the nursing of infants; the production of sperm, which swarm in their
millions in every ejaculate; menstruation; the flow of bodily secretions; and the general rhythms of the
body.
Above all, the Moon rules women and their functions, life-stages and concerns. She is the Triple
Goddess; She rules menopause, death (as the Dark Goddess aspect of Luna), and rebirth, revitalization
and rejuvenation (the other side of the Dark Goddess, Who kills only to enhance life, and Who puts new
life into the world for every life She takes). This is reflected in many of Her anatomical and
physiological rulerships. Thus She rules the pituitary gland, which is involved in regulating the
menstrual cycle and pregnancy. She rules those portions of the brain as well which are involved in the
cessation of menstruation and menopause, and in the genetically-regulated production of certain
hormones which automatically, non-catastrophically terminate life at a time which apparently is also
genetically determined, assuming death has not come before in some other form. Thus She is represented
even in the very molecules of the body’s hormones the three aspects of the Triple Goddess: the Maiden,
the young, virginal girl, in the form of estrogen; the Nymph, or Matron, the woman of child-bearing
years, in the form of progesterone; and the Crone, in the form of those hormones responsible for the
cessation of menstruation in women, and onset of death in all organisms.40

Psychology:

According to De Vore, Luna rules “the higher emotional facilities such as faith, hope and charity,
veneration, peace-loving [sic].” She rules the instinctive portions of the psyche; acquisitiveness;
reactions to quotidian affairs, and to those pertaining to the home and the domestic life; moods that
fluctuate between the extremes of optimism and pessimism; concrete ideas; ingenuity in the service of
pragmatism; a mind lacking the ability to concentrate strongly, which fluctuates rapidly and is easily
influenced; sympathy (in the sense of psychic attunement rather than compassion or pity); respect for
the old and “regard” for the young; suavity; kindness; love for animals; a strongly protective nature,
with a desire to defend those who cannot defend themselves; a strong maternal impulse, not restricted to
females; modesty, timidity, economy, receptivity, imagination, impressionability, changeability; a love
of travel; personal charisma; psychic abilities; extra-sensory receptivity; a changeful, plastic,
wandering nature; romantic, visionary, frivolous, capricious (though you would think that this one would
go better with Saturn, ruler of Capricorn, the Sea-Goat 41), fanciful, unstable, procrastinating or lazy
natures.42

Diseases:

For Luna, Liber 777 gives impotence (Key 9) and menstrual disorders (Key 13).
Goldstein-Jacobson says that Luna can bring about extreme malfunctioning of a part or all of the
body. She rules congenital disorders, and systemic disorders resulting from prevailing epidemics of
common diseases that are not particularly serious.43
De Vore gives endocrine imbalances which cause inflamed glands and defective eyesight; functional
ailments and irregularities; allergies; mental instabilities; female disorders; emotional depression
which impairs normal functioning; dropsy and excess fluidity; and catarrhal infections of the mucosa. 44
Watters gives psychosomatic diseases or physiological malfunctioning in which the imagination or
unconscious plays a role, since the Moon rules the imagination and its powers. 45 She also rules
psychogenic ailments and diseases, however, those in which real, physical dysfunctions, such as peptic
ulcers, 46 which can be quite serious or even life-threatening, are brought about by the action of the
mundane or Magickal potencies of imagination.
She rules diseases and dysfunctions connected with infertility and menstrual disorders, because of
Her general rulership of women and those tissues, organs and functions peculiar to them. Because of Her
rulership of the immune functions, She rules all conditions resulting from a breakdown of immune
functions, such as AIDS; auto-immune dysfunctions, such as lupus; and allergic reactions of all kinds.
She rules all extremely infectious diseases, and plagues of all kinds, as well, not only because of Her
rulership of immune functions, but also because of Her esoteric rulership of Pisces and the Twelfth House
of the horoscope, which rules public health concerns, and therefore plagues. 47 Because She rules the
unconscious portions of the psyche, and all their flux and flow, She rules emotional morbidity and
dysfunctions of any kind; in particular, She rules sleep and dreams, and therefore any pathologies of
these, including nightmares, pavores nocturnes, and night-terrors or incubi/succubae as these are
experienced by adults. She rules fetal disorders and dysfunctions; complications of childbirth; and all
diseases and disorders peculiar to small children. She is associated with satyriasis and sexual addictions,
as pathologies of the sexual instincts. And in general, She is associated with any disorder of the tissues,
organs and organ-systems or the normal bodily functions, discussed above, which are ruled by Her.

Occupations and ecological niches:

Luna rules activities and professions dealing with children, such as wet-nurses, nursing and the
activities of governesses; therefore She rules pedagogy in all forms, and any pathologies therein,
including all kinds of child-abuse. Because of Her connection with nurturance and mothering in all their
aspects, She rules dieticians, nutritionists, chefs and cooks, and anyone else involved in nutrition, food-
production or the distribution of foods.
She rules all those who make their living from the sea or in connection with water or liquids, such as
sailors, fishermen, longshoremen, bath attendants, hydroponicists, and those who deal in liquids of any
kind, in any way.
She rules all studies of water, the things that dwell within it, and their niches in and relationship to
the living world, including marine biology and riparian and lucustrian ecology; and She rules students,
teachers and researchers in these fields. Similarly, She rules the staff of aquaria and marine amusement
parks. She rules rain, and therefore is associated with rain-makers and those who study or predict
meteorological and climatological patterns of rainfall.
She rules all those whose professions involve women, such as gynecologists, obstetricians, midwives,
designers of women’s clothes and hairstyles, those who work at women’s shelters or in jobs connected
with the women’s liberation movement, and the staff at women’s Legal aid centers.
To these, Davis adds coachmen, marines, millers, bar-maids, glass-blowers, grocers, janitors,
laundrymen, silversmiths, waiters, washerwomen, vocalists, instrument tuners, stock breeders, etchers,
unionists, welfare workers, naturopaths, mediums, valets, employment agents, relief commissioners,
department store personnel, and those who work at any form of “common employment,” that is, low-
status and/or unskilled labor, or jobs or professions in which one deals with the public.

Places, nations, and peoples:

She rules all residences, such as a hotel, motel, apartment house, houseboat, trailer, camping places,
stopover sites, parking places, lodges, restrooms and nests. In particular, She rules the home, the place
where one feels safest, best protected, and most secure and happy.
Because She rules all things connected with the water, She rules aquaria and other artificial water-
habitats; in general, She rules docking-places, such as seaports, beaches, docks, wharves, piers, dry-
docks, boat-houses, and all boats, ships and submarines.
Because She rules birth and death, She rules the womb and the grave, as well. Thus She rules
nurseries and obstetrical rooms, and mausoleums and tombs. (She shares the latter with Pluto, Who is
Her heliocentric higher octave.)
In horary charts, She signifies property most likely intended for residential purposes, or for the
raising of crops.
Luna rules the mother, wife, female children, or any woman under consideration. She rules all
common things and thus the common people, the great mass of people in any society or of the body
politic, and the transportation and distribution systems that serve them.
Especially under the aspect of the Egyptian Divinity Djehuti (Thoth), She rules the continent of
Africa, all African peoples, and all people of African descent, regardless of “race.” Djehuti is also the
God of all civilized arts, of healers and judges, and of the following professions: teaching as a
profession, pedagogy, medicine, healing and Law in all its aspects. As God of orphans, He rules
orphanages, social-workers and all social institutions and activities dedicated to rescue, protection and
nurturance of the abandoned, helpless ones. So these, too, may be considered to be ruled by the Moon.
Planetary Age of Man:

Luna rules the First Age, that of the very young organism. Among the invertebrates, She rules the
embryo within the egg and the larva. Among mammals, She rules the nursing infant and the period
during which the infant is intensely dependent upon its mother for nurturance, support and protection.
This is Shakespeare’s “mewling infant,” ages 0-4. Sephariel reckons this period as ruling the first seven
years of life. And if we assume that a human life is ideally 120 years long, and that each Planet rules a
decade of life, Luna rules the first decade, ages 0-10.

Matters of the horoscope:

Qaballistically speaking, Luna’s Realm, Yesod, Sephirah 9, is the province of fertility, reproduction
and sex as a fundamental biological drive, as well as the root of manifestations of Kundalini Energy, the
Power of Kali and Shiva, Who are Lunar Gods. Yesod means “Foundation”; the primordial drives
underlying sex, reproduction, and Kundalini manifestations are literally the foundation of all life and
being, without which nothing comes into existence. Thus She rules the receptive aspects of creativity,
including the womb, conception, pregnancy and gestation, as well as “higher” manifestations of the
creative, such as the fine arts, and Tantra or Sex-Magick. For these reasons Neptune, Who also rules the
fine arts, and corresponds to the Hindu God Shiva, and Pluto, the Planetary manifestation of Kali Who
corresponds to all the Dark, Destroying, Defending or Protective Goddesses, are considered to be higher
octaves of Luna. 48
Other matters ruled by Luna include health conditions such as allergies; prosthetic replacements for
Lunar-ruled body-parts, such as “falsies” and artificial breasts, for women who have had mastectomies;
infants and infancy; 49 beaches, rivers, especially the swifter-moving currents of these, and lakes and
oceans, particularly the shallower part of the last two; families, wives, mothers and the home; the
general functioning of anything; hotels, motels and other residences; pregnancy, gestation, and
lactation; the Querent, that is, the person asking a question for which a horary chart is erected or a Tarot
reading is made; the metal silver, moonstones, and other Lunar stones, and jewelry, ornaments or
housewares made from these; omens, and things that come in threes or nines; various forms of
dementia, especially those involving emotional instabilities and breakdowns; the physical Moon, in
astrological charts erected concerning questions about Lunar astronauts or matters otherwise related to
the Lunar globe; mirrors, and the principle of reflection; the principle of polarization; lenses; lasers
(these are also ruled by Pluto, one of Luna’s higher octaves).
In Her higher octave, Pluto, Luna is expressed as Shakti, that avatar of the Great Goddess that
manifests as sexual ecstasy (cf. Vol. I, Part 2, Chapter 3, Section 1.2.1.2.1
Luna in Leo represents Magickal and spiritual creativity, as Luna in Cancer does emotional, physical
(child-bearing) and aesthetic creativity. In Leo, Luna is Shakti, the active, female partner in Tantric
ritual (see Volume I, Part II, Chapter 3, on the nocturnal mundane rulerships of Sol and Luna and the
diurnal esoteric rulership of Pluto).
Luna represents the activity of the individual, as Saturn does that of a generation, for in the
secondary progressed horoscope, Luna advances through the Zodiac at about the same speed that
transiting Saturn does through the sky, an average of about 12.5ø per day.
Luna in the Signs:

Cancer: Selene, the Matron – physical creativity (conception, gestation, birth), emotional creativity
(drama), aesthetic creativity.
Leo: Shakti – Magickal and spiritual creativity.
Scorpio: Diana Far-Shot or Hekate, the Hag or Crone, the power of the post-menopausal woman, the
super-grandmother, guardian of the community
Pisces: Artemis, the Maiden – the young virgin, ripening into womanhood

Music:

The instrumental melody “Claire de Lune”; Debussy’s La Mer; Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata;
“Mr. Moonlight (Johnson),” sung by the Beatles

Poetry:
 Nursery-rhymes for very young children, especially those about the “Man in the Moon” and other
Lunar subjects; Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussycat”;

Books and other literary productions:

Cyrano de Bergerac’s and Baron Munchausen’s delightful tall tales of their voyages to the Moon;
Jules Verne’s From Earth to the Moon; H. G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon; Edgar Allen Poe’s
famous Moon-hoax; books written expressly for children and/or beloved by them (Lewis Carroll’s Alice
in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass are perfect examples of these); collections of
Frederic Brown’s science-fiction stories, including Honeymoon in Hell, And the Gods Laughed, etc.;
collections of the incredible short fiction of one of America’s greatest writers, Charles Beaumont, who
died so young, so tragically, of Alzheimer’s – these include, e.g., “Miss Gentillebelle,” a study in
madness and child-abuse; Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Rocket Ship Galileo and
The Man Who Sold the Moon.

Graphic art:

The paintings of Vincent van Gogh; the work of Hieronymus Bosch, especially his paintings of the
Last Judgment and Hell; the paintings and other graphic works of Salvador Dali.

Cinematographic art:

Destination Moon (written by Robert A. Heinlein)

Saints and exemplars:

Tom O’Bedlam; the Apollo astronauts; female heads of state (among the sadder exemplars of this
type was Mad Juana, Queen of Spain and wife of Philip the Fair of Spain; supposedly she “went mad”
upon her husband’s death, and finally had to be sequestered “for her own good,” which, oddly enough,
proved to be politically beneficial to the very people who’d had her put away); Don Quixote de la
Mancha; Giovanni Riccioli, the man who invented the system of nomenclature for naming the
mountains, maria, etc. of the Moon; Johann Schroeter, the father of selenography, who made the first
accurate maps of Lune, laid out the first Lunar coordinate system, etc.; the Berlin banker, Wilhelm Beer,
who made the first comprehensive Lunar map and atlas (1837-1838); King Midas of Lydia, generally
credited with being the inventor of coined money.

American emblems, sigils, symbols, myth, folklore, and urban legend:

The “evil” Proctor & Gamble logo consisting of the Moon & 13 Stars, which, legend has it, means
they worship Satan
De Ladies who runs wit’ de ‘gators (see this section in Volume 2, Part 2, Chapter 10 of this work, on
“Sewer-Pot an’ de Alligators of Ol’ New York” concerning de nature o’ dem ‘gators)
 Nota Bene:
In Her higher octave, Pluto, Luna is expressed as Shakti, that avatar of the Great Goddess that
manifests as sexual ecstasy (cf. Vol. I, Book 2, Part 3, Section A.2.a.2.a). Her colors include red as well
as silver, purple, indigo, etc. The color of the dead and the things of the dead in Egypt was red, because
the Egyptians embalmed the bodies of their dead by painting them with red ochre, as a preservative,
along with packing them with spices and myrrh and other techniques. Djehuti, Who was the
Psychopompos and Judge of the Dead, was also Lord of the Moon. So red was both His color and that of
the Moon.
Traditionally, memory as a function is ruled by the Moon. But Neptune rules the Unconscious and
Pluto rules both psychoanalysis and the Magickal or Deep Mind. So the domains ruled by all three are
those of memory. These domains include the Signs Cancer, ruled by Luna, ruling ancestral or group-
memories, ancestral titles and inheritance, land passed down by ancestors, and so on; Scorpio, ruled by
Pluto, ruling biological memory, all the way back to the beginning of life, as accessed e.g. by DNA; and
Pisces, ruled by Neptune, ruling memories from past lives as well as the Unconscious in this life, both
individual and collective. In the individual chart, the Houses of Memory are the Fourth, Eighth, and
Twelfth, i.e., the Houses of Endings. (These Planets, Signs, and Houses thus are also the rulers of the
Past, just as the Houses of Life, Fire Signs, and their Planetary Lords are those of the Future, the Houses
of Relationships, Air Signs, and their Lords are those of the Present, and the Houses of Manifestation,
Earth Signs, and their Lords are those of the physical realm and physical reality here-and-now. Thus,
e.g., Saturn is exalted in Scorpio, as is Uranus, for Saturn rules Time, the Past, and Age, and Uranus rules
Technology and Science, and both of these have to do with the origins of life on Earth.)
Luna in Leo represents Magickal and spiritual creativity, as Luna in Cancer does emotional, physical
(child-bearing) and aesthetic creativity. In Leo, Luna is Shakti, the active, female partner in Tantric
ritual (see Volume I, Part II, Chapter 3, on the nocturnal mundane rulerships of Sol and Luna and the
diurnal esoteric rulership of Pluto).
Luna represents the activity of the individual, as Saturn does that of a generation, for in the
secondary progressed horoscope, Luna advances through the Zodiac at about the same speed that
transiting Saturn does through the sky, an average of about 12.5ø per day.

Luna in the Signs:

Cancer: Selene, the Matron – physical creativity (conception, gestation, birth), emotional creativity
(drama), aesthetic creativity.
Leo: Shakti – Magickal and spiritual creativity.
Scorpio: Diana Far-Shot or Hekate, the Hag or Crone, the power of the post-menopausal woman, the
super-grandmother, guardian of the community
Pisces: Artemis, the Maiden – the young virgin, ripening into womanhood
 Notes
1
The magnitude of an astronomical body is its brightness, measured on an inverse logarithmic scale.
An apparent magnitude of 1 is exactly 100 times brighter than magnitude 6, each magnitude being 2.512
times brighter than the next. Magnitudes brighter than 0 are minus figures, e.g., Sirius’s magnitude is
-1.4, and Sol’s is -26.8. The absolute magnitude (M) of a body is the visual magnitude which it would
have at a standard distance of 10 parsecs (32.6 light-years). If m = apparent magnitude and r = distance
in parsecs, M = m + 5 - 5 log r. See glossary for more about magnitudes.
2
The angular radius of a heavenly body is one-half the magnitude of the arc it subtends in
degrees/minutes/seconds, radians, etc. On the average, Sol and Luna each subtend about half a degree,
i.e., have an angular diameter of half a degree and therefore an angular radius of a quarter of a degree, as
seen from Earth.
3
The amount of energy required to escape from a body into space varies as the square of its escape
velocity, since kinetic energy equals the mass of the moving body under consideration times the velocity
of that body.
4
A version of the Pelasgian origin story. See Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (New
York: Pelican Books, 1960), Chapter 2, pp. 30-31. Also, see Section 2 of this chapter for the
psychospiritual and astromythological implications of Luna’s close approach to the Earth and its
implications for life on Earth.

Patrick Moore and Carry Hunt, Atlas of the Solar System (New York: Rand McNally and Co.,
5

1983), pp. 143-209.

6
The pen-name of the occultist and Golden Dawn member Mrs. Viola M. Penry-Evans, nee Firth (c.
1890 - 1946 e.v.). Ms. Fortune was the founder of her own occult group, the Society of the Inner Light,
in 1922 e.v. She wrote several well-known non-fiction monographs on various occult subjects, also
produced a wealth of marvelous occult fiction in the form of several novels and a group of short stories
about her intriguing character Dr. Taverner, a real person who may have been one of her teachers in her
studies in occult Arts and Sciences. These works of fiction, which clearly constitute her best writing, are
also far better sources of real occult knowledge and wisdom than her rather pedestrian non-fiction works
on the same subjects. Ms. Fortune used fiction as a vehicle for presenting her synthesis of Magick and
psychology in terms relevant to everyday living and the problems that serious students of the occult will
inevitably meet. Her fiction includes a series of stories about the mysterious Dr. Taverner as well as five
novels, The Demon Lover, The Winged Bull, The Goat-Foot God, Moon-Magic, and The Sea Priestess. It
is from the last two of these novels that the lovely poem quoted above is taken; I have made a few small
additions to and modifications in it, but other than that, the work is entirely Ms. Fortune’s.
7
Adapted by this author from Dion Fortune’s Moon-Magic (New York: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1979)
and her The Sea-Priestess (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1978?), 1994.
8
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, op. cit., Volume 1, pp. 29-31.
9
Eukaryote: any organism, unicellular or multicellular, whose cells have membrane-bound nuclei
and organelles. As opposed to prokaryotes, also called bacteria and monera, unicellular organisms which
lack these.
10
There are a number of excellent sources for discussion on this theory and research behind it. These
include, e.g., Lynn Margulis’s Origin of the Eukaryotic Cell: Evidence and Research Implications for a
Theory of the Origin and Evolution of Microbial Plant and Animal Cells on the Precambrian Earth (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970), Mark and Diana McMenamin’s Hypersea: Life on Land (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1994), and many others. See Section 2.2.3 of Appendix 5 of Volume I
of this work, especially Section 2.2.3.3 (works on evolution and sociobiology), for a listing of works in
the biological sciences for more sources of discussion concerning this concept.
 11
This term is taken from the story of Noah and the Flood in the Old Testament book of Genesis.
Planetologically speaking, “Noachian” refers to eras dating back to the establishment of a planet’s first
definitely solid crust, the impacting of that crust by meteor and cometary bombardment from outer space,
and the first traces of life on that world, if any. For a highly enjoyable fictional exploration of this aspect
of planetary evolution, see Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars, (New
York: Bantam, respectively 1993, 1994, 1995), in which the probable nature of the Noachian era on
Mars is mentioned and described.
12
For more on Hans Horbiger, the World-Ice Theory and the Third Reich, the following may be
useful sources of information: Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Dawn of Magic (London:
Panther Press/Granada Publishing, Ltd., 1964; this book was also published in the United States under
the title The Morning of the Magicians); William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A
History of Nazi Germany (New York: Touchstone Books/Simon & Schuster, 1981, 1990; originally
published in London by Secker and Warburg, Ltd., 1964); and Gerald Suster, Hitler: The Occult
Messiah (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981).
13
Graves, op. Cit. Volume 1, Chapters 1-2.
14
Oken, op. cit., pp. 182-183.
15
Robert Hand, Horoscope Symbols (Gloucester, MA: Para Research, Inc., 1981), p. 39.
16
Ibid., p. 51.
17
See Frances Sakoian and Louis S. Acker, The Astrologer’s Handbook (New York: Perennial
Library/Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987), pp. 119-120.
18
According to the English astrologer William Lilly, there are exceptions to this rule. If Luna is in
mutual reception with another celestial body at the time for which the chart is erected, She is not
considered to be void-of-course; in such a case, the course of events comprising the outcome of the
question may be determined either in terms of Her re-placement in Her own or the other body’s Sign
through the mutual reception and the aspects She makes to that body or others as a result, and/or with
respect to applying aspects made by the ruler of the chart’s Ascendant to other bodies in the chart. Also,
if, though technically void-of-course and not in mutual reception with any other body in the chart, She is
in one of the Signs Taurus, Cancer, Sagittarius, or Pisces, “sometimes She will perform,” according to
Lilly. See his An Introduction to Astrology: With Numerous Emendations, Adapted to the Improved
State of the Science (Hollywood, CA: Newcastle Publishing Co., 1972; this book was originally
published by Lilly himself for the first time in 1647), Chapter XXX, for more on this subject (see
especially “Aphorisms and Considerations,” Nos. 5, 8, 9, 10, 23-25, and 27 in that chapter). Other
sources of information on the astrological influence of Luna, including that of void-of-course Moon (and
exceptions to the rule that this condition in a horary chart indicates that the question is “non-radical,” i.e.,
“no action forthcoming” or “nothing to worry about”), include, e.g., Anne Ungar and Lillian Huber, The
Horary Reference Book (San Diego: ACS Publications, 1984), especially pp. 4-5 and 7-8; Barbara H.
Watters, Horary Astrology and the Judgment of Events (Washington, DC: Valhalla Paperbacks, Ltd.,
1973), pp. 13-14, 42-43; Anthony Louis, Horary Astrology: The History and Practice of Astro-
Divination (St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1991), esp. pp. 74, 82, 83, 110, 139-142, 147, 157, 172-173, 206, 210,
and 221; Nicholas DeVore, Encyclopedia of Astrology (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), p.
429, entry under “Void of Course”; Geraldine Davis, (A Modern Scientific Textbook on) Horary
Astrology, with Authentic Charts and Predictions (Los Angeles: Tate Printing Co., 1942), esp. pp. 47,
49, 51-86, and 87-108; Ivy M. Goldstein-Jacobson, Simplified Horary Astrology (Alhambra, CA: Frank
Severy Publishing, 1960), esp. pp. 5, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 33, 44, 45, 48, 49, 52, 53, 56, 64, 68, 69, 83, 84,
88. 89. 90, 97, 132, 135, 148, 190, 195, 232, 238, 266, and 269; and Sylvia de Long, The Art of Horary
Astrology in Practice, with 101 Charts (Tempe, AZ: American Federation of Astrologers, 1979 ?), pp.
50-59.
19
William Blake (1757-1827), “Infant Joy,” from Songs of Innocence.
20
As You Like It, II, vii, 145-147.
 21
The terms “hag” and “crone,” meaning an aged though wise woman who is no longer fertile and
has lost her youthful attractiveness, often used pejoratively to mean “evil witch,” are often misleading,
The Third Person of the Lunar Trinity also often refers to the Warrior-Queen in battle-aspect, such as
Kali, a battle avatar of the Hindu Mother Goddess and military leader of the Gods, Durga. Medusa, the
fearsome monster of Greek mythology, may actually have been a battle-aspect of Pallas Athena, Her real
nature cloaked by the story that She was a monster defeated by Athena because the dominant Olympian
cult did not want the people reminded that Pallas Athena had once been a sovereign Goddess of another
people. Warrior-queens were well-known to the ancient Celts, but stories of them were suppressed
during the Roman empire’s occupation of Britain to keep the dominant Romans happy during that time.
It can also be argued that the Archangel Mikhail, general officer of the hosts of Heaven during the
Apocalypse described in the New Testament Book of Revelations, is the battle-aspect of Mary, the Queen
of Heaven in the Christian pantheon. For more on this, see, e.g., Demetra George with Douglas Bloch,
Asteroid Goddesses: The Mythology, Psychology and Astrology of the Reemerging Feminine (San Diego,
CA: ACS Publications, 1986; ISBN 0-935127-15-1), Chapter 6; and Volume III, Book 10, Part 4, “The
Hag: Visions of Female Power, its Ancient Loss, the Raging Hope of its Recovery” of this work.

Kenneth Grant says that “The liquid nature of this entity suggest that the evocation be accompanied
22

by some stringed instrument such as the vina, the zither or harp.” See Kenneth Grant, Nightside of Eden
(London: Skoob Publishing, 1994), p. 166.
23
Nicholas de Vore, Encyclopedia of Astrology (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), p. 280.
24
Alan Oken, As Above, So Below (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), p. 262.
25
Geraldine Davis, Horary Astrology (Los Angeles: Tate Printing Company, 1942), p. 37.
26
De Vore, op. cit., 280.

George Frederick Kunz, The Curious Lore of Precious Stones (New York: Bell Publishing Co.,
27

1989), pp. 350-351.

28
Oken, op. cit., p. 262.
29
De Vore, op. cit., p. 300.
30
Goldstein-Jacobson, op. cit., p. 44.
31
Ibid.
32
De Vore, op. cit., p. 281.
33
Goldstein-Jacobson, op. cit., p. 45.
34
De Vore, op. cit., pp. 286, 296, 299.

Barbara Watters, Horary Astrology and the Judgment of Events(Washington, DC:

35
Valhalla
Paperbacks, Ltd., 1973), pp. 42-43.

The Hebrew letter Qoph, Key 29, literally means “the back of the head,” and is associated with the
36

cerebellum, because of the location of that organ. Interestingly, the numerical value of Qoph is 100,
which is the literal translation of the name “Hekate,” the Lunar Crone. Qoph is also associated with Tarot
Trump XVIII, The Moon. This card’s astrological assignment is the Sign Pisces, the esoteric diurnal ruler
of which is Luna.
37
De Vore, op. cit., p. 279.
38
Anne Ungar and Lillian Huber, The Horary Reference Book (San Diego: ACS Publications, Inc.,
1984), pp. 167-171.
 39
Oken, op. cit., p. 262.
40
Astrologically, the timing of death is ruled by Luna, particularly the progressed Moon in the natal
chart and the aspects She makes to the Hyleg, the astrological “Giver of Life,” e.g., the Sun, Ascendant,
etc., in the natal chart. According to Gaucquelin et al., the organism’s response to astrological
phenomena seems to be genetically regulated, so it’s no surprise that Luna, traditionally believed to rule
the timing of death, actually does rule it on a biochemical level, via hormonal secretions of the pituitary
gland triggered by certain genes in response to Luna’s passage through the natal chart and the aspects She
makes to it.
These hormones are also produced when the body is mortally wounded, if heroic medical
intervention is not given before it is too late. For this reason, animals, including human beings, who are
so badly burned that the superficial nerve-endings in the upper integument have been burned away often
quietly slip away from life without feeling pain if no medical aid has been given in the meantime that
would keep the organism alive long enough for the burned nerve-endings to regenerate. For more
information on burn injuries and deaths resulting from them, see, e.g., Barbara Ravage, Burn Unit:
Saving Lives After the Flames (New York: Da Capo Press, 2004; ISBN0-306-81419-6), passim, and
especially Chapter 13, “Burned to Death.”

On the other hand, the functions of progressed Luna are very similar to those of transiting Saturn,
41

Who moves at about the same speed through the sky as the progressed Moon does through the natus.
42
De Vore, op. cit., pp. 290-291.
43
Goldstein-Jacobson, op. cit., p. 195.
44
De Vore, op. cit., pp. 286-287.
45
Watters, op. cit., p. 43.
46
This is especially true of gastrointestinal ulcers, since Luna rules the G.I. tract. In addition, Luna
rules the sympathetic or excitatory aspects of the autonomic nervous-system, which intimately interrelate
our emotions and our physiological functioning. The stomach and the rest of the G.I. tract are
exquisitely sensitive to signals from the sympathetic nervous-system, so that conditions of chronic anger,
fear, and frustration can produce non-stop production of hydrochloric acid (HCl) by the stomach, which
in turn can finally ulcerate the stomach, duodenum, and small intestine, making large holes in their inner
walls. If the condition continues long enough, the result can be cancer – another Luna-ruled and
-influenced condition.
47
These include macrobiotic plagues, such as plagues of locusts or rats (e.g., the “plague of frogs” of
Exodus 8: 1-7), and botanical ones, such as ergot (fungal rye-blight) or Dutch elm blight, as well. These
can be especially devastating, because animals such as locusts and rats and the various plant diseases
often attack food-crops, live or stored in granaries and warehouses, on a large scale, and cause
widespread starvation.
48
Though Neptune is not usually credited as one of Luna’s “official” higher octaves in the octave-
scheme of the Planets discussed in Part 2 of Volume 1 of this work, His influence is very similar to
Luna’s, except that it acts more on whole groups and generations than it does upon separate individuals,
exactly in the manner of a higher-octave manifestation of any body. In his major work on astrology,
Astrology: With a Study of Neptune and Uranus (New York: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1974; ISBN 87728-
247-1), Aleister Crowley refers to Neptune as “a higher octave of Luna” for exactly this reason. For
more on this subject, see ibid., especially Section II, “A Study of Neptune,” pp. 57-116.
49
De Vore, op. cit., pp. 43, 45.