Jew World Order

By J.E.Cirlot

The symbolism of the moon is wide in scope and very complex. The power of this satellite was noted by Cicero, when he observed that ‘Every month the moon completes the same trajectory executed by the sun in a year… It contributes in large measure to the maturation of shrubs and the growth of animals.’ This helps to explain the important role of the lunar goddess such as Ishtar, Hathor, Anaitis, Artemis. Man, from the earliest times, has been aware of the relationship between the moon and the tides, and of the more mysterious connection between the lunar cycle and the physiological cycle of woman.. Krappe believes—with Darwin—that this follows from the fact that animal life originated in the watery deeps and that this origin imparted a rhythm to the life which has lasted for millions of years. As he observes, the moon thus becomes the ‘Master of women’.

Another essential fact in the ‘psychology of the moon’ is the apparent changes in its surface that accompany its periodic phases. He postulates that these phases—especially in their negative sense of partial and gradual disappearance—may have been the source of inspiration for the Disappearance—may have been the source of inspiration for the Dismemberment myth (Zagreus, Pentheus, Orpheus, Actaeon, and Osiris for example). The same might be said of the myths and legends of the ‘spinners’. When pttriarchy superseded matriarchy, a feminine character came to be attributed to the moon and a masculine to the sun. The hieros gamos, generally understood as the marriage of heaven and earth, may also be taken as the union of the sun and the moon. It is generally conceded nowadays that the lunar rhythms were utilized before the solar rhythms as measures of time, and there is also a possible equation with the resurrection—spring follows upon winter, flowers appear after the frost, the sun rises again after the gloom of night, and the crescent moon grows out of the ‘new moon’.

Eliade points to the connexion between these cosmic events and the myth of the periodic creation and recreation of the universe. The regulating function of the moon can also be seen in the distribution of the waters and the rains, and hence it made an early appearance as the mediator between earth and heaven. The moon not only measures and determines terrestrial phases but also unifies them through its activity: it unifies, that is, the waters and rain, the fecundity of women and of animals, and the fertility of vegetation. But above all it is the being which does not keep its identity but suffers ‘painful’ modifications to its shape as a clear and entirely visible circle. These phases are analogous to the seasons of the year and to the ages in the span of man’s life, and are the reasons for the affinity of the moon with the biological order of things, since it is also subject to the laws of change, growth (from youth to maturity) and decline (from maturity to old age). This accounts for the mythic belief that the moon’s invisible phase corresponds to death in man, and, in consequence, the idea that the dead go to the moon (and return from it—according to those traditions which accept reincarnation). ‘Death’, observes Eliade, ‘is not therefore an extinction, but a temporal modification of the plan of life. For three nights the moon disappears from heaven, but on the fourth day it is reborn…

The idea of the journey to the moon after death is one which has been preserved in the more advanced cultures (in Greece, India and Iran). Pythagorean thought imparted a fresh impulse to astral theology: the “Islands of the Blessed” and all mythic geography came to be protected on to celestial planes—the sun, the moon, the Milky Way. It is not difficult to find, in these formulas, the traditional themes of the moon as the Land of the Dead or as the regenerating receptacle of souls. (But)… lunar space was no more than one stage in the ascension; but there were others: the sun, the Milky Way, the “supreme circle”. This is the reason why the moon presides over the formation of organisms, and also over their decomposition (as the color green). Its destiny consists of reabsorbing forms and of recreating them.

Only that which is beyond the moon, or above it, can transcend becoming. Hence, for Plutarch, the souls of the just are purified in the moon, whilst their bodies return to earth and their spirit to the sun.’ The lunar condition, then, is equivalent to the human condition. Our Lady is depicted above the moon, thereby denoting that eternity is above the mutable and transitory. Ren’e Guenon has confirmed that, in ‘the sphere of the moon’, forms are resolved, so that the superior states are served from the inferior; hence the dual role of the moon as Diana and Hecate—the celestial and the infernal. Diana or Jana is the feminine form of Janus.

Within the cosmic order, the moon is regarded as a duplication of the sun, but in diminished form, for, if the latter brings life to the entire planetary system, the moon influences only our own planet. Because of its passive character—in that it receives its light from the sun—it is equated with the symbolism of the number two and with the passive or feminine principle. It is also related to the Egg of the World, the matrix and the casket. The metal corresponding to the moon is silver. It is regarded as the guide to the occult side of Nature, as opposed to the sun which is responsible for the life of the manifest world and for fiery activity. In alchemy, the moon represents the volatile (or mutable) and feminine principle, and also multiplicity because of the fragmentary nature of its phases. These two ideas have sometimes been confused, giving rise to literal interpretations which fall into the trap of superstition. The Greenlanders, for example, believe that all celestial bodies were at one time human beings, but the moon in particular they accuse of inciting their women to orgies and for this reason they are not permitted to contemplate it for long.

In pre-Islamic Arabia, as in other Semitic cultures, the cult of the moon prevailed over sun-worship. Mohammed forbade the use of any metal in amulets except silver. Another significant aspect of the moon concerns its close association with the night (maternal, enveloping, unconscious and ambivalent because it is both protective and dangerous) and the pale quality of its light only half-illuminating objects. Because of this, the moon is associated with the imagination and the fancy as the intermediary realm between the self-denial of the spiritual life and the blazing sun of intuition. Schneider has drawn attention to a highly interesting morphological point with his observation that the progressive change in the shape of the moon—from disk-shape to a thin thread of light—seems to have given birth to a mystic theory of forms which has influenced, for example, the manner of constructing musical instruments. At the same time, Stuchen, Hommel and Dornseif have demonstrated the influence of the lunar shapes upon the characters of the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets, in addition to their profound effect upon the morphology of instruments.

Eliade quotes Hentze’s comment to the effect that all dualisms find in the moon’s phases, if not their historical cause, at least a mythic and a symbolic model. ‘The nether world—the world of darkness—is represented by a dying moon (horns=quarter moon; the sign of a double volute=two quarter moons facing in opposite directions; two quarters superimposed back to back= lunar change representing a decrepit, bony old man). The upper world—the world of life and of the nascent sun—is symbolized by a tiger (the monster of darkness and of the new moon) with the human being, represented by a child, emerging from its jaws’.

Animals regarded as lunar are those which alternate between appearance and disappearance, like the amphibians; examples are the snail which leaves its shell and returns to it; or the bear which vanishes in winter and reappears in spring, and so on. Lunar objects may be taken as those of a passive or reflecting character, like the mirror; or those which can alter their surface-area, like the fan. An interesting point to note is that both objects are feminine in character.

From the book: “A Dictionary of Symbols” 1962 by J.E. Cirlot, via Ron McVan