The Moon: the road between two towers

The road between the towers: moon, dog and wolf, what is in the water

Waite’s description rests on a few points. The distinction between this card and some conventional types is that the moon is increasing on what is called the side of mercy, to the right of the observer; it has sixteen chief and sixteen secondary rays; and the path between the towers is “the issue into the unknown”. He adds that the card represents the life of the imagination apart from the life of the spirit.

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The Moon as BaZiFlow drew it: towers and a path.

Looking at the Rider-Waite-Smith card, you can see XVIII at the top; a yellow full moon with a face in profile, rays of alternating length and many yellow drops below it; a grey tower on each side with hills beyond; a red-brown dog at the left and a pale yellow wolf at the right, each looking up and howling; a pale path between the two beasts leading up between the towers; and, in the water at the bottom, a dark red crustacean climbing toward the shore.

Eight words in three groups by subject: others, surroundings, inside

Waite’s divinatory meanings are: hidden enemies, danger, calumny, darkness, terror, deception, occult forces, error.

Hidden enemies, danger, calumny, darkness, terror, deception, occult forces, error.

You can read the eight words by first asking whose matter each is. Enemies, calumny and deception are done by others; danger, darkness and occult forces belong to the surroundings; terror and error land inside oneself. The grouping is added here for reading; Waite prints a single run of words.

Moonlight, dog and wolf, what climbs out: Waite reads them as something inside

In Part II Waite reads the whole picture as an inner landscape. The moonlight is intellectual light, a reflection, with the unknown mystery beyond it. It illuminates our animal nature, types of which are drawn below: the dog, the wolf and “that which comes up out of the deeps”, a nameless and hideous tendency lower than the savage beast. It strives to attain manifestation, symbolized by crawling from the abyss of water to the land, but as a rule it sinks back whence it came.

His last passage is the “message”: the face of the mind directs a calm gaze upon the unrest below, the dew of thought falls, and the words are “Peace, be still”; it may be that a calm will come upon the animal nature, while the abyss beneath ceases from giving up a form.

Peace, be still.

All of this is Waite’s inner reading, in which the picture becomes a landscape within a person. The practice below borrows only one line of it: the light is reflected, so separate what the light reaches from what it does not.

How to read it: before a night walk, write the light and what lies beyond it apart

Take the line “only reflected light to guide it” and lay a Friday night out against it. Four friends plan a walk around a lake at the edge of town to see the night view, and none of them has walked the road at night.

1. 1

   Write what the moonlight reaches

   Write only what can be checked: how long the whole walk is, which stretch has street lamps, when the last bus home leaves. This is the part the light can reach; list it item by item.

2. 2

   Write what it does not reach

   An unwalked stretch, a change in the night’s weather. Label these “unknown”, not “dangerous”; the two words carry different weight, and the wrong one turns something unknown into a known bad thing.

3. 3

   Give every thought an exit

   The dog and wolf stand at the place of exit. Write down the worries that come up one by one and give each a check or a fallback, then see how big each one still looks.

Reversed and neighboring cards: unsteady, inconstant, silent, and other cards that write about light

The reversed line reads quickly: instability, inconstancy, silence, plus lesser degrees of deception and error.

Instability, inconstancy, silence, lesser degrees of deception and error.