Face the Unknown, Embrace the Mystery
The Moon Card invites us to transform fear into fascination
As a child, I was terrified of outer space. I remember visiting an IMAX planetarium at age seven. I sat down in one of the plush leather chairs three times my size and gazed up at the screen. The lights went dim and the theater filled with yelps and giggles. As the narrator spoke of black holes, asteroids and infinity, I felt my body flush with panic. At school, I avoided books and conversations about space whenever possible. I could not conceive of infinity —the boundlessness frightened me. In my mind, safety seemed to reside in what could be measured and defined. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to understand my childhood fear of outer space as a fear of the unknown and its potential.
Therapy, spirituality, and the natural world have helped me shift from fear to fascination.
The Moon card is mysterious. Animals howl up an eclipsed moon, crayfish crawl up from the depths of the water. A dog and a wolf howl up at the night sky — the tamed and the wild. The illustration on the Moon card in the Smith- Rider Waite deck features a Lunar Eclipse. Eclipse energy is especially potent and transformative. I’ve found that the truth becomes illuminated during eclipses. Much like the crayfish that climbs up out of the dark water, we get a glimpse into the depths.
I fell in love in 2019, something I couldn’t have expected. My first love. Our love was a series of surprises. I’d met him in the library, after my computer crashed during a particularly stressful week. It was our senior year of college and we teetered between youth and adulthood. “What’s next?” we wondered, driving through the town of Ithaca on a warm night in May, one of our last as students. The Moon seemed to whisper, “Only time will tell.” After school ended, we returned home to New York City and soon after the pandemic hit. I remember the wash of fear and uncertainty we’d experienced being told we’d have to isolate from each other for an unforeseeable amount of time.
Two years later, we ended the relationship on an evening in late July. We sat in a field, moonlight strong overhead. Our faces were slick with tears and we spoke through sobs that sounded almost like howls.
When I made the decision to end things, I’d found myself at a crossroads. It seemed my path suddenly split into three. One path hung left, grassy, with a downwards slope, leading me towards a conventional life. Another lie to the right, this one a mystery: dark, steep, surrounded by marsh and brambles. In the center was the road I’d been traveling, all S-shaped and dizzying, winding back and forth in indecision. Foreboding as it was, I veered right, heeding a call from the beyond. I didn’t know it yet, but this path would lead me towards a transformed relationship with queerness, spirituality and creativity: parts of myself I would find only after losing the life I’d known.
When I gazed down that dark path at the start of my journey, though, there’d been nothing promised. I was relying solely on instinct and intuition. I had to trust in something I couldn’t see.
After the breakup, I traveled to Burlington, Vermont with my dear friend, Sabine. My heart was swollen and heavy. I was eager for reprieve. We drank craft beers and talked about our evolving sexualities. We swam in the lake and felt around for shells with our feet. I could still feel the pit in the bottom of my stomach, fear and uncertainty and I placed my hands there, massaging the worry.
In the evenings, we biked home from town back to our airbnb. The path was long, running through a forest. I was nervous to ride home in the dark. I hopped on my bicycle, ready to book it. I grew up in New York City, where the darkness is flavored with danger. Sabine led the way. She was relaxed, pedaling slowly, gazing at the silhouetted trees. I followed her lead. I let my shoulders drop and listened in for creatures and critters. The cool of evening sent a chill through me that felt invigorating. The moon was bright and beautiful, suspended in the inky sky. Aside from the path, our surroundings were cloaked in darkness. We had just enough light to keep going.
Recently, I’ve been working with the Roman and Hellenistic Goddess Diana, associated with the crossroads, wildlife and the moon. She is typically depicted with a bow and a quiver of arrows strung along her back, a hound at her side. She is fierce, both huntress and protector. Goddess of the crossroads, Diana aids us in moments of choice and transition.
In those moments of uncertainty, what we need is not a definitive answer but instead the courage to live the question.
In the Smith Rider-Waite deck, we see no human beings. This card asks us to rewild and to get in touch our animalistic nature. In Mary Oliver’s prolific poem Wild Geese she writes:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on
This poem is such a comfort to me. The first line asks us to abandon human-made notions of “good” and “bad,” which so often serve to reinforce social norms and shame us into conformity. Instead Oliver, reminds us that we need only connect to the natural world and our place in it. While some days we may be plagued with loneliness or despair, the natural world keeps its rhythm and continues on.
The Moon teaches us to live in cycles.
We will have periods where we are waxing towards fullness, buzzing with activity until we reach a peak experience. Like a full moon, that peak experience is meant to be followed by a period where activity wanes, creating spaciousness and even emptiness. The new moon is the fertile void, rich with potential. Counter to capitalist society I am trying to let myself wax and wane and move in cycles that feel natural and rhythmic.
Ultimately, this card encourages us to face and embrace our fear of the unknown. Face and embrace — these words both imply a level of intimacy. The unknown is just that, something that is yet to be known. How do we get to know anyone? By asking questions and remaining open for the answers.
Might we ask our most fearful parts gentle questions? Might we offer them understanding? Our fears are most terrifying when they are at our back, under the bed or looming overhead. In offering those fearful parts compassion and understanding, we transform worry into wisdom and fear into fascination. We open ourselves to the mystery.