Eighteenth Key: the Moon
“The 29th Path is the Corporeal Intelligence, so called because it forms every body which is formed beneath the whole set of worlds and the increment of them.”
The 18th tarot card (the Moon) is assigned to the 29th path on the Tree of Life (which runs from Netzach (Victory) to Malkuth (The Kingdom)) and has been assigned the Hebrew Letter Qoph (purple).
Qoph is a simple letter usually meaning ‘back of the head’ but it can also relate to ‘ear’. The related consciousness is traditionally given as ‘Sleep’. Hermetic Qabalists frequently color this path ‘ultra violet’.
This path is quite feral and can be raw, brutal, and fraught with phantoms. It does relate to the stages of the Soul’s organization of the physical body, it’s vehicle of habitation, and thus to evolution. We see this referenced in the imagery of the card: first with the crayfish emerging from the waters of the subconscious, and secondly in the juxtaposition of the Wolf and the Dog on either side of, and guarding, the path of Ascension toward the Twin Towers.
The ‘sleep’ referred to is our normal waking consciousness, in the same sense that Jesus referred to muggles as ‘dead’ or ‘walking tombs’. By this the early Christians differentiated the Gnostic from the zombie. The path running from Malkuth Consciousness (‘the deceptive effect of the apparent power of Material Forces’, see card 17), or the proto-consciousness of ANW’s conscious matter; and the Venusian Consciousness (Jung’s Collective unconscious, or Hive Mind) is a two-way path of Alchemical distillation and precipitation; its esoteric title is ‘Ruler of Flux and Reflux’.
This path represents a conquest of the phantoms reflected from the physical world of causal determinism, sometimes referred to as the ‘creations of the created’. (See also Plato’s Cave). In this subliminal path, the Sadhaka will address the phantom world of the darkest recesses of the individual mind. Alongside this comes the Ancestral Karma and the Race Consciousness, all with phantoms of their own Egregori. Naturally, this can be a terrible and frightening Path with very damaging psycho-emotional trauma, especially for those unprepared to handle such dangers.
Magical tradition informs us that successful treading of this path affords the Magus Siddhis concerned with bewitching and the casting of illusions. Once the Rider has Mastered the Deep Recesses of the Dragon’s Lair, we are granted the capacities to employ the mechanics of subliminal consciousness, for ourselves and over others.