Caring for your debilitated moon

We learned in our last little chat that a debilitated moon generally implies issues with our perceptive faculties, perhaps even our senses themselves, and with unconscious processes. This means that, for whatever reason, our senses do not always relay a clear and accurate reflection of reality – we receive an image slightly askew, distorted by our own mental filter through which we see events.

So, fate has given us some work to do. How do we fix this?

How to train your moon (now in 3D)

 

Working with your nativity

We examine our nativity and look for planets that will help us. For better or worse, the planet dispositing the moon and those in strong mutual reception with our moon will affect our mind. Ideally, these planets are strongly dignified and thus able to help us, but should this not be the case, we will still need to engage these planets to reduce any negative impact they might have on us.

As an example, if the moon is disposited by the planet that signifies your mother, we know that the relationship with her will have a large impact on the clarity of our mind. As such, it is on our best interest to cultivate this relationship to make it beneficial for us. In the unfortunate event of irreconcilable differences, we will need to make our peace and move on if we want a peaceful and ordered mind.

If there is a mutual reception by sign or exaltation between our moon and the significator of our spirituality (that is, the planets love one another and will therefore aid each other), we know that our spiritual practice will help us gain tranquillity and clarity of mind. As such, it may be wise to seek refuge in a spiritual practice that will alleviate our suffering and mental distress so that we are prepared for when such events occur that cause us stress.

Passive magical methods

The primary magical technique of medieval astrological magic was to create a talisman during a time when the appropriate planet (or other celestial object) was strong to bring us that which we lack. In this case, we would create a talisman of the moon after electing a time when the moon is strong and wear it. Over time, the influence of the magically imbued talisman will have an overall strengthening effect (by a sort of spiritual osmosis) on the moon in our nativity and the conditions it signifies, i.e., if the moon is a significator of your wealth, wearing a moon talisman will increase your income as well as lessen the ill-effects on your mind of a debilitated moon in your nativity.

If this is not possible, wearing jewelry with a gemstone associated with the moon (natural pearl is best, moonstone is an acceptable alternative) will have a similar effect though at a much reduced level.

Active magical methods

This involves propitiation of the moon via contact with a deity, spirit or intelligence directly associated with the moon either through evocation or other means. This does not necessarily require a great degree of magical development because a basic prayer with offerings and a request for aid is an evocation in its own right. The downside is that it requires the good will of an intelligence who may not be disposed to being helpful to you, but it is possible to elect a time when communication will be easiest and most fruitful (cf. The Picatrix).

The Hermetic method

This is covered in the first two steps of the Czech magician Franz Bardon's Initiation into Hermetics. The most important of which are the following three methods:

Introspection

Here you spend 10-20 minutes twice a day being aware of your thoughts passing though your mind without getting involved in them. This self-awareness and the detachment from your automatic surface level thinking is an important step in gaining clarity and self-knowledge.

Mindfulness

The aim is to spend your day focused in the present as much as possible. This means that when you are ironing your shirt, you are actually ironing your shirt and not thinking about the terrible revenge you will inflict upon the person who cut you off in traffic earlier in the day. This awareness of and focus in the present moment, without the filter of the unconscious reactions and thoughts of your debilitated moon, enables you to act with clarity. Awareness of your thoughts in the moment also allows you time to challenge and reject them if you deem that they are not appropriate.

Soul Mirrors

Through introspection and self-observation, you list all of your undesirable and desirable character traits to form the Black and White Soul Mirrors respectively. What is desirable and undesirable is ultimately left up to you to decide, but generally if a certain character trait is not in line with your core values, or if it does not help you be the kind of person you want to be, it is deemed undesirable. It's the Hermetic equivalent of the confession of the grimoires that precedes evocation, except that you are not listing sins and you are committing to change not merely hoping for redemption or a second chance through divine intervention.

A great degree of honesty is required and some deep digging. It is not enough to copy and paste Bardon's list, primarily because they are not yours, but also because they are too general to be of use. For example, anger is not an appropriate trait because anger is sometimes the appropriate response. A better entry for your Black Soul Mirror might be something like “I feel anger every time my wife does that thing that annoys the hell out of me”.

Once you have identified a trait that you want to change, the next step is to identify the triggers and craft a response that is more in line with your deepest desire and your core values. If it is important for you to have a loving relationship with your wife and to increase the depth of your communicative bond, then an appropriate response might be to: i) remind yourself that she is not doing it to annoy you but because she cares, ii) reflect on the importance of your relationship, and iii) thank her for the gesture. Once the alternative response has become second nature and you feel the bond of love grow each time your wife repeats the gesture that used to annoy you, the trait has been changed.

Most soul mirror traits can be changed with the kind of basic behavioural change above, but Bardon does provide a few other techniques for changing deeply embedded behavioural traits. One is autosuggestion, or the repetition of phrase when you are on the verge of going to sleep and when you awaken. For example, our trait for the example above might be something like “I am thankful every time my wife does such and such a thing because it demonstrates her concern and love for me” (it will likely work better than “I will never get angry with my wife again”).

There are other techniques that Bardon relates in his book, and there is a further step in identifying the corresponding element by investigation of the root reason of the trait, but these are, strictly speaking, not necessary if we are simply looking to train our moon to be more helpful.