by Marilyn Muir, LPMAFA
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy spoke to a joint session of Congress supporting his vision of space exploration. He said, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
We have been to the Moon and back multiple times since the first of many fly-bys which occurred on January 2, 1959. After several attempts, actual first impact was on January 30, 1964, after President Kennedy’s assassination. Multiple fly-bys, orbits and attempts at landing were made over many years. On July 16, 1969, less than ten years after that speech, Apollo 11 made history. “The Eagle has landed” and Astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the lunar surface.
Our Moon is the closer of the two lights in Earth’s sky, the Sun by day and the Moon by night. They appear to be similar in size due to an optical illusion caused by distance and perspective. Our Moon is about one quarter of our size. While it is common to believe the Moon directly orbits the Earth, the actual center is about 1000 miles inside Earth’s crust. It is not that the Moon orbits the Earth, it is that the Moon and the Earth orbit a common center of gravity, producing more of a symbiotic relationship.
The Moon affects both ocean and land – tides and many other natural cycles. When the Moon/Earth pair first formed, the Moon was much closer to the Earth, looming huge in the sky, and would have been overwhelming to whatever ancient creatures existed. Over millions or perhaps billions of years, the Moon’s orbit has enlarged to what we experience today. Over more vast spans of time, the Moon will continue to pull away from the earth, appearing smaller to us and having less and less effect on the Earth and its cycles. In 2012, that rate is 1.6 inches per year (see Space.com).
When we view the Sun from our Earth, it rises and sets rhythmically on a daily basis, at times obscured by atmospheric condition and at other times by eclipse (which was terrifying to ancient earthlings). The Moon also has periods of time when the Sun/Earth/Moon relationship allows the Earth to cast a shadow on the Moon and the available light darkens, again traumatic for ancient earthlings. Less frequently, the Moon obscures the Sun from the earth’s perspective. These are the Lunar and Solar Eclipses. Additionally, the Moon shifts its shape constantly, from the invisible stage at one point in its cycle to the complete circle of what we call a Full Moon, fluctuating rhythmically.
The ancients saw this pair of lights as the celestial parents, Dad (Sun) and Mom (Moon), god and goddess. Dad was steady, reliable, considered superior. Mom was fluctuating, changing, the wife to the supreme ruler. The ruler (Sun) was largely unknowable because it put out so much light it obscured everything else. The Moon’s light allowed the inverted bowl of the heavens to be seen clearly, and that is the way that astrology actually developed… out of the night (visible) sky. So the Sun was objective and dominant, but not really knowable, and the Moon was visible, subjective and fluctuating, but knowable. The Sun was the life-giver of light and heat. The Moon represented the cycles of life and the womb. Observation of the celestial parents and the rest of the night sky over the centuries eventually developed into a body of information called astrology.
For all that occurs in our lives, humans have a need to establish meaning. I am an astrologer as well as an enthusiastic supporter of space exploration, so I look for the meaning behind the scientific data I encounter. What does it all mean? Please do not tell me it means nothing. What a waste of the universe and the Creator! For the purposes of this article, I am going to dwell on the Moon so we can explore an unusual application of “meaning.” For astrologers, the Moon represents mom, home, hearth, family, fluctuating emotions, and feelings – all of which affect our material lives and bodies (Earth) in a myriad of ways. Sometimes those emotions are comfortable, sometimes not, observable yet changeable, viewable to some degree or at some times, but not all emotions are viewable and not all the time. If we mess with the Moon, what does it mean to those emotions?
As the lunar surface is lighted by the Sun which is our only source of light, more and more of the surface is visible (think “conscious”) until it reaches full light (fully visible), and then the light play starts to diminish as the Moon completes her orbit around the Earth. But there is an anomaly here…what we consider fully visible is only the half of the Moon that faces us. The other half of the Moon is facing the darkness of outer space when outside Earth’s orbit or the Sun when inside Earth’s orbit, but is not visible from our perspective.
We will take one keyword out of the previous paragraph to explore and that word is “emotion”. The cycle begins at the conjunction of the Sun and Moon, The Sun is blinding, the Moon not visible to us due to the glare of the Sun. Emotions are not visible but they still exist, they are just not viewable. As sunlight starts to unveil that darkness at the Crescent Moon, visibility of emotions commences, enlarging day by day until the full lunar circle is revealed. This full range of emotions occurs at Full Moon. After that, the circle of light diminishes, obscuring more and more of the emotions until full invisibility as the orbit completes itself. Or does it?
The lunar turn on its axis is locked in step with the lunar orbit. The same side of the Moon is always turned toward the Earth and the other side is always turned away. What we can see are repeating visible patterns. If the Moon represents the emotions, it represents all of them, those we can see or conscious emotions and those we can never see or unconscious emotions. We all know there is a range of emotions in human experience that are probably best kept hidden.
What do you suppose happened when we took it upon ourselves to develop new skills so we could photograph the Moon, fly around it, land on it, and explore it? We just got up close and personal with what reflects…the Moon has no light of its own so it is the emotional reflection of our ego drive…and identifies our emotions.
What do you suppose happened when we expanded our scientific skills and were able to photograph the dark side of the Moon, that which had never been visible to us, those emotions that might be best kept in the dark but now had been made visible? Did you notice a tremendous change in deeply felt emotional expression, particularly dark emotions in recent decades?
Our first Lunar Mission, a fly-by, occurred January 2, 1959, giving us a close up and personal view of the Moon. As mentioned, over the years our technology developed and we were able to crash land, land, and eventually walk on the Moon on July 16, 1969. “The Eagle has landed” was the acknowledgement and shortly thereafter, Astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the Moon and left his boot print to mark our visit. Talk about up close and personal! What is invisible is unconscious to us – affecting us, but subliminally. What becomes visible becomes conscious, and we must learn, absorb and grow from the emerging experience.
We have visited the Moon many times, physically and in orbit, and the photos are becoming numerous and more technically defined, just as our emotions are being explored. The study of human emotions and psychology has grown tremendously. We’re still learning about things we probably wanted to keep hidden. Too late!
On June 17, 2009, we sent a mission to impact our Moon in our search for lunar water. Early Friday morning, October 9, 2009, the double impact occurred; my grandson and I watched on television as history was being made. We watched as Moon dust was stirred up. As impacts go, it was fairly quiet, less than the viewing audience expected, but we did land a shell of a rocket where we aimed it and the mission craft itself was right behind it for a second impact. The scientists seemed satisfied that they hit their target and gotten their data. Expectations of the intended spectacular tend to fake us out. It is not the event, experience or person who disappoints us, it is our own expectations.
We know what happened. What does it mean? We took a slap at our Moon to stir up some matters and called it a search for water, which equates to emotion. We succeeded. The impact was not all that visible to the naked eye, but instrumentation should make it so, therefore it must be conscious in experience. The event blew up some moon dust – twice. We stirred the pot of emotions. What do you supposed we have just stirred up? Are we ready to handle more emotions than we already have? I do not see that we are doing all that well with what we have been stirring up for half a century. Was this new pot-stirring a good idea? Does not matter…it has now become a part of our conscious experience. Hidden emotions exposed, stirred up, moon dust on the fly.
Stay tuned. Continuing human experience will reveal which emotions got stirred up, made visible, and have become conscious in our lives. What has happened in stirring up the Moon dust is a mystery because we do not really know what it means at this point…a new lesson just popped up for us. Do not worry, the universe has plenty of time and opportunity to teach us.
What do you think about smacking a comet in the eye, which we recently did? How about orbiting, landing and exploring Mars, the mythic god of war, and his two henchmen (moons), Deimos and Phobos (also know as dread and fear). Both events were up close and personal as well. Sounds like universal lessons to me.
Published on EZine Oct 2009, republished with slight editing.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.