The Moon – Water or Air??

This article, which has been sitting on my one of my pen-drives for a few months, was a development based on a comment I made to an article called “Why is the Moon grade connected to the element of Air?” on Nick Farrell’s blog. I found nothing to disagree with in what Nick said on that blog, I was merely adding my own thoughts on the Moon and the GD association with Air. The comment got so long, that I kept it on file, with half a mind to make a full article out of it and I just recently stumbled on it again, so I have decided I might as well use it now as a blog article. I added some more points to it today. Here it is:

Luna, Ruler of the Waves.

In modern occult movements like Wicca, the Moon is associated with Water and is female (as the Sun is with Fire and is male). Perhaps this all started with Dion Fortune, who says in her Mystical Qabalah. Nick mentions Ms. Fortune's book Moon Magic, which influenced Gerald Gardner and Wicca, mentions the Moon only in reference to water. It is not just in Moon Magic we see this, but also in her greatest masterpiece: The Mystical Qabalah.

This attribution is interesting, as Dion Fortune was trained in the Golden Dawn system of Qabalah and she is generally speaking very true to that system, yet the Golden dawn attributes the Moon (and Yesod) to Air, not Water. So why, in The Mystical Qabalah, does she discuss the Sephirah of Yesod in terms of the Moon and Water, and not in terms of the Moon and Air?

One reason for Ms Fortune's interpretation of the Moon as Water (despite her GD training)  is that, according to the GD Qabalistic system, both Yesod and the Moon correspond to, and are ruled by, the Archangel Gabriel, who as Fortune points out is the Archangel of Water (not Air!)

Some thoughts on this I have had over the years -

One association of the Moon with Water seems to come down to the fact that it pulls the tides.

But in this case that means it rules over water (via the tides) rather than is made itself of water.

Thus it rules water but is not itself watery. This is comparable to how Aquarius while being the “Water-Bearer” is not itself a Water sign as such. It is of course an Air sign, and Air is “the bearer of water “- as we know from dewfall and the moisture in the air.

Perhaps also an association arose because it appears silvery, like the surface of a lake.

Another watery association is with the menstrual (“moon-strual”) cycles of the female – and hence of the “female” element of water, through the amniotic fluids of menstruation and birth. However, even here there is a striking contradiction to this easy association – many of the ancient lunar deities are MALE  (e.g. Thoth, Khonsu and the Babylonian god, Sin) !

The constantly changing Moon.

Another association with water would be the *changeability* of the Moon – sometimes its full and round, sometimes only a crescent, etc – like water it is fluid, constantly in flux. However, this would also apply to Air. And there we see how perhaps the moon can justifiably be said to represent either Air or Water – because both are FLUIDS. In mainstream science, both liquids and gases are described as Fluids – i.e. they flow from one shape to another. 

Water & Air are both fluids.

So, we could say that, generally speaking, 

the Moon is the symbol of 

all that is FLUID.

But getting back to the GD’s attribution of the Moon to Air...

 It seems the only logical attribution to make. First, the reason already stated (that all GD students know) that Air is the Reconciler between the 2 “extreme” elements of Fire and Water – Air had to be on the Middle Pillar. We can also see why the Moon should be on the Middle Pillar: the Sun should be central on the Tree(being the centre of the Solar system and the supreme symbol of the redeeming Divine Light) and the moon being the reflection of this Divine Light (and the Holder of that Light in the darkness) – it was appropriate to place the Moon directly beneath the Sun and directly above the Earth/Malkuth. Essentially the two main luminaries, the Sun and the Moon, should be on the Middle Pillar. And so the moon, like Air falls on the Middle Pillar and cannot therefore be attributed to Water, at least not directly.

Nick wrote that “the association of water to the moon is a fairly modern attribution.”

Indeed, if we look at how the ancients saw it - one other point of interest is to look at the ancient Egyptian and Greek Gods again –the great Teacher of the Hermetic Tradition, Thoth (Hermes) was always associated with the Moon in ancient Egypt (Mercury  with Thoth was a later association as far as I can discern). Thoth was the God of the Mind & Communication – both of which have always been associated with the Element of AIR, not Water ; so it’s natural to associate the Moon (through the lunar Deity, Thoth) with AIR. 

My conclusion? 

- The Moon corresponds to Fluidity and Changeability - hence it corresponds to both Air and Water, as these are the fluids, the changeable substances. The Golden Dawn chose to attribute Air to the Moon directly, because it had to do so to keep the idea of Air as the central Equilibrating Element on the Middle Pillar between the Spheres of Water and Fire, while it attributed Water to the Moon indirectly by having it correspond to the Archangel Gabriel.

Original blog article: Why is the Moon grade connected to the element of Air?