"Eclipse"

Saturn may have finally left Pisces, but that doesn’t necessarily make the terrain of The Moon card in the tarot any clearer. Our card for June illuminates the fluidity between art and fear, magic and madness, the body and the language we try to impose upon its processes. Here we are in the realm of the howl—where the call’s not coming from within the house so much as echoing everywhere all at once. The Moon’s calling card includes questions like: What’s the difference between devotion and compulsion? Going with the flow and being overwhelmed by it? Justified wrath and a howling anger that perpetuates harm across time and space? Crowley calls this Piscean path treacherous, but there’s also something of Asclepius’ healing temple here—the ancient model of the hospital where dreams could heal alongside science, and dogs, and priestesses, and, in the words of Emily Dickinson, a certain slant of light.

We don’t have answers, necessarily, to the questions above, but we feel our way into them with the help of Pamela Colman Smith’s Arcana XVIII, allowing the light of an eclipsing Moon to catch some of the meanings of other cards, including the High Priestess, The Star, The Sun, and The Tower, in its path of totality along the way.

Texts mentioned:

Amanda Wagstaff’s textiles and quilts (Here’s an interview Cameron did with Amanda last year.)

Emily LaCour’s Full Circle exhibition featuring her “Eclipse” series (Here’s an introduction to LaCour’s art as it relates to eclipse cycles.)

Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth

Guy Dargert’s The Snake in the Clinic

Emily Dickinson’s “A Certain Slant of Light” (320)

Peter Kingsley’s Catafalque

Allen Ginsburg’s “Howl”

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