 |
|
 |
| |
The Moon:
Selene, shown here, was the original moon goddess, being on the job
long before pushy sorts like Artemis, Pasiphae and Bendis got into the
act. Like a lot of goddesses, she fell in love with a handsome
human, a king named Endymion. Of course, a lot of gods did the
same kind of thing, but most of the guys were the love-em-and-leave-em
types, which usually worked out better for everybody in the end.
The goddesses, other than Aphrodite, tended to be more faithful,
which is where the trouble started.
The ladies wanted to keep their lovers beside them forever, eternally
young and handsome. And that meant a lot of begging, pleading and
crying before Zeus, who was the only one who was supposed to grant
immortality. But in Zeus’s opinion, there were already too
many good-looking humans monopolizing the limited number of hot
goddesses without his helping them along by making the toy boys
immortal. This left the goddesses with an uphill battle.
Selene was one of the few who convinced Zeus to grant her wish.
She did so by agreeing to a condition: Endymion could live
forever—and remain handsome and youthful—as long as he did
so asleep. It might not seem like an ideal arrangement from most
people’s perspective, but Selene was happy to visit her lover
eternally in his dreams. Some versions of the story have Endymion
himself suggesting the compromise, perhaps preferring an unending
dream-like existence to a mortal life and a quick death.
The Moon card governs dreams, artistic endeavors, creativity and
romance. It indicates that a long-held dream can come
true—if the querent is willing to get a little ingenious in his
or her methods. Thanks to someone’s creative argument,
Endymion still sleeps, as handsome, dashing and oblivious as ever,
somewhere in Greece.
The Moon reversed:
Selene, goddess of the moon, and Endymion, her human lover, had a son famous for his beauty. That would
seem like a good thing, except that this is an ancient Greek
myth. And they liked them pretty and tormented and doomed, did
the ancient Greeks. So handsome in a storyline almost always
equals trouble, and nowhere was that more true than in the life of
Narcissus.
Narcissus flashed his blindingly white smile and bared his cute little
dimples to one too many nymphs, who he then left to waste away (as
nymphs had a habit of doing) from unrequited love. One of these
was Echo, who was a favorite of the goddess Artemis. She was so
crazy in love with the heartless Narcissus that, after he laughed in
her face, she stumbled off into the wilderness where now only her voice
remains. So, when a less wimpy nymph wished that Narcissus could know
what unrequited love felt like, Artemis was only too happy to help her
out.
Narcissus was lounging by the river one day when he saw the most
incredibly attractive face in the water just below him. The fact
that it was a male face might have had something to do with why all
those nymphs kept striking out, but we digress. Narcissus called
out to the young man, but was ignored. He tried to touch him, but every
time he did so, the youth disappeared in a ripple of water. Some
stories say that, eventually, Narcissus realized that he’d fallen
in love with his own reflection, while others keep him clueless to the
last. Either way, he couldn’t tear himself away from the
water’s edge even long enough to eat, and so eventually, like the
nymphs, he wasted away.
Like Narcissus, the moon reversed warns of chasing an impossible dream
without knowing when to call it quits. Sometimes giving up can be
a good thing, by freeing your attention to focus elsewhere. And
if the ancient Greek legends teach anything, it’s that
there’s always another fish in the sea.
Or nymph in the river.
Or something like that.
|
|
|
|
