Doorways to the Black Moon

Lilith Consultations

Mine eyes gleam on thee, lit with an alien light.

My lips proclaim mysteries.

–George Sterling, Lilith

It is out of deep experience that language is reborn. This rebirth occurs through the generation of new images, for images are closer to our experience than words. Images are the midwives between experience and language. A mystical awakening will entail an awakening of the power of images to heal, to name, to excite, to teach.

-Matthew Fox

For tapping into deep mystical layers of our awareness, the image of Lilith is an especially potent midwife. Lilith is one of the most ancient of the dark goddesses that embody the power of the femini

ne. Like Persephone, Hecate or Kali, Lilith expresses the feminine power of the divine, creative life force. Yet these dark goddess images are most often viewed as fearsome, destructive and devouring. If we follow the mythological trail of these dark goddesses back in time to find the source of their darkness and negativity, we discover not only a major shift in the collective human image of the feminine, but also some deep undercurrent of unease that needs to be acknowledged and healed in our personal lives. Lilith assumes different forms and different names–Lily, Lalita, Layla, Lola, Lolita, Kali, Lila–among others. Ultimately when we are speaking about the Goddess, all forms are variations of the One. It is part of her play.

Intriguing artists for many decades, she is reappearing today in such guises as the Lilith Fair music festival, in the fiction of Anais Nin and as a character in T.V.¹s Cheers. In astrology, Lilith gives her name to the Black Moon, a point of increasing interest to astrologers, especially in Europe. This Dark Goddess, referred to in the very earliest mythologies from the Sumerians and the Hebrews, first came to me in a dream and called me to work with her long before I knew about her astrological identities. I am deeply in the service of this triple goddess who has given her name to an asteroid, the Dark Moon, the Black Moon–and even a star. In her many forms, Lilith offers stepping stones to a deep dimension of our souls.

What is the Black Moon?

Astronomically, Black Moon is the second center of the Moon¹s elliptical orbit around the Earth. Elliptical orbits are due to gravitational effects. An ellipse has two centers, different than a perfect circle with just one center. The Earth is one center of the Moon¹s orbit and Black Moon Lilith is the other. Therefore it is not a physical body but an abstract point. Black Moon circles the zodiac in 8 years and 10 months.

The Black Moon is a key point of the Earth-Moon relationship, symbolizing a central motivating factor that is subtle yet potent, unseen but felt. Named in the very earliest mythologies from the Middle East, Lilith taps into an urgent desire of the soul that seeks dramatization in life and will brook no denial. The center of gravity between the Earth and Moon is inside the Earth. As part of the Earth-Moon system, Black Moon is a symbolic vortex intimately bound to the center of the Earth. Black Moon and Earth are the two centers or the double center, around which the Moon orbits. Lilith is a twin to the core energy of the Earth, the deep heart of fire.

The Black Moon point is where we are lured into the Mystery of life. She insists that we feel through, let go, surrender to something essential and transparent in us that is primal, the passion of the soul. It is a corridor into the heart through which we are lured to discover our deepest truth, the longings and yearnings of our souls. It represents an intelligence informed by the wisdom of earthy instinct. Since our culture has lost, even rejected this kind of natural wisdom, as Lilith in mythology was rejected, it is often feared and thus repressed, making it that much more difficult to tap into and trust.

Black Moon Doorways to the Signs

Here are evocative quotations, doorways to consider the Black Moon through the signs, a contract which your soul seeks to embody in this lifetime:

ARIES

She had a mighty Will: she strove and strove and willed and willed for more moons that there are leaves on all the trees of the garden.

–G.B.Shaw, Back to Methuselah

TAURUS

I am the substance and the one who has no substance.

-The Gnostic Gospels

GEMINI

How do you know but ev’ry Bird

That cuts the airy way

Is an immense world of delight,

Clos¹d by your senses five?

–William Blake

CANCER

When She danced on the waters,

And the wind was Her horn,

The Lady laughed

And everything was bornŠ.

–Songs for the Old Religion, adapted by Aidan

LEO

In the bright crystal of your eyes

Show the havoc of fire, show its inspired words

And the paradise of its ashes.

–Paul Eluard

VIRGO

What is inside of you is what is outside of you

And what you see outside of you, you see inside of you;

It is visible and it is your garment.

–The Gnostic Gospels

LIBRA

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

There is a field. I¹ll meet you there.

–Rumi

SCORPIO

Be and yet know the great void where all things began,

The infinite source of your own most intense vibration,

So that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

–Rilke

SAGITTARIUS

With dancing, red-hot sparks about,

All of a sudden her wings spread out,

Dreadfully changed she seems to him,

Kin of the flaming Cherubim.

–Isolde Kurz, The Children of Lilith

CAPRICORN

I am Nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial

child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen

also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses

that areŠ

–from The Golden Ass of Apuleis

AQUARIUS

You flash like lightning over the highlands,

You throw your firebrands across the earth,

Your deafening command, whistling like the South Wind,

Splits apart great mountains.

Holy Priestess, who can soothe your troubled heart?

–Wolkstein and Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth

PISCES