The Moon
Posted: 12 Nov 2009, 22:10
A thread to discuss the iconography of The Moon
On some renaissance decks, The Moon depicts Luna as a woman or the goddess Diana (sometimes accompanied by a hound). What is less commonly known is that the god Apollo--who appeared as The Sun in some decks--had a strong association with the wolf as well. Apollo Lykeios (Λυκειος) was known to early classicists as both a god of light and a god of wolves (see Servius's commentary on Virgil). The pairing of wolf/light (lykos/lukos) and the interesting interplay of symbols that creates seems very in keeping with many of the divinatory meanings that have been developed for The Moon. I have little doubt that some of these deeper/archetypal meanings influenced the addition of the wolf/dog to the early trump design.It is perhaps not an accident that the wolf, a creature of the twilight hours, came and went so frequently in the expressions of a people emerging from the Dark Ages. From classical times he had been a symbol of things in transit. He was a twilight hunter, seen at dawn and dusk. From the common perception that his way of life bore some resemblance to that of primitive man came the idea that wolves themselves had taken form halfway between man and the other animals.
The link between the wolf and a period of halflight--either dawn or dusk, though dawn is more widely known as the hour of the wolf--suggests two apparently contradictory images. The first is the wolf as a creature of dawn, representing an emergence from darkness into enlightenment, intelligence, civilization. The second is a creature of dusk, representing a return to ignorance and bestiality, a passage back into the world of dark forces. Thus, in the Middle Ages, the wolf was companion of saints and the Devil alike. His howl in the morning elevated the spirit. Like the crow of the cock it signaled the dawn, the end of night and the hours of the wolf. His howl at night terrified the soul: the hours of the wolf (famine, witchery, carnage) were coming on.
The association is old enough to be the basis for the Latin idiom for dawn, inter lupum et canem, between the wolf and the dog. Another Latin idiom expresses it a bit more abstractly: Hac urgent lupus, hac canis, literally, "The wolf presses here, the dog (light) there," a reference to the dimly lit area between two fires in a Roman military camp. [Note that Lopez omits the common Latin use of this idiom as found in Horace and Cicero, among others, which can be translated idiomatically as "between a rock and a hard place."]
Hi Morgan,Morgan wrote:
The link between the wolf and a period of halflight--either dawn or dusk, though dawn is more widely known as the hour of the wolf--suggests two apparently contradictory images.
(Image above taken from something Robert wrote.)
I agree with your last statement and that the unclarity between dog and wolf at dusk and dawn played into the development of the card design. (There are various threads that also mention this connection from some time back, by the way)Morgan wrote:The pairing of wolf/light (lykos/lukos) and the interesting interplay of symbols that creates seems very in keeping with many of the divinatory meanings that have been developed for The Moon. I have little doubt that some of these deeper/archetypal meanings influenced the addition of the wolf/dog to the early trump design.
It is mentioned in the Gebelin/Mellet thread on AT for example :jmd wrote: (There are various threads that also mention this connection from some time back, by the way)