Barefeet steadied across the rough pavement. The surrounding grass was cool and wet. While the twilight held the atmosphere, shades of navy, gray, and green covered the landscape. The sleeping houses and empty neighborhood blocks instilled a sense of calm yet obvious silence. Clouds puffed up lightly here and there across the horizon, holding the Summer night in a blanket of softness. The mind's eye entranced itself in lunar light. Any buzzing, any disruption, shedding away through a slowly awakened reverence. Listening quietly for whispers of insight...
The Moon's fullness pulled on the waves of thought, as if rocking the mind into a sound slumber. The eyes fixated in a concentrated gaze on the round orb beaming with vibrancy. They saw the field of projection, bright light hypnotizing the retinas. Simultaneously, the internal perception submerged into a vision of geometric shapes framing the curves and ridges of its surface. Images of translucent lines criss-crossing the rocky exterior became clearer and finely woven.
Without blinking, the image transformed itself through the veil of sight into something new. Circles contained within circles, mirroring one another. This expansion of form grew around the Moon and emerged into a Flower of Life. Its luminance enveloped the bright orb like a serpent around an egg.
A depiction of the Flower of Life
Chandra and Soma
In Indian astrology, the planets are worshipped, deified as revered vibrations of consciousness. Each planet receives a multitude of names, attributes, myths, and more. They are anthropomorphized, having human-like qualities in their ancient depictions. Some see the planets archetypally to aid in the advancement of self-perception. Either way, astrological wisdom can be greatly attained in meditating with these powerful energies and making them our close friends.
The name of a planet contains the vibrational essence, and they have many names. The Moon's popular names are Chandra and Soma in Sanskrit. Chandra translates to "bright" or "shining", with chan as "delighting in" or "enjoying" and dra meaning "to run about". The Moon is typically depicted riding on a chariot of deer or antelope, adding to the perception of lightness and movement. Since this precious luminary remains in constant flux, the name captures a fickle nature and derives from delighting in its freedom to move swiftly. These features highlight how the Moon becomes associated to the mind in astrology.
Chandra (or Moon) riding on a chariot of antelope.
Soma means "to extract". Additionally, this refers to "the nectar of the gods" as well as a special plant used to extract juice, now considered by many to be extinct. Historians point to the significance of Soma during rituals, where ancients would soak the plant for distillation and consume the drink for intoxicating purposes. Distillation was considered a way to enrich the potency of the plant's intoxicating effects, distilling its essence in the form of sacred knowledge.
Soma means "to extract".
When breaking the name down further, So appears in words associated with bringing ends to things, while ma concerns being bound or ruled by time: brining an end to that which binds us. Ma is also used for the mother goddess such as Kali Ma or the Goddess of Time (Kali). All of these little pieces create a fascinating puzzle of not only the name's translation but of the Moon's given attributes.
The ancient teachers felt the intoxicating effects of the Moon. In fact, the effects were akin to the Soma plants' abilities to induce psychotropic experiences, therefore naming the Moon after them. For thousands of years, people documented the people's emotions and sanity depending on lunar cycles, with the word lunatic deriving from Lunar. In the scriptures, gods became addicted to the intoxicating effects of the Soma plant including the king of the Gods, Indra.
The popular Hindu god, Shiva, the god of destruction and immortality, is always depicted with a crescent moon on his head.
A dichotomy may be starting to appear. Based on the Soma name, the Moon's attributes are to chase after delightful and intoxicating experiences in order to gain liberation from the things which bind us. Of course, chasing these experiences is a form of binding, keeping us in a state of seeking. This represents the paradox of lunar wisdom.
Another interesting aspect to consider concerns the extraction of the juice that creates the mind altering experiences. If the plant were not distilled, then the intoxicating effects would not become fully active. The sacred process of extracting Soma represents an act of what the Moon does in order to attain liberation. Of course, distillation is an essential process generally to transform the chemical properties of the plant in order for it to be consumable in its most mind altering form.
At the same time, the Gurus believed in the Moon's quality to distill from life the essence of things: if you can learn to seek liberation by extracting out the true essence of something, it will provide tremendous potency to release karmic constraints wrapped into the mind. Both the nature of intoxication and this nature of extracting are considered significant qualities of the Moon.
If you can learn to seek liberation by extracting out the true essence of something, it will provide tremendous potency to release karmic constraints wrapped into the mind.
Therefore, the Moon (as the mind) aims to go beyond itself or beyond the mind, seeking the desire for freedom and even freedom from desire.The ancients provided a roadmap, a cypher, on how to extract the essence of the Moon and embed knowledge of what the planet represents simply in its names. Similarly, understanding the names of the Moon aligns perfectly with the metaphor of extracting out its essence, just as the juice extracted from Soma symbolizes its essence.
From delight to liberation, the Moon represents desire, freedom, alteration of consciousness, and the ability to receive pleasurable experiences by seeing things for what they truly are at their core. Through the internet and social media, cross-cultural explorations of sacred teachings are amassing tremendous interest on a global scale. With a plethora of information to sift through, the special connection to extracting the essence of spiritual knowledge may stop short or get lost in order to consume and absorb as much information as possible, as dictated by the mind. Turning towards spirituality entails going into the past and absorbing ancestral wisdom for genuine insight. This is an important lesson for the higher aspects of Moon.
Happy Full Moon!
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