The distinction between this card and some of the conventional types is that the moon is increasing on what is called the side of mercy, to the right of the observer. It has sixteen chief and sixteen secondary rays. The card represents life of the imagination apart from life of the spirit. The path between the towers is the issue into the unknown. The dog and wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of that place of exit, when there is only reflected light to guide it.
The last reference is a key to another form of symbolism. The intellectual light is a reflection and beyond it is the unknown mystery which it cannot shew forth. It illuminates our animal nature, types of which are represented below—the dog, the wolf and that which comes up out of the deeps, the nameless and hideous tendency which is lower than the savage beast. It strives to attain manifestation, symbolized by crawling from the abyss of water to the land, but as a rule it sinks back whence it came. The face of the mind directs a calm gaze upon the unrest below; the dew of thought falls; the message is: Peace, be still; and it may be that there shall come a calm upon the animal nature, while the abyss beneath shall cease from giving up a form.
the plate, in waite's words · the painted card will hang here in time
Reversed:Instability, inconstancy, silence, lesser degrees of deception and error.
The library's note
The Moon increases "on what is called the side of mercy," its sixteen chief and sixteen secondary rays lighting a path between two towers where a dog and a wolf cry out and something nameless claws up from the water below. Waite reads the scene as imagination working apart from spirit, "reflected light" rather than a source of its own, illuminating the animal nature without dispelling it. The crawling thing from the deep "strives to attain manifestation" and, as a rule, sinks back whence it came. Between the Star's unveiled clarity and the Sun's light two cards ahead, the Moon studies the trumps' dimmer register.
a young page · the keeper's voice pass on the note is still to come