The Mythology of the Black Moon in Astrology

On the Re-enchantment of the World website, we have access to teachings on the place of the Black Moon in the astrological system. From its astronomical symbolism, the Black Moon in the signs and houses. The involution of the Black Moon, the fall and the evolution, the return to the star.

We will concentrate here on the mythological and symbolic part of the Black Moon. It is a question of understanding why the author called the medium Black Moon the Unicorn, while the corrected Black Moon took the name of Lilith.

The Unicorn, the Middle Black Moon

The unicorn is a mythological animal, originally represented by a one-horned goat, so it refers to Capricorn. One could place the Unicorn's mastery in Capricorn, and because of its desire for purity, one could place its exaltation in Virgo. Today we are used to representing the Unicorn as a white horse with a single horn.

The unicorn is an animal that exists in all mythologies and does not belong to any school. It is characterised by a twisted horn in the middle of its forehead.

The metaphysical significance of the unicorn.

The unicorn corresponds to the combined vibrational awakening of the ajna centre (the third eye) and the coronal centre, which form this famous horn in the etheric body. It is therefore a place of spiritual awakening. The vibrations or energies of these two centres merge to form the horn of the unicorn.

A person who is aware of the light of their unicorn will feel the spiritual and psychic energy through these two centres and will have direct access to Truth Consciousness. The term "Truth Consciousness" was most often used by Sri Aurobindo, whose unicorn was on his ascendant in Leo.

Some anecdotes about the Unicorn.

According to medieval tradition, the mythical unicorn was a difficult prey for hunters.

How could it be tamed?

A virgin, in the sexual sense of the word, had to be taken into the forest so that the unicorn would be attracted to her and rest on her breast. The hunters could then catch her.
Symbolically, this means that we can only reach our unicorn when we are in our virgin state, without expectations or projections. The heart is open and fully receptive when the unicorn rests its head on the heart of the virgin.
Only then can we tame it and make it safe. If we are without expectations, with an open heart, our unicorn can reveal itself.

It is said that the unicorn can die of thirst at the lake if it is not pure enough. Indeed, the thirst for purity outweighs the need to quench one's own thirst; the thirst for otherness, because water also represents otherness.

We would say, from the unintegrated point of view of the unicorn, I know I can do it, but I'm not going to do it because it's not perfect enough the first time. The house of the unicorn in the astrological sky represents the house where we have this place of grace and virgin competence like no other. Put differently, only we can do it because only we have the precise contact with the infused knowledge of what needs to be done.
This knowledge is manifested in the direction of the house and the mode of the astrological sign in which the unicorn is found, but because we cannot bear imperfection we do not use it. It is a place of prohibition because of excessive demands. For example, the person who has the unicorn in the 5th house will have a great vision of the creativity they could use, a great awareness of the light of creativity they could express, but they will never do it because they are not interested in making a painting that doesn't look like anything, even if it is a Picasso.

You can see the problem with the unicorn; it has a lot of ontological pride. There are many forms of pride in a birth chart. We have the pride of the Lion, the pride of the Capricorn and there is the pride of the Unicorn. The unicorn , which means that it knows, but it doesn't tell anyone. So it is a pride hidden in self-effacement and silence. The pride of the Lion will be assertive because of the need for recognition, in fact it is easier to perceive because it spreads out. The pride of Capricorn is an inner pride that let it happen but don't think less of it. Here, we have 3 manifestations of the feeling of superiority, which is really a structure and an ontological feeling of supremacy. Obviously not all lions, Capricorns and unicorns are in this dimension of pride, but there is always a hint of it in the background.
This feeling is reactivated at the moment of birth because the newborn is totally dependent on its mother and at the same time it has total power over its mother. So this feeling of omnipotence reappears at every birth and shows the ontological side that comes from long before the last birth.

Let's go back to the mythology of the unicorn.

How to catch the unicorn?

By being virgin of all desire in order to open up to our essential desire?

The text tells us that the unicorn would rather die of thirst than drink water that is not pure enough.

Beware of this demand for purity, and truth that would prevent us from implementing anything, beware of this desire for the absolute that would take us away from the possibility of touching our essential desire.

Another picture tells us that one day a snake spat its venom into the lake, so that the animals could not drink the water because it was poisoned. To purify the lake, the wild animals waited for the unicorn to come and dip its horn into the water.
There is the purifying role of vision, when the third eye and the coronal centre are open we develop the vision that purifies, that is, the fact of being in pure consciousness allows us to purify our deepest shadows, the poison of the snake. Why are they our deepest shadows, simply because the snake is a cold-blooded animal, which corresponds to the most archaic and primitive functions of being? The unicorn has a therapeutic role; it is an initiator of the first order, carrying out its own therapy or that of others through the power of its vision. It is not a question of catharsis by shouting out one's emotions, but of dipping one's horn (the depth of one's vision) into the lake of one's emotions, and it is the vision itself that allows one to purify these emotions. In this way, the animals, our emotions, can drink the water of the lake and allow us to move again.

Another image represents the miners descending into the mine with a light in their foreheads. Never go down into the mine, into the depths of the cave where the dragon slumbers, without first acquiring a spark of light in your third eye. It is the unicorn that will ignite the light. It is the inner certainty that what we are doing is right, it is an infused awareness of what we have to do beyond what others think or what history has shown us. It is the order of evidence that comes from our own interiority, that is the unicorn.

The unicorn is white ! In Latin, candidus means white and gives the term candidate, candidate for election, for initiation. So the whiteness of the animal is a sign that it is an initiatory animal. Moreover, if we look closely, when we see white animals in our dreams they often represent initiatory periods in our lives. Once again we see that to be in an initiation process one must be white, without blemish, and to be without blemish does not mean to be completely pure, but to be free of all lies. In other words, to be in the total truth of who we are, right down to our lies. This is the work of the astrological Virgo.

The involuting unicorn theory would say: I'm waiting to be perfect before I start my initiation path. Because obviously if we wait until we are pure to start the initiation process, we will start at the end and it cannot work. So we never start the process in the direction of the house and sign our unicorn is in. The author invites us to look at our birth chart, where is our Unicorn and what does it tell us?

The mythology of Lilith, the corrected black moon

First of all, we would like clarifying that this is a biblical term that the author has adopted. In Greek mythology, with which the author is more familiar, the unicorn represents the figure of Athena, goddess of war and wisdom. A virgin goddess with a clear eye who always keeps her distance and knows what to do at all times. She is the intelligence that the present moment requires.

According to the Bible, Lilith was Adam's first wife. Adam had two wives, Lilith and Eve. But Adam's first wife went bad because she demanded equality with man, she demanded equality with Adam. Obviously God did not agree and when she continued to demand and dare to speak God's name she left paradise to live with Samael, an angel/demon. We see that Lilith is someone who wanted to be equal to man and went into the world of darkness. Out of pride she spoke the name of God, the name of the ineffable, which according to Hebrew tradition was not to be spoken by anyone. She fell into the world of darkness because she wanted to appropriate a divine power prematurely.

In the Hebrew tradition, we are also told that the rabbis ritually pronounced magical formulas so that Lilith would remain at the bottom of the ocean, remain under the waters, in fact, so that she would remain in the unconscious. This is how the character of the great goddess, with this first monotheism, was split in two. One part, Eve, was submissive to man, and the other part, Lilith, was repressed in the depths of the unconscious.

In her fascinating and destructive ambivalence, wisdom and war, the character of the great goddess was divided, demonised by the predominance of the monotheists.

(Monotheism is the fundamental affirmation of the three great Mediterranean religions, Judaism, Christianism and Islamism.) Religions that admit the existence of a single god.

What the Lilith/Unicorn complex is trying to find is the omnipotence of the feminine, the omnipotence of the Great Goddess.

There is a part of the feminine that is frightening, that is Lilith, and there is a part of the feminine that is fascinating in its ability to respond in the right way at the right time, that is the unicorn.

The problem today is that these two modes of the feminine are divided, separated. In fact we only have moons, we only have women who give birth and take care of the home and motherhood. The question of the feminine is complex, but we have three elements, Eve, the moon, we have the unicorn in its first part, Lilith, who claims equality with man, and Lilith, the fruit of the fall. That is, the demonisation of the feminine because of its pride, but also because of the fear it arouses in man.

This is why the author told us in a previous seminar that women are closer to the Lilith/Unicorn complex and men are closer to Priape (the point opposite the corrected Black Moon, Lilith).

We read this from a mythological point of view, but we can read it astronomically, since the whole Earth/Moon system, of which Lilith/Priape is a part, remains a lunar system and refers to the invisible secret of the feminine. By invisible we do not mean in the home, in fertilisation, in the childcare system, which is more the role of the Moon.

In astronomy, the word ellipse translates from Latin as a lack. Whenever we find ourselves in an ellipse, we are in a life impulse, but this impulse is based on a lack. When this lack is filled, the ellipse becomes a sun circle. We see what happens in the circle, what we have called Lilith corrected and the earth returns to the same place, the lack disappears because the ellipse has no axis, the unicorn disappears. In other words, when the feminine returns to the earth, to conscious life, to the sun, the masculine can flourish. The more the feminine is in the fulfilment of its unicorn, the more the dimension of the solar masculine, the soul, can open up.

Lilith's mistake is that she wanted to be like the man, a moon that wanted to be the sun, instead of exploring deeply the nature of the feminine with its power, in reference to Athena, and its ability to cut off the heads of the shadows, in reference to Medusa, to allow the masculine part to open fully.

The process always begins with the integration of the feminine.

Even the Greek heroes were born of a god who impregnated a woman. So in order for our inner hero, which is solar consciousness, to be born, we have to become women.

What does it mean to become a woman? It means to become a unicorn, in a state of whiteness in the sense mentioned above, to be in a state of receptivity, openness and welcome, as a woman would be while waiting for her love. This is obviously not a gender issue, but an inner process. As long as we fight against ourselves, we will not win. The laws of the outer world are reversed in relation to the laws of the inner world. What is right and relevant in our attitude towards the outer world is often an obstacle on the inner path. As much as it can be very right to say no to others in the outer world because it breaks the boundaries and by saying no, we put our name down with its identity affirmation. As much as an inner no makes no sense in the long run, there is only the great mantra of evolution, written in three letters, "YES", that allows for openness, acceptance and the total and unconditional acceptance of who we are in order to become who we are.

This perception represents a luminous moon, the shadow moon recriminates and God knows how much we have a masculine feminine in our culture. We have an archaic, primitive, repressed and unfulfilled feminine, obviously, the author explains this from a social point of view. Why do people strike and grumble all the time, why are they never happy and want to be taken care of, why is there this latent narcissism that represents the lunar flaw? Because this lunar shadow is an unfulfilled feminine. It is therefore the myth of the great goddess who is repressed under the waters, in the deep unconscious, and who emerges as she can, in a recriminatory way. The shadow moon is a Lilith who will recriminate and be a vortex of negative energy, absorbing everything she finds without ever growing. Conversely, a blossoming feminine represents the wisdom of Athena and what allows the passage between these two poles is the Moon.

The history of Medusa in brief

Of course, in a different context, Medusa is the Greek equivalent of Lilith.

Perseus, which means the destroyer, is one of the great Greek heroes who is the spiritual prototype of Hercules. Perseus' mission is to cut off the head of Medusa. Medusa was originally a beautiful young girl whom Poseidon, Neptune, had fallen in love with. Obviously, the girl ran away because she had no desire for that god and took refuge in the temple of Athena. Poseidon, who did not care about borders, entered the temple and raped Medusa. From that day on, the beautiful girl was transformed into a horrible gorgon, one of the three gorgons of Greek mythology. She is most often depicted with her tongue hanging out, teeth protruding, snakes wrapped around her head, petrifying eyes, and Perseus must go and cut off the head of this Medusa creature. He takes his sword and a well-polished shield which serves as a mirror, and after many adventures, he cuts off Medusa's head. From this decapitation, Pegasus, a white winged horse and another character called Chrysaor, who is in fact a warrior with a golden sword, are born.

So who is Medusa?

It is the formation of a figure that symbolises hatred, the tongue hanging out, the snakes circling her head, the petrified look, the petrification is the symbol of fear, she has been raped by Poseidon. In fact, it is a mixture of fear and hatred that constitutes the coagulated core. It is that which is unacceptable and which is concentrated within us, repressed in our inner cellars.

What does this mythological story contribute?

The birth of Medusa (Lilith) is interesting. We are told that a beautiful young girl was raped by Poseidon in the temple of Athena, the unicorn Athena. What the myth tells us is that the outburst of hatred and fear was born of a premature mystical experience. The encounter with Poseidon, the god of great waters, who sometimes replaces the god Ouranos and becomes the god of the sky. It is in fact birth, that is, we come out of our little cloud and encounter earthly experience, limited in a body. It is all that is of the order of cosmic consciousness and of the whole, Neptune, which makes us lose our bearings, which frightens us, which frightens us, which anguishes us. To locate Lilith in a chart, to know if the chart is Lilith-dominant or Unicorn-dominant, the Lilith-dominant will be frightened by the infinite and the Unicorn-dominant will be fascinated by the infinite. Why is this? Because infinity is the place where you can get lost. What are the metaphors for infinity in the geographical reality of the earth, are deserts and ice floes. If we are fascinated by deserts and ice floes, we are closer to the unicorn, and if certain music opens us up to infinite spaces and makes us lose our heads and feel uncomfortable, we are more on the side of Lilith. When the infinite descends into the finite, when the immensity of the spirit descends into the body, nothing is more difficult, because there is a part of the memory of the body that comes back and causes a terrible fear, and that is the construction of Lilith.

The desire for unicorn sanctity that wants to be fulfilled immediately while the body is not ready. This is why we could call Lilith the Medusa.

This story tells us something else. Perseus is going to decapitate Medusa, which means that when you cut off your head, you cut off your thoughts, you stop being in that negative feminine of constant whining and recrimination, it's other people's fault, nothing's right with my life, and so on.

What's going on?

This miracle is the appearance of Pegasus and Khrysaor, two winged and divine characters who give us back our power of elevation, our inspiration towards the sky, our quest for height, and who are obviously white in colour, which refers to the true desire for purity.

These are all our snakes that hiss at our heads, that is, all the thoughts of hatred, violence and incompetence that we turn against ourselves and that prevent the liberation of our creative inspiration, Pegasus, and our dedication to the true struggle, Khrysaor.

Whether we speak of the coagulated core, the psychotic core, the medusa or Lilith, it is the same thing. We are talking about this construct of fear, of anguish, this vortex of suffering, of all that of the Moon could not be integrated by the consciousness. All our sensitivities that have become sentimentality and that prevent the process of evolution, that is, that our wings unfold in Pegasus and Khrysaor.

The end of the story

When Perseus decapitated Medusa, he took her hair and carried it in a bag. In order to win the battles he would later fight, the petrified side of Medusa's eyes would serve as a victory by petrifying the enemy with fear. At the end of his adventures, Perseus gave Medusa's head to Athena, who placed it on her shield.

So, Lilith/Lycorn conjunction, what is very interesting here is that the consciousness of truth, the consciousness of the absolute is no longer an inhibitor of evolution, but will allow Athena to go to war because the petrifying look is a quality of light. The petrified gaze represents the one who will speak the truth, and because he speaks the truth, he removes the poisons, he kills the enemies. But he will speak the truth wisely, as a system of protection and not as a system of vindication in battle.

In other words, the whole story of evolution from a metaphysical point of view is to understand inwardly and deeply that the truth we hold is not the whole truth. That the evidence we hold is not the whole of reality, and what will allow this to happen is love. For the unicorn easily forgets that it is on one degree of the zodiac and that there are no other 360 degrees. The unicorn in our chart will tell us that this is the truth and it is true, it is the truth for our individual chart. But as it has no sense of otherness with its ontological pride, it only knows how to defend its truth, which it takes as the truth. It will therefore be necessary for her to go through the construction of the coagulated nucleus, Lilith, to make her realisation and one day cut off the head of the jellyfish and see that in reality she is only a pearl of light in a necklace.

In short, the unicorn's obstacle is its ontological pride and its salvation is the process of dismemberment that Lilith represents.

Because the unicorn is crushed, because deep inside each of us there are memories that have been crushed, because we have been rejected in our particular quality that we know is like no other, because there is this immense suffering of injustice, of the unacceptable, of rejection, this is how life has found the only way to soften us.

So, from an evolutionary point of view, Lilith is a blessing that must not be repressed in the depths of the unconscious, and from an ego point of view, it is a dismemberment.

Translated and adapted from Luc Bigé'shttps://reenchanterlemonde.com/astrologie/#la-lune-noireby @SatyamAstro/Nicolas Roessli and supported by DeepL.com

To go further, a book in French has been written by Luc Bigé and translated into English by Google, The Black Moon, a vertigo of absolute

https://reenchanterlemonde-com.translate.goog/produit/la-lune-noire-un-vertige-dabsolu/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr