Full Moon and Stars
What this is
The full moon with a human face, ringed by stars, set at the head of the twenty-first folio. It is the emblem of the night sky at its brightest, a borrowed light and enough to see by.
What it governs
Presides over the night's light: dreams, intuition, and the things that come clear only when the day is done. Folio 21.
Its properties
Its colour is silver and night-blue; its number twenty-one, three times seven, the days of the moon's quarter counted thrice. The quality is calm and quiet sight; its shadow is illusion, the moonlit shape taken for the thing itself.
Where else it appears
The same note is the Moon of the arcana between its two towers; Isis, whom, the Book's translator says, the Egyptians gave to the moon; the full moon under which the Writing of Balaspis bids the priests consult the Book; the lamp of every night traveller.
Where you meet it on the Oracle
On the Oracle it heads the Folio of the Day on the daily Book of Fate surface, and it heads the folio your own five rows of strokes lead to when you consult the Book. The words you are given are the Book's own Answer on that folio, the one that stands beside your Sign; the Hieroglyph marks the page and does not choose the words. As a frame for the day, let the matter settle and look at it again by a quieter light.
Why it matters
The Book gives its Hieroglyphs no order but their folios, and no meaning but the Answers that stand under them. In the Table a Question meets this one wherever the number of the Question and the number of the Sign together make twenty-two or fifty-four.
Correspondences
Where this comes from
- H. Kirchenhoffer, The Book of Fate, the fourth edition (London, 1823)