The Moon:

 The Moon:

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”

The twenty-ninth path on the Tree of Life is Qoph, it connects the sphere of Malkuth to the sphere of Netzach and is associated with the Moon trump of the Tarot. It is upon this path that the influence of Venus is directly felt for the first time. The Yetziratic name for Netzach is Occult Intelligence and as most people know occult means secret knowledge. Relating occult secrets to the profane has always been unlawful and these secrets have throughout the centuries been well guarded. Sir Edward Kelly suffered torture and death for not being willing to give away the secrets of Alchemy, in the process both his legs were amputated, and he eventually died in prison, but he never succumbed to their interrogations. However, the above story is of no importance as an occult secret or mystery cannot be told, they can only be understood through experience. Which gives rise to the difficulty of fully integrating the mystery of this card, as it is entirely subjective in nature. The influence of the Moon truly is mesmerizing, and the magician runs the risk of being transfixed as a result of her influence, this needs to be guarded against. The experience of this realm, needs then, to be experienced for the sake of the experience, wherefrom the lessons learnt will later be acquiesced consciously and integrated to benefit the psychic constitution of the enquirer.

This card is associated with the Dark Night of the Soul, but the influence of Venus may overpower the overbearing influence of the ordeal, which may be experienced in its wholesome light. The imagery associated with this card is debauchery and evil things, all manifestations of moral corruption may be found here, such as the imagery found in the stories of the witches sabbath, therefore one needs to guard against enchantment along this path and stay the course. The Moon is a symbol of the withholding mother as in her there is no truth only poisoned corruption, she is the dying bride, therefore one's union with her necessitates the death of self. Thus, she is both Isis and Apophis as representing the first initiation and manifests the Shadow that needs to be overcome in order for the conception of the new life to be successful and the child to be born. She symbolizes simultaneously life, death and putrefaction. Her presence is symbolic of the Vampire and the Neophyte's greatest adversary along the path of initiation. In other words: Qoph is Isis and Apophis of the Formula of I.A.O., or Life before initiation which is a corruption of the Great Mother and indicates the ordeal of the Vampire and the Shadow. The aspirant has to die in order to be reborn, thus also the putrefaction, which is associated with the card, in a sense, is the stagnation, that is associated with the Vampire, and symbolized herein, as a putrefying corpse. 

 The path is associated with Pisces. This myth revolves around Aphrodite and her son Eros and the monster Typhon. It’s said that Typhon was the son of Tartarus (Hell) and Gaia (Earth) he was a giant serpent who was often called the father of monsters, it is from his name that we get the word typhoon, in other words he was the devil but also symbolic of the unconscious. Aphrodite and Eros were traveling along the Euphrates river, when they were suddenly attacked by Typhon, in order to escape from the monster they turned into fish and got away. This myth not only sums up the card and the imagery inherent in the card but the nature of the path as understood in the characters of both Eros and Aphrodite and their places on the Tree of Life. The sphere of Netzach connects us to the divine realm as well as the path being an aspect of the Moon which is influential as a form of the Shekinah whose influence below Tiphareth is experienced as the unconscious impulses and impressions of the magician's psyche. The sphere of Yesod is sometimes called the Gate and is symbolic of our link to the unconscious or lower astral plane, so too is this card referred to as the path of the "Gate of Resurrection" in Crowley’s Book of Thoth, as we are now linked with the light of the Moon that carries with it the influence of the Logos all the way from the highest into the lowest world. This influence needs to be integrated consciously, and this integration of the Shadow is experienced as the Dark night of the Soul, wherefrom we are fortified and awaken (resurrected) into a new field of consciousness having left the restricting influence of the old Aeon behind.

“Love is the law, love under will.”