Food for The Moon

Food for The Moon

By Montalk

The moon is more than just a pale satellite of interest to poets and astronomers. Its influence goes beyond merely creating ocean tides or driving biological cycles. More importantly, the moon exerts a significant occult influence upon our psychological and emotional states. The werewolf myth and superstition concerning full moon lunacy are not far from the truth. Certain lunar phases heighten the possibility for emotionally draining situations and stimulate reactivity and sensitivity in vulnerable individuals.

Personal observation reveals what numerous esoteric sources have explained at length, namely that we are food for the moon. In this article, I summarize these sources and then give an account of how through personal experience I independently arrived at similar but more expansive conclusions. This is an incredibly fascinating and practical subject since the lunar factor can be observed by anyone with eyes to see and knowledge of such cycles can be used to bypass obstacles normally made worse by the fog of ignorance.

Gurdjieff and Ouspensky

Fourth Way philosophy is an esoteric system assembled from incomplete fragments of inner Christianity and Sufism. It’s founder, Georges Gurdjieff, frequently admonished the thoughtless mechanical behavior of humanity and was fond of saying that we are “food for the moon.”

What did Gurdjieff mean by this phrase? Many have interpreted “food for the moon” as a figure of speech, that perhaps Gurdjieff meant we are slave to our mechanical conditioning and feed our baser impulses. While it can be additionally interpreted that way, Gurdjieff was likely being literal. Peter Ouspensky, one of Gurdjieff’s most prolific disciples, lectured at length concerning the moon’s role in human affairs and its place in the cosmological scheme of things. It is reasonable to assume what Ouspensky wrote about the moon accurately reflects what Gurdjieff taught him.

According to Ouspensky, the moon acts as a giant electromagnet pulling upon all organic life on earth and sucking into itself the soul essence of dying creatures. The moon is an embryonic planet receiving its nutrition from organic life on earth through an etheric umbilical cord, an energy conduit between earth and moon.

In mankind, the moon drives his programmed mechanical aspects like a pendulum moving the gears of a clock. The degree to which one’s actions are driven by the moon is proportional to one’s level of reactivity and non-being. For people incapable of moving themselves through life by nobler spiritual impulses, the moon provides a propulsive force. Without this force, mechanical individuals would be passive as puppets without a puppeteer.

Ouspensky went so far as to say that the very physical motion of our limbs was made possible thanks to the moon. It would be more accurate to say that the moon exerts some subtle influence upon the organs of our etheric body responsible for initiating neurochemical impulses that trigger habitual motions. Such mechanical behavior may therefore be driven by the moon, but not via crude physical mechanisms like the moon pulling on the water in our body, as some have proposed.

The moon is therefore an important factor in driving our mechanical actions. As long as its influence is limited to such effects, the moon is doings its job properly. Ouspensky warned, however, that if lunar influences trespassed into one’s emotional and mental aspects, then emotional and mental imbalances would occur.

Ouspensky was asked whether there was any truth to the connection between full moons and lunacy. He said there was none and that lunar phases are irrelevant because the moon is always around earth exerting virtually the same pull regardless of its phase. That much is true, however as I shall explain later, it is the alignment between earth, sun, and moon that colors the lunar influence, therefore lunar phases do correlate with cycles of mental and emotional stability and instability.

In the cosmological schema, earth is like a mother to the moon which is still a fetus in the sense that it cannot yet “breathe” on its own, hold an atmosphere, or support life. Gurdjieff said, “The Moon is actually a fragment of this Earth, which must now constantly maintain the Moon’s existence.” In that sense, the moon is like a parasitic thoughtform. Nevertheless, the equation is balanced because in exchange for the moon propelling our mechanical movement, we feed the moon so that it may, according to occult theory, grow and one day be born as a living planet. As to how organic life feeds the moon, Ouspensky explained that upon death the physical body returns to the earth but the soul essence, the astral and etheric energies sloughed off by the evacuating spirit, float toward and deposit themselves upon the moon. During life, however, unprovoked emotional turmoil and unconscious psychological suffering produce subtle energies that feed the moon, and this much is detrimental to personal esoteric evolution.

In line with the objectives of Fourth Way, to escape the more deleterious lunar influences Ouspensky said we must “create moon within ourselves.” By this he meant we must develop within us a driving mechanism that can take the place of the external lunar influence; in this way we would break free of the puppeteer. Assuming for a moment a more general and practical interpretation, this simply says that in order to become free from mechanical conditioning and reactive behavior we must reinforce our sense of self-awareness so that conscious choice and awareness reigns supreme over any external stimuli that might provoke an unconscious reaction. In this way we stop feeding the moon while living, and still properly pay our dues upon death.

In his epic work Gnosis, Boris Mouravieff formulated an esoteric system for spiritual evolution founded upon the inner traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy. Though sharing a common basis with Fourth Way, what Mouravieff detailed is comparatively more complete, accurate, and systematic. Here is an excerpt from Gnosis summarizing what is necessary to transcend the lunar influence:

    As a cell of organic life on Earth, man plays a part in the development of the Ray of Creation. The vivification of the Moon, that cosmic foetus, is one aspect of this development. This requires considerable quantities of energy, which is produced in particular by the human part of organic life. Illusion, which plays such an important role in the waking consciousness of man, was introduced into that state so that he would accept this aspect of the cosmic work, participating in it without rebellion.

    If we become conscious of this situation and desire to escape it, we must conceive and create a screen which will protect us against this devouring influence of the Moon. We must meanwhile guard against falling into Illusion again by erecting a false screen; the result would be an aggravated waste of these forces instead of an economy of force. The quantity of force necessary to genuinely oppose the influence of the Moon is already considerable. The first imperative, then, is to stop wasting these forces, to turn off the taps which let the energy escape uselessly: sterile emotions, in particular negative emotions; fantasies from uncontrolled imagination; uncoordinated mental gymnastics, gossiping and chattering. We must thus act like a wise minister of finance and carefully economize our energies, yet without all the time sterilizing either our activity or our intelligence. On the contrary, we must store and as far as possible augment these forces to build up our reserves. These are the two main aspects of the first objective we have to attain. (Mouravieff, Gnosis I, p. 168)

Mouravieff also explained that organic life functions as a transmitter station sending refined energy to the moon to assist its growth. Despite increases in the human population and thus an increase in quantity of energy transferred, times of peace do not produce sufficient energy and so catalysts for suffering such as wars and catastrophes arise to sustain the process.

    The Moon’s passive energy arises from solar energy. It reflects this, but not without a transformation as its own nature. […] Unlike the Earth, the Moon does not have a direct organic link with the Sun. Being a satellite, it depends directly on its planet, and it is only through the latter’s mediation that it enters into relation with the Sun. One of its essential roles is to reflect solar energy onto the Earth’s surface in a form modified by reflection as described above. This also leads to qualitative and quantitative variations that depend on its phases. These changes do not prevent continual reverberation, due to the fact that the Moon always presents the same face to Earth, as the duration of its rotation around itself and around our planet are both the same. (Mouravieff, Gnosis II, p.29)

Although Mouravieff did not elaborate in what manner the lunar influence varies with phase, it stands to reason that essentially it is a matter of astrological alignment between earth, sun, and moon. During new and full moons, the moon and sun are respectively in conjunction and opposition. During quarter moons they are square. Opposition, conjunction, and square represent alignments that in this particular case aggravate the mechanical aspects in man. Other times of the month when the moon is trine or sextile sun, a more harmonious astrological aspect establishes itself. These alignments engender calmer temperaments with the mechanical influence not trespassing into emotional or mental territory.

That the moon always shows the same face, has an unusually circular orbit, and is precisely distanced to blot out the sun during total solar eclipses implies an intentional placement by the “Architect” of the matrix, or perhaps it simply suggests a collective choice to experience this highly improbable but necessary reality. When asked if the moon was intentionally placed, the Cassiopaeans responded: This is impossibly complex because in one way or another, everything is part of a “plan.” Mouravieff and Ouspensky emphasized that despite the soporific nature of the moon and the urgent necessity for individuals to overcome its influence, there is still an important cosmological reason for this arrangement. If nothing else, the moon makes physical life possible by driving the earth’s rotation.

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