One
of the questions we get asked the most about the 2=9 is why is it
attributed to the element of Air. After all the Moon regulates the
tides and there is all sorts of water symbolism that is associated
with Luna.
It
is a question that might not have occurred to students of the Golden
Dawn before the twentieth century . This is because the association
of water to the moon is a fairly modern attribution.
Until
the wide scale adoption of the notion that the earth and all the
planets orbited the Sun and the moon orbited the earth, there was a
more hierarchical order to the universe.
Below
was the earth and water which we could walk or swim in. The next
level between these two elements and the moon was Air. The moon hung
in the air and acted as a boundary between the sub luna elements and
the more holy fire element which stretched to the throne of god and
upon which the planets rested. Everything that was sub-luna was
subject to decay while the heavens were seen as eternal. Demonic
forces, humans, ghosts were all sub-luna.
The
Moon was said to control all these things, earth, water and air but
it was very often seen in a negative way. Luna goddesses such as
Diana and Hekate always had a bad press but became associated with
witchcraft because they dealt with that unconscious underbelly of
humanities desires and fears.
Then, in the 1940s, a former Golden Dawn Magician Dion Fortune wrote a novel
called Moon Magic. Although the book never identifies the moon with
the element of water there is an lot of water in the settings and
associations. The symbolism so impressed the founder of modern
witchcraft Gerald Gardner that he assumed that since the moon
controlled the tides (which was an important link in Moon Magic) then
luna must be attributed to water.
Wicca,
and Moon magic has influenced much of modern magic and alas Luna's
total dominance by the element of water has been taken as read. Even
if the moon actually controls a lot more.
However
there are some good sound cabbalistic reasons why Yesod, and the Moon
is Air. There are three pillars on the tree of life. The white
Pillar is attributed to fire while the black pillar is water. The
middle pillar is attributed to air. Yesod is upon the middle pillar.
One of the famous side effects of a 2=9 initiation is that the person becomes an "air head" and a bit ditzy. I
