You'll See It When You Believe It.

Or, how our ancient connection to the moon unlocks the wisdom of the Four of Cups

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A prevailing (though not entirely uncontested) theory in mythology, archaeology, and anthropology circles is that the earliest humans in Europe and Asia lived in matrifocal societies that worshipped a universal Mother Goddess. The evidence of this has been discovered in digs all over Eastern Europe and Western Asia in the form of cave paintings, figurines, and more, all pointing to the worship of an all-powerful female goddess.

Assortment of Bronze Age Goddess Figurines from Pinterest

This early goddess wasn’t simply a goddess of fertility, as often became the case all over the ancient world as polytheism and patriarchy became the norm. Oh no. This universal Mother Goddess was in charge of it all. Even when male hunter gods began to enter the picture, the Mother Goddess still reigned supreme.

It probably isn’t news to you that one of the - if not the - primary natural ambassadors of the Mother Goddess for Neolithic and ancient man was the moon. Not least of which because the moon was understood in the same way as the goddess - as a triple entity.

As Anne Baring and Jules Cashford explain in The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image,

For these early people in the history of humanity we could imagine that the moon, as the whole of nature, was experienced as the Mother Goddess, so that the moon’s phases became phases in the life of the Mother. The crescent moon was the young girl, the maiden; the full moon was the pregnant woman, the mother; the darkening moon was the wise old woman, whose light was within.

Even now, the phases of the moon play a huge part in modern spirituality, especially in witchcraft, paganism, astrology, any working with the Divine Feminine, and even manifestation.

The biggest difference though is that at its most basic, most of us think of the lunar cycle as having four main phases, not just three: the waxing, full, and waning moons, yes; but also the new moon.

Or, perhaps more accurately (depending on who you ask), the dark moon.

The dark/new moon phase refers to the couple of days in each 28-day moon cycle during which there seems to be no moon in the sky. It occurs after the last remnants of the waning moon have disappeared and before that ever so thin sliver of the waxing crescent - my personal favorite - takes shape in the night sky.

To use a word mythologist and host of The Living Myth podcast Michael Meade likes to use a lot, the dark moon represents that powerful “pregnant” pause before creation or beginning.

So why does the transition from a three-phase moon cycle to a four-phase cycle matter, both in general and in tarot? Keep reading.

The African Bushmen, one of the earliest peoples, were reported to have spent entire nights dancing under the waning moon. Why? “We must show her how we love her or she won’t come back,” recorded South African anthropologist Sir Laurens van der Post, who famously (and rather imperialistically, but that’s a different story) spent time traveling with and observing the Bushmen.

Other civilizations undoubtedly had similar rituals and ceremonies.

Baring and Cashford posit that perhaps over time, the growing trust in the observed phenomenon that out of darkness new light emerges “gave birth in [the Bushmen and other early humans] the power to see life imaginally.”

Now, I’m no evolutionary psychologist, but it makes sense to me that the earliest, most cognitively primitive man probably had no understanding of anything beyond that which they could experience through their senses. That is, the power of imagination - the power to consciously and intentionally visualize and imagine what does not yet exist in physical reality - is a more advanced, higher order cognitive function that the earliest primates, including humans, probably did not have.

What if the dark moon - that pregnant darkness filled with potential - helped contribute to our ability to imagine and visualize and, in turn, create and innovate? In other words, what if - as Baring and Cashford wonder, “out of this ability to experience life imaginally arose the inexhaustible”?

Here’s the beautiful lunar theory at which Baring and Cashford ultimately arrive:

It is possible that an ability to think abstractly developed from an understanding of the moon’s phases as four instead of three. To the three visible phases - the waxing, the full and the waning - was added the fourth phase - the three days’ darkness where the moon cannot be seen and can only be imagined…

When the dark phase of the moon is included as an essential part of the continuing cycle of light, it requires the capacity to hold as present in the mind an image of what is not actually visible to the eye.

Tarot captures this evolution beautifully in the transition from the Three of Cups to the Four of Cups. This transition from the literal and sensory to the more abstract and imaginal breaks the message of the Four of Cups wide open. Looked at through this lens, the Four of Cups means more than just boredom or apathy.

Here’s what I mean.