GARLAND New Moon

New Moon 9* 51’ Aquarius

January 29th 7:36am eastern

25th Shape: GARLAND

8° 34' 17'' Aquarius – 21° 25' 43'' Aquarius

This mornings lunation occurs in the most infamous of the 28 Shapes, the 25th Shape of GARLAND. The ancient greek word used in Greek Magical Papyri is στέλμα, and is translated by Betz as Garland, but others have suggested Wreath or Crown. Looking at the etymology of the word as well as the content comparatively for the 25th “mansion” from each tradition (Arabic, Chinese, Indian, the Grimoirium Verum and by extension the syncretized Exu of Quimbanda) it appears that the dynamic generally being referred to is a kind of “encircling”. The context of funerary garlanding, such as motifs on ancient tombs, holds across the material, as the Indian God of death, Yama, is here attributed in the Vedas and is thought to usher souls into the afterlife. This seems to be a bardo sequence in the grecco-egyptian initiatory and transmigratory process laid out in the PGM; after the sudden shock of separation from the physical body and previous identity in LIGHTNING Shape and prior to the liberation of being summoned to new life in the following Shape HERALD”S WAND. GARLAND is the liminal interim of still darkness where essentially nothing happens.

Bondage escapist master Houdini has placements here, notably the outermost personal planets Saturn and Jupiter were transiting in this part of Aquarius during lockdowns and pandemic restrictions, there is also talk of protecting trees and crops, perhaps suggesting fences, as well as locking and unlocking things, particularly treasure. The latter tracks with the content of SHEGOAT which is opposite GARLAND and has particularly to do with the delivery of precious resources and riches hidden within the earth or secreted to a private location, explicitly a cave. So GARLAND speaks of tightly stashing what you want to hold onto, barring intruders from your delicate grove as well as binding your movement and separating you from those you love, as if it is just the neutral locking effect itself, uncaring if its what you wish to be put into the safe or your own body getting thrown in the dungeon.

Bardos are liminal intermissions between existences, particular purgatories that seem to need to exist for the sake of renewal and regeneration, like a period of processing between relationships or notable episodes. Being in-between in nature they come with the essence of one foot in one world and one foot in another. They are mid step change, the air lock between arriving and departing vessel. Waiting rooms positioned between existences. The Indian material speaks of Shiva on one foot doing penance and purification, the centeredness of single-footedness, which reminds me of the trees themselves which Picatrix suggests protecting. In the bardo you are not going to claw yourself into escape and must wait for liberation later, so planting oneself like a tree and existing in an arboreal metabolic timescale for the moment seems a fitting strategy, acquiring boons from austerity in the elastic meanwhile.

As Saturn rules Aquarius, where Pluto now roams for the next two decades, and where this lunation currently occurs sidelong newly ingressed Mercury busy analyzing Pluto’s corrupting presence in this conceptual, and ruthlessly progressive air sign, while ruler Saturn is still swimming the deep end of Pisces, the zodiac sign associated with the feet (Aries being the head which sees light first upon birth and Pisces the feet being last to illumination in the process) I had already been contemplating the iconographic and mythological phenomenon of monosandalism, or characters wearing one shoe in ancient stories and art. As GARLAND specifically brings attention to single footing this Dark Moon seemed an appropriate moment to center the contemplation.

There is a particular form of Shiva who only has one leg, sometimes Shiva flanked by Vishnu and Brahma in the Trimurti, who’s name is Ekapada which literally means One-Foot, and  is spoken of in the Rigveda as being the Unborn or Unmanifest one. He is associated with the serpent of the deep ocean, has many wild appearances and accouterments, appearing in South India as well as Nepal, including wrathful forms, delivers blessings for severe penance, likely of the variety where you devote a limb to the deity such as raising your arm never to lower it again, and is said in the Atharvaveda to be “made of two worlds”— as perhaps devoting an arm to the divine may store it elsewhere in the afterlife for later use. Looking at his iconography I can’t not see the HangedMan in the Tarot when he appears in a reading inverse, and seems to be standing on one leg with arms bound behind his back and hair standing wildly on end, suggesting some ecstatic initiatory posture, like Odin’s famed “sacrifice of himself to himself” on the world tree which revealed to him the runes. If you look at the world upside down for long enough your vision flips, like looking at an optical illusion sphere which suddenly goes from appearing concave to convex. Things may be not as they seem, there are two realities afoot rather than one, a superimposition readily ascertainable through the corporeal senses.

Proper monosandalism would refer to the hero of the Argonautica, Jason, carrying goddess Hera across a river disguised as a crone. After which, she reveals her divine identity and blesses Jason, much like Ekapada’s boons from austerities. Mid way across the water Jason loses a sandal and proceeds to Iolcus only wearing one. His adversarial uncle Pelias sees this when Jason shows up and is horrified as an oracle had spoken that he ‘beware of the man with one sandal’ for he should seize the rule of Thessaly. This leads to Pelias acquiescing to Jason’s birthright to the throne as long as he fetches the Golden Fleece and subsequently funds the expedition. This is one of many instances of monosandalism which scholars seem to struggle to interpret fully or appropriately. One typically reads the significance of Jason’s missing sandal to be a pronouncement of “death or glory”, that he’s already one foot in the grave with this mission. I find this hard to believe, and nod to other authors who think it is possibly an announcement of his initiated status and perhaps even cultic roots associating him with a prominent oracular tradition (Dodona). There are many, many instances of academia extremely oversimplifying or entirely mislabeling archetypal dynamics from having no understanding of astrological cycles, this may be akin to that misunderstanding. Monosandalism remains obscure and seems to require insider cult knowledge to fully grasp, but the patterns present in GARLAND Shape may hold some of the keys.

Other examples include mosaics of Achilles discovered among the maidens, where his mother, the sea Nymph Thetis has hidden him in disguise as one of the girls at the court of Skyros, where he has discreetly coupled with king Lycomedes’ daughter the princess Deidamia and sired children. An oracle stated that the Trojan war would not be won without Achilles and so Odysseus goes to fetch him, and in the process reveals his gender and identity at the court; the very moment of this reveal depicts him with one sandal on and one off. So far each example Ekapada, Jason and Achilles has included water, the sea and in the latter two water crossing themes, or the transition between worlds. We can extend these themes to the miraculously ocean-born Aphrodite, who bursts from sea foam when Uranus’s severed testicles are tossed into the waters. There are many depictions of her in various states of dress and nudity either wearing one sandal, in the process of stripping naked for bathing captured in depiction with only a final shoe on, dangling her removed sandal suggestively or even fully robed and readying to aggressively strike Eros with an upheld slipper. The motif of women removing or losing a shoe in art persists into modernity often said to suggest in French painting the desire to initiate an affair or engage with romantic passion. Even though we are talking about the goddess of love here, the symbolism may still suggest something more initiatory and transitional. Many cultures involve shoes in rituals of betrothment, an engagement being quite literally an in-between period between living existences and transition of households. There may also be suggestions of sexual maturity and losing one’s virginity, or very possibly the mysteries implied might be more indiscernible to us as culture and era outsiders.

The Derveni Krater, found in an aristocratic tomb, is an ornate hellenistic bronze vase depicting a Dionysian revel in full swing in which an unknown figure, usually described as a hunter or a warrior, appears wearing one sandal. The one shoed character appearing on this possibly ritual object of a likely initiated member of society (it was considered civilized to be initiated into the Mysteries) has been speculated to be Jason himself, along with other suggested identities, but no definitive call has yet to be made. Although, its presence in a tomb returns the funerary, bardo and transmigratory theme. There are many Grecco-Roman examples of deceased children’s stele where the depiction includes the youth or infant wearing only one sandal. This gets echoed in Victorian photography, where dead children are photographed often wearing one shoe before burial or inurnment.

Monosandalism can also be found in China. One of the 8 Immortals of Taoism named Lan Caihe famously wore one sandal. Like Achilles in hiding, Lan Caihe was of ambiguous gender. Known as a wandering entertainer and flower basket carrying street musician, Lan Caihe in multiple tellings ascended to the heavens and immortality while drunk, sometimes directly from a tavern, suggesting Dionysian connections. Fitting to Ekapada, Jason, Achilles, Aphrodite and the Derveni Krater (being a vessel) Lan Caihe’s mythos includes water, and in particular the crossing of seas and even walking directly on the surface at times. He is often associated with the infamous Buddhist monk of the 5th century Bodhidharma, whose particular monosandalism is thought to symbolize “survival beyond death”. He wandered into China perhaps from Persia or South India and brought forms of Buddhism and martial arts with him, even being considered the originator of Shaolin kung fu. Before being admitted into the Shaolin temple he is said to have stared at the outer wall in meditation for nine years. At the seventh year he fell asleep and to prevent any further incident cut off his own eyelids. Other tales mention his demand that a disciple cut off an arm to show their devotion to god, tracking with the extreme asceticism and “binding” of body parts present throughout GARLAND Shape.

This collection of concepts reminds me of a more contemporary instance of monosandalism in Samuel Delany’s 1975 novel Dhalgren. The single sandaled, drifter protagonist who has forgotten his own name arrives at the devastated city Bellona over a suspension bridge to find it in semi ruins after an unknown disaster has left it without any outside contact to the world. Buildings burn continually without reducing, the geography of the city continually shifts, Sun’s and Moon’s perform double appearances and out of sync motions, the various characters carry on lives supplied by what has been left behind in the mostly abandoned city where a street gang called the Scorpions roams adorned in “optic chains” and modules which disguise them in holographic projections of various monsters and beasts. The Joycean story structure which follows the unreliable narrator, the amnesiac and possibly schizophrenic “Kid” runs as a circular plot with a variety of entry points of which Delany has described the book to include perceptual shifts akin to gazing at a Necker cube, resulting in literary multistable perception, or the narrative version of a graphic object that has more than one perception encoded into it, an Escher-like unfixed labyrinth reality where the end is the beginning and in between things over lap one another and create irreconcilable recursion and paradox. The un-closed final lines of the book are:

But I still hear them walking in the trees: not speaking.Waiting here, away from the terrifying weaponry, out ofthe halls of vapor and light, beyond holland into thehills, I have come to

And the mid sentence opening lines are:

to wound the autumnal city. So howled out for the world to give him a name.

This continuous sentence on either end of the books 800 pages, depictions of the extremely separated location, across the water, over a bridge (as the Chinese material for this station also talks of bridge making), of constant perspective shifting, circularity, and spending time elsewhere in the interim between life episodes resonate with GARLAND archetypes. It even includes strong references to trees, particularly the opening scene where “kid” flees the scene of a girl he has just had sex with suddenly metamorphosing into a tree before his eyes. The holographically clad Scorpions, encircled by their optic chains, are styled extravagantly like Ekapada, and are martial like Bodhidharma.

Ironically, my image search for Ekapada accidentally led me to a contemporary Indian fashion culture website with many interesting articles on style and including explorations of colorful fabric making and weaving in particular, weaving and dyeing being also mentioned in the Chinese material. The Grimoirium Verum mentions both human and fox hair, continuing the theme here of fiber. The day prior to this lunation I ended up being scheduled to take a CPR and First Aid course for maritime license purposes, which included many exercises in bandage wrapping, slings, splinting and improvising tourniquets, which emphasized the “binding of body parts” from the Picatrix, but also continued the side theme of fabric work and of course very much literalized the concept of wearing only one shoe. At the end of the all day crash course on injuries, breath cessation, cardiac arrest, drug overdose, amputation and other near death scenarios, the captains license seeking participants in attendance, who had travelled far to and were subjected to many hours of videos and demonstrations in the bland waiting room like confines of Maine Maritime Academy Bucksport campus beside the Penobscot river, near to where it meets the Bay and ultimately the Gulf of Maine, in the end all received their certificates and from there could submit their applications, thus being in a sense institutionally initiated into the maritime profession.

At todays lunation Venus is at the same degree as her mid April direct station, currently separating from Saturn and applying to Neptune, and trine to retrograde Mars, while Pisces’ ruler Jupiter is still a few days away from turning direct himself. We are in the midst of various detours and standstills before things loosen from hidden HangedMan posture, and this particular New Moon offers that up to be experience quietly and acutely.