Rabbit's Moon

“Rabbit’s Moon” is Kenneth Anger’s initiation ritual, a way to begin the journey across the nine films of the Magick Lantern Cycle. It is the journey of The Fool, the zero-numbered trump of the twenty-two Major Arcana; The Fool, in this case, being a literal clown, mime, jester, alone in Dante’s wilderness of self, having journeyed to the middle of this life’s way and, feeling lost, abandoned, confused, seeking the light or illumination above.

A sacred lamp lights the way of The Hermit, trump nine, and the sacred lamp is here: the Moon captured in the glow from above, the heavy, gravid, pregnant woman of mystery that is also, like The Fool, an unnumbered factor: round, ovoid, having “no beginning and no end.” This is the birth of the Divine Child, exemplified in the Sun, the ancient depiction of which is seen later in the very short film.

Sun and Moon, Divine Gateways, opposing forces of Yin and Yang, cosmic duality made manifest. The Moon begins the subterranean voyage into the labyrinth of the Self; the Sun is the expositor of a New Dawn, a New Day, the Divine Child come riding the white horse of Christ, the Kalki avatar riding into the new day, the new realization, the illumination of the Sacred Self reborn.

Rite of Spring

Rabbit — a literal rabbit is seen at one point — encounters the next turn or phase of his own potential beingness: the motley-clad Fool, perhaps badly dignified, the trickster, Joker, Magician, the first numbered card after the zero-numbered Fool. He is cavorting with the Empress, Number Three: perfection, unity, the Trinity, also the Divine Trimurti in Hinduism.

The Empress is depicted as a fairy. She is the godmother of Spring, abundance, and the woman in charge of her environment. One has to pass, or penetrate, the veil by moving through the second phase of the Inner Veil: the High Priestess, the second card, defined by two. In literal Roman numerology, II: a duality of columns suggesting the pillars of Solomon’s Temple, and also the twin columns Samson brought down to smite the Philistines. Atlas shrugs, and “the world spins on to random insect doom,” to quote William S. Burroughs.

But not the Initiate. The Magician, clothed as The Fool, desports with the Empress, who, clothed as a fairy, grants fairy favors. They dance together against a backdrop of mystical beauty set against the barren darkness of the surrounding forest. Rabbit, prostrate upon the ground, is given a mirror and a lyre, perhaps suggestive of Orpheus, who descended into the underworld to find Eurydice. The mirror is the reflecting pool of Narcissus, who contemplates his image and is entranced, ultimately hypnotized by it. Music and illusion, Orpheus and Narcissus, self-realization and the descent into the unknown.

Additionally

I should have noted that the "magic lantern" was the precursor to the motion picture as entertainment. Images projected on a wall for the astounded amusement of Victorians, who could see their dreams finally visually represented as two-dimensional projections--the outward manifestation of their inward state.

Fertlity and fecundity represented by Rabbit's "magic lantern", the birth of his inner visions and the laser-like beam or pathway which he traverses to gain his ascendancy. The Moon itself, ovoid, pregnant, and also the image of discordance between two similar states of being, in the Tarot, a dog and a wolf, and in the Initiate, the Fool and the Magician--or, zero and one, the binary code of modern computer interfaces.

The Moon representing the journey into the subconscious waters, the murky pool of possibilities. The card is numbered eighteen, literally one and eight, or the Magician and Strength. It can be read as nine, the number of The Hermit. Strength, Solitude, and the Unknown, as well as the Yin and Yang of interplaying yet irreconcilable forces.

Just some additional thoughts.

Rabbit's Moon

We return to the Rabbit, the literal rabbit, the symbol of Easter, which the ancients referred to as Ostara, the time of fertility and the birth-symbol of the Divine Egg. April is the month celebrated here, the deeply fractured month of transition, revolution, leading toward Walpurgisnacht, Beltane (May Eve and May Day).

Emma Lazarus, in her most famous poem inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty (another form of the goddess), proclaimed, "I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door." This is a deep intonation of illumination as Rabbit, now in his New and Revised state as The Magician (if still clad in the motley of a Fool) is preceded outward by the fairy favors of The High priestess turned Empress, toward his ultimate destination: the Dark Side of the Moon.

And at the end. A hollow scarecrow of his formal self is cast back to earth, discarded. What does this procaim? Is this the rejection of a dead and no longer functioning self, cast back to Earth by Hecate, Diana, the Moon goddess and High Priestess as being insufficient or "unworthy"? Or is this the lizard skin of transformation, The Fool (Rabbit) shedding his mortal skin so that, henceforth, The Magician holds sway as the Journeyman prophet on the pathway forward, Initiation?

It will be up to the viewers of this shadow and greasepaint cinematic dumbshow to determine for themselves.

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