A daimon of Luna

Do you believe in the man in the Moon?

No, not the face people imagine in the shadows of the craters, which is really the Great Rabbit, or Lunar Hare. Nor do I refer to those artful pictures, ever popular on greetings cards and in children’s stories, that add a nose and a grin and a wink to the crescent moon.

I am speaking of something altogether different. I am inquiring whether you know anything (for worthwhile beliefs can only stem from knowledge) of the beings who live in the Moon. I am well aware that since humans in clumsy space suits first walked on the Moon, it has been commonly believed that the Moon is an astral desert, empty of organic life. This is merely a modern superstition, founded in the confusion of different orders of reality. Beyond appearances, the Moon is thickly settled. Its inhabitants do not live on the Moon in the way you live on the Earth. They cannot be found on the lunar surface from which astronauts and robots pick rock samples. The lunar population lives in the Moon, which is to say, in the Sphere of Luna, a frequency domain located a little – just a little – beyond the realm you can touch and smell and taste with your ordinary senses.

I know what I am talking about, because the Moon is my home. If you chance to meet me tonight, because you happen to be looking up at the bright face of the Moon from under just the right tree at just the right time, or because you travel to my world on the wings of a dream, it’s quite likely you might see me as the man in the Moon, or at any rate a man in the Moon. I find it generally convenient, in my dealings with humans, to show myself as a human male, taller than average, with what I conceive to be a commanding – though not overbearing presence – exquisitely tailored in a mode that is rarely encountered on Earth outside Jermyn Street and one or two most particular establishments in Buenos Aires. Yet I must disclose, at the beginning, that "man in the Moon" is a misnomer.

I live in the Moon, but I am not a man. I am a daimon. I have lived very close to men, so close that I have sometimes forgotten my true identity. But I belong to a different and more ancient order of beings. When you turn to books, you will find the word daimon has several spellings. I prefer the oldest version, an accurate transliteration from the Greeks, who were close observers of traffic to and from my realm. Their witches – especially in the wild northern reaches – were adept at the dangerous art of drawing down spirits from the Moon. The most excellent shaman-philosopher, Plutarch, studied deep in our academies before he took up permanent residence and joined the faculty of one of our finest schools. Plutarch’s essay on the Sphere of Luna, De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet remains the best travel guide to our realm outside the closed stacks of the Magic Library.

Do please be careful with the word "daimon" now it is in the air, darting around you on dragonfly wings. Words have the power to call things into manifestation, and bring creatures from one world into another. You don’t want to say "daimon" out loud the wrong way; this can produce unpleasant effects, and sometimes unwanted visitors. To call me a "demon" would be extremely rude. I did not mind being called a "demon" in demotic Greek in the age of Cleopatra, but since then a fog of fear and confusion spread by the morbid imaginations of the Dark Ages has made that version quite unusable.

Note: My post on "Bombing the Moon" triggered a lively discussion of how we can establish the reality of intelligent beings in the astral realm of Luna. There is really no substitute for direct interaction, when that is possible and timely. So I thought I would post this excerpt from one of my early conversations with a daimon of Luna who - over the nine years since I recorded this not unamusing statement - has been an excellent guide to the realm where he has resided, by his account, for a very long time. He counsels that this is not the time for humans to make uninvited visits to Luna; many of the residents are quite angry over the fact that a human agency (NASA) targeted and fired on the Moon. Though the physical impact was trivial, this apparently added to a deep-seated suspicion of humans.
The graphic: "Nocturnal Float" by artist and dreamer Michele Ferro, who recorded a dream in which humans fired on the Moon - with devastating consequences - in June 2003, and posted it at our forum over at http://www.spirituality-health.com/ a month before NASA shot rockets into a crater near the lunar south pole. Here is Michele's dream report:
BROKEN MOON
Mankind blew up the moon. Not completely, but all that remained was a craggy charred clump. Something "bad" was happening in the world so that the "experts" felt it was necessary. Many of us were against this action and protested, argued, prayed, and did what we could think of to prevent it but we did not succeed. And of course, as it turned out, things in the world were even worse now. I knew that if you peered through a telescope there were strange squiggly masses in the sky that were headed toward the earth from the moon.
I stood alone at the top of a snow-capped mountain in the late afternoon and looked at the moon - black, charred and destroyed - in a bright blue sky. I reflected that someday it would be a myth that it was once white and round and full. I wondered how the cycles would look now and how the tides would be affected. I also started to see advertisements reflected into the sky that angered me greatly.