Selene ~ Moon in Cancer Talisman Pendants

Hail, white-armed goddess, bright Selene, mild, bright-tressed queen! 

-Homeric Hymn to Selene

While the Moon is a key consideration in most of my talismanic elections she is usually playing a supporting role as a translator of light. By way of the Chaldean Order she is the luminary that stands between us, the planets, and the stars. It is her we meet at the borders of the sublunary sphere as she reaches down to touch the realm of changing nature with her divinity. We feel the ebbs and flows of her cyclic nature most distinctly, and when she meets and illuminates the planets and stars upon her path their influence is heightened. Normally in talismanic elections I am looking to the Moon to act as intermediary, as according to the Picatrix, the Moon gathers and binds the planetary powers and the heavenly spirits to the lesser things of this world. However in this election I looked directly to her. 

The Selene ~ Moon in Cancer Talisman Pendants were crafted over a couple of months: the face of Selene placed in the center of the entwined serpents is the talismanic element of these pendants. I sculpted her face from modelling clay and at the elected time of 5:27pm on the 16 Jan, 2022, AEST in Brisbane, I sand cast the faces of Selene in solid Sterling Silver. This election took place during Moon hour. The Moon was waxing gibbous and fast approaching her fullness as well as dignified in her domicile of Cancer and applying to conjoin the ascendant. Enclosed by the benefics, the Moon was separating from dignified Jupiter and applying to Venus, with Venus in her heliacal rising phase.

As the Moon rose over the ascendant the room was bathed in a luminous blue light I had never before or since experienced in my studio. I quenched the silver Selene talismans in a bath of rosemary infused water. The talismans were suffumigated with an incense made of rosemary and frankincense as I invited Selene to ensoul her image using the invocation from the Picatrix as well as hymns and poems. 

The final form of these talismans is inspired by two Images of the Moon, first from the Picatrix and the second from Agrippa. As these images were complicated with detail I chose to adapt a section from both texts:

"The image of the Moon, according to the opinion of Mercurius, is the shape of a woman with a beautiful face....with horns on her head, encircled by two snakes..."(Picatrix, page 107)

"They made images of the Moon in the hour of the Moon rising in the first face of Cancer. These were for increasing plants on earth, and against poisons and illnesses of children. Their figure is a horned woman... having around her head a crown of two serpents..." (Agrippa, page 408)

Talismanic Properties

 Agrippa says of a talisman made under a fortunate Moon: makes the wearer pleasing, amiable, delightful, and wards away wickedness and ill will. It excels in security in journeys, makes wealth and a healthy body, and drives away enemies and other harmful things from whatever place they wish. ( Agrippa, p341)

My personal experience of this talisman draws in part from the association of the Moon with the Great Mother Goddesses. Demetra George writes in Finding our Way through the Dark, that as the Great Mother Goddess the Moon was perceived as the fertile matrix out of which all life is born into and which all life is reabsorbed. The story that the Moon tells is of birth, growth, fullness, decay and disappearance. The Moon talisman provides for a harmonizing with the cyclic nature of life which is mirrored in the progressive phases of the moon. She guides through transitions and cradles to support a full experience of emotional expression so that we may channel and direct it or release it as needed.

Rick Tarnas in Cosmos and Psyche, identifies the Moon as governing the impulse and capacity to gestate and bring forward, to receive and reflect, need and care, nurture and be nurtured. Attunement to the Moon brings us into resonance with our feeling nature.

I also recommend this talisman for dream recollection, this comes from both from my own personal experiences as well as Agrippa who recommended working with the Moon to obtain nocturnal visions, and for summoning spirits in sleep. 

References:

Agrippa, Cornelius, and Eric Purdue. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Rochester, Vermont, Inner Traditions, 2021.

Attrell, Dan, and David Porreca. Picatrix. A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic. University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019.

George, Demetra. Finding Our Way through the Dark : --an Astrological Companion to Mysteries of the Dark Moon. Tempe, Az, American Federation Of Astrologers, 2008.

Tarnas, Richard. Cosmos and Psyche : Intimations of a New World View. New York, N.Y., Plume, 2007.