So Disney is about to hit us with Moon Knight, and the media is ablaze. Moon Knight is actually one of the coolest heroes. His power comes and goes. During the full moon he is super strong. During the new moon he barely has any power at all.
Of course in spiritual symbolism, the moon expresses the false truth. Like, the moon is only relevant when you are in darkness. And all light (truth) and gravity (power) comes from the sun, which is the center of all things (like God). Humanity is like the earth, going around the sun (God) and dependent on it for all energy and power and light. The earth is knocked off kilter, just like humanity, and sometimes the earth is hot, sometimes cold, just like humanity does well sometimes, not so well at others. The earth is half in the light and half in the darkness, just like the earth. Sometimes pointed at God and bathed in light, sometimes looking off into space and in darkness. Then we get to the moon. While the earth (humanity) orbits the sun (God), the moon orbits the earth and is dependent on the earth to stay in place. Kinda like our old pal who I just love to write about in my crazy facebook posts…the devil. Satan or Hasatan. The Serpent. Samael. Asmodeus. Beelzebub. He can only do anything to humanity when humanity is in darkness. And he has no truth to give. He can only bounce the truth (sunlight) back at us in the night…sometimes…to lead us astray with truth distorted.
So according to this symbolism, and true to Disney’s form, Moon Knight represents someone who can only be a hero when he is strengthened by the devil. Great. There goes Moon Knight.
But there is another way to look at these things. Maybe we can flip the script a bit. After all, the Jews like to highlight that regardless of the details of his relationship with the Messiah and the angels, Satan is still an agent of God. I mean the Calvinists with their modernism also highlight that everything that happens is simply God’s sovereignty. And Kabbalah also highlights that everything that is is an outworking of Ein Sof, God as he really is, no matter what it is.
Oh, and the stars are the angels, by the way. And they guide us in the night. And they do radiate their own light. They don’t twist anything. And Satan is an angel, if a fallen one.
So then, looking at the moon this way, we can look at it like the fact that even when we are in darkness, God will light our way, whether it’s by tiny little stars far away twinkling, or whether it is by bouncing his truth at us off the moon, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.
A common theme about Moon Knight stories is that he likes to go out to catch bad guys during the full moon, when his power is at its strongest, but so many stories revolve around his being forced to defeat the biggest bad guy during the new moon or the crescent moon, when he is at his weakest. The bad guy is going to do his thing right now, and Moon Knight has to do something about it right now, whether his power is strong or not. And he ends up defeating the bad guy without any superpowers at all, kind of channeling his inner Batman, who has no superpowers but gets it done anyway.
So again looking at the moon this way, we can see that whatever the details of the symbol may be, you are going to get God’s truth and power and warmth bounced at you when you are in darkness, and along with the twinkling stars, your way will be lit. Sometimes you will see things clear as day. Sometimes not. Sometimes you will defeat the bad guys when you are strong, sometimes when you are weak. Sometimes it will be easy. Sometimes it will be hard. And sometimes the devil coming at you will make you stronger. You don’t have to make the moon your sun, though. You don’t have to make Satan into God. He is just a way God bounces the truth at you.
I think if you keep these things in mind when you watch the show, it will make it a little richer. We are all like Moon Knight in a way. We feel so much better and stronger and more powerful when buying into the devil’s light, but we need to read a little deeper into exactly where the real light in that light comes from, finding the lessons from divinity in all the jacked up stuff going on, if we are going to use that stuff to get us where we are really going, so we will be able to do God’s will even when there is no moonlight shining at all, when we only have the stars around us.