The Moon: Gus Porter
Upright: Illusion, anxiety, intuition, uncertainty, complexity, secrets, the subconscious
Reversed: Release of fear/anxiety, revealing secrets, clarity, self-deception, repressed emotion, misunderstanding, misinterpretation
Who better to fit the Moon’s themes of illusion and secrecy than Gus the Illusion Master himself! The Moon card represents your fears and anxieties from past experiences clouding your understanding of the present and future, making it difficult for you to trust your own intuition. Gus is shown to struggle with false impressions of other people, from his misplaced trust in Mattholomule and in Bria’s gang, to his inability to see past an illusion of Willow, his first and best friend. Gus tends to take people at face-value and give them the benefit of the doubt, but when his trusting nature blinds him to others’ deception, it deals a heavy blow to his self-esteem—especially since a lot of that esteem is based on his talent for illusion magic. His trauma from being taken advantage of by his peers for his academic talents leaves him with such severe anxiety that his subconscious has created a defense response that dredges up other people’s subconscious fears and secrets—a power he eventually learns to weaponize.
We eventually see Gus work through his difficulties with illusions; Through the Looking Glass Ruins challenges but then reaffirms his passion for his illusion magic by forcing him to use it to defeat his deceptive peers, and by allowing him and Matt to resolve their mutual misunderstanding. In Labyrinth Runners he is able to release his anxiety through Willow’s breathing technique, and to see through Adrian Graye’s illusions. Later he uses his powers to force Belos to reckon with his suppressed guilt by dragging his secrets up out of his subconscious. Because Gus gets a glimpse at these memories, he is allowed a clearer understanding of Belos’s past and Hunter’s status as a grimwalker. In a small moment in For the Future, his guess for what Luz’s palisman will be is the closest, suggesting that his intuition about others’ true natures is maturing.
