The Moon Card from The Smith-Waite Borderless Deck

The Moon Card in the Smith-Waite tradition.

Here is the crawfish with a tough shell protecting its vulnerable underbelly. It is climbing out of the water towards a moonlit path that will take it up the mountain to a higher self. The crawfish, like the ancient Zodiacal sign for Cancer, ruled over by The Moon, represents the energy of our primal instincts and our unwanted feelings.

The crawfish surfaces in the dark and through our dreams. Spending most of their time in the deep waters of our unconscious, our unacceptable fears and desires are powerful enough to crawl out and climb up the path into our conscious mind.

The Moon is shown in all her phases. Her golden tears fall like those of Isis, the ancient Egyptian Goddess of the Moon, whose compassionate tears brought her husband back to life. She sees the crawfish and embraces it even when she does not understand.

The dog and the wolf sit each side of the golden path to self-realization and howl to the moon. The path to higher consciousness must pass them. The wolf, fierce and wild, has one eye on the crawfish and acts instinctively to chase it back into the dark waters. The dog has been tamed by love and compassion. Willing to serve, it gazes enraptured at the moon, accepting the crawfish and its journey.

The plants around the rim of the waters of the subconscious are dark, barely recognisable silhouettes of their daylight selves. The two towers mirror the pillars that we see in the High Priestess, The Emperor and The Chariot. However, here they are bleak; the small dark windows representing the power of our unconscious minds to imprison us with sorrow, fear, fantasies or delusions.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung

The Moon, goddess of the night, illuminates our path to self-realization through our dreams. She tells us to acknowledge our repressed feelings, to conquer our unconscious fears, our self-doubt, the dark imaginings that hold us back.

The Dark Night of the Soul - our shadow side

“The purpose of Alchemy is to liberate the whole individual which is hidden in the darkness, threatened by the rational and correct conduct of life, consequently experiencing themselves as hindered and on the wrong path.”
(Carl Jung, Vol. 13, Alchemical Studies, par. 433)

Sometimes we all want things that we do not want to want. We fantasise about behaving, having, doing things that we believe are wrong or unacceptable - desires that we find difficult to share with our closest friends or even acknowledge to ourselves.

Our shadow side is the side of us that we hide from the world - that we sometimes hide from ourselves - the person that we act out in dreams or fantasies. This is the side of ourselves that we struggle to accept. We hide it because we are ashamed or embarrassed.

We all have a shadow side. Sometimes it is more apparent to those who know us than to ourselves.

‘Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people’. Carl Jung

Our shadow side is often experienced as projection - when something we are ashamed of in ourselves is seen as a fault in others. An extreme example might be homophobia which some studies suggest can sometimes be a visceral negative reaction to LGBTQ by people who harbour same-sex desires themselves.

Learning to understand, acknowledge and express our shadow side - allowing it to come out into the light - can be a difficult process. A ‘mid-life crisis’ or an ‘existential crisis’ is often the point at which the shadow side or parts of our subconscious demand to be heard and will not be silenced. The Moon, with her compassionate tears, turns our anguish and our fears into loving acceptance and takes us towards The Sun.

The Moon and Madness

“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness”
(From the poem ‘Howl’ by Allen Ginsberg 1956)

Luna, ancient Roman goddess of the moon, gave her name to lunacy or the ‘moon madness’. The moon’s association with strange behaviours and madness goes back thousands of years and probably far longer to primitive times.

In King Lear, the rewriting of an ancient pre-Roman story of a Celtic King’s delusions, loss of power and insanity, Shakespeare wrote of “fools by heavenly compulsion”. Moon madness is a common trope in traditional stories. When we observe the moon’s gravitational pull, powerful enough to pull the tides in vast oceans, it is not surprising that people have long believed her power to alter the minds of humans.

The Moon asks us to be compassionate about our own delusions and those of others. Understanding mental health and accepting with love those who are experiencing mental health problems is a message of the Moon.

The Moon and our Deepest Fears

‘Somewhere, to what remote and fearsome region I know not, Denys Barry has gone. I was with him the last night he lived among men, and heard his screams when the thing came to him; but all the peasants and police in County Meath could never find him, or the others, though they searched long and far. And now I shudder when I hear the frogs piping in swamps, or see the moon in lonely places.’ (The opening paragraph of The Moon Bog by HP Lovecraft.)

Every culture has its stories of malevolent witches, crazed werewolves, bloodsucking vampires, and other moonstruck creatures of the night. Unlike the Sun, Moon shadows distort reality, creating strange shapes that the confused mind translates as fearful and monstrous.

In the Major Arcana, The Moon comes between The Star, signifying manifestation of hope and The Sun, symbolising optimism and personal fulfilment. Confronting our fears is a necessary stage on our journey towards enlightenment. The Moon asks us not to succumb to our fears. We must face them and embrace them before moving on.

The Moon and The Feminine

Moon goddesses are almost invariably female - for example Diana, Artemis and Isis.

In many tarot decks feminine intuition is seen as an innate, mysterious yet powerful force, typified by The High Priestess with a bright sickle moon at her feet or a full moon in her left hand or above her head.

The Full Moon Above the Head of The High Priestess in The Tarot Illuminati by Eric C Dunne

Traditionally, a woman’s monthly menstrual cycle was seen as a reflection of the lunar energies as she passes through her four phases. The stages of a woman’s life flow from Virgin, through Mother and Enchantress, to Crone, reflecting the seasons of the year. This spiritual or intuitive connection between women and the mysteries of the universe was recognised by ancient religion. In modern times understanding and validating our beliefs about the universe became the scientific study of men who made it easy to reject on grounds of lack of proof . How do we prove love or sadness or acceptance? How do we prove grief, or revulsion or adoration? The Moon is about the power of what feel and believe about ourselves and our connection to the universe to affect and change our lives.

The Importance of Fantasy

The stories of childhood and the journey to adulthood and beyond are retold in the tarot cards through the symbolism of castles, towers, agriculture, wildlife and landscapes, powerful men and confined and victorious women.

As Bruno Bettelheim, the insightful child psychologist who devoted his life to understanding troubled children, wrote,

The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal , they are not untrue . . . The unrealistic nature of these tales (which narrowminded rationalists object to) is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner process taking place in an individual
Bruno Bettelheim. The Uses of Enchantment

Being willing to listen, to understand and work through our fantasies and dreams is important for growth. Tarot is one way to do this.

The Meaning of The Moon in Tarot

When The Moon appears in a tarot reading, we might be being asked to confront our deepest fears or delusions. It is time to question what we are afraid of and why.
Gaslighting, a recent name for an ancient ploy to control someone by making them think they are losing their mind, is an aspect of the Moon card.
Anxiety, phobias, OCD, psychosis, paranoia, depression, panic attacks, food issues – so many commonly experienced states of mind that span a wide range from the well-managed to negatively affecting our lives – are all the subject of The Moon. Tarot can help us by looking at ways to understand why we feel the way we do and even suggesting possible therapeutic solutions. Some might be simple such as joining a gym or a book club, perhaps an online dating site or getting in touch with old friends or estranged family members. Others might be more challenging like investigating talking therapies or seeking professional, legal or medical advice.
Female issues are often indicated by The Moon. Problems such as menstrual migraines, challenging menopausal symptoms, endometriosis, hormonal problems such as those caused by polycystic ovaries, problems around fertility or negative self-image can all be explored through the tarot. Be aware that the tarot is NOT a medical diagnostic tool and should NEVER be used as such, but it can help to some women to find new ways or seek professional help to deal with symptoms which might have been misunderstood or misdiagnosed in the past.
Sleep problems such as recurring nightmares or dreams, insomnia, sleep walking and poor sleep hygiene can all be indicated by The Moon card in a reading. Exploring ways to address these problems can be the focus of a tarot reading.
The Moon can appear in a reading when someone is being affected by bullying or discrimination arising out of prejudice or fear. Racism and prejudice faced by members of the LGBTQ+ or the disabled community are examples of fear of ‘the other’ expressed as poor treatment which can result in challenges to mental health. Dealing with aggression, violence or more subtle forms of discrimination takes its toll on people’s lives. Finding ways to acknowledge and address our own prejudices is just as important and the tarot can show us ways to connect to people who differ from us culturally, socially, politically, in age or gender or any other way in which we define and categorize ‘the other’.
The Moon is a mysterious card and it reminds us that it is only by confronting our fears, phobias, fantasies, deepest desires, and our instinctive needs for security, comfort, companionship and love, that we can embrace our true selves and find fulfilment.