The 78 Cards
The Moon
Major Arcana, card 18. Astrology: Pisces.
Uncertain light. Dreams, intuition, and the things that only look real in the dark.
The picture
A full moon hangs in the sky, with a crescent and a face drawn inside it, and drops fall from it towards the earth. Below, a dog and a wolf howl up at it. A crayfish climbs out of a pool in the foreground. A path winds from the water between two towers and on into distant hills.
Upright
The Moon is the card of walking by uncertain light. You can see enough to move, and too little to be sure of what you are seeing.
Under moonlight a shape in the garden can look like anything. That is fear at work: False Evidence Appearing Real. It is also where intuition speaks loudest, in dreams, in hunches, in the feeling you cannot explain. The trouble is that the two voices sound alike, and the Moon asks you to learn which one is which.
Look at the dog and the wolf, the tame and the wild in you, both howling at the same light. The crayfish is something rising from deep down. The path runs between them all. Pisces is the sign of dreams and dissolving edges, and the card suits it. Keep walking, slowly, and check what you think you see.
Reversed
Reversed, I read the Moon most often as delayed. The fog is lifting, and it is lifting slowly. What was confusing is starting to come clear, or a hidden thing is about to come into the light. The second way that fits is too much or too little: too much Moon is the imagination running away with you, the monkey mind at full volume, and too little is ignoring your intuition because it cannot be proven.
To tell which it is, ask how you are sleeping. If you are waking with things coming clear, it is delayed, and you are nearly through. If you are lying awake with the worst case playing on a loop, it is too much, and the card asks you to put the fear down and look again by daylight.
When it turns up
What are you seeing by moonlight that might look different in the morning?
The Moon has also been a Tarot Card of the Week. Read that post to see the card at work on a real week.
If you would like the cards read against your own chart, my readings are here.
Related pages
The Moon as a Birth Card · The Twenty Two Paths
The 78 Cards
Every card in the deck, upright and reversed.
See every page and post in the Contents.
The Members area has songs, Moon pages to print, the Sunday article a day early and a first look at new Library pages.