The Moon Tarot Card Meaning

The Moon upright

You receive only indirect light: your awareness reflects, interprets and recomposes what it perceives instead of seeing it directly. This is the card of dreams, imagination and the unconscious. Your imaginative life is very active: unusual emotions, dreams, fears, and sometimes a sharper intuition. You may feel confused, lost or worried, with the impression that something is slipping away from you, at the edge of your awareness. Misunderstandings, blurred perceptions, hidden motives and secrets, yours as well as other people's, enter the situation. You may also feel guided or drawn toward a goal you can't yet name.

Deep, instinctive fears awaken. They can make you react irrationally or out of habit. The card invites you to turn inward and leave some outside concerns behind, which can range from a halt in activity to a period of withdrawal. It can also indicate, for men and women alike, an inner awakening that needs your attention.

As for the situation, the card signals hidden enemies, danger, rumors and slander, deceptions and errors. It speaks of secrets, denunciations and scandal. It marks a moment of crisis, with illusion, daydreaming and error. Overall, it speaks of darkness, doubt and hesitation.

This darkness is a passage. By showing the limits of thinking that proceeds only by reasoning, the card pushes you to look for a more direct light. Doubt and turmoil can open onto a deeper understanding, if you don't lock yourself into them. The mistakes of this period teach you to tell true from false. And simplicity is all the more enjoyable after going through this strangeness.

Your strengths

When you accept what your imagination brings up, it enriches your life and calms you. You also know that an instinctive belief can hold a truth that reasoning doesn't yet grasp.

What holds you back

You let confusion and fear overwhelm you, and you sometimes take for real dangers that come from your own illusions.
You get lost in theories and interpretations, which end up blurring what you are trying to understand.
When your imagination runs away with you, you form fanciful plans that come to nothing.
You may show mental laziness, gullibility, superstition, an intrusive curiosity or false knowledge.
You become passive in your thinking and too impressionable.

What helps

Getting through the uncertainty without stopping there.
Accepting what the imagination brings up, with simple courage: the fears then calm down and the imagination brings you back enriched.
Getting guidance and preparing yourself before entering this zone.
Enjoying the charm of fiction while keeping your feet on the ground.
Not waving away what seems irrational to you: try to understand what a vague intuition is trying to say.
Approaching the trial as an adventure.
Following the path beyond ordinary experience, where a wider realm opens for whoever has the courage to go there.

The Moon reversed

The upright Moon speaks of dreams, intuition, mystery, fears and illusions: it shows what you feel without yet understanding it.

You may reject what you cannot see. You cling to reason, the literal and the practical, especially when you feel confused or when things seem irrational to you. You block what your intuition sends you and resist impressions that cannot be explained. You take refuge in the conventional and the conforming, or withdraw into silence, stillness or weariness. You feel ill-suited to the changes this card represents, especially when they make no sense to you.

You may also fight against what you are experiencing inwardly. You do not want to turn away from action and the solar side, and you may try to push this part of yourself away by keeping very busy. This fight does not work: your fears grow as you fight them. The result is turmoil, deeply disturbed emotions and fear, because you do not let the soothing side of the Moon appear.

The reversal can also give the opposite. You can face what worries you with calm and acceptance, especially when you are going through a personal transformation or a spiritual development. Instability and deception then seem less threatening than they do upright. Hidden things may come out into the open. Inwardly, there is a risk of deluding yourself about yourself, but also the possibility of understanding the images of your psyche. Accepting this lets you digest and clarify what you have lived through.

Toward others, you may see them as dreamy, deluded or too emotional, and judge them not very responsible for their actions. You may also believe they wish you harm.

The classic meanings of the reversed card are instability, inconstancy, silence, and deceptions or errors of a lesser degree than upright. An older reading sees a weakening of the card: an unease of conscience that stays latent instead of becoming active.

Your strengths

You can face what worries you with calm and acceptance. You can understand the images of your psyche and clarify what you have lived through.

What holds you back

You deny what you cannot see and cling to reason when everything seems confusing.
You block your intuition and resist what it brings you.
You withdraw into conformity, silence or stillness.
You fight your fears by keeping busy, and they grow.
You deceive yourself about who you are.
You credit others with bad intentions or judge them too emotional and not very responsible.

What helps

Letting what you feel come instead of fighting it: once accepted, this turmoil turns into wonder and imagination enriches you. Accepting what you are living through so you can digest and clarify it. Getting through doubt and uncertainty without fixating on them.

What the card shows

The scene takes place at night. A large moon lights a landscape, with a tower on each side of the horizon. Two animals, a dog and a wolf, turn their heads toward the moon. In the foreground, a crayfish comes out of a pool of dark water. Drops fall from the moon.

The moon

The moon produces no light of its own: it reflects the sun's. It therefore stands for an indirect clarity, that of imagination, dreams and the unconscious. This light only half illuminates things and distorts them, which gives an impression of uncertainty. Imagination turns what you live deeply into images your consciousness can understand, but these images remain distorted. The moon also stands for the mind that analyzes, compares and interprets without reaching direct light. It is waxing on the side of mercy, and it carries sixteen principal rays and sixteen secondary rays. It also points to the power and mystery of women's fertility.

The drops

The drops that fall from the moon have the shape of the yod, the first letter of the name of God in Hebrew, and they are a sign of grace. They also express a power that descends into the body.

The dog and the wolf

The dog and the wolf stand for the animal and instinctive part of you, which the moon awakens, just as a full moon makes both animals howl. They also stand for the opposing impulses of human nature, disturbed or fascinated by this uncertain light. The wolf is an animal of nature and the dog an animal adapted by humans: the dog stands for what is cultivated, the wolf for what is natural. The path goes between the two.

The crayfish

The crayfish comes out of the water and stands for what comes from the depths of the unconscious and rises toward consciousness. It represents the deepest fears, those without a precise form. It never comes fully out of the water and always falls back. What comes from the depths of you therefore shows itself only in pieces.

The towers and the path

The two towers mark the limits of what you ordinarily perceive and understand. The path between them is a passage into the unknown. This limit is not final: beyond it lies a wider field of experience, open to those who have the courage to follow it. The path goes up and down, but overall it leads upward.

What the card means

The Moon is the card of illusion, doubt and ambiguity. It shows a consciousness that hesitates, distorts itself and risks going astray in the face of its own reflections. It stands for the fears and illusions that appear when you move into unknown territory: confusion, a feeling of being lost, a sense that something is slipping away at the edge of your awareness. You may also feel guided toward a goal you cannot yet make out. It stands for midnight, the darkest moment before the light returns. The traditional meanings are hidden enemies, danger, slander, deception and error. It also points to scandal, denunciation and the revealed secret: what someone wants to keep hidden ends up being known.

In a reading, the Moon shows that your unconscious is stirring: you are going through unusual emotions, dreams and fears, and you are more intuitive. It also shows a withdrawal into yourself and a distance from outside concerns, as with the High Priestess, but with more vivid images. It is tied to the sign of Pisces.

Your strengths

You have imagination, intuition and a sensitivity to the images of the unconscious.
You can get through uncertainty without fixating on it, and your doubt can become the starting point of a deeper knowledge.

What holds you back

You may let fear, confusion and a feeling of being lost take over.
You risk getting lost in theories and interpretations that obscure what is real instead of lighting it up.
You tend to see things in a false light when imagination takes the place of reasoning.
You take refuge in reason, the concrete and activity to keep this part of yourself at a distance, and the fears grow all the more as you fight it.
You may see ill intentions toward you in others.

What helps

Accept the images, dreams and emotions that rise instead of fighting them: the fears calm down and imagination enriches your life.
Move forward with plain courage, preparing yourself for what you will meet.
Withdraw from the outside world for a while to pay attention to what is going on inside you.
Enjoy the charm of imagination while staying on solid ground.
Get through the uncertainty without stopping in it, and look for a more direct light than reasoning.
Look at your fears as an adventure.