The Moon

  • Arcana Major
  • Number XVIII
  • Figure on this site Mani's slow journey
Historical evidence

In the earliest decks

The Moon is the eighteenth trump in most traditional decks, but the earliest decks did not print numbers or names on the trumps, and their order was not fixed. The card’s imagery varied widely before it settled.

One Tarot Heritage survey describes the oldest known Moon images as astrologers or astronomers with measuring instruments, watching the sky during a lunar eclipse. It dates the D’Este and Charles VI cards to the mid-15th century. The Visconti-Sforza card, about 1450, is unusual: it shows Diana, goddess of the hunt and of chastity. A late 15th-century card in Budapest seems to show a man carrying the moon’s weight, which the same survey links to Atlas. The Bolognese design first appears around 1500 and then stays the same on Bolognese decks.

The familiar Tarot de Marseille Moon came later. The survey describes two 17th and 18th-century forms: Type I, with the moon seen from the front (17th century), and Type II, with the moon in profile (early 18th century), which became standard by the mid-18th century. Both show dogs, two towers, a crayfish, rays and falling drops. Their meaning is not agreed: the survey notes the drops are ambiguous and that the towers and dogs have been read in several ways (for example as the tropics, or as day and night). One example is the Jean Dodal deck of Lyon, dated about 1701 to 1715.

Historical evidence

The Rider-Waite-Smith card

The 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith Moon was drawn by Pamela Colman Smith for Arthur Edward Waite. Tarot Heritage describes it as showing the moon in profile with two sets of sixteen rays, and notes that Waite replaced the drops of blood in earlier versions with Yods (the Hebrew letter shape). Éliphas Lévi’s 1856 version had kept the Marseille design but added a blood-sprinkled path toward the horizon.

Waite himself says the card differs from some conventional types: the moon is waxing on what he calls the side of mercy, to the observer’s right. He gives the moon sixteen chief and sixteen secondary rays, and Wikipedia reports 15 Yod-shaped drops of dew in the deck. The dog and wolf, the towers and the crayfish rising from the water remain from older designs.

Myth and literature · Quotation

Waite’s description

The distinction between this card and some of the conventional types is that the moon is increasing on what is called the side of mercy, to the right of the observer. It has sixteen chief and sixteen secondary rays. The card represents life of the imagination apart from life of the spirit. The path between the towers is the issue into the unknown. The dog and wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of that place of exit, when there is only reflected light to guide it.

The last reference is a key to another form of symbolism. The intellectual light is a reflection and beyond it is the unknown mystery which it cannot shew forth. It illuminates our animal nature, types of which are represented below—the dog, the wolf and that which comes up out of the deeps, the nameless and hideous tendency which is lower than the savage beast. It strives to attain manifestation, symbolized by crawling from the abyss of water to the land, but as a rule it sinks back whence it came. The face of the mind directs a calm gaze upon the unrest below; the dew of thought falls; the message is: Peace, be still; and it may be that there shall come a calm upon the animal nature, while the abyss beneath shall cease from giving up a form.

Myth and literature · Context

Later meanings

The old trumps carried no fixed occult meanings. Antoine Court de Gébelin, in his essay on the tarot, gave the trumps an Egyptian, kabbalistic and divine significance; he is also credited with the suggestion of an Egyptian origin. These were his own claims, not earlier tradition.

Tarot Heritage lists several later attributions for this card. The first recorded interpretation, in a 1750 manuscript, was simply “Night”. French occultists linked the card to the Hebrew letter Tzaddi, while the Golden Dawn linked it to Qoph and called it the “Ruler of Flux and Reflux”. Wikipedia lists the zodiac sign Pisces for the card, citing Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth (1944), not the Golden Dawn.

These are additions by writers in the 18th to 20th centuries. They were not part of the 15th-century Italian games.

Modern interpretation

As read on this site

This is the meaning used for readings here. Using the tarot to divine is a modern practice, and the Norse figure shown for each card is this site’s own association; the tarot began as an Italian card game. A short history is on the Tarot page.

Upright

Keywords: illusion, uncertainty, anxiety from incomplete information, navigating the unclear

Mani is chased across the sky and never caught, and that pursuit means the light he gives is always partial, always shifting, never quite steady enough to fully trust. This card names real uncertainty: a situation seen through shadow and partial information, where instinct is the only available guide but instinct itself might be reacting to shapes that aren't actually there. Move carefully here. The path isn't clear, and pretending otherwise doesn't make it so.

In general: Things are genuinely unclear right now, and what feels like insight might also be uncertainty wearing a confident face. Move carefully rather than assuming the dim view is the full picture.

In love: A connection that feels confusing or hard to read clearly, where feelings are real but the situation itself is genuinely murky.

In work: A decision being made with incomplete information, where intuition is filling gaps that facts haven't yet confirmed.

Reversed

Keywords: confusion lifting, surfacing fear, clarity returning, confronting the unconscious

Moonlight eventually gives way to a clearer hour, and what looked like a threatening shape in the dark turns out, in better light, to have been something smaller and far less menacing all along. This card, reversed, marks confusion beginning to clear, fears that have been simmering under the surface finally being looked at directly rather than just felt. The unease isn't gone yet, but it's finally visible enough to actually deal with.

In general: What's been unclear or unsettling is starting to surface where it can actually be looked at. That's progress, even if it doesn't feel comfortable yet.

In love: A confusing or anxious undercurrent in the relationship starting to surface and become nameable, rather than just felt as vague unease.

In work: A source of unspoken worry or uncertainty about a decision becoming clear enough to actually address directly.

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