Major Arcana · 18
The Moon
La Lune · La Luna
The The Moon tarot card meaning runs through both orientations: upright, illusion, intuition, the unconscious; reversed, confusion lifting, secrets revealed, release of fears. Below, its imagery across the Rider–Waite–Smith, Thoth, and Marseille decks, and what the tradition’s writers said about it.
- Element
- Water
- Planet
- Moon
- Zodiac
- Pisces
- Hebrew
- Qoph
- Numerology
- 18
- Timing
- Pisces season (February–March); lunar cycles — within a moon's turn; nighttime; dream-time.
Upright
- illusion
- intuition
- the unconscious
- dreams
- subconscious patterns
- mystery
Reversed
- confusion lifting
- secrets revealed
- release of fears
- anxiety processed
The Moon Tarot Card Meaning
Upright
[object Object]
Reversed
[object Object]
The image, three ways
Rider–Waite–Smith
A great moon, both crescent and full visible, hangs in a strange sky dropping yods. Below, a wolf and a domesticated dog howl on either side of a path. A crayfish emerges from a pool. Two stone towers flank the path leading into distant mountains.
Thoth
A nightmarish moon-scape with the path winding through Anubis-like figures, scarab-like crayfish, and dripping yods. Crowley calls this the most terrible card in the deck — the descent into the deepest unconscious before dawn.
Marseille
La Lune — a face in the moon, two towers, two dogs (or wolves) howling, a crayfish in the water. The path beneath.
Four ways a reversal speaks
After Mary K. Greer, Tarot Reversals (2002)
01 · shadow
The unconscious flooding; projection mistaken for perception; the deeper psyche surfacing unbidden.
02 · fading
Illusion dissolving; the projection recognized as projection.
03 · excessive
Anxiety amplified into paranoia; lunar mood without anchor.
04 · internalized
Hidden anxieties; fears nursed in private until they swell.
What the tradition says
A.E. Waite · 1910
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot
Hidden enemies, danger, calumny, darkness, terror, deception, occult forces, error. Waite's reading is overwhelmingly cautionary.
Aleister Crowley · 1944
The Book of Thoth
The Moon as Pisces — the deepest, darkest water before dawn. Crowley calls it the most terrible card; the dark night of the soul made visible. But: the path goes through. The Sun is on the other side.
Rachel Pollack · 1980
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom
The Moon is the descent into the personal and collective unconscious — the place where dream and shadow live. Walking the path is the work.
Mary K. Greer · 1984
Tarot for Your Self
Greer's instruction for the Moon: keep a notebook by the bed for two weeks. The card's intelligence arrives in dreams, half-thoughts at the edge of sleep, body-knowing that surfaces only when the rational mind has stopped policing it. Most of the Moon's work happens horizontally.
Lon Milo DuQuette · 2003
Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot
DuQuette frames the Thoth Moon as the most psychologically severe card in the deck — Crowley's image stares back at the seeker like an open psychic wound. The path between the towers is the path through the dark night; there is no shortcut, only the willingness to keep walking the dim track until dawn.
Shadow
The paranoid; the dreamer who confuses fantasy with intuition; the projector who can't tell their wound from another's behavior.
Archetypal role
The Dreamer / The Mystic / Hecate / The Lunar Goddess / The Threshold-Walker
Historical notes
The Moon's strange creatures — the crayfish in particular — have puzzled scholars. Some see the crayfish as the primal unconscious self crawling toward consciousness; others as Cancer's astrological symbol misdrawn into the Moon card. The two towers reappear from earlier cards (Death, Hierophant) — the threshold motif. Crowley's Moon is the most unsettling card in his Thoth deck.
Neighbouring arcana
The Moon combinations
Bring this card into a question
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