THE MOON
Symbolism
The Moon is pictured with different phases shining brightly down onto the earth showing the important cycles that we experience in life. There is the repeated symbol of two towers of duality shown here for the last time in the Major Arcana. The towers are identical here and show one of the fools last strong experiences of separation in the final steps of his journey.The Yods fall from the sky, showing the divine presence in the darkness of the night.
A crayfish crawls out of the universal waters of the subconscious where our basic animal instincts are born. We have the same survival instinct inside us. A wolf and a dog stand howling at the moon. The wolf represents our more raw, wilder nature and the dog symbolises a more tamed connection to our animal nature. All three animals represent different stages in our evolution and the subconscious past that we hold in our bodies. The dog barking reflects back to the Fool card and yet here the animal fears coming up is not due to the Fool’s leap into incarnation but his move away from old patterns and into the light. The Moon lights up our fears so that we can detach from them.
Keywords
Upright: Subconscious, darkness, occult, past lives, karma, shadow self, ancestral healing, Dreams, instinct, intuition, imagination, illusions, dark night of the soul, psychic abilities.
Reversed: Fear of dark, shadow denial, repressing past, mundane vision, negativity, sleepwalking, suppressing subconscious messages, avoid past lessons, madness, hysteria.
Upright meaning
The Moon reflects the light of the sun onto our darkness and our shadow. Ninety-five per cent of the activity of our mind is unconscious. The thoughts that provoke uncomfortable feelings are a part of our programming that we would rather keep unconscious. The Moon, however, will shine a light on what is hidden. Here are all of our memories, our inherited programs, and our past lives. This card reveals secrets about the past that we may not have seen before.
The moon will always bring up the past. We sometimes dwell on the past and sometimes we repress our memories, especially those that are painful. Letting go of our attachments to the past is important but first, we must see what it is that we are holding onto. This is the Moons job, to shine a light on what is not normally seen. If we can become aware of how we are chained to the past, we can integrate and transform unconscious attachments.
The Moon shines her light gently into the darkness and the shadow. She can guide us through our shadow work because she guides us to see our darkness and fears. She will encourage a night of the soul and if we don’t resist this journey, she can help us release past karma and attachments to habits that no longer serve us.
Because the Moon reflects our subconscious selves, she opens a doorway to our inner world of dreams and imagination. She will communicate symbolic messages to us through dreams and this is a good time to pick up on this guidance. She will also awaken our psychic senses that open up as we heal the hidden programs that suppress these gifts.
The Moon has strong ties to the feminine and the mother energy. This is a powerful time to heal our relationship to the feminine and whoever holds the mother energy in our lives. It is time to look at our fears and doubts, to respect the past where they come from, and to consciously walk forwards. May we consciously surrender the chains that hold us to the past.
Reversed meaning
The Moon has a dual nature. The Shadow of a card that already represents us taking a good look at the shadow can have two distinct messages. When we resist looking at our hidden past, there is normally pain and fear that is uncomfortable to feel and face. On one hand, it is important to be aware of our resistance and to work with surrendering and trusting more this darker part of our journey.
On the other hand, our journey into the shadow can sometimes be overwhelming and we may not be psychologically prepared. This reversal can sometimes be a warning not to dive too deep too fast and to maybe find some professional guidance before we jump into shadow work that our ego is not ready to experience. Every journey has its time.
Strong traumas from the past are naturally suppressed but those traumas will always bring up mirror experiences because those wounds have a natural desire to be seen, respected and healed. Some of our traumas are inherited ones. We hold our forefathers DNA and we will unconsciously repeat their mistakes. This is not a curse but an opportunity to heal an old ancestral program.
When our inner fears are not faced, but instead strongly suppressed, we will often attract stronger life experiences to bring them out to be seen. We will have more excuses to blame the outer world for what is ‘happening to us’. We won’t see the correlation between our fears and what is manifest because we are too strongly in denial. The Moon reversed asks us to look at these habits.
If you have been on a prolonged journey of darkness, you can also see this reversal as being a sign that this journey is coming to an end and there is light at the end of the tunnel.