Tarot card meanings · Major Arcana 18

What does The Moon mean in tarot?

In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Moon upright means “deception, occult forces, error”, and reversed “Instability, inconstancy, silence, lesser degrees of deception and error”.

Upright

Deception, occult forces, error.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3

Reversed

Instability, inconstancy, silence, lesser degrees of deception and error.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3

What does the picture show?

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.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 2

Where does the Moon fall in a reading?

The Moon belongs to the Major Arcana. On this site you draw three cards, which take three of the places in the ten-card method Waite describes: “This covers him”, “This crosses him”, “This is before him”. The same card reads differently in each place, and the I Ching cast beside it may agree or disagree.

Waite's words are quoted as printed, and left out where they speak of money, law, illness or disaster. The pictures are the 1909 deck drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. For entertainment and self-reflection.

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