This is by far my favourite Tarot card. Because it's the one which represents an opportunity to change your life. Through losing those rotten old habits that have been holding you back from being who you truly want to be. And for me that's what Tarot is all about. It shows me how to be a more functional more beautiful human being. (I know, you're surprised, right. You thought it was the devil's tool, lol.)
However The Moon is not an easy card to understand. Just take a look at it would you.
A dog and a wolf are howling at the woman in the moon, that's right, there's a woman, look. She's not very happy. Can you see the yellow tears she's crying? Meanwhile some kind of crustacean (lobster or crayfish who knows, you say to-mate-oh, I say tom-mar-toe) crawls out out of the water and opens his arms in welcome. And ahead two towers create a gateway through which a path leads somewhere unknown. Weird, huh? Like some crazy dream. That's because we're dealing with the subconscious in this card which is hard for the mind to grasp.
Let's just focus on the crustacean for today. A strange life form. Hard for even scientists to classify.
Crustaceans can be found crawling along the muddy bottom of water courses, including ocean trenches thousands of meters down and mountain lakes thousands of meters up, which makes them pretty darn resilient, don't you think? They arrived early in evolution and have remained pretty much unchanged for millions of years. I said they were resilient. Resilient and ubiquitous, they're everywhere man. They might have started in the ocean but they can now be found in water all over the planet. Some have even set up home on the beach (sound's good to me.) Though you won't see them often as most prefer to hunt at night.
They are scavengers who eat pretty much anything: plant or animal, dead or alive. They're like nature's very own vacuum cleaner. But they're not easy to kill in return. A hard exoskeleton protects their soft centre and if cornered they can drop off an appendage and regrow another one later. Handy, huh? We manage to kill them though, by the boatload. Although why we bother is a wonder as only a small portion of these creatures is actually edible. One of the most interesting things about them is they cannot grow unless they shed their skeleton, which they do do from time to time hidden away from sight.
So the key ideas and how they might relate to The Moon card:
Ancient species: You're dealing with something in your psyche that was implanted early in life.
Hard to classify/Most of creature inedible: This issue is hard for you to get a handle on.
Resilient: This issue has been difficult to 'kill' i.e. resolve.
Nocturnal/Muddy bottom of ocean: This issue is being impacted by your subconscious. That's why it's difficult to resolve.
Hard shell: You feel quite protective about this part of your self/life. It's your soft centre.
Growth: You have to shed your protective layers in order to be able to resolve this issue and grow.
Delicious: Okay okay I threw that one in, but they are and so is this Tarot card, although both come with a tough exterior that needs first to be cracked.
The woman who taught me Tarot, Anne Shotter, founding president of the Tarot Guild of Australia, called this card vacuum cleaning your soul. Doesn't sound pleasant does it? I like to think of it more as reprogramming your hard drive. Giving it a good reboot.
It's finally not biting back every time your mum tries to get a rise.
It's finally enrolling in higher education like you've wanted to since you were a little tacker but never felt good enough for.
It's finally giving up cigarettes after trying for 10 years.
It's finally acknowledging you'll never go back to the ex who makes you feel like shit.
It's finally losing the extra weight you've been carrying around since you were a teenager.
It's also the card of childbirth. There's nothing like having a baby to change the way you operate as a human being.
It's that profound and that challenging.
The Moon is the 19th card in Life Lessons Tarot. It takes the experience of the 18 cards before it to be capable of this kind of deep inner change. That's the 18 tears the moon is shedding.
As Albert Einstein (or some other dude, no one can quite decide) said: If you always do what you've always done you'll always get what you've always got.
The great gift of Tarot is that it says you CAN change how you operate in the world, i.e. who you are, for the better. And that radical life-rattling process happens here in The Moon. It's not easy but it can be done.
Have you done it? Please share examples.
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