The Moon Tarot Card Meaning

The Moon upright

A moon sheds drops of dew between two towers; a dog and a wolf howl, and a crayfish climbs out of a pool onto a path that winds into the distance. Waite reads the dog and wolf as the fears of the ordinary mind at the edge of the unknown, and his advice is to be still. Do not act on half-light: verify, rest, and let things settle.

The Moon reversed

Waite reversed gives instability, inconstancy, silence and lesser deception. The fog is thinning; still double-check before you commit.

A reversed card (What does Upright / reversed card mean?) is one drawn upside-down.

Is The Moon a yes or no?

Upright: Leans no. No — or at least not until the picture is clearer. The facts are not all visible yet.

Reversed: Reversed, The Moon reads as mixed — not a clear yes or no: confusion lifting, instability, minor deceptions.

The yes/no lean is BornClock’s reading convention drawn from the card’s meaning — Waite himself did not assign one.

Symbolism in the The Moon card

What appears in the 1909 Rider–Waite–Smith picture, as Waite describes it:

• Moon with dew falling — Waite: thought descending quietly
• Dog and wolf — Waite: the fears of the natural mind
• Crayfish climbing from the pool — deep impulses that rise and then sink back
• Path between two towers — Waite: the way out into the unknown

In Waite’s own words (paraphrased)

Upright: hidden enemies, danger, calumny, darkness, terror, deception, error.

Reversed: instability, inconstancy, silence, lesser deception.

Source: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910, public domain). Some of Waite’s 1910 fortune-telling meanings are old-fashioned; the plain-English reading above is ours.