The Moon (Tarot card)

The Moon (XVIII) is the eighteenth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.

The card depicts a night scene. Two large, foreboding pillars are shown. A wolf and a domesticated dog howl at the moon. A crayfish appears in the water. The Moon has "sixteen chief and sixteen secondary rays" and "[is] shedding the moisture of fertilizing dew in great drops" (totaling 15 in the Rider-Waite deck) which are all Yodh-shaped. The figure in the moon is frowning, reflecting displeasure.

According to Waite's , "The card represents life of the imagination apart from life of the spirit... The dog and wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of that place of exit, when there is only reflected light to guide it... The intellectual light is a reflection and beyond it is the unknown mystery which it cannot reveal." Additionally, "It illuminates our animal nature" and according to Waite, "the message is 'Peace, be still; and it may be that there shall come a calm upon the animal nature, while the abyss beneath shall cease from giving up a form.'"

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