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Bohemian Gothic Tarot

XVIII THE MOON

Lighter or more conventional meanings

Magic, enchantment and mystery * Wild imaginings, both visionary and somewhat frightening * Mental disturbance, confusion * Spells and illusions * Illusions and visions - good or bad.

Darker, shadow or more hidden meanings

Dark imaginings, delusions * Using the occult or witchcraft in a negative way * Madness or mental confusion * Paranoia * Nightmares or feeling as though you are haunted or cursed.

The Moon is often seen as the most "Gothic" card in any tarot deck. It speaks of dreams, illusions, nightmares and, on occasions, madness. It's the card of natural psychics and otherworldly enchantresses; beautiful and alluring but also dangerous. It's important to remember, in a reading, that the modern tendency to read The Moon as an indication of mental illness and instability and of psychological and psychic disturbances, is unnecessarily negative.

The card can also point to extra-sensory gifts, enlightening (if at times unsettling) dreams, magical powers - whether you regard these as actual or metaphorical- and divinatory abilities. It's the card of witches, but, as the image here shows, the witch can be seen as a beautiful woman with a strange affinity with nature. The figure of Pan, playing his pipes in the distance, implies her contact with the wild things of the earth, and, more threateningly, with the idea of panic and loss of mental control. As a figure with the power to use these unpredictable energies, the woman is alluring and also, literally or metaphorically, enchanting. It's significant that she's dressed in white, not black, and accompanied by a white wolf. Clearly she has the potential to be dangerous, but is she really evil? I think that we should see her as "weird" in the old sense of the word - supernatural, unearthly or uncanny - rather than either mad or wicked. Yet there is undoubtedly peril shown here and we should be aware that the wolf, elegant and lovely as he is, has bloodstains on his mouth.

When you interpret this card, beware of giving it any simple meaning such as "madness" or "psychic powers". The Moon is more subtle and more complex than that and tends to need sensitivity when it's read. It speaks of things that are hard to define exactly; being in touch with the supernatural in a way that might look crazy to an observer, occult knowledge that carries some risk to your psychological health, a desire to get in touch with spirits and phantoms, becoming lost in dreams and nightmares. It's a frightening card in some ways but it is also alluring, for if we believe that there is more to this life than the material world that we see everyday, then an invitation to step outside reality and experience "what lies beneath" is bound to be tempting. The Moon warns us that this kind of contact with enchantments and the world of "faeries" (as some would characterise it) carries some dangers. The white wolf on this card symbolises the wild things, both in our own minds and in the hidden world around us, that we must keep under our control when we go in search of magic.

Some further ways to consider this card

One other card, the Five of Swords, shows a woman with a wolf, although in the case of the Swords' card it's a werewolf rather than simply an animal. In what ways are the cards similar to one another? In what ways are they different? Could the white wolf who accompanies the woman in The Moon card also be a werewolf?
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but 1 feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
- Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee.
We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise know what all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing... Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish, silly tale.
- Arthur Machin, "The Great God Pan", Late Victorian Gothic Tales.
Suddenly, as I gazed, something came between me and the light. I looked up instantly. Between me and the round disk of the moon rose a luminous face of a woman, with great strange eyes, and a woman's mouth, full and soft, but not smiling, hooded in black staring at me as I sat still upon my bench. She was close to me - so close that I could have touched her with my hand. But I was transfixed and helpless. She stood still for a moment, but her expression did not change. Then she passed swiftly away, and my hair stood up on my head, while the cold breeze from her white dress was wafted to my temples as she moved. The moonlight, shining through the tossing spray of the fountain, made traceries of shadow on the gleaming folds of her garments. In an instant she was gone and I was alone.
- F. Marion Crawford "By the Waters of Paradise", The most interesting stories of all nations: American.