Why is The Moon card usually seen as negative?

chaosbloom

junemarie said:
The Moon in Tarot, as in astrology and other occult traditions, has had a bad press because of the rank misogyny of many male occultists - eg Papus and Crowley to name just two.

To become an occultist in Indo-European (and most other) cultures, you needed to be literate, preferably in Latin and Greek as well as your own vernacular, and have access to an exceptional library. A private income helped.

Few women had these opportunities before 19th century. Further, well-to-do educated men had the means, the contacts and the opportunity to publish in a way that simply wasn't open to women until the early 20th century.

Not only were male occultists informed by the misogyny of their own culture, but they understood better than most, the extraordinary and compelling nature of feminine magical power. For these reasons they were very wary and often negative about expressions of this power, of which the moon is perhaps the most important. Thus we have a tradition of negativity about the moon which still survives in some Tarot schools.

If you want a good corrective to all that nonsense, read (if you haven't already done so) Robert Graves' masterpiece on the magical feminine, The White Goddess.

For my money, the moon is the ruler of all magic, and especially of divination. You cannot interpret the planets, or understand your dreams, or read the Tarot, without honouring her. She is Mother, Goddess, and High Priestess, and you will understand nothing of the occult arts without her guidance.

Yes, exactly my feelings on why the greater divide between male and female magical practices exists. Female spirituality existed but since it dealt more with practical and not theoretical matters and didn't or couldn't publish books and form societies (women excluded from the Freemasons for example), their forms and practices were labelled as low magic versus the male-dominated high magic. It's not just that they were male. It was also that they were aristocratic upper class twits who tended to see anything outside their class as unlearned, unsophisticated and plebeian. That happened to include female spirituality.

SkylerK said:
The fact is, mythology and greco-roman -christian or pagan traditions aside, the Moon in my experience-and that of most readers I know- often speaks of mental illness, hidden things, the dark side, and everything I said in my first post-and more. I pride myself in being a pragmatist and empiricist first of all, and in readings, I have never seen the Moon in a particularly positive way. Of course, maybe one day I will, I can't rule it out. Until then, I'm sorry if Tradition has treated the Moon-and the feminine in general- unfairly, I am a woman too. But that's the way it is, and it's not going to change because we disagree.

Okay, so your argument now is that since your experiences have confirmed your bias for the Moon as a negative card, this holds some sort of universal validity for everyone. It doesn't. Not just because you might have confirmation bias but also because it's a universal observation that magical or divinatory correspondences differ between cultures and practitioners without that affecting the effect of the practice.

SkylerK said:
And it's not just about Christian tradition, by the way.

Do you prefer Abrahamic Judeo-Christian then? Islamic? The last one might be more favorable to the Moon because of their lunar roots but I'm not sure and frankly don't really care.

SkylerK said:
Oh I see a lot of disagreement, actually. And not just in attitudes, but about the facts. But that's alright. And it goes without saying that each one of us can keep his own and no one owns the ultimate Truth.

You are confusing opinion with fact. Please stop trying to prove interpretations other than your own to be wrong claiming to use facts. Unless of course you mean that everyone in this thread that doesn't ascribe to your exact interpretation is a bad reader.

SkylerK

chaosbloom said:
Yes, exactly my feelings on why the greater divide between male and female magical practices exists. Female spirituality existed but since it dealt more with practical and not theoretical matters and didn't or couldn't publish books and form societies (women excluded from the Freemasons for example), their forms and practices were labelled as low magic versus the male-dominated high magic. It's not just that they were male. It was also that they were aristocratic upper class twits who tended to see anything outside their class as unlearned, unsophisticated and plebeian. That happened to include female spirituality.

Okay, so your argument now is that since your experiences have confirmed your bias for the Moon as a negative card, this holds some sort of universal validity for everyone. It doesn't. Not just because you might have confirmation bias but also because it's a universal observation that magical or divinatory correspondences differ between cultures and practitioners without that affecting the effect of the practice.

Do you prefer Abrahamic Judeo-Christian then? Islamic? The last one might be more favorable to the Moon because of their lunar roots but I'm not sure and frankly don't really care.

You are confusing opinion with fact. Please stop trying to prove interpretations other than your own to be wrong claiming to use facts. Unless of course you mean that everyone in this thread that doesn't ascribe to your exact interpretation is a bad reader.

I'm just putting across my ideas and talking about my experience just like everyone else here, you're the one who seems unable to accept ideas other than your own, not me.

chaosbloom

SkylerK said:
I'm just putting across my ideas and talking about my experience just like everyone else here, you're the one who seems unable to accept ideas other than your own, not me.

There is a difference between tolerating different ideas and recognising them as equally valid as my own for those that espouse them which I did than immediately rejecting my opinions in favour of yours which you seem very insistent on. It seems that by "accepting ideas other than my own" you mean the later and you would be right on that.

SkylerK

chaosbloom said:
There is a difference between tolerating different ideas and recognising them as equally valid as my own for those that espouse them which I did than immediately rejecting my opinions in favour of yours which you seem very insistent on. It seems that by "accepting ideas other than my own" you mean the later and you would be right on that.

I did not reject your ideas, and what you said about the idea of moon in the different cultures and traditions is true, and very interesting. All I said was that in my experience, for some reason which I do not know myself, the Moon card carries a sinister aura that, if it corresponds in any way to the feminine, it does so in a disturbing way. In fact, in my readings, when the Moon comes up as a him towards her answer, it often means attraction mixed with anxiety of a subconscious nature. I hope that is clear.

SkylerK

chaosbloom said:
There is a difference between tolerating different ideas and recognising them as equally valid as my own for those that espouse them which I did than immediately rejecting my opinions in favour of yours which you seem very insistent on. It seems that by "accepting ideas other than my own" you mean the later and you would be right on that.

Oh by the way, if I had thought you were talking rubbish, I wouldn't even have replied to you.

chaosbloom

SkylerK said:
I did not reject your ideas, and what you said about the idea of moon in the different cultures and traditions is true, and very interesting. All I said was that in my experience, for some reason which I do not know myself, the Moon card carries a sinister aura that, if it corresponds in any way to the feminine, it does so in a disturbing way. In fact, in my readings, when the Moon comes up as a him towards her answer, it often means attraction mixed with anxiety of a subconscious nature. I hope that is clear.

No problem with that. That's just not how I see it. If I view the Moon as motherhood or bad menstrual pains or cancer in the ovaries (get it?) and my interpretation of the card in my own personal spreads gets routinely verified, that doesn't make your interpretations on your spreads wrong. The cards speak different languages to different persons.

When we were talking about randomness in Tarot, there was someone that claimed that all card interpretations are subjective and that the Tower might be interpreted as a positive card by some readers. I found it an extreme example but I don't doubt readers like that exist or contextual interpretations of the Tower as a positive card don't happen by some people. They wouldn't be "wrong".

SkylerK said:
Oh by the way, if I had thought you were talking rubbish, I wouldn't even have replied to you.

You've still got every right to think that if you're so inclined. The key is not to be rude about it.

SkylerK

chaosbloom said:
No problem with that. That's just not how I see it. If I view the Moon as motherhood or bad menstrual pains or cancer in the ovaries (get it?) and my interpretation of the card in my own personal spreads gets routinely verified, that doesn't make your interpretations on your spreads wrong. The cards speak different languages to different persons.

When we were talking about randomness in Tarot, there was someone that claimed that all card interpretations are subjective and that the Tower might be interpreted as a positive card by some readers. I found it an extreme example but I don't doubt readers like that exist or contextual interpretations of the Tower as a positive card don't happen by some people. They wouldn't be "wrong".

You've still got every right to think that if you're so inclined. The key is not to be rude about it.

I don't think I was rude at all, I think you got upset over something that is not quite clear to me, and I really don't want to continue with this, it is not interesting to anybody.

chaosbloom

SkylerK said:
I don't think I was rude at all, I think you got upset over something that is not quite clear to me, and I really don't want to continue with this, it is not interesting to anybody.

Gods, Skyler. That simply means that you can reject what I'm saying and hold your own opinions but if you do, just don't be rude about it. Not that you were already rude.

But you're right and I need to divert my attention to the chicken in the oven or this thread is going to cost me my lunch.

Barleywine

SkylerK said:
Oh I see a lot of disagreement, actually. And not just in attitudes, but about the facts. But that's alright. And it goes without saying that each one of us can keep his own and no one owns the ultimate Truth.

I'm one who happens to believe that Ultimate Truth is out there somewhere but all our methods of divination are imperfect lenses through which to view it - "through a glass darkly." The human mind is probably an inadequate vessel to contain it anyway (the "10-pounds-in-a-5-pound-bag" syndrome). It's why we have religion - to transfer our individual responsibility for thinking about it to a "higher authority." All we can do as readers is the best we can do, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't entertain - and hopefully educate - ourselves by trying.

junemarie

One of the things that is often lost sight of in discussions like this, is that Tarot cards are mostly read along with others. In other words, as a spread. Even if you have only two cards, they still modify one another. So the moon alongside the Tower, is going to mean something very different from the moon supported by the four of wands and the Lovers. Tarot cards derive their meaning from the way they interact with one another in a given spread. The meaning is never fixed, but always subtle, always subject to the pattern they create and recreate in each reading.
The Moon card is Feminine, but the who or how of that femininity (what 'feminine' means in a particular instance) will depend entirely on her relations with the cards that surround her. And sometimes the configuration is a negative one, and sometimes it's positive.
A Tarot spread is a discussion, not a monologue.

Why is The Moon card usually seen as negative?

chaosbloom

SkylerK

chaosbloom

SkylerK

SkylerK

chaosbloom

SkylerK

chaosbloom

Barleywine

junemarie