Why is the Moon Card evil and bad?

[danieljuk]

we have such a history of demonising the moon! the Victorian's were convinced people went crazy during a full moon (lunatics).

If we look at the sun and the moon, there must be positives and negatives of both, instead one is "good" and one is "bad". I really try to challenge the negative associations with the moon when I do readings. In Tarot Bear's book he writes about the moon and it's negative image. He portrays it as really about cycles.

There is some nice suggestions about the positive aspects of the Moon here
I like the ideas that mystery can be a good thing, it illuminates in the dark, it has connections to femininity and romance.

 

[kwaw]

Islamophobia

I don't agree that the Moon is always a bad/evil card,* it has many positives. But to address the question as to why it may be seen as such, one of the reasons that may have fed into its reputation early on that I haven't seen touched on (lost or subsumed beneath the feminist interpretation of its 'bad' reputation as being the patriarchal denigration of all that is feminine, which is no doubt a part of it) is that maybe of old the moon is a symbol of Islam, and the rise of the Ottoman Empire with its expansion in the 15th century and huge incursions into Europe in the 16th century was a great concern and source of fear. An exemplar of this in terms of the tarot is among the tarot sonnets of Folengo, 1527:

The Triumphs of Falcone:

Moon, Hanged-Man, Pope, Emperor, Popesse

Dear Europe, when will that part of you
owned by the Treacherous Turks,
be returned by the Pope or Emperor,
who hold the keys of Fortune in their hands?

Alas, the Traitor and importunate have placed
the summit of Peter’s honour
in the hands of a Woman, and set Imperial fury
Only against the lily, and not the Moon.

If the Pope were not a Popesse,
who holds Marcin suspended by the foot,
I’d see the Moon in the Eagle’s grasp.

But the acts of this Pope and Emperor
of mine will ensure my Popesse makes the Moon grow,**
and I want to Hang myself.***

Other reasons are the icongraphic and emblematic traditions associating it with inconstancy and the fickleness of Fortune, and as already mentioned, Luna(cy).

Kwaw

Notes:

* An old thread, long but well worth reading through, 'La Lune, How may it be read?'
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=35468

** Far(e)... la Lune : 'making the moon' is idiomatic for the renewing moon, or according to Florio 'the moon to shine'; and figuratively means 'great anger, full of fury'.

***Eagle = Christendom, Holy Roman Empire/Emperor; Lily = France; Falcone is possibly Grifalcone, a venetian friend of Folengo's, and Marcin (little?) Mark is possibly Venice (whose patron saint is St. Mark); Moon = Ottoman Empire / Islam; Popesse = false/foreign religion (which is against the 'true' faith of Christianity), a weak 'feminine' pope whose actions serves the enemies of faith, parts of Europe under a foreign (non-christian) religion/power (Ottoman Empire/Islam).

 

[SweetSiren]

I hate to say this, because this is so overused when talking about tarot, but it depends on surrounding cards.
Personally, if there are a lot of colors that contrast the moon, lots of bright colors in the spread, I tend to think something is brewing that could change things, one of the traditional "all is not what it seems" interpretation. Maybe one of your close friends whom you have the happiest of times with, is actually harboring some anger or jealousy. And this is bad. It certainly isn't heartwarming.

If the moon is surrounded by some neutral colors, as in the card doesn't seem to stand out with it's darker theme, I'm likely to see some sort of stability in it, like awareness of what's *really* going on and being ok with it (sort of along the lines of the common intuition interpretation). Like, you may be aware that your friend has some anger or jealousy problems, but they're not willing to admit it to you, the both of you haven't had a confrontation about it.

I don't think the moon is necessarily negative or scary, but to be frank, it's not something that indicates anything positive. Think about it. It's not often that we keep good things in the dark. It's not often that secrets kept are actually really happy ones. I like the High Priestess because she tells you eventually what you don't know. The Moon, however... you may never know until you seek it out for yourself, and even then, you might be chasing ghosts. In both of my examples, you don't know for sure about your friend, it's just a gut feeling you have or lack, and you'll probably never know for sure. The High Priestess, however, eventually brings things to light.

So yeah, I don't like the Moon. I like that it can say something is amiss and to stay close to your values and what you know to be true, but that's as far as my appreciation of it goes.

 

[Richard]

Even the man who is pure in heart and say's his prayers by night,
may become a wolf when the Wolfbane blooms and the moon is pure and bright.

 

[nisaba]

Why does the moon card always gets a bad rap?

I'm not sure it does. I'm not sure any card does (except, perhaps the Devil and Death, and then not from people who know the Tarot). Getting a bad rap and having the job of portraying the more challenging things is not the same thing.

Do people fear the moon?

I don't know. I personally don't. She is my sister. She is my light in the dark.

Is there something evil about the moon?

Not as far as I know. That's not to say that the card doesn't have challenging things to describe.

The moon is connected to femininity and cycles and intuition and the magnetic pull of ocean waves and tides.

It's also connected to shadows, darkness (moonlight is never as illuminating as sunlight), disappearances, clouds, wolves, towers and crustaceans, whatever they might symbolise personally to every reader.

I think one of the problems people have is that moonlight doesn't light things up the way sunlight does. A scene by day or under urban street lighting looks wholly different to the same scene by moonlight without any artificial lighting. If you are operating in moonlight-proper, shapes are different, distances are different, and there is the look and feel of bulk in shadows, waiting to launch itself at you. Not for nothing are myths like werewolves attached to the Moon - if you see a stranger unexpectedly by moonlight, they may well look like a cross between a person and an animal.

And because of these changes to perception under real moonlight, the moon card has its association with mood changes, illusion, and arguably insanity.

We who are living in urban environments where even in the early hours of the morning we can see the ground between our feet and everything several metres away from us, we don't appreciate the illusions that the Moon casts. Try living in the small town where I did a few years ago, where there is no street lighting and the nearest town to spill light-pollution over the horizon was 400 kilometres away. If you went outside at night you DID take a torch, because there was no possibility, even under a full moon, of seeing what the ground was like under your feet. And moonlight made the road look different, even made your own home unrecognisable.

Which is why the card is associated with illusion and a break from reality.

 

[Sar]

Recently The Moon revealed a persons drug abuse for me, so it became a bit negative then, but now I love here again.

 

[ravenest]

Try living in the small town where I did a few years ago, where there is no street lighting and the nearest town to spill light-pollution over the horizon was 400 kilometres away. If you went outside at night you DID take a torch, because there was no possibility, even under a full moon, of seeing what the ground was like under your feet. And moonlight made the road look different, even made your own home unrecognisable.

Which is why the card is associated with illusion and a break from reality.

My experience is the opposite. For more than 20 years I have been living in an environment with no outside artificial lighting. I can see quiet well by Moonlight (just a colour de-saturation) , a few times even being able to read large print by moonlight. Even at no moon at all, the stars can provide enough light to walk around by.

I can easily recognise my own house and others and .... in Moonlight (although I must admit some look different in moonlight).

The difficulty comes during cloudy nights with no moon.

My take on it is .... when its dark at night you cant see, so a light is usually carried. A light can be seen by others.

When the Moon is out thats when people do dastardly deeds at night ... just enough light to do it without giving your position away, just enough darkness to conceal.

Perhaps in the days before outside lighting, you were more at risk on moonlit night ?

Same for outside ritual at night, a bit of moonlight is better.

But that doesnt explain this story (based on a traditional Australian one );

" Hey! You kids! Go to sleep! Dont lie there looking at the Moon. You know what will happen? The Moon man will get angry at you. He will come down here and eat you! Oh, you dont believe me? Well, I can take you to a place where that happened and the children's bones are still there scattered around. No go to sleep ... and dont look at the Moon! "

Yeah .... Moon MAN.

 

[nerrine]

I'm (almost) always pleased to see this card

I think it's an overall positive card, just not an easy one to face. The strange light of the moon is calling primitive creatures from the deep, making both domestic and wild dogs howl, and the water is so dark- who knows how deep it might be or what else is in there?
But there is a path, if you can get beyond it, where you realize you are actually on the other side of the veil that was behind the High Priestess- the veil you were so curious about but couldn't get past her to lift.

So while there are some unpleasant and previously repressed or denied feelings being stirred up- this card says now the time has come that you can face them and get past them. The phase where you were blind to their existence is over- which means that as long as you can face the "monsters being called out from the deep" they will no longer hold any power over you. And the monsters probably aren't nearly as scary in reality as you have made them in your imagination. I mean, crabs and crayfish are creepy looking but I'm pretty sure they've never fatally attacked anyone (maybe in Australia there's a venomous one ) The Moon offers the promise of liberation from some previously unknown block in your psyche.

It always makes me think of the quote from Jung:
"Until you make the unconscious conscious it will run your life and you will call it fate."

 

[kwaw]

There are a couple of idioms we may relate to the animals on the (TdM) moon card of relevance;

firstly the french 'Between the dog and the wolf', idiomatic for 'twilight', in which light it is hard to discern between the dog and the wolf.

secondly there is the italian 'What has the moon to do with a crab?', meaning 'What a (strange, bizarre, fanciful, disproportionate) comparison!'

Seeing things in a strange light, our perception of things is twisted, distorted, thus our understanding and actions may be based on faulty information, our perception of things being a distortion of things as they truly are. Things will seem different in 'the light of the Sun'.

 

[Rhinemaiden]

I view the moon card as enchantment and benevolence .... I see no negatives in this card other than a caution not to be taken in 100% by what is perceived in the moonlight, but to examine it further in a harsher and more revealing light. Take what you see in the moonlight with a grain of salt.

My favorite moon card is from The Tarot of the Absurd (the card on the RIGHT in the link below). To me it represents peace, protection, serenity.

http://barefootfool.com/the-two-moons-of-the-tarot-of-the-absurd/