18. The Moon
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Welcome to Soulchology’s worksheets, your starter-kit into an intuitive self-enquiry using tarot and astrology. I write these in my usual dry humour, which reflects the tone of my sessions too, because learning is intense enough without stripping it of humanity. A little wit makes the wisdom easier to digest!
Anyway, while full sessions include numerology, Lenormand, and therapeutic layers, these worksheets are your solo starter kit designed to get you going without frying your nervous system.
Grab your deck, take a breath and don’t overthink it. No altar required. You can read these on your lap, mid-commute, or in bed with questionable lighting. If you know current transits, great, add them in. If not, the cards still work because they’re generous like that.
And, if you shuffle really fast, they love to fling out like you’re live in an episode of Ghosts and Trevor is standing next to you.
Each sheet prompts you to connect the cards with your real life, that is, not your aspirational, one-day-when-I-journal-daily life. Pay attention to the artwork, colours, symbols, and emotional tone because tarot is layered, not linear. Study only what leaps out, don’t go looking for clues.
This isn’t about mystical perfection, it’s about noticing yourself. Your thoughts, your choices, your patterns. If you’re new to tarot and feeling twitchy about it, you might want to read my piece on Substack that gently dismantles the pressure.
My advice is to pull (or fling) your card at the end of the day, not first thing. That way, you’re reflecting and not pre-loading your brain with vague forecasts. It’s a faster way to build intuitive confidence and a more honest way to learn what the cards actually mean to you.
i. The Nutshell
Upright
The Moon dissolves the edges of things you thought you understood. Nothing is quite what it seems with this card. Your reflection makes animal shapes, it ripples, the shadows breathe, and the road ahead glitters like a mirage that vanishes in the same moment. This is your calling to feel your way forward without a script.
When The Moon rises your inner world of dreams, instincts and fears gets louder. You’re in the theatre of your mind where each of your alter egos has something to say. Stay present like you’re watching a new sci fi on Netflix because this is where you get to see what scares you, and that some of that is purely your imagination in overdrive.
Despite all this, The Moon wants you to walk the path anyway. To stop demanding proof and start learning the language of intuition, uncertainty and the wisdom that can only be felt. You may feel like your anchor isn’t holding but that’s often what real change feels like before it introduces itself properly.
Keywords: Intuition, dreams, illusion, uncertainty, subconscious, parallel universe, soul memories
Translation: Trust the part of you that’s been here before.
Reversed
The Moon reversed is what happens when you attempt to gaslight your own intuition. You're feeling off… and writing it off. You're calling it confusion, but deep down you know exactly which truth you're dodging.
This reversal suggests you're stuck in a fog of your own making, or inherited patterns pretending to be facts. Maybe you’re spiraling through old fears, over-identifying with your anxiety, or clinging to someone else’s narrative because yours feels too out-there to trust. It's a call to stop outsourcing your knowing. You're not losing your mind; you're losing that alter-ego.
Alternatively, The Moon reversed might mean the scotch mist is finally starting to lift. You’re squinting in the half-light and seeing the outlines of something more resonant. It’s not in your full beam yet but you’ve become accustomed to finding your way in the dark and know to trust this is the beginning of what it feels like to trust your intuition.
Keywords: Fear, confusion, denial, intuition blocked or returning
Translation: You’re in the deep end of your own psyche so tread water and notice.
ii. Illus-traits
A quick symbolic breakdown of The Moon in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck - what do you need to be at peace with to face uncertainties?
The Moon - Illumination with mood swings. The path is warped and cast in shadow. Feel your way through.
Dog and Wolf - Instincts that are tame verus wild. One knows the rules, the other howls at them. Both are valid but neither has the full picture.
Crawfish - Raw psyche surfacing. What’s usually hidden is now crawling into consciousness. Get curious.
Water - The unconscious is reflecting and distorting. You’re looking through your emotions to find the truth.
Twin Towers - You’re in-between realities now. This is the initiation of arrival.
Winding Path - Not a straight line in sight. Progress can feel like a u-turn until you see you were always on the right path.
iii. Influences
Planetary
The Moon is ruled, unsurprisingly, by the Moon which is our emotional hub and the queen of tides, moods and mysteriously misplaced objects. This planetary influence moves with secret hints and hunches and by doing this, logic loses its grip and your night terrors start writing the agenda. You’re being asked to trust what you feel in the dark, not what you can prove in daylight.
Natal House(s)
The Moon draws a veil between the Fourth House of roots, safety, and ancestral memory, and the Twelfth House of dreams, breakdowns and what psychologists systematically call “the subconscious.” However, The Moon activates the internal terrain where your illusions masquerade as insight and your childhood pet might visit you in a dream to deliver life advice. Which will you listen to?
Astrological Sign(s)
The Moon card is linked to Pisces who’s the empath, mystic and emotional sponge. Pisces prefers to swim through life absorbing signals. This card shares the signature of blending reality into poetry and dissolving facts into feelings.
Numerologically
The Moon is card 18, which reduces to 9; the number of culmination, inner wisdom, humanitarianism and distant revelations that only make sense three weeks later. It’s the Hermit’s lantern flickering at the edge of a lucid dream. There’s something you’re meant to see here, but you’ll have to pop your specs on and stop trying to get Google Maps to sort it out.
Element
As a Water card, The Moon swims in the depths of feeling, intuition and surrealism. This isn’t healing you can plot on a flip chart because it arrives through tears, tantrums, déjà vu, chills, head tingles, and the suspicion your shadow just winked at you. Stop intellectualising and listen to what your body or dreams are trying to communicate. Keep a dream diary and decipher the next day.
iv. A Day in the Life of The Star
Well That Escalated Quickly
You feel like you’ve wandered into a haunted house with no Selenite and the overwhelming feeling that your so-called intuition might be undermining your best interests. You’re not sure if you’re having a breakdown or just vibing on smoke signals. Dreams are weird, your gut feelings feel like gastro, and every tarot pull looks like a high school dare. You're suspicious of anyone who uses the word “journey” and your shadow self is now hosting nightly pep talks you never asked for. Nothing makes sense, everything feels symbolic, and you’ve started yelling “Over it! Just tell me in plain English!.”
Adjusting the Knobs
The weird dreams are still happening, but now they come with subtitles. You’re less terrified and more cautiously intrigued, like, “Maybe this is a metaphor?” You’ve stopped trying to decode everything with logic and started writing things down just in case they mean something later. The veil hasn’t lifted, but you’ve cut little peepholes in it. Emotions are still running the show but you’ve embraced the fact that your inner world is more vintage curiosity shop; still eccentric but has some charm to it.
Unsubscribed from Self-Sabotage
You’re embracing your inner moon-child and your coping mechanisms now include poetry. You’re noticing patterns, trusting hunches, and occasionally catching yourself saying, “I don’t know why, I just know.” And…, that’s working. Your boundaries are no longer made of wet tissue and you’re starting to feel more like yourself again, that’s if “yourself” is a mystical possum who’s learning to nap, feel feelings, and trust dreams over external input.
Writing the TED Talk
You’re floating through life like a softly glowing jellyfish with a PhD in emotional nuance. Mysteries now seduce you. You’ve made peace with uncertainty, flirt with your instincts and let your inner child choose your emotions. Your shadow and your higher self now car-pool. You don’t need to know where you’re going because your intuition has it’s own satellite. You’ve realised clarity is sometimes murky, strange and slow but as you’re now fluent in the dark, you trust that.
v. Working with these Energies
Living The Moon by Illuminating the Night
The Moon offers mystery, mood swings and metaphors that haunt your dreams. For example, think being a passenger in an open top bus that’s hurtling down a narrow cobbled street, dodging boulders of ice that look like giant Elestial Quartz, with a scary driver that laughs as he throws your luggage out the window. This perceives a lack of control of imminent change that’s leaving something behind in your current life. It wants you to get your driving license and take the wheel because you feel the change coming but your anxiety is driving the bus of denial, and it’s leaving whether you’re driving or not, but it’s better to be. The Moon archetype is a psychic treasure map scribbled in disappearing ink. You're not heading in a straight line because you never were to begin with. You're meandering through that cobbled town of your own psyche, led by moonlight. Welcome to the emotional riptide.
1. Decode the Dreams
- What’s your anxiety actually trying to tell you under all the static?
- What fears are being projected as intuition?
- Are you interpreting the signs… or reaching for another coffee?
2. Massage Your Shadow
- What emotions are you only allowing to visit after midnight?
- Where have you been trying to out-logic something that needs to be felt?
- What if your confusion is just the cocoon part?
3. Gently Release the Defenses
- If your inner child took that bus wheel today, what route would they choose?
- What roles or identities are overdue for a fade-out?
- Where can you be ‘weird’ without immediately self-editing?
4. Trust the Blur
- What would it feel like to let your life unfold without demanding immediate meaning?
- Which mysteries are actually invitations to expand your intuition?
- Can you be okay not knowing, and let intuition fill in the blanks?
5. Stay in the Dream Loop
- What recurring themes or synchronicities keep knocking on the door of your subconscious?
- Where does your heart and/or body say “yes” while your brain insists on overthinking?
- What small practise helps you reconnect when reality gets a little too pointed?
vi. Building Skills
How to Function When Everything Feels Like an Alternative Reality
Practice Emotional Cartography
Track moods like weather patterns, not personal failures.
Use journaling, dream logs, or voice notes to catch subconscious thoughts.
Learn to name your feelings before they hire a marching band.
Strengthen Inner Signal Reception
Meditate, not to “clear your mind,” but to hear its background noise.
Try breath-work or body scans to distinguish intuition from indigestion.
Trust the subtle yes/no in your gut more than the overthinking monologue.
Create Ritual Anchors
Choose 2-3 daily rituals that signal safety such as tea, candles and grounding touch.
Make your space beautiful or weird enough that your psyche feels seen.
Ditch strict routines and build gentle habits that tether you to the present
Develop Symbolic Literacy
Notice recurring images, metaphors, and motifs in your life.
Treat synchronicities like breadcrumbs, not mandates.
Interpret and understand but resist attaching and clinging. Divine flow needs to… flow. If you go through life like it’s a white-knuckle ride, your claw-like hand is unable to open to receive.
Gently Apply Reality Checks
Keep a trusted friend on call for when your brain spirals.
Ask: “Is this fear factual, habitual, or is this feeling new?”
In this hamster-wheel life, a nap isn’t just for nanas, they can really help. Tartan blanket optional but I highly recommend.
vii. Embodiment
Learn to See in the Dark. The Moon offers atmosphere, unraveling and revelations. You’re still here, a little feral, slightly cross-eyed from over-analysing signs, but intact. You’re now adapting to twilight logic and marrying your instincts.
Smell:
What does mystery smell like? Wet earth, candle smoke, the sharp memory of someone you haven’t met yet. Take it in. This is what it means to be alive in the middle of the in-between; tracking truth by scent and uncertainty.
Body:
Where does your intuition live today? In your gut, your neck, that sudden twitch in your left or right eye? Scan yourself and lay a hand over the somatic message, accepting any discomfort as being temporary. Your body is communicating and it knows you’ll pay attention to discomfort, so acknowledging it by asking what it’s communicating is the best way forward.
Soundtrack:
Choose instrumental music that sounds like the inside of your dreams. No lyrics. Just vibrations that speak to your bones in a language older than words. Let it hold your mood without trying to analyse. Feel the answer.
Action:
What’s one practice that grounds you? A salt bath by candlelight? Telling your worries to your cat? Drawing a boundary with someone who swears they’re “just being honest”? Make it mundane magic and make it yours.
Nature Cue:
Find the moon, a mirror, or a body of water. Stare. Reflect. Repeat. Watch how the surface changes with the slightest shift. That’s your psyche. That’s your truth and it’s tidal.
Notice What’s Dreaming You:
The Moon asks what’s becoming. What part of you is shapeshifting? What truth feels too wild to say out loud, but refuses to leave? That’s the next version of you. Let the Moon show you how to navigate by memory. Bonus points if you feel lost because this is how you know you’re in the correct realm.
viii. Your Impressions
Look at The Moon card in your own deck if possible. Take a moment to observe without overthinking.
Where does your focus rest? The moon above, both full and crescent at once? The wolf, the dog, the crawfish crawling out of the subconscious billabong? It’s all intentionally fluid.
Notice what stirs in you. Is it unease at the lack of answers? A strange ambiguous comfort? A gut-deep pull toward something you can’t explain but absolutely feel? Let it surface. The Moon doesn’t rush.
Now check your body. Are you holding your breath without realising it? Is your heart moving to an older rhythm beneath your logic? Maybe there's a sense of knowing trying to creep in.
The Moon asks you to feel it out; one dream-fragment at a time.
ix. Intuitive Meaning
This card can indicate the moment you realise the shift is a new normal, especially if it’s become a ‘stalker card’ (repeatedly shows up). Become curious as to what stories you’re currently telling yourself about whatever situation is wanting your attention.
When have you followed a hunch, gut feeling, or irrational instinct… and been right in a way logic could never have predicted?
Where are you mistaking emotional autopilot for safety, when what you really need are divining-rods to your heart’s-calling?
What’s one deep, slightly uncomfortable truth about your emotional nature that you're ready to honour instead of hide?
Applied Insight – Three-Card Reading with The Moon as Your North Node
What fear is disguising itself as fact?
What instinct wants to be trusted even if I can’t explain it?
What hidden part of me is surfacing now, ready to be understood?
Pull or shuffle-fling your cards, and let them form a riddle. Look for symbols that echo, colours that stir something, or expressions that speak in sighs. The Moon speaks in literacy concepts… which is why I love metaphors, analogies and similies so much ;o)
Write Your Own Keywords
Note three personal words that reflect your experience of The Moon. Make space for the poetic, the intuitive and the honest, especially the parts that don’t make immediate sense but feel true.
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x. Closing Reflection: Track Your Evolving Lens
Your relationship with each card will grow over time because it’s meant to shaped by your life. Consider the prompts below to revisit and reflect.
What I thought this card meant when I first pulled it: —————————————————
A recent experience that changed how I see it: —————————————————
How I feel about it now, in my body or life: —————————————————
What surprised me as this card kept showing up: —————————————————
One way this card is living in my life right now: —————————————————
If this card visited me today as a guide, what would it want me to remember? —————————————————
Revisit these after a week, a moon phase, or a meaningful moment. Let the card evolve as you do.
If you feel a quiet sense of recognition, curiosity and want to explore it, browse the sessions page for what feels right.