What the Hell is the Moon About?

So I’m still working with the Tarot de Marseille. I haven’t written about it much on the blog this year, but the TdM continues to be my main divinatory deck as I explore this system of Tarot in greater depth. I’m past the fun, exciting everything-is-new stage and into the intermediate slog of “I’ve got the basic principles down, now I just have to apply them until my eyeballs bleed.” Learning a new skill—always so enticing at first and then hard for a long, long time.

Certain aspects of TdM reading are becoming clearer to me. I’m now in the habit of immediately scanning every reading for the presence (and number) of Épées. This sets the tone for the reading and tells me about the obstacles the querent faces and how surmountable those obstacles are. Likewise, court cards pretty readily show the extent to which other people are involved in a situation and the amount of power those people have. Things like this provide immediate shape and structure to a reading and help me navigate the details.

Nonetheless, there are other aspects of reading with TdM that remain challenging to me. Of particular significance are the trump cards taken from the natural world: the Sun, the Moon, the Star, and the World. Reading the trump cards with this deck has involved a lot of literalism: the Emperor is somebody with swagger who likes being in charge, the Hanged Man indicates consequences, the Chariot is a journey. But it’s hard to be literal with the natural cards.

I did a reading for a friend yesterday about something career-related and the Moon showed up smack dab in the middle of the reading. And… I simply do not know how to interpret its presence there, even given the context provided by the other cards. I talked through it with my friend, pointed to the nearby Seven of Coupes, and discussed the difference between the constrained, measured water in the cups and the boundless ocean depicted under the Moon. I think that eventually we got to an interpretation that made sense. But it was a slow, painstaking process of staring at the cards and asking “What on earth is this trying to say?”

In moments like that, it’s so tempting to fall back on RWS-style card interpretation. It’s so tempting to say “The Moon is about the unknown, illusion, intuition, and deception, so if we think about those themes in the context of your career…” Nonetheless, I’m trying really hard not to do that, because it doesn’t feel authentic to this deck. That is absolutely the interpretation I would have gone with if I’d done this same reading with a RWS deck, but it just doesn’t feel like it fits with the TdM. Whatever the Moon was trying to tell me in that reading, it wasn’t something that the RWS Moon would have said. The two decks have a radically different feel and character to them, and despite the temptation to lean on prior knowledge, I’m doing my best to honor that difference and to meet the TdM on its own terms.

But in the meantime, cards like the Moon continue to baffle me.