Card 18: The Moon

In this episode, we discuss the radical workings of the Moon tarot card. From myth and patriarchy to practice and wild reclamation, we embrace the deepest intuition and wild waters within. From the Star’s healing into the liminal, to where intuition leads and softens the ego, the Moon encourages us to stand at the crossroads of internal to external, to discover ourselves, and let our wild magick out of the box. 

Some of the main themes in this episode:
• Evolution line from Devil to Moon and why it matters
• the liminal, intuition, signs, magick, and wildly reclaiming our evolution
• patriarchy’s break with cyclical wisdom and how doing the work for ourselves is to do the work that was denied to others
• symbolism of crab, pillars, lighthouses, wild vs tame
• three practical reads for real-life choices
• boundaries, protection, and discerning signs
• simple rituals for moon phases and integration
• poem “The Moon” as a closing invocation

Give me some algorithm love, please: a rate, a share, whatever, wherever, however, it is so appreciated!

Links:

• The Moon Blog Post
• Purchase My Tarot Key
• Purchase My Poetry Book
• Numerology of 18
• Pharos Lighthouse
• Qoph Hebrew Letter

Background track is Moon Over the Sea by Sayuri Hayashi Egnell

Chapters

• 2:18 Late Release And Life Chaos
• 4:56 Why The Moon Card Matters
• 7:22 From Devil To Moon: The Evolution Line
• 12:52 Facing The Liminal And The Ego
• 19:24 Patriarchy And The Loss Of Moon Magic
• 28:06 The Moon Belongs To Everyone
• 34:48 Numerology Of 18 And Themes
• 39:10 Reading One: Go Within And Integrate
• 46:56 Reading Two: Crossroads Of Inner And Outer

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:32

Hello, and thank you for tuning in to the Wolfchild Magic Podcast. My name is Ashley, your tarot reader, Rocky Mountain Witch, and overall Wolfchild. And I thank you for being here with me today. Today's episode is going to be a deep dive into the moon tarot card. I apologize that this episode is coming out to you a little bit later than what I wanted. Last week was insane. I got incredibly sick, had cold, just took everything out of me, and it took me a lot longer to recover because we were also dealing with having pretty much the entirety of the plumbing in our bottom floor being dug up and replaced. The day after Thanksgiving on Black Friday, I just wanted to do some laundry. Grizzly and I just wanted a really quiet day to kind of get our house back in order, to get our lives just settled. A quiet day just to tend to the house, kind of pick things up, you know. And I went to do laundry and I was walking downstairs. We went to do something, and I was like, why is the floor wet? Basically, my washing machine had backed up as it was trying to drain, you know, in the spin cycle and get all of the water out and down the plumbing line, the main line. All of that came up. So my entire laundry room and front area, like hallway, was completely flooded. This is also something that we thought was fixed because we had a portion of this pipe dug up in January, and they told us that everything was fine, it looked good, we were good to go, which was obviously not the case. So they had to come back out on Black Friday, and then between some miscommunications, stuff with the crews, the snow, it just took so long to get this fixed, and now it is almost completely fixed, but our basement kind of got a little bit torn up. It had to be because they have to get to the pipe. So the carpet had to be cut and it is now like taped back down because our cat would just destroy it. Uh, there's exposed concrete, and it's just a huge mess. The bathroom, which was where they had to do a lot of the plumbing because that was like on the other side of what they hadn't done, what which was supposed to be what was done, the bathtub had to come out, much of the floor had to come out. So it was just a huge project, and it just took so much out of me. So we are gonna be talking about the moon today. The moon is one of my favorite cards in the entirety of the tarot. I do have an episode that is all about my favorite tarot cards. I will have that linked in the show notes. As with all of my deep dives, I am going to be talking to you about how I read this card, how I work with this card, both for myself, for my clients, some encouraging invitations for you to work with this card, both in your tarot practice, but also just in your regular life. I'm also going to be discussing some of the imagery and the symbolism that you will see or may see in the moon tarot card. I encourage you to pull out your own moon card from your tarot deck if you own one. And as I'm no longer gonna be discussing all of the images, it's just become too cumbersome with the amount of decks that I own. I'm gonna be highlighting one that I think really emphasizes what the moon speaks to again in imagery and symbolism. But the blog post is linked where you can go and see every single moon card from every deck that I own. And there may be one in there that you really resonate with and you want to bring that tarot deck into your practice. There is no affiliate link. It is just me sharing my tarot decks, and you can see if you like one. If you like the way that I read this card, you can also click the link in the show notes to purchase my tarot key, which is where I pull from every single deep dive. It is literally just a handout that has the main ways that I read every single tarot card in the deck. So if you want the ways that I read them, then you can go ahead and again click that link in the show notes. Finally, if you could give me some algorithm love, I would be so appreciative. A rate, a share, uh, whatever, wherever, however, it is so appreciated. I will also be doing the deep dives on YouTube. I have decided I'm going to try to get my YouTube channel up and going a little bit more because I may be switching from the podcast over to YouTube. So if you would rather see all of this there where it's my face, not just my voice, then look out for that and show some love there. Now let's go ahead and start talking about how to read the beloved card, the moon. So just to back up here for one second, we are in the evolution line of the major arcana, the third line, starting with the devil, and you can go back and listen to every single deep dive, but starting with the devil, we are liberating ourselves. We are breaking free from the things that hold us down so that we can evolve. As we start to break free of those changes, the systems, the structures, the behaviors, the paradigms, everything that was kind of attached to those chains, to that old life has to fall with that with the tower. The star comes afterward and says, now we stand authentic, vulnerable, wild, connected, looking into the divine of this world for guidance. And that shift from tower to star now to moon is where we find the permission slip to let our wild spirit run free. So with the moon, there's so much happening, and the moon can be hard to sit with in a way because it's so liminal, it's so enigmatic, it's so intuitive, it's so watery and fluid that sometimes working with the moon may feel disconcerting. It may actually feel kind of scary in a sense, not in the terms of like safety being threatened, but in the term of self-discovery. It can feel scary to sit with some of the most precious, vulnerable, wild parts of ourselves because we are unlearning some of the old ways of being and evolving back into a more wild place. And that can feel triggering to the ego. So if that is the case, please know that that is one normal, two, that is by design. One, the ego wants everything logical, linear, straightforward, easy to understand. And that is the exact opposite of what the moon is, babe. The moon is not straightforward. Again, it's shadowy, it's silvery, it's feminine, it's mysterious, it's sexual, it's sensual, it's all of these beautiful aspects of our spirit and our lives, but that can be hard to sit in because we have to suspend. We have to embrace that watery, spiritual, fluid energy within us. And that again can feel very uprooting, but to do that is to actively reclaim something that literally patriarchy has taken from us, okay? Patriarchy has taken away this connection to that energy of the moon, that energy of the self, that energy of the oral, of the feminine, of the mysterious, of the dream space. It has literally replaced all of that, all of that internal beautiful energy, and replaced it with patriarchy, where we were forced to lose that connection to the moon, to the magic, to the mystery, to the wild, to the feminine. Patriarchy sought to tame and make women obedient so that we would be easier to control, we would be disconnected from each other and disconnected from ourselves, that we would have to look to those in power, air quotes, aka men, for validation, for resources, for finances, for any sort of power that we could get in this world, it couldn't come from us. It had to come from patriarchy. In fact, I just want to quickly read this. This is from the book Witch Unleashed Untamed Unapologetic by Lisa Lister. And it says, for thousands of years, people from all over the world worshipped a mother god, the great mother. She was nature and nurture, death and rebirth, fierce and loving, light and dark. She was the polarities and all the mystery that lies in between them. This creatrix of all that is was known as both male and female, and a divine, sacred, and devotional relationship with her was our guide. So it is no coincidence that when we were intentionally disconnected from the great mama, when our goddess nature was banished from the Roman Catholic Church, both men and women became disconnected from who they were. The patriarchal takeover. We were bereft of our parent, our mama, the one who nourished us, enter patriarchy, predominantly Christianity, to take on the role of parent. A controlling, ego-fueled, money-obsessed, capitalistic parent. The idea that we experienced our body as sacred, that we lived in the community, and that we worked for love and service was not conducive to the development of capitalism. So what followed was the destruction of all of that community, connection, and the sharing of wisdom were replaced by greed, control, and ego. The church, wealthy landowners, and merchant classes wanted to turn the lower classes into a work machine, a workforce that'd be compliant and work for money. The only way they could do that was to turn the mystical into a machine. They needed to steal and repress our spiritual beliefs, take away any sacred practices of initiation into adulthood, and disconnect us from any magical concept that meant we had agency and power. Without a mama, both men and women remain infantilized. They're filled with fear daily to maintain obedience and amenability. This makes them unable to take responsibility for themselves. And patriarchy has continued to create firm structures that keep us that way right through to the times that we are currently living in. She goes on to write, witchcraft was defined as an exceptional crime, distinct from all others. Ordinary punishments would simply not be enough. The patriarchal institution wanted to break down and destroy the strong, powerful women who threatened them. They wanted women to fear them and each other so that they never knew or experienced the magic and power that they had within them. They wanted to dismember the goddess and the divine spark of sisterhood and women that she represented. And finally, she writes, and from that system emerged a new, much more acceptable model of femininity to which women would have to conform in order to be socially accepted in the developing capitalist society. That model was one in which women were sexless, obedient, and submissive. Women's bodies and their life-giving menstrual blood were now receptacles of sin and shame. Women were resigned to being subordinate to men, and women accepted their role as reproducers of life and accepted too that in a capitalist society, that role was devalued to being simply their job. I want to be very clear here and say that you do not have to be a cisgendered woman who bleeds in order to work with the moon in divination, in your witchcraft, or in the tarot with this card. The moon is for everyone. And in fact, the more that we include and bring to the table cisgendered men, trans, non-binary people on the fringe, the elderly, the disabled, the more that everyone comes into this tent of the intuitive, liminal, enigmatic magic of the moon in physical form, but also in the tarot, the more that we actively reclaim and write those wounds that have been steeped into our subconscious, into the unconscious, and have just continued in our society, the more that we start to right those wrongs. So I encourage everyone to connect to the moon. Connect to the moon in the tarot, connect to the moon in real life, connect to these energies. That is actually how we evolve not only for ourselves, but for the collective. Bringing moon magic, bringing the energies of the moon tarot card back into the fold means reclaiming what has been pushed into the shadows, what has been pushed to the fringe, what has been discarded, what has been demonized, what has been villainized, what has literally been denied to women, to the queer community, to the BIPOC community, to every community that is again seen as other in the eyes of capitalist patriarchal systems. Bringing moon magic back into the fold for yourself is reclaiming that for all. It is such a beautiful but hard energy. And we have been told to deny the cyclical and to embrace the linear. And there's nothing wrong with the linear. There's nothing wrong with the logical, the illuminated, which we'll get into with the sun, but we have to first integrate in the shadows, in the self, in that watery, intuitive energy within. We have to start there because just as we will get to when we get to the queens of the tarot, we have to start from the internal to the external. It can only be that way. We cannot look to the external to validate our magic or to encourage our intuition to grow. We have to radically reclaim that within ourselves, which means we have to start with the moon. We have to start with the queens. We have to start with the high priestess, and then we move into the external. I think you can see now why this is my favorite tarot card. I love this tarot card so fucking much. Looking at the numerology here from this website, numerologist pro, which is my personal favorite for all numerology resources, um, which is linked in the show notes. It says that the moon card is associated with the number 18, which holds significant meaning in numerology. The number 18 is a combination of the numbers one and eight. The number one symbolizes new beginnings, leadership, and initiative, while the number eight represents power, balance, and transformation. Together, these numbers create a powerful combination of inner strength and but and the potential for profound personal and spiritual growth. The influence of the number eighteen on the moon cart emphasizes the themes of intuition, illusion, and the subconscious. It suggests that through the exploration of the hidden aspects of the self, one can achieve greater self-awareness and transformation. The number 18 encourages the integration of intuition and inner wisdom to navigate the uncertainties and mysteries of life. Those are all themes that we will see with the moon card. So the first way that I read the moon card when it comes forward is that there is something within us that needs deeper reflection. Like we need to go into the inner self, reflect on it, uncover it, and then bring it into that integration, bring it into that wholeness or into the external, like we talked about before. And this could be anything. And you could go about this in a myriad of ways. And that's what makes the moon card not so cut and dry. So for some people, this may be leaning into a sense of meditation. This may be leaning into tarot cards or scrying mirrors or divination. Some people may choose to engage with going out into nature or going into a space where they can see the moon, kind of let the moonlight wash over them. But when the moon card comes forward, it says that there is something in the recesses of ourself. We could do this in dream work, again, a myriad of ways, but there is something within the deep recesses of our wild spirit that wants and needs our attention, our focus, our intuition, or our magic. It needs our presence in that liminal space within. There is something that is stirring, that needs to be understood, felt, and integrated so that it can help us align or come through and into our external lives in a way that serves, in a way that provides us with that evolutionary wild sovereignty. And this is what makes the moon working with it in witchcraft or here in the tarot so liminal because when we are working with moon energy, we are reclaiming and calling back again these very intuitive, emotional, symbolic, dream-like energies within us. We are calling forward our inner knowing, but we have to first engage with the inner self. We have to engage with those energies within. When we start to remember and more readily call on that power within, we trust ourselves more. We trust the journey that we're walking, we lean into these bigger forces, we remove the need to fill some of the holes in our life, and we all have these, but we remove some of the need to fill the holes in our lives or the distractions with materialism, with patterns, behaviors, coping mechanisms, people that don't serve us because we recognize where this service comes from within. And so we start to both. Both actively, but also subconsciously choose this type of energy more in our external world. So the more that we work with moon energy, the more we allow this energy to take up space in the internal, but the more that it creates shifts in the external, we may not always be able to readily see it or call it in or recognize it, but we start to remember that the cyclical energy of just like the moon of dark moon, which is when it's you know the darkest can't see it to full moon and then back again, we recognize that we hold that same cyclical energy within ourselves, as above, so below. We recognize that as just as the moon goes through cycles, so do we. And the more that we lean into the cycle, the more we lean into the external to give to the external, to give to other people in the external, to give to the bigger picture, the more that that comes back and serves us. The second way that I read the moon card is that it speaks to energies, messages, invitations that are either coming through the unconscious, the collective unconscious, the dream space, the intuitive, the emotional, but it also speaks to deep connections that we are making in the external. So just like we talked about with the first way that I read the moon card, that it speaks to this invitation that we need to go into the internal for reflection, for understanding, so that we can create that integration and that wholeness and then align that into our external. This is where the liminal comes into play because the moon is, as we just mentioned, shining a light or being a reminder to sit in the internal, to see what's in the internal that wants to come through and forward into the external. When the moon comes forward, it says that we need to start paying attention to everything. And at that crossroads between internal and external, there we are with the moon. The moon represents that liminal space between the internal in our life and the external. We will see this as we get into the symbolism, but just for right now, I just want to highlight that when the moon comes forward for you, it's an invitation to start paying closer attention to things, to everything, perhaps. So pay attention to your dreams, pay attention to your artistic inspirations, pay attention to your emotions, your intuitive downloads, but also pay attention to things that you're seeing in the external. Is there something that you are continuing to see? Now, this doesn't make it automatically a sign, and that's where the moon can be kind of hard because it's this constant need to experiment, to discover, and to sit with it. Because not everything in our lives is a sign. Some things just are happenstance, some things might be pure coincidence, but some things are signs. And our intuition will start to be able to tell the difference. But again, it takes discovery, it takes time, it takes patience. It's that constant cyclical energy, and we're gonna be going through that. There's no end line, there's no goal post, there's no finish line with any of the tarot, but especially with cards like the moon. It's just this constant peeling back and looking at and sitting with and discovering. The moon does say that we need to start looking at what's coming through our intuitive waters, through our shadow, through our unconscious, but we also need to pay attention what in the external might be a connective thread to the symbolism within, to a deeper understanding, to reflection, to a sense of that wild sovereignty. The moon says that there are things in our internal and in our external world that want to be made into the magic. They want to be heard, they want to be given meaning, they want to be brought to the altar, they want to be taken into the breath, into the body, into nature. I have spent now months, years talking about the fool to the tower in these deep dives. And one of the main threads that I've been talking about is this rewilding, finding that wild sovereignty, connecting to that sweet and precious place within. That place is innate and inherent to you. It is a part of your fingerprint of the divine, it is your power, it is your play, it is your understanding and connection to a bigger picture. This energy can be found in every person. Some people just don't want to connect to it, they don't find validity in it, that's totally fine. But that magical kinship that we create to the liminal and to the magical that can be felt when we take the time to drop into it, like I'm mentioning here, where we recognize that there is something in our external world that wants to be taken to the altar. Or on the flip side, something in the internal that wants to come through into the altar of our physical world. The moon is where we are invited to, like I said before, let the magic out of the box. And again, this can feel strange. We we talked about this and how this has been something that has been stripped away from us, demonized, denied, um, pointed at, laughed at, all these things. The moon blends science and magic, dark and light, real and imagine, light and reflection. The moon is such an enigma because it pulls on these deepest parts of us, the part that transcends the body, but is totally of the body. It transcends our waking world when we connect to it like in dreams, but we integrate it into our waking lives. The cycles that we move through are a mirror, as I mentioned before. And she reflects this truth back onto us. And I want to also quote here from the moon book, written by Sarah Faith Gottesteiner, who is this book is amazing, please go buy it. But she writes in relation to the moon as a mirror, and she says, to clean the mirror is to be as honest as possible. Projections and delusions must be wiped away. To clean the mirror is to attempt to keep our perspectives loving and our reflections in service to our evolution. So when we are working with the moon, we want to be as honest as possible. Not everything is a sign meant for us. Some things are absolutely signs meant for us, though. So we need to start to go into that space of experimenting, of reflecting, of discovering in order to keep our perspectives loving, as she says, and our reflections in service to our evolution. We have to recognize where on that crossroads of internal and external are we residing. And to let the moon reflect that to us, reflect that truth to us in a beautiful, loving, but again, deeply honest way. Like right now, we may just not be able to do some of the witchcraft that we want to do. Right now, maybe isn't the time to do the money spell. Right now is maybe not the time to continue to just be so in the external. Maybe because it's a waning moon, we need to take time to rest, to find stillness, to sit in darkness, to limit um artificial light. You know what I mean? Like when the moon comes forward, it's asking us to stand at that crossroads, see what's coming through the internal, see what's coming through the external, and navigate ourselves in the reflection of that. And once we do that work and recognize where we just need to keep coming back to this crossroads, we come to the last way that I read the moon card, which is this wild synergy between the waking and the dream space, the light and the dark, the science and the magic. As we've been talking about now, as I've been talking about now, when it comes up in a reading, this card, we are asked to connect to the wild undercurrent that flows through all things. There is a reason why the moon is said to conjure witches to the woods and the lunacy and normal people to come out. The moon takes us to the French. We encounter the liminal, the non-logical, the cyclical, the otherworldly, the symbolic. We know that the moon affects things like the tides, and it is said that the moon cycles may have a link to supporting animal migration. A moon cycle is around 28 days, the same time length as a woman's menstrual cycle. The gravitational pull of the moon supports the axial tilt of the earth, creating consistency between the seasons. The moon has been also our greatest collective muse. Since the dawn of time, the moon has been conjuring the poets, the artists, the philosophers to write the most beautiful poems about love, to paint the most beautiful paintings about starry nights, to encourage sonnets. The moon inspires us on the deepest of levels, on the deepest of our creative levels, our imaginative levels, our play levels. The moon gives us this permission slip to play, to dream, to let loose our normal and logical selves, and to tap into the primal, the inexplicable, and the palpable energies within. And this is why I said at the very beginning that the moon is not just for cisgendered women who bleed. The moon is for fucking everybody. And I encourage if there is a man who is straight who is listening to me, go connect to the moon. Patriarchy has denied everyone this connection for different reasons. The moon has been denied as this conduit to these emotions or energies within because it's feminine, because it's soft, because it's girly, because it's stupid. In reality, it is a connection to your whole self. And when we connect to the moon in the tarot and in our physical world, we are conjuring up these energies and these intuitive knowings, the symbolic understanding that has been denied to us again for different reasons. But the moon is this reminder that we deserve to feel these things. We deserve to feel pleasure. We deserve to feel our emotions. We deserve to sit in the space of the non-logical, of the dream, of the inspirational, of the poetic, of the feminine. This symbolism, these energies, especially related to like the divinity of the female, is a symbol that's still under threat. And her ties to women, those on the fringe, those who face subjugation, including the natural world herself, are timeless, are sacred, cannot be understated, but again, it is for everyone. We deserve to have this muse in our life, this inner muse that speaks to us and allows us to recognize the beauty in this world. And one final quote from Goddess Diner in the moon book The Moon is a love letter to our wildness. It is a reminder of our resilience in the face of subjugation. It is a promise to recognize the power inherent in the collective feminine. So when this card comes forward, see what moon phase you are you're in. You know, I mean we're all in the same moon phase, but you know what I mean. When this card comes forward, take a few moments to just stand at the crossroads of yourself in your internal life, your external life, and see what is being pulled up on you. See what's coming through or needs to be dropped down. See what inspiration or what muse is calling you. Where can you suspend some of the logical and come into a place of intuition and play? Where can you untame even just a little bit for a moment? We have responsibilities, we live in the concrete jungle, we have things that we have to do, but when this card comes forward, it is a reminder to connect back in to the wellspring of the self, which is the wellspring of the beauty, the magic, and the altar of this world. So now let's look at some symbolism and also some other things to consider with the moon card. So the astrological correspondence of the moon is Pisces, which is ruled by Neptune. And this represents, again, intuition, the unconscious, dreams, hidden fears, and illusion. While Cancer is ruled by the moon in astrology, the moon card in the major arcana specifically corresponds to Pisces, reflecting its themes of spirituality, mystery, and the deep psyche, but also potential confusion or deception, things that we have talked about. The Hebrew letter associated with the moon card is kough. And from this article, it says that cough has to do with the requirement of removing the husk of the superficial to reveal the holiness within. In Hebrew, kough means monkey, a creature which resembles a human but is purely animalistic with none of the higher capacities of a human. This indicates the requirement for a human to overcome his purely animalistic nature and to emulate the image of the creator he is made in, to realize his true spiritual nature beyond just the physical. It represents all the cycles of nature, changing seasons, monthly and yearly cycles. It is the constant movement, circulation, and change of life. It could also represent that through the cycles of life that we see, evolution, growth, change, suffering, happiness, life experience, we are constantly worked on in order to evolve and to realize our true spiritual nature. So if you go to the blog post again, you will see the images that I am going to talk about. I'm only really going to talk about two. Again, it's just too much to talk about all of them. But I usually reserve the image at the very beginning of the blog for the one that I want to discuss because I think it highlights the symbolism of the card the most. So in this blog post, you will see that that honor is given to the moon from the Tarot of Dragons because it purely and beautifully highlights the symbolism and this binary that we've been talking about, where it's the crossroads between light and dark science and magic. So if you look at the image of the Tarot of Dragons, I will also put this on my Instagram. We see here on this cliff, and then there's the ocean, we have the domesticated house cat and then the wild tiger. This represents the binary of domesticity and feral or untamed. Another key thing that you will see in many tarot depictions of the moon is this type of gateway, this threshold, or this crossroads. Again, in the writer weight, it's these two mountain peaks. And from a lot of the research that I did on the symbolism, it is said that these two mountain peaks resemble severity and mercy. In the Tarot of Dragons, though, the lighthouses that you see are two very specific lighthouses, specifically the pharaohs of Alexandria. And lighthouses are a symbol of warning and of heeding these messages. The guidebook says that they blaze bright with warning. And then when Googled, it says that the pharaoh symbolizes guidance, divine power, and protection stemming from the famous lighthouse of Alexandria, the pharos, symbolizing a beacon of light, knowledge, and safe passage. There is an article I listed in the show notes that goes into some further symbolism and the history around this infamous lighthouse, if you wish to read it. I love any and all things history, so I thought it was fascinating and included it in case you would find it fascinating too. And then right smack dab in the middle of this image, we have our beautiful crab. This is one of the most iconic pieces of moon symbolism in the tarot, or symbolism in the moon card, I should say. The crab signifies this emerging from the deep emotional intuitive depths to come to the shores of consciousness, to come to the shores of awareness or understanding. The research around this says that in tarot, the crab or crayfish, as it will often be depicted on the moon card, symbolizes the unconscious mind, instincts, intuition, hidden fear, and emotional depths linking to the moon's rulership over cancer, representing inner worlds, tides, and primal feelings. It signifies messages rising from the subconscious, and often related to cyclical changes, vulnerability, and the journey of moving from the watery unknown to the conscious shore, representing the need to face illusion and instincts. With the crab, I have also always found that there's this sense that we need to move differently. Like literally, they scuttle. And it's kind of weird at times to see a crab scuttling. But when the moon card comes forward, there is this sense, like we talked about before, when we stand on that crossroads of internal and external or whatever binary we're existing in, we need to approach and move through the situation in a way that is different, often tied to our intuition. As they are also hard-shelled, we need to be hard-shelled ourselves as well. We need to protect those tender and vulnerable parts within us. And that is the part that moves the most when we connect to the moon. That tender spot within us, that deep palpable force within, is quite tender. It's quite fluid. It's quite liminal. So we do need to have that exoskeleton and that protection wherever we. Go, whether we're in the emotional or in the physical, to move through these situations and to navigate our internal forces and the external forces so that we can find that deeper understanding. And some of this armor we will molt or shed, but we always want to have a protective energy around us to help us make sense of what we're navigating through, to help us decipher where we are at on the binary or where we are at on the crossroads. And to also help us decipher all the symbols. Is this sign meant for me? Is this intuition or is this anxiety? We need that protection even with ourselves in order to navigate this deep liminal force that comes with the moon. The guidebook says with the crab, a giant crab up from the primordial ocean floor emerges between them, his pincers raised in challenge and awe. He has consciousness in embryonic form. On the shore, entranced by the dragon in the moon, sets her feline audience, a curious house cat domesticity, and a noble tiger wildness. An elegant, enigmatic eastern dragon dances over the illumined face of the low-hanging moon. Having no fire of her own, the moon's light is an illusion, a dim reflection stolen from the unseen sun. Still, when full, it is enough to cast a shimmering path across the tranquil sea. Beneath the moon dragon's eldritch gaze, fears and anxieties rise from the murky waters of the subconscious, begging to be let go. Dreams and nightmares flourish and secrets long hidden emerge from the shadows. Truth is at odds with illusion, deception and uncertainty obscure your way. Still, there are beacons in the night. Your creativity is aglow with dragon fire. Your intuition is as sharp as a dragon's tooth. Trust your instincts, let your imagination soar and be free. Together, they will guide you through. Our dragon in the moon here represents this most innate inner wisdom and this most innate inner power again, which is why I love this image. And of every moon card in my collection, I think this is one of the best because it just so beautifully highlights all that we've been talking about. Before we move on to the poem and then close out this episode, though, I just want to highlight one other card that has so much of the same symbolism, but has one difference that I just really want to share with you, and that is from the Darkwood Tarot. It's almost to the bottom on the right hand side of the blog post, but we see much of the same imagery. We see the two dogs, which are the wolf and the domesticated dog. We see the pillars of severity and mercy and the path leading up to this crest on the hill where we get the full view of the moon and the bats, which obviously represent this ability to see in darkness. But unlike the crab here, we have the moon bringing forth this beautiful, fully formed, naked wild woman. And it says from the guidebook that the moon has pulled forward a fully formed wild woman from the unconscious and mysterious depths of the world. The time is ripe for you to birth your own raw wilderness from the depths and let that discovery take you on a journey towards new possibilities. And I wanted to highlight this because this also highlights one of the key things that we've been talking about here with the moon is this permission slip to tap back into the most wild, primal, and beautiful energies within you and to reclaim that. Because when you again reclaim it for yourself, you reclaim it for the world and you reclaim it for those who had it taken away from them. And so I think that's really important to highlight. Since I want to end with the poem, I am going to go ahead and thank all of my patrons now. So I would like to thank, so I would like to thank Deb Guy, Bobby McDermott, Lisa Zimmerman, Nicole Smith, Tracy Lanham, Kim Hartnett, Chris Ree, Miranda Snow, Colleen Tue, Charlie Ruggles, Shannon Konendike, and Danica Favorite. Thank you all so much for your support. In me and in Wolfchild Magic, it means the world to me. And here is the poem The Moon from my book Major Arcana, a poetry collection, which you can purchase in the link in the show notes. The Moon. She is the doe-eyed mother, bearing what seems too heavy to hold, yet she endures season after season, shuffling between softness and fury. She stitches the falling light into netted silver so that the salmon know when too soon becomes not soon enough. She weaves water and women into swooning, luring the wild dogs to come and announce this land godless. Even those weary of their own loads soothe the hearts inside their curved shells, an echo that everything is circular. We can all bring the sound her lover makes in his frothed current to our ears. He is the only one who truly knows what gravity means. Just when I feel like I've pocketed a sense of understanding, she brings it back to the beginning, ringing the bell of my unconscious appetite so that I may never be hungry of fantasy or dream. All she asks of me is this to measure time in the shape of an open mouth, to take in all there is.