Today’s card draw from The Wild Unknown Tarot is the Moon.

I want to start off by providing an important notice, which will be included in all of this series. However, other things that will be included that you can skip to are:

• Card Description
• Considering the Card, where I look at how I would interpret certain imagery used
• Traditional Rider-Waite definition

I only include the latter as a comparison, to show how wandering down your own understanding of images and symbols can bring you to a similar meaning, though along a different path with different experiences. This is to help expand knowledge of the card.

I will not, however, be including the definitions from the guidebook, as that is not the point of this. Also, I don’t have rights to that material.

Important Note

I started this series because I had read that people struggled with the deck purely because the definitions in the Little White Book were very Rider-Waite-based, and that there wasn’t much wisdom regarding the animals and symbolism chosen.

This series is to help you to decipher the meanings yourselves. I am by no means saying what I have to say about the cards are correct for anyone outside myself. However, I am providing my daily journal entries regarding the deck to act as a guide so that you can begin your own journey.

When I started tarot, I had no idea what to write in my journal, and thus didn’t. Instead I obsessively read and re-read the Little White Book belonging to the Spiral Tarot (which is why today I can completely quote the book). I didn’t trust myself to know the cards, even when I could recite the definitions. I was afraid to put the book down.

To this fear of lack of knowledge, the creator of The Wild Unknown writes:

You do know enough. You’ve been a person on earth every day since you were born. You’ve experienced all the emotions and situations these cards depict. Quiet the naysayer…don’t let it prevent you from sitting down with a friend (or yourself) and using these cards to help talk about what’s going on in your life. It will be positive. It will be radical. You’ll find things start to reveal themselves through the cards that have been hidden away, covered with dust.

pp. 10-11, The Wild Unknown Guidebook

Description of the Card

The Moon is the yellow in the black shy, where trees are silhouetted in its light. The background and the sky are white against the black trees. The only color is the moon.  

Traditional Card Meaning

The Moon corresponds to the number 18. It represents the shadows that we don’t see. When the moon is bright, we are able to see the shadows of the night more clearly, more definitively, and thus, these are the areas we need to address.

The light is blocked from these areas, and thus they are hidden. However, during a New Moon, when there is no light, then we can’t see what is hidden from us.

The Moon is a card of looking inward to work on the self. It can represent things that we can’t see but become apparent to us, which might be an external person being deceitful, or it might be something within us. It can also indicate dreams, and information which comes to light as a result of them.

What I Derive from the Card Itself

 When considering that trees might be darkened by the moonlight, we are considering that the moon is shining light into the darkness, causing it to make the unknown seen.

The moon makes shadows bolder, and thus outlines the shadow work to be done. It’s a shower of the subconscious, and thus, dreams must be acknowledged.

In leaving earth (literally, physically leaving earth via the means of science, not metaphysically), we shoot for the starts but must first pass the moon. When we get to the Moon, our reward is the Sun. Thus, in order for goals to be achieved, the works in the Moon must be completed.

When standing under the moon, we feel its pull, its light. It reminds us of the other workings, the higher work we can get to, but first we must see it.

About the Deck

The Wild Unknown Tarot  is a 2016 Harper One publication, created by Kim Krans. The deck is widely available at most bookstores who carry Tarot cards, but also on Amazon. Kim Krans always wrote The Wild Unknown Guidebook.