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Tarot Birth & Year Cards · Trump XVIII of the 22

The Moon, XVIII: the road by reflected light

The Moon is trump XVIII of the Major Arcana: a moon between two towers, a dog and a wolf howling at it, and a crayfish climbing from a pool onto a path into the distance. The Golden Dawn gave it Qoph and Pisces, making it the Sun-sign card of Pisces; in Greer's method it is the Personality card of a total of 18.

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Pamela Colman Smith's 1909 design for The Moon: a moon with a face shining between two grey towers, drops falling from it, a dog and a wolf howling up at it, and a crayfish climbing out of a pool onto a path that winds away between the towers to distant hills. Beside it, Greer's rows of nine with 18 filled and the column 9, 18 outlined.
The Moon in the 1910 printing of Smith's designs, and its place in Greer's rows of nine: the cards of one column share a digit root and make one constellation. Card art: Pamela Colman Smith, 1909 (public domain).

Facts

Number
XVIII (18) in the 1909 deck
Hebrew letter (Golden Dawn)
ק Qoph, “back of the head”, value 100; a simple letter
Sign, planet or element (Book T)
Pisces (sign)
Path on the Golden Dawn's tree
Path 29, Netzach to Malkuth
Greer's constellation
9 · 18: the Hermit and the Moon
As a birth card, 1900 to 2030
Personality card on 5.3% of days; Hidden Factor on 5.8%
Natal-chart card
Sun-sign, Moon and Rising card for Pisces
Year card, 15 June birthday
10 of the 201 years from 1900 to 2100
Tarot de Marseille
La Lune, XVIII

Meaning

Smith's Moon shines between two grey towers, a face within it and drops falling from it. A dog and a wolf howl up at it, and from a pool in the foreground a crayfish climbs onto a path that winds away between the towers to distant hills. Waite says the card represents the life of the imagination apart from the life of the spirit: the path is the way out into the unknown, and the animals are the fears of a mind that has only reflected light to see by.

The Golden Dawn gave the card Qoph, a simple letter glossed as the back of the head, and the sign Pisces, and titled it the Ruler of Flux and Reflux, the Child of the Sons of the Mighty. On the order's tree the Moon is path 29.

We read the card as the uncertain way: imagination, dream and unease, and a road taken by a light that does not show everything. Waite's fortune-telling list for it, which begins with hidden enemies and danger, is quoted below as his; it is never a warning.

In the birth cards

The Moon belongs to Greer's ninth constellation, with the Hermit, 9. It is the Personality card of everyone whose total is 18, with the Hermit as Soul card, on 5.3 percent of the days from 1900 to 2030. An 18-9 is the last of Greer's night-time chains and has no Hidden Factor; the Moon is the Hidden Factor of a single 9 instead, on 5.8 percent of days.

The trump and the chart's Moon card are different things that can meet. Every chart with a birth time has a Moon card, the trump of the sign the Moon is in; it is this card only when the Moon is in Pisces. As a Sun-sign card it belongs to everyone born with the Sun in Pisces. As a year card it comes 10 times in the 201 years from 1900 to 2100 for a 15 June birthday.

History and names

In the Marseille decks the card is La Lune, a moon above two towers with two dogs and a crayfish in a pool below; Smith made one of the dogs a wolf.

Correspondences

Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.

Golden Dawn title (Book T)
“The Ruler of Flux and Reflux; the Child of the Sons of the Mighty” sourced
Waite's fortune-telling list (1911), upright
“Hidden enemies, danger, calumny, darkness, terror, deception, occult forces, error”, quoted as history; Waite called such meanings artificial and arbitrary sourced
Greer's name for the constellation
Introspection and Personal Integrity (1987, 2021) sourced
Our line for the birth-card chain
18-9: Through the depths to wisdom our construction
Sun-sign card
For the Sun in Pisces; also the Moon card and the Rising card for Pisces sourced
Not the Moon card
The Moon card of a chart is the trump of the Moon's sign, which is this card only for a Moon in Pisces our construction

How the schools read it

Game decks (15th to 18th century)
La Lune: a moon above two towers, two dogs and a crayfish in a pool.
Golden Dawn, Book T
Qoph, the back of the head, a simple letter, and the sign Pisces; path 29. Book T titles it the Ruler of Flux and Reflux, the Child of the Sons of the Mighty.
Waite and Smith (1909 to 1911)
The life of the imagination apart from the life of the spirit; the path is the way out into the unknown, and the animals are the fears of a mind that has only reflected light to see by.
Mary K. Greer (1984 to 2021)
In the constellation of 9 with the Hermit. The Personality card of an 18-9, a chain with no Hidden Factor, and the Hidden Factor of a single 9.
EsoTerrier
Read here as the uncertain way: imagination, dream and unease, and a road taken by a light that does not show everything.

Claims about it

  • The Moon warns of hidden enemies and danger.

    false

    What the record shows: Those words are in Waite's fortune-telling list, which he called arbitrary. We quote it as history; our pages never warn of harm.

  • The Moon's old one-line meaning on our chart was our own wording.

    false

    What the record shows: Our old line followed a modern keyword list too closely and was replaced in October 2026.

  • Qoph and Pisces are the Moon's ancient correspondences.

    disputed

    What the record shows: They are the Golden Dawn's, from about 1888.

Elsewhere on EsoTerrier

Sources

Primary texts (4)
  1. S. L. MacGregor Mathers for the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Book T: The Tarot (late 1880s or early 1890s; H. Felkin's copy). First printed in The Equinox, 1912. archive.org/details/mathers-and-felkin-golden-dawn-book-t-the-tarot-1888
  2. A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. London: William Rider and Son, 1911 (issued 1910). en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Pictorial_Key_to_the_Tarot
  3. Aleister Crowley (unsigned), 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica. London: Walter Scott Publishing, 1909. The Golden Dawn's tables in print.
  4. Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formation, translated by W. Wynn Westcott, 2nd edition. London, 1893. archive.org/details/sepheryetzirahb00rittgoog
Studies and other sources (4)
  1. Mary K. Greer, Tarot Constellations: Patterns of Personal Destiny. Newcastle, 1987. Facts only.
  2. Mary K. Greer, Archetypal Tarot. Weiser, 2021. Facts only.
  3. Joy Vernon, "Tarot Birth Cards" handout (2020), reproducing Greer's Hidden Factor chart. joyvernon.com/images/Tarot%20Birth%20Cards.pdf
  4. "Visconti-Sforza tarot deck", "Tarot of Marseilles" and "Sola Busca tarot", Wikipedia (orientation only). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visconti-Sforza_tarot_deck
Our own research (4)
  1. EsoTerrier, Tarot research, 9 October 2026 (methods, art and legal review).
  2. EsoTerrier, Tarot validation, 12 October 2026: the engine against an independent implementation on 3,288 dates, and the method statistics over 47,847 days.
  3. EsoTerrier calculation engine, the Tarot service and its documentation.
  4. EsoTerrier, Tree of Life research and knowledge records (October 2026).
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By EsoTerrier. Written with AI assistance from our research and checked against its sources; last revised 19 October 2026. How we write these pages.

First published ; last revised . Corrections: support@esoterrier.com.

Card art: Pamela Colman Smith, 1909 (public domain).