Roles: Our emotional reactions; our needs; what comforts us; our unconscious drives
Designation: Luminary
Speed Through a Sign: 2.5 days
Speed Through the Zodiac: 28-30 days
Dignity: Cancer/Fourth House
Exaltation: Taurus/Second House
Detriment: Capricorn/Tenth House
Fall: Scorpio/Eighth House
Retrograde: None
You most likely know your Sun sign, but there is a reasonable chance that you’re not sure what your Moon sign is. If you know it, awesome! If not, that’s okay. There are a lot of easy and free ways to figure it out. All you need is your date, time, and place of birth1. Even if you don’t know your time of birth, your Moon sign will still be accurate within a few degrees. So it’s not a deal at all unless it’s at the beginning or end of a sign.
So what’s the big deal? Just how important is the Moon in astrology? Well, to be concise, it’s a pretty important part of you, just like your Sun is. As mentioned in the last article, the Sun is your ego, your confidence, and the things that bring you pride. It’s your core self. But you can think of the Moon as your core within your core. The Sun is what you are, but the Moon is how you feel. If the Sun is your ego, then the Moon is, more or less, your id. Your Sun sign is what you want, and your Moon sign is what you need. With your sun, you’re expressive, showy, and confident. You make it visible. But your Moon is hidden away. It’s the side you don’t really like to show unless you’re in a comfortable space. Your heart (Sun) shines, but your soul (Moon) is more cautious. Makes perfect sense: the Moon is most visible at nighttime, when we’re usually asleep. The Moon is your emotions, unconscious drives, and how you act when it’s time to react.
Let’s take a look at how it works. The Sun takes about 30 days to go through a sign. Meanwhile, the Moon takes only about 2-3 days to go through a sign. So the likelihood of someone having a Moon sign that’s different from his/her Sun sign is very high. Let’s say, for instance, you have your Sun in Taurus and your Moon in Gemini. So you find your pride in Taurus kind of things: gardening, cooking, comfortable fabrics, finances, relaxation, and being strong and calm for your loved ones. You’re stable, stubborn, and loyal, and those are the traits that you reveal on a conscious level. Now, with your Moon in Gemini, things are very different inwardly. When you’re at your most comfortable, you’re a lot more social and keen on gathering information. You’ll say random things, lose your concentration, and get ideas at the spur of the moment. In romantic relationships, you’ll be reserved and perhaps cautious at first, only to become more flirtatious and easygoing later on. You’ll shine at your brightest in calm, quiet, sensuous surroundings. However, you’ll feel most secure in places where a lot of information is getting passed along, like school, book clubs, and social gatherings. There’s a likelihood that you don’t identify completely with Taurus traits, because your inner self is Gemini in nature… an extremely different energy! Taurus doesn’t quite speak to your soul.
The Moon is most comfortable in Cancer and Taurus, and least comfortable in Capricorn and Scorpio. Cancer and Taurus are very much about home, are very nurturing signs (they’re both big on food, something closely associated with nurture), and have a kind of softness about them. The Moon gets all of that from those signs, and because of that, it can do what it knows best. On the other hand, Capricorn and Scorpio are stern, harsher signs that try to suppress or ignore their emotions. They both deal with the darker or bitter parts of life, and the Moon can’t really handle that. If it can’t feel, then it’s denied what it wants to do most, or it relies on its negative traits. It’s like an eclipse. It’s left “in a world of darkness.”2 No one should have to leave their emotions in darkness, so never do that to yourself. Whatever way you are emotionally, just embrace it, regardless of what your Moon sign is. Conversely, the Moon does its best in the Fourth (Home and Family) and Second (Value) Houses and its worst in the Tenth (Career and Public Image) and Eighth (Death and Hidden Depth) Houses.
When you take care of your Moon, you take care of your needs and your emotional balance. You become secure and warm and fuzzy. You feel like you can just kick back in a recliner and breathe a sigh of relief. But when your Moon is ignored, you start to fall back on reactions based on the negative traits of your Moon sign. So if you have Gemini Moon, you’ll likely become confused and fickle. You become upset, and it shocks everyone around you. It’s terrible for everyone: the other person’s feelings are hurt, and you face the very opposite of what makes you comfortable. It’s not fun when you lean to the bad side.
Next Article: “Mercury: Your Think Tank”
1Astro.com and alabe.com are great websites to go to for free natal charts
2Just an Always Sunny reference. I had to.