moon

the moon is the part of you that was already moving before you decided anything. it is the body, the breath, the tide of the mood; the reactions that arrive before the thought does. it is what you were handed rather than what you chose: the way you were fed, held, or not; the reflex to reach for comfort or to flinch. it changes fastest of all the planets, running through the whole sky in a month, and it is the thing in you that changes fastest too. the moon is not the story you tell about your life. it is the felt weather of living it, hour by hour.

what the moon does

when valens lists what the moon governs, it reads like everything that keeps a life running from one day to the next. first the body itself, and physical life: the moon is the flesh, closest to earth, the animal fact of being alive. then the mother, the nurse, nurture and conception; the moon is where you came from and how you were tended. it takes the home too, the household, the mistress of the house, everything domestic and inward. it rules the people and the crowds, the city, the many rather than the one.

it governs fortune, gains and expenditures, the ordinary tide of money in and money out. and it governs travel and wandering; valens says the moon “does not hold straight,” because its home is the crab, so it moves sideways, off at an angle, never quite in a line. in the body it rules the left eye, the stomach, and the breasts, the parts that take in and feed. the through-line under all of it is simple: the moon is what carries you day to day. it is closest, it is fastest, it is the tide of the body and the mood.

the other light

the moon, with the sun, is a luminary. it is not a benefic or a malefic; it does not take a side that way. but its light is borrowed. the moon shines with the sun's light reflected back, and that is why it waxes and wanes, filling and emptying through the month. it is also why moods do the same: the moon is the reflected thing in you, brightening and darkening depending on what it is turned toward.

the sect light of the night

the moon leads the night team in sect. it is one of the two sect lights, the sun for the day and the moon for the night. if you were born after sunset, the moon is the sect light in charge, and the whole night team, moon with venus and mars, is more at home, better behaved, more itself. this is why the day-or-night question comes first, before almost anything: it decides which light is running the chart, and a planet's whole character shifts depending on whether it belongs to the sect in power.

where it is strong, where it struggles

the moon rules cancer, its own home, all shell and belonging and the instinct to protect what is soft. it is exalted in taurus: steady, fed, safe in the body, comfortable in its own skin. it falls into trouble at the opposite corners. in detriment in capricorn it is cold and exposed, asked to be hard when it wants to be held. in fall in scorpio, feeling does not disappear; it turns intense and hidden, driven underground.

how to actually read it

to read someone's moon, you stack a few things. the sign it is in. the sect, day or night. the phase: waxing or waning, near full or near dark. the company it keeps, which planets it sits with or aspects. and its angularity, how prominent it is in the chart. keywords are where you start. condition is where you actually read.

the night star

the greeks called her selënë, the romans luna. she is the visible moon overhead, the second eye of the sky beside the sun, the one light everyone can see changing shape. she is the clock everyone can read.

its guardian in the wing

the guardian here is sailor moon, usagi tsukino, whose whole power runs on feeling, on crying and caring and refusing to give up on anyone. her surname even means “of the moon.” she is the friendly face of the moon as the body, the heart, the tides: soft on the outside, and stronger than she looks.

where this comes from

this leans on valens for the old significations and on chris brennan for the way i frame sect and condition. i am paraphrasing a living tradition, not quoting it.