The Moon in Astrology

Think of what you reach for when you are tired, upset or far from home. A certain food, a certain voice, a walk, a blanket, being alone, being held. You do not choose it. It chooses you. That is the Moon in your chart: the part of you that feels before it thinks, and knows what it needs to feel safe.

If the Sun is who you are becoming, the Moon is who you already are underneath: the child you were, the habits you fall back on, the private self only your closest people see.

What the Moon stands for

The Moon represents:

• Emotional needs: what you need in order to feel safe, cared for and at home.
• Instinct: how you react before you think.
• Comfort and habit: what soothes you, the routines you fall back on.
• Memory and the past: your early life, your family, your roots.

The Moon is the second luminary, the night light to the Sun's day. It is by far the fastest body in the chart, moving about 13 degrees a day and crossing a whole sign in about two and a half days. If the Moon changed sign on the day you were born, you need your birth time to know which sign is yours.

The face we never see

Here is something most horoscope pages never mention. The Moon always shows the same face to the Earth. It turns on its axis exactly as fast as it circles us, so one half of it is always turned away. No one on Earth had seen the far side of the Moon until spacecraft photographed it in the twentieth century.

Astrologers have always read the Moon as the hidden, private self, and the sky agrees: part of the Moon is always out of sight. Your Moon sign describes the side of you that is there all the time, even when no one sees it.

The Moon also returns to the place it held at your birth about every 27 days. Every month you have a small lunar return, and many people notice that their emotional rhythm follows it.

Where is this planet in your chart?

Its sign says how it works, its house says where. See both, with the aspects that shape it.

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