The Moon in 7 decks
The same card as 7 decks draw it, five and a half centuries apart. What stays the same is the card’s core; what changes is where a reading can find something new. The meanings are written for the Rider–Waite–Smith picture; the descriptions here are of each deck’s own.
Side by side
Choose any two decks and read the pictures against each other.
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A full moon with a face looks down over a path that runs between two towers from a pool at the bottom of the picture toward distant mountains. A dog and a wolf howl up at the moon, and a crayfish crawls out of the water onto the path. Drops of light fall from the sky. No human figure is anywhere in the scene.
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A crescent moon with a face in profile sits in a ring of red, blue and yellow rays, with coloured drops falling. A blue dog and a red dog face each other on yellow ground between a red-brick tower on the left and a round grey tower on the right. A red crayfish rises from a ruled pool below. Numbered XVIII, titled LA LUNE.
Rider–Waite–Smith
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A full moon with a face looks down over a path that runs between two towers from a pool at the bottom of the picture toward distant mountains. A dog and a wolf howl up at the moon, and a crayfish crawls out of the water onto the path. Drops of light fall from the sky. No human figure is anywhere in the scene.
Tarot de Marseille
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A crescent moon with a face in profile sits in a ring of red, blue and yellow rays, with coloured drops falling. A blue dog and a red dog face each other on yellow ground between a red-brick tower on the left and a round grey tower on the right. A red crayfish rises from a ruled pool below. Numbered XVIII, titled LA LUNE.
Tarot de Viéville
Jacques Viéville, c. 1650
Numbered XVIII, a grey moon with a face sits inside a rayed disc of red and yellow, shedding leaf-shaped drops. Below, a woman in a headscarf sits on the ground beside a tree, holding a distaff of fibre and working the thread with her other hand.
Visconti-Sforza
Bonifacio Bembo, c. 1450
A barefoot woman with long fair hair holds a blue crescent moon up in her right hand. In her left hand hangs a loose white cord with a small red object on it. She wears a red tunic over a blue skirt and blue sleeves. Rocky hills rise behind her on a green field below tooled gold, with a red band at the base.
In the Visconti-Sforza deck the number cards show only their suit symbols, and the trumps are unnamed and unnumbered.
Sola Busca
c. 1491
A white-bearded old man in a long purple robe, a red band in his hair, leans on a stone block and holds a tall candlestick topped with flame. A large red wheel shows at the lower left and a blue helmet lies on the ground. The name LENTVLO is at the top and XVIII below it.
Sola Busca trumps are named figures matched to the standard trumps by number only.
Oswald Wirth
Oswald Wirth, 1889
A crescent moon with a face in profile sits inside a rayed disc, dropping coloured drops. Below, two square towers stand on either side of a path; a white dog and a grey dog look up at the moon. In the pool in the foreground lies a large red and blue crayfish. Below are the number 18, LA LUNE and the Hebrew letter tsade.
Soimoi
Mike Koz, 2025
A woman in a dark blue kimono walks a stone path through a bamboo grove under a full moon, half hiding her face behind an open fan painted with red blossoms. A white fox mask hangs from her sash and a glowing paper lantern hangs from her other hand. Two black cats prowl beside the lantern-lined path, and wisteria hangs above.