The Moon and Intuition

The Moon anchors a web of archetypes that include change, cycles, the body, the past, mystery, magic, emotions, security, nurturing, the Mother, the unconscious ... so what is Her role in bringing us intuitive messages? Is She intuitive?

I thought so (and still do) but had to explore this recently. In the midst of an online astrology class, I listed intuition as one of the Moon's gifts and was immediately corrected by the instructor and my classmates: No, they said, Neptune and Uranus are sources of intuition, not the Moon. It wasn't the main focus of our discussion so I let it go ... but not really.

Yes, Neptune and Uranus are sources of messages from beyond the limits of the known world. Whether a quick download of quirky Uranian insight, or a cosmic flowing vision of Neptunian knowing, these outer planets offer guidance that defies logical explanation. But then, so do all the outer planets, especially to any of us hard-wired to receive their messages.

The Moon represents those things we know without knowing how we know them: shifting emotions, changes in our bodies, the feeling of being loved and cared for, the feeling of being neglected or ignored, deep ancestral memory, the unconscious. She relates to our dreams, all nighttime things, and our earliest life when there was no ego, only our connection to Mom.

To me, all these are sources of nonrational, can't-be-explained-by-logic, yet vitally important knowing. Isn't that what intuition is?

The definition of intuition as something we know without being able to rationally explain is late-ish, from the 1840's. The original meaning derives from Latin and meant to watch over or protect, as a guardian would. That ancient protection is closer to how I feel about the Moon, light of the night, than Neptune and Uranus, those powerful but impersonal message bearers.

So, I hold to my felt sense of the Moon as a source of intuition. She seems to me to rule the heart kind of knowing, the resonance I feel and the answers I find when I consider something or someone with an open, compassionate heart.

In closing, I offer this from Jung's Red Book, as a beautiful expression of Moon knowing:

"The knowledge of the heart is in no book and not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth."

(photo by John Smith for the Geograph Project, Wikimedia Commons)