Category: Mental Health; Tarot Tips | Reading Time: 4 Minutes
Everything feels gray. It’s like someone turned the color saturation down on your world.
The show you used to binge-watch feels irritating. The hobbies you once loved look like a pile of expensive, dusty clutter.
Even your friendships feel distant, as if you’re trying to shout to them through a thick wall. You reach out to text a friend, but then you put the phone down because you suddenly have nothing to say.
You are walking through your week with a heavy, persistent fog in your skull.
When this happens, your brain’s reflex is to panic. You assume you are broken. You assume your life is collapsing.
Take a deep breath. You have just entered the territory of The Moon.
The Science of “Liminality” (The Hallway)
In the Tarot, The Moon represents the landscape between sunset and sunrise. It is a world of distorted shapes, long shadows, and a complete lack of a map.
Psychologists and anthropologists call this Liminality (from the Latin word limen, meaning “threshold”).
You have successfully outgrown the “Old You,” but the “New Version” hasn’t arrived yet.
You are standing in the dark hallway between two doors. The door behind you is locked. The door in front of you isn’t open yet. And for a moment, the lights have gone out.
This is the “Dark Night of the Soul.” It is a period of deep recalibration where your internal GPS is updating its software.
The Crayfish and the Lobster (Growth is Gross)
If you look at the bottom of The Moon card, you will see a small Crayfish crawling out of the water.
This connects perfectly to the biology of a lobster.
A lobster lives inside a rigid shell. As it grows, that shell eventually becomes too tight. It becomes a prison. To survive, the lobster must crawl under a rock, crack its own shell open, and cast it aside.
For a period of time, that lobster is soft, pink, and completely vulnerable. It is a squishy mess hiding in the dark.
This is exactly where you are.
You’ve shed the old identity—the job, the relationship, or the beliefs that were suffocating you—but you haven’t grown your new armor yet.
You feel raw because you are raw.
This is not a mistake. If you had stayed in that old shell, you would have stopped growing entirely. The Crayfish in the card is showing you that the only way forward is to crawl out of the deep water and expose yourself to the air.
The Wolf and the Dog
Look again at the card. A Wolf and a Dog are howling at the moon.
These represent the two sides of your nature:
- The Dog: Your tamed, civilized self that wants a plan, a schedule, and safety.
- The Wolf: Your wild, primal instinct that wants to hide, run, and heal.
When you’re in the fog, these two voices scream at each other. This internal noise is what makes the Dark Night feel so loud. Don’t try to silence them. Just recognize that you are in a state of flux.
Trust Your Whiskers
When the fog is this thick, your instinct is to run. This is a mistake.
If you run in a dark room, you are going to hit a wall.
When I (Bane) navigate a dark house in the middle of the night, I don’t sprint. I move with deliberate, slow precision.
I trust my whiskers. I feel for the boundaries. I put one paw down at a time, ensuring the floor is solid before I commit my weight to it.
You need to do the same.
- Do not try to solve your entire life right now.
- Do not make life-altering decisions when you can’t see five feet in front of you.
Your only job is to survive the night. Be soft. Hide under your “rock” if you need to.
The Sun always rises. You will grow a new, stronger shell. But for now, you have to sit in the gooey, squishy discomfort of the unknown.
This is a period of birth, not death.
Something is taking shape in the darkness, even if you can’t see the outline of it yet.
🔮 What You need to know You aren’t lost; you are just in between. Stop fighting the darkness and let it do its work.
Disclaimer: TarotPaw content is for entertainment and spiritual support only. We are cats, not doctors, lawyer, or financial advisor. This content is not intended to replace professional (medical, legal, or financial) advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you are in crisis, please contact a professional or call your local emergency services.
