Keywords: Emotion, needs, habit, security, mother
- Rules
- Cancer
- Full cycle
- 27.3 days (about 2.5 days in each sign)
- Retrograde
- Never retrograde
Dignities: Exalted in Taurus, in fall in Scorpio, in detriment in Capricorn.
The Moon is the fastest-moving body in the chart, which makes it the most personal. Because it changes sign every two and a half days, even two people born on the same day can have different Moons.
What it describes is not thought but need: what a person requires to feel safe, which reflex takes over under stress, how they soothe themselves. If the Sun says where you are heading, the Moon says where you come from.
In traditional astrology the Moon also signifies the mother and early childhood. In modern usage this is read as an "internalized way of caring": how a person has learned to look after themselves.
When the birth time is unknown, the Moon is the body that suffers most. If it changed sign during that day, you get two different readings, and they look nothing alike.
In the houses
House placement: the area where a person invests most emotionally.