Pamela Colman Smith · RWS deck
The Major Arcana
The Moon
- Hebrew Letter
- QOPH
- Element
- PISCES
- Path
- Netzach ↔ Malkuth
- State
- Sensing / Unsettled
Upright · Sensing
Intuition doing its work undisturbed. The road is walked even if the terrain isn’t fully understood. The howling fear is present, but not in charge. The querent can still move forward.
Reversed · Unsettled
Intuition disrupted by fear or uncertainty. The terrain may still be passable, but anxiety has taken charge of the journey and the querent no longer trusts themselves enough to keep moving.
The image
A dog and a wolf howl toward a moon with a human face. A crayfish rises from a pool at the base of two distant towers. A path winds between them, toward mountains that can’t be fully seen from here.
Qoph’s own name is the Back of the Head, which in modern terms translates to the intuition and the unconscious. These are the senses that work without looking directly at what can be physically navigated or proved. This path runs from Netzach, desire, down into Malkuth, the ground itself. The road is walked by reflected light, not direct sight.
Learn how to read The Moon in a spread
This page shows you what The Moon means. Knowing how to read it — how it shifts next to the other cards, what the reversal is really telling you, and how to turn a spread into a clear answer — is what the RWS Decoded course and book teach, card by card.
