chaosbloom
The Moon in Tarot, as in astrology and other occult traditions, has had a bad press because of the rank misogyny of many male occultists - eg Papus and Crowley to name just two.
To become an occultist in Indo-European (and most other) cultures, you needed to be literate, preferably in Latin and Greek as well as your own vernacular, and have access to an exceptional library. A private income helped.
Few women had these opportunities before 19th century. Further, well-to-do educated men had the means, the contacts and the opportunity to publish in a way that simply wasn't open to women until the early 20th century.
Not only were male occultists informed by the misogyny of their own culture, but they understood better than most, the extraordinary and compelling nature of feminine magical power. For these reasons they were very wary and often negative about expressions of this power, of which the moon is perhaps the most important. Thus we have a tradition of negativity about the moon which still survives in some Tarot schools.
If you want a good corrective to all that nonsense, read (if you haven't already done so) Robert Graves' masterpiece on the magical feminine, The White Goddess.
For my money, the moon is the ruler of all magic, and especially of divination. You cannot interpret the planets, or understand your dreams, or read the Tarot, without honouring her. She is Mother, Goddess, and High Priestess, and you will understand nothing of the occult arts without her guidance.
Yes, exactly my feelings on why the greater divide between male and female magical practices exists. Female spirituality existed but since it dealt more with practical and not theoretical matters and didn't or couldn't publish books and form societies (women excluded from the Freemasons for example), their forms and practices were labelled as low magic versus the male-dominated high magic. It's not just that they were male. It was also that they were aristocratic upper class twits who tended to see anything outside their class as unlearned, unsophisticated and plebeian. That happened to include female spirituality.
The fact is, mythology and greco-roman -christian or pagan traditions aside, the Moon in my experience-and that of most readers I know- often speaks of mental illness, hidden things, the dark side, and everything I said in my first post-and more. I pride myself in being a pragmatist and empiricist first of all, and in readings, I have never seen the Moon in a particularly positive way. Of course, maybe one day I will, I can't rule it out. Until then, I'm sorry if Tradition has treated the Moon-and the feminine in general- unfairly, I am a woman too. But that's the way it is, and it's not going to change because we disagree.
Okay, so your argument now is that since your experiences have confirmed your bias for the Moon as a negative card, this holds some sort of universal validity for everyone. It doesn't. Not just because you might have confirmation bias but also because it's a universal observation that magical or divinatory correspondences differ between cultures and practitioners without that affecting the effect of the practice.
And it's not just about Christian tradition, by the way.
Do you prefer Abrahamic Judeo-Christian then? Islamic? The last one might be more favorable to the Moon because of their lunar roots but I'm not sure and frankly don't really care.
Oh I see a lot of disagreement, actually. And not just in attitudes, but about the facts. But that's alright. And it goes without saying that each one of us can keep his own and no one owns the ultimate Truth.
You are confusing opinion with fact. Please stop trying to prove interpretations other than your own to be wrong claiming to use facts. Unless of course you mean that everyone in this thread that doesn't ascribe to your exact interpretation is a bad reader.