Dreaming About the Moon

A moon in a dream gets noticed for its size or its colour: too large, too low, doubled, blood red, or hanging about in a daylight sky. Across a very wide range of cultures the traditional account connects the moon to cycles, to feeling rather than thinking, and to those parts of life that change on a schedule of their own. A full moon suggests something at its peak, a new moon a beginning not yet visible.

Phases and what gets made of them

Because the moon changes shape, the phase is the first thing anyone interprets. Waxing goes with growth and waning with release. An eclipse, which people report far more often than they ever witness one, indicates a temporary loss of clarity rather than an omen, whatever older folklore says on the subject. Two moons in a single sky is a surprisingly frequent report and usually attaches to a divided situation, or a choice between two versions of a life.

The moon and mood

The old belief that the moon governs mood has left a heavy mark on dream interpretation and on the language itself. Research on sleep and the lunar cycle is mixed at best, and nothing here should be taken as a claim about how the moon affects anybody. What can fairly be said is that dreamers themselves associate the image with emotional weather, and readers have followed that association rather than any physical mechanism.

Your own moon

This symbol lands very differently depending on who is dreaming it. Somebody who tracks lunar phases deliberately, for a calendar, a festival or a garden, arrives with a whole framework already in place. Somebody whose last real look at the moon happened on one particular night with one particular person arrives with a memory instead. Both outrank the general account, and the moon that appeared in your own dream is the one to work from.