Dreaming about
the moon

The moon has no light of its own. It shines with borrowed sunlight, changes shape every night, pulls the tides up and down the beaches, and is at its brightest when the rest of the world is dark. Dreaming about the moon usually draws on those habits, pointing to your moods and feelings, to things that come and go in cycles, or to a part of your life that only shows itself at night.

Its shape and color matter. A full moon is a different dream from a thin crescent, and a red moon or one that seemed to be falling toward you is a different dream again. Think too about what has been rising and falling in your life, your mood, a relationship, a worry that comes back every month.

What dreaming about the moon means

The word lunatic comes from luna, the Latin for moon, because people once blamed the moon for madness, and nurses and police officers still swap stories about busy full-moon shifts.

Feelings and moods

The moon pulls the sea, and dreams often use it for the pull of feelings you can't fully control. A moon over water, or a moon that seemed to change your mood in the dream, can be about emotions running high, homesickness, longing, a crush you can't shake. Ask what has been tugging at you, rising and falling, over the past few weeks.

Cycles

The moon goes through its phases in about a month, and the words month and moon share a root. Dreams of it often come in situations that repeat, like a mood that returns every few weeks or an argument that goes round and round. Notice which phase the moon was in. A new or crescent moon can mark a beginning, a waning one something drawing to a close.

The mother and the hidden side

The moon is an old picture of the mother and of the feminine, so a moon dream can be about being cared for, or about your own mother. It also lights things only partly, which is why it tends to show up around secrets, intuition and what you feel but can't prove.

Dreaming about a full moon

A full moon is the cycle at its peak, and it often appears when something has come to a head. A relationship becomes official, a secret comes out, a long project is finally done. If the full moon felt beautiful, the dream is usually about fulfillment and being able to see clearly. If it felt eerie, with long shadows and a sense of being watched, it can be about emotions running too high, or the feeling that everyone can see what you hoped to keep private.

Dreaming of a blood moon

A blood moon is the coppery red the moon turns during a total eclipse, and people have long read it as a sign of upheaval. In a dream, it doesn't predict anything. A red moon usually points to strong emotion breaking the surface, anger or passion or grief, or to the sense that something familiar in your life has suddenly changed color.

Dreaming about a giant moon close to earth

A moon so huge and close it filled the sky is a common and striking dream. It tends to come when one feeling or situation has grown too big to ignore, something you used to see from a safe distance that is now right on top of you. It can be awe as much as fear. Two moons, or a moon in the wrong place, adds the sense that the normal rules of your life have stopped applying.

Dreaming about the moon falling

A moon falling toward the earth, or crashing into the sea, is one of the more frightening versions. Something that was always steady and above it all has come loose, perhaps a parent who seemed invincible, a belief, or a calm you relied on. These dreams sit close to dreams of the apocalypse, but the moon makes them more personal, about feelings or about the mother figure in your life.

Dreaming about the moon according to Jung and Freud

Jung: the moon on the mother list

Jung's list of mother images includes the moon, along with heaven, woods, a spring, the sea and still waters.^[1] A full moon over the sea puts two of them in one frame, so ask where mothering was on your mind that week: the one you had, the one you were, the one you wanted.

Freud: a moon you can almost touch

Nothing Freud wrote about the moon itself is quoted here, so this is his method at work. He looked for day residue, the scraps of the previous day a dream borrows,^[2] so ask whether the moon was really out when you walked home. Then comes the wish: a moon that fills the sky is something distant brought within reach, and he'd ask what you want that close.

Other readings

Calvin Hall, the American psychologist who built a standard system for coding dream content, held that a symbol states how you see something instead of hiding it.^[3] For the moon he took up the philosopher Susanne Langer's idea that it is a "condensed" symbol for woman, since its phases echo the menstrual cycle and its light is weaker than the sun's.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of the moon in dreams

The moon in Joseph's dream

The best-known moon in scripture is in Joseph's boyhood dream, where the sun and moon and eleven stars all bow to him. Jacob's answer is to ask whether he, Joseph's mother and his brothers will really bow before him.^[4] The Quran tells the same dream, and Joseph later calls his parents and brothers bowing to him the interpretation of his old dream.^[5] The Talmud records Rabbi Berekhya pointing out that Joseph's mother had already died, and taking the moon as proof that part of a dream can come true without the rest.^[6]

The red moon in Revelation

Revelation lists the moon becoming "as blood" among the signs at the sixth seal,^[7] a vision of upheaval that says nothing about your own red moon.

Questions to ask about your moon dream

The moon in your dream was doing something specific, and that's where to start.

• What shape and color was the moon?
• Was it far away and calm, or too close, falling or changing?
• Who were you with, or were you alone?
• What in your life comes and goes in cycles right now?
• Has anything been coming to a head lately?

When you tell Oniri about a moon dream, it asks a few things like these first, because a full moon over a beach and a red moon over a highway don't read the same way.