Moon in the signs

What Moon means

In a natal chart the Moon stands for the part of you that reacts before you think. It describes your emotional needs, the moods that come and go, what comforts you after a bad day and what quietly unsettles you. Traditionally it is linked with the mother, with early care and with the body’s rhythms of hunger, rest and habit, so it also says something about how you were looked after and how you look after others. The Sun is the self you are working towards; the Moon is the self you fall back on when you are tired.

The Moon is the fastest body in the chart. It crosses a whole sign in about two and a half days and goes round the zodiac in about a month. That speed makes the Moon sign far more personal than the Sun sign: two people born a few days apart, even in the same week, can have entirely different emotional temperaments. It also means the Moon can change sign on the day you were born, sometimes within a few hours.

People who share your Moon sign tend to recognise the same needs: the same kind of comfort, the same things that put them on edge. How loudly that shows depends on the house the Moon falls in and the planets it touches. To find your Moon sign you need your birth date and, ideally, your birth time, since without it a Moon that changed sign that day cannot be placed with certainty.