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Moon in dreams: what it can mean

  • Nature
  • Change
  • Family

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The short answer

The moon changes shape but always returns, lighting the dark without warming it. Many dreamers connect it with cycles, moods, mystery or a quiet figure watching over them.

Your dream is not everyone's

Tell it the way you remember it. You get a reading about your dream and your life, not a dictionary entry.

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Three ways to read it

Psychology and research

Research

On the continuity view, images in dreams carry the dreamer's own associations, and the moon is rich in them: night walks, romance, loneliness, calendars, a grandmother's sayings. There is no good evidence that the moon's phase changes what we dream, so treat a moon in your dream as your mind's image, not an outside influence. Its size, colour and phase in the dream can be worth noting for yourself.

Classic texts

History

In Genesis, Joseph dreams that the sun, the moon and eleven stars bow down to him, and his father Jacob reads the moon as Joseph's mother. Artemidorus likewise tied the moon to women, and especially to the dreamer's wife or mother. Both show an old habit of reading the moon as a close, nurturing figure.

Folk tradition

Tradition, not science

Tradition: American popular dream books, around 1900

Miller's 1901 dream dictionary read a clear, bright moon as a hopeful sign for love and ventures, and a clouded or strange moon as a sign of disappointment. It is one old popular reading, reported as history rather than prediction.

Questions to ask yourself

  1. What in your life moves in cycles, coming and going?
  2. Who watches over you quietly, or whom do you watch over?
  3. What did the light of the moon let you see that you could not see before?

Related symbols

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. G. William Domhoff (2001). A New Neurocognitive Theory of Dreams. Dreaming 11(1): 13-33.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: pp. 13-33 (dreams as simulations of personal concerns) (reference not yet checked)

    Dreams as embodied simulations of personal concerns (the continuity view). The backbone of our psychology lens.

  2. Antonio Zadra, Robert Stickgold (2021). When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep. New York: W. W. Norton.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: the NEXTUP model (reference not yet checked)

    NEXTUP model: dreaming explores weak, unexpected associations between memories.

  3. Hebrew Bible (1611). Genesis, in The Holy Bible (King James Version).

    public domain

    • Cited at: Genesis 37:9-10 (reference not yet checked)

    Quoted from the public-domain King James Version.

  4. Artemidorus of Daldis (1644). The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica), in five books, translated by Robert Wood. London.

    first published 2nd century CE

    public domain

    • Cited at: Book II, on the heavenly bodies (reference not yet checked)

    Greek dream manual from the Roman era. We paraphrase the public-domain Wood translation (1644). Modern translations (White 1975, Harris-McCoy 2012, Hammond 2020) are copyrighted and only cited.

  5. Gustavus Hindman Miller (1901). What's in a Dream (later reissued as Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted).

    public domain

    • Cited at: entry: Moon (reference not yet checked)

    An American popular dream dictionary. Its entries are written as omens ("foretells"); we only report how people once read a symbol, never as a forecast.