The waning moon occupies a significant and consistently shadowed position within the depth-psychology corpus. Across Jungian, archetypal, and astrological-psychological traditions, it functions as the emblematic image of decremental process: the movement from fullness toward darkness, from fertility toward sterility, from visibility toward concealment. Jung himself, in his 1928–1930 seminars, anchors the waning moon firmly in millennia of folk experience, documenting its universal association with decay, ghostly danger, and agricultural failure — a primordial impression encoded in the collective unconscious. Thomas Moore, drawing on Ficino's Neoplatonism, rehabilitates the waning phase as a therapeutically indispensable moment: without the emptying that waning enacts, no genuine fullness is possible, and resistance to this natural decay represents a pathological loss of Luna. Von Franz reads the moon's waxing and waning alchemically, as the corruptible, restless character of the feminine that the coniunctio seeks to stabilize. Liz Greene situates the waning within the full lunar cycle as a phase of decreasing light that ancient observers experienced as treachery. The central tension in the literature runs between the waning moon as omen of ruin (Jung's folk register, Greene's archaic dread) and as necessary psychological rhythm (Moore's therapeutic reframing). Together, these positions insist that the waning moon is not pathology but an archetypal station in the soul's own cyclical economy.
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the waning moon is felt as unfavourable. It predicts evil and destruction. It is the time of ghosts, when all is dark… everything undertaken under the waning moon is appointed to decay, it is sterile from the beginning.
Jung grounds the waning moon in a millions-of-years-old collective impression in which diminishing lunar light is experienced as an omen of decay, sterility, and ghostly danger embedded in folk custom worldwide.
Jung, C.G., Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984thesis
a therapist with this planetary scheme in mind might look for a loss of Luna, experienced as resistance to natural decay and waning. Without the phase of emptying, there can be no vital fullness.
Moore, via Ficino, reframes the waning moon therapeutically: resistance to psychic decay and emptying constitutes a pathological loss of Luna, since waning is constitutive of any full lunar rhythm.
Moore, Thomas, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1990thesis
Waning or waxing, full moon or sliver-crescent may be sensed at any time with reference to one of the many motions of the psyche.
Moore argues that lunar phases, including waning, are not merely sequential temporal events but archetypal images simultaneously available to describe any movement of the psyche.
Moore, Thomas, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1982thesis
the moon, which is characterized by waxing and waning and being hostile to the sun, and as
Von Franz reads the moon's waxing and waning alchemically as a corruptible, restless, and adversarial feminine principle that the coniunctio of sun and moon must overcome and transform.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980thesis
up to the time of the coniunctio the moon flowed, which would have to do with the constantly waxing and waning of the moon, the constant flux
Von Franz identifies the alchemical lunar flux — the constant waxing and waning — as a corruptible changeability that ceases only when the opposing lights unite in the coniunctio and the new light is born.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980supporting
the inexorable shrinking of the light. Thus the Moon was viewed as treacherous, and the earliest lunar goddesses who personified it are paradoxical and ambiguous in character.
Greene traces the waning moon's treacherous quality to prehistoric experience of unreliable light, which generated the paradoxical, ambiguous character of the earliest lunar goddesses.
Greene, Liz; Sasportas, Howard, The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope, 1992supporting
in a few days it has waned and gives only an uncertain light, or it may be completely dark. A man meets a woman. It is full moon with her
Jung uses the contrast between full and waning moon to illuminate how men must submit to the unpredictable rhythmic cycles of the feminine anima principle rather than imposing solar-masculine will.
Jung, C.G., Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting
The moon appears in art and symbols in three forms: a) The crescent or waxing moon… (b) The full moon… c) The waning moon
Jung's seminar catalogues the three symbolic phases of the moon — waxing, full, and waning — situating waning as the third and darkest station in the moon's threefold appearance in art and myth.
Jung, C.G., Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting
knowing the colors and aromas of beginning and of ending, recognizing fullness for what it is — part of a rhythm, not a goal; and appreciating emptiness.
Moore articulates the Ficinian principle that lunar consciousness requires familiarity with ending and emptiness — the psychological corollaries of the waning phase — as integral to a full awareness of psychic rhythm.
Moore, Thomas, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1990supporting
knowing the colors and aromas of beginning and of ending, recognizing fullness for what it is — part of a rhythm, not a goal; and appreciating emptiness.
Moore's Ficino-derived formulation presents lunar consciousness as requiring acquaintance with ending and emptiness — the experiential register of the waning moon — as a condition of psychological maturity.
Moore, Thomas, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1982supporting
The Moon then begins to wane, to decrease in light, as it travels back toward the Sun, and reaches its second quarter
Greene maps the waning phase precisely within the full lunation cycle, showing how the moon's decreasing light after opposition defines the second half of the monthly arc back toward conjunction.
Greene, Liz; Sasportas, Howard, The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope, 1992supporting
O Fortune, changeable as the Moon! You always wax or wane; Hateful life is one moment hard / And the next moment favours the gambler.
Greene invokes the Carmina Burana's identification of Fortune with the waxing and waning moon to illustrate the medieval archetype of cyclic inconstancy governing human life.
Greene, Liz; Sasportas, Howard, The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope, 1992supporting
thirty of them, corresponding to the age of the moon in its waxing and waning. Their colour is yellow.
Jung's alchemical research in Mysterium Coniunctionis records how the moon-plant Lunatica was understood to encode the full lunar cycle of waxing and waning in its thirty flowers, linking botanical symbolism to lunar rhythm.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955supporting
the moon receives them incessantly from the first to the middle of the month, so that it waxes and gets full, and then it guides them to the sun until the end of the month, and thus effects its waning
Jonas presents the Manichaean cosmological interpretation in which the moon's waning results from the offloading of purified souls — light-particles — transmitted upward through the sun, making lunar waning a moment in cosmic soteriological process.
Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 1958supporting
It is through the moon's phases — that is, its birth, death, and resurrection — that men came to know at once their own mode of being in the cosmos and the chances for their survival or rebirth.
Eliade situates the lunar phases, implicitly including waning as the death-moment, within the foundational anthropo-cosmic synthesis that enabled archaic humanity to integrate biology, temporality, and eschatological hope.
Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957aside
waning tides; a definite dualistic rhythm. At New Moon, the Moon is at its innermost point within the Earth-orbit. At Full Moon, it is at its outermost point outside of the Earth-orbit. Subjectivity and objectivity.
Rudhyar frames the waning cycle within a dualistic rhythm of subjectivity and objectivity, anchoring the moon's decrease in light to the geometric relationship between lunar position and the Earth-orbit.
Dane Rudhyar, The Astrology of Personality: A Re-formulation of Astrological Concepts and Ideals in Terms of Contemporary Psychology and Philosophy, 1936aside
That the moon was worshipped in Crete in her triple phases is at least probable.
Harrison adduces evidence for Cretan triple-phase lunar worship — encompassing the waning moon as one station — through identification of the Charites with the functional roles of Auxo (increaser) and cognate figures.
Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912aside