This is one of my posts at the Aeclectic Tarot Forum.
About the Moon, it can be both female and male, as to the circumstances, the querent, the other cards surrounding it, and so on.
I think this question about the Moon being male or female is a tough one, since quite quickly one finds oneself in a rigid system where some chains of equivalence (as they put in discourse theory) are being established like: solar=male, positive, active and lunar=female, feminive, passive etc.
I don’t have a problem with solar=positive, active and lunar=negative (or reflective), passive etc. It is when when it is mixed up with the gender stuff it becomes slightly problematic, to put it mildly.
I really like the idea of solar lunar aspects for both males and females or as characterising both men and women.
Women can be solar, men can be lunar and vice versa. I surely know that from my self. Sometimes I withdraw to within myself, at other times I act “aggressively” to get things done.
As for the solar woman, Eowyn in LOTR could be an archetype. Arven being her lunar counterpart.
As for gods (for example): The trickster Loke in the norse mythology may be lunar, while Thor or Tyr may be solar deities. I guess.
Apollon both has lunar and solar attributes – being both a solar deity, and also connected with the delphic oracle, being the ruler of initiations of death and rebirth, and being connected to Persephone (This I have read on Rachel Pollacks blog). This sounds quite “lunar” to me.
Persephone for herself could be a lunar goddess, as her mother, Demeter, a corn goddess, being more solar.
Reading a book about Gawain (by John Matthews) I learn that the great Goddess apart from being a triple deity, also divides in two: The Flower Maiden and the darker Goddess – later known as Morgain la Fay, also solar and lunar aspects of the Goddess.
There’s plenty of examples. You may not agree with my interpretations all the way ;o)
My point merely being that for my part, that if I restrict my self to single sided, gendered, conceptions of both Tarot and other subjects, I’ll miss important learning.
Maybe it is so simple, that the Sun card is about the solar aspects of life, The Moon card about the lunar aspects of life, among al the other meanings ;o)