Dream interpretation manuals from Artemidorus in the second century to the Victorian penny dreadfuls all have an entry for the Moon, and they mostly agree it means a woman, a mother, or a change of circumstance.

Artemidorus reads a bright moon as good for travellers and traders and an eclipsed one as illness or loss. The consistency across seventeen centuries is less impressive than it looks, since later dream books copied earlier ones wholesale — a tradition can look ancient and unanimous simply because everybody was reading the same book.