Full Moon at 23 degrees 59’ Cancer at 22h27 UT on 13th January 2025

The first Moon after Yule – celebrated around the Winter Solstice – was known as the Wolf Moon in the Anglo-Saxon tradition as it fell at time when wolves could be heard howling in the wintery nights.

The Sun sits in Capricorn at this time, while across the sky the Moon is resplendent in her Cancer home. This is a Yin, Cardinal, Water sign, introverted and emotional, which possesses, nonetheless, a quiet power and the ability to initiate new projects. 

In the astrological cycle, the Sun’s ingress into Cancer in June marks the Summer Solstice. The sign sits on the cusp of the 4th house opposed by the Capricorn marking the traditional 4th and 10th houses of the birth chart – the parental axis. The Moon represents the nurturing mother archetype while Capricorn, the goat-fish, is ruled by Saturn, an archetypal father-figure, stern, sometimes limiting and concerned with material security and building enduring structures in the ‘real’ world.

In the lunar 4th we find our past, our ancestors, the place we have come from. In the saturnian 10th we find our public selves, our career and the structures we are putting in place for our future.

Regardless of the houses this Full Moon spans in our personal chart, these archetypes will be activated. This is a Full Moon which is powerful in its own sign. A Cancer Moon can be very self-protective and protective of what it loves as well as emotional and nostalgic as it looks back into the past.

With this Cancer Moon we are thinking about where we’ve come from, our origins, and memories, our families or tribe. We are weighing these things up against our duties and responsibilities, our drive to create material security and be successful in the wider world. Is there a decision to be made about family or those we are close to, and how we balance this with work, career and material security, around this Full Moon?  

The lunar theme of belonging and perhaps clinging to what we know is highlighted by Mars which sits beside the Moon. Both the Moon and Mars create a flowing trine with Neptune and the Pisces North Node suggesting that our dreams and goals are involved and we may be prepared to move crabwise to achieve them.

All Full Moons are the culmination of a cycle and to move on, as we know, we must let something go. The Capricorn Sun demands that we look towards the future and take our material responsibilities seriously. Its trine to the south Node implies that to fulfil our dreams and build the next stage of our lives we must take practical steps. 

The Full Moon is just separating from a positive aspect to Uranus, planet of radical change, so the decision to let go of something (material or a cherished ideal) may have already been made. It remains then, for the Moon to conjoin with Mars, implying that we may still have to come to terms with the difficult emotional implications of our decision.

Cancer and Capricorn are about nurturing and looking after in both emotional ways (Cancer) and practical, material ways (Capricorn). Both signs can be business-like and both tend to be good with money. The difference is one of focus with Cancer more intent on preserving what it knows and loves, and Capricorn more intent on building the future. It is concerned with responsibility and duty, though it’s goat-fish symbol sports a fishy spiritual tail.

So, the Full Moon in Cancer opposed by the Capricorn Sun is asking us to make decisions about the future and not be overly emotional or nostalgic about the past if we want to progress, though this may be difficult. The Nodes suggest we must be compassionate with ourselves and others and keep our dreams and ideals firmly in mind. And that we must balance this with practicality. Most of all we must be prepared to adapt and perhaps to make some sacrifices along the way. 

Perhaps we don’t get to ’have it all’ on this Full Moon, the square to Chiron reminds us that we are human after all, and letting go can be painful. But perhaps we can have some of it, and that will be enough. The Mutable Nodes suggest that we must be prepared to adapt to new circumstances.

Interestingly, this Full Moon relates back to the New Moon at 24 degrees Cancer on 17^th July 2023, which was the day before the Nodes shifted from Taurus/Scorpio to Aries/Libra. That is, from a focus on our values to a focus on our goals. Now, with the North Node in Pisces, we have moved beyond thinking only about what we want to the recognition that adaptability, wider understanding and an element of sacrifice maybe involved in the pursuit of our dreams.

Image: chatgpt

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