If you’re looking up at the big bright full moon in Aries wondering, What kind of moon are you? — you’re not alone. Tradition states that full moons are a time of reflection, of stillness and meditation. And, while plenty of Aries are pensive people, they hardly have a reputation for standing still. What kind of full moon ritual suits an Aries full moon, then? Full moons, we know, are full of emotions. A full moon summons the Earth’s tides toward extremes and, legend has it, summons the Earth’s people toward extreme behaviours. Under the stars of Aries, our full moon is a passionate moon, a moon that knows what it wants and means to get it. Under the stars of Aries, our full moon is impatient, looking toward the next cycle when this one is still going on.
Under the influence of Aries, this full moon has an independent nature, itching to move up and onward. But nothing above or below is ever alone, and while the moon in Aries might have us feeling like we’re on our own and can do as we please, the aspects it makes to other planets and stars tell a different story. The full moon rises in opposition to the Sun in Libra and brings our emotional need to differentiate ourselves up against our investment in maintaining common ground. Although Mercury has stationed direct, he still moves through his retrograde shadow, and echoes of Mercury retrograde in Libra can be felt here. Tensions around expectations in partnership, resentments that arose when direct communication didn’t happen, hurt feelings that stem from feeling under-appreciated or taken for granted — these are all the things that might lap at the edges of our night like waves at the shore.
The under (and over) current is strengthened by the moon’s opposition to Mars, which is also in Libra and conjunct the Sun. Mars rules over Aries and the tension in this opposition can certainly be felt. Mars in Libra craves a consensus and abstains from conflict unless conflict is absolutely necessary. Mars in Libra, bolstered by the Sun, wants everyone to come together on their own terms and then collaborate to create new shared terms that everyone can agree on. While some people dream of a common language, Mars in Libra does her best to initiate one.
A noble effort and a doomed one, since finding common ground takes patience and compromise and our full moon in Aries has little of either. A great night to remember that sometimes, under the right circumstance, beauty is in the trying and what it teaches us about ourselves, even if we don’t get the results we were counting on with each other. Pluto in Capricorn echoes that lesson, making a square to Mars and bringing yet another Cardinal energy to the mix. At 24°, Pluto in Capricorn also makes a square to the Moon in Aries at 27°. The square is not as tight as the one it makes to Mars in Libra at 23° but the interplay between these signs makes it palpable nonetheless.
It’s only right that the tensions in the sky of our Aries full moon form a kind of arrow that points right back to the last degrees of cardinal Cancer, our Zodiac’s mooniest sign. In Inside Degrees, Ellias Lonsdale used this sentence to describe the 24° of Cancer (opposite to Pluto): “Defiant of time’s cycles. Invested with the life-pulse immortal. As serene and effortless as it is constant and true. Making way for what cannot be foreseen.” Then, there’s this one to describe the 27° (square to the moon): “Inwardly compelled to take hold of given pairs of opposites and to work them by going into both and finding out how and where and why both cannot be refused, insist on being met.”
Cancers are known for their sensitivity. This quality empowers them to read a room and anticipate an emotional current before it arrives. Cancerian rituals work with cycles, with sleep and dreams and seasons. A Cancerian Aries full moon acknowledges and defies a cycle, it holds it and it breaks it to make way for what is unpredictable because it is entirely new. Under tonight’s full moon in Aries, what would it look like to make way for that which can’t be predicted? What would it look like to make way for what cannot be foreseen between you and those you love? How can making way for the unknown create space for opposites to meet?
Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
Being A Capricorn Is A Scam, Actually