If that title is turning you off
(Cat, I need some love and light right now, not "the transforming power of grief!")
well, I hear you(!), still, this Cancer Full Moon is in a standoff with the Sun/Pluto, that's not easy - let's trust there's some gold (there is!) in here, too, if we are willing to dig for it!
On January 17th, 2022 at 6:48PM EST, the Cancer Moon opposes the Capricorn Sun at 27 degrees giving us another 27 degree Full Moon (our 4th!) - this one, our annual Full Moon in Cancer.
The Moon is the ruler of Cancer, so with nowhere else to go - no secondary ruler and no multiple dispositors to work through - the Cancer Full Moon is always very potent.
Full Moons are peak energy/culmination points - often endings.
We have the Moon (where we've been, what we feel, feminine energy, being) and the Sun (where we are trying to go/be, masculine energy, doing)
as far apart in the sky as they can be from our
earthly perspective during a Full Moon. This Moon at home in Cancer - so
very strong - the Sun, quite comfortable in serious Cappy, but
answering to Saturn in Aquarius who is himself (although the ancient ruler of Aquarius, so strong here) answering to a retrograde Uranus in Taurus answering to Venus, retrograde in Cappy, so back to Saturn. The Sun gets a few more hoops to jump through/energies to be factored in. And, this year, he is certainly powered up through his proximity to powerful Pluto.
Cancer/Capricorn is the polarity of traditional female/male roles. Home and family vs work and the world. How we care for ourselves (and others) and meet our needs for safety and security vs how we push ourselves out in the world toward meeting goals to obtain safety and security. Sometimes on some level this is - love/comfort vs money/comfort. Mom vs dad. Lots of family patterns and soul group energies in this polarity - the Cancer/Capricorn axis - that come to the surface now; ripe to be released. We have been working out alot of our old stuff through Cancer/Cappy the last few years and this Full Moon is part of that story. I could link to a gazillion posts, but I will just link to THIS ONE, the Full Moon in Cancer from January 2020, right before "time runs out/power is cemented", that Moon also stood across the sky from Pluto, but in 2020, Saturn had Pluto's back, too, this year Saturn has moved on.
We want to move on, too, but here we are AGAIN - facing off with these shadow issues/fears.
I pulled some asteroids/dwarf planets, etc into the chart to kind of flesh things out a bit for us, but let's start with the Moon's opposition to Pluto, by far this Full Moon's BIGGEST aspect, because, contrary to the astronomical community determined to demote him, astrologers are pretty sure 'death' cannot be so easily outmaneuvered
Let's unpack the chart!
The Moon moved into Cancer right about the time the Sun was meeting up with Pluto (a couple days before the Full Moon). The Sun on Pluto throws a light on power. Merges power/ego. Maybe we see who is really holding the cards/a reveal of the man behind wizard briefly makes an appearance. Maybe the emperor is shown to be without clothes. Maybe the servant is shown to be the king he really is. Truth can come out. The way we deal with power comes TO OUR ATTENTION. With the Moon in Cancer we will FEEL what this power/lack of power feels like.
In the run-up to this Full Moon, before the Moon in Cancer opposes Pluto and then the Sun - she will, trine Jupiter, sextile Uranus, oppose Venus and trine Neptune, so she has been put through her paces already. Her opposition to the Sun in Capricorn is her final aspect.
The Moon's closing aspect matters... alot.
Ideally we'd like something smooth like a sextile or a trine and certainly not an opposition, but with all these 27 degree Full Moons, the Full Moon IS most likely to be the FINAL aspect, and, of course, the Full Moon is ALWAYS an opposition. Life seems determined we end each monthly lunar cycle with this opposition, ego challenge/CHALLENGE COMING FROM OUTSIDE OURSELVES for months.
These 27 degree Full Moons are in play until April when the Moon moves to 26 degrees Libra, but even then the final aspect is a square to Pluto (this is about a week before Pluto stations retrograde). It won't be until May that the Moon's closing aspect will be a sextile (smooth aspect/opportunity) to a retrograde Pluto and that Full Moon is an Eclipse in Scorpio (25 degrees), our first in 18 years, and answering to Pluto. Eclipses are hard to predict. With that Eclipse the 'spell' is broken and we move on with our usual mixed bag Full Moons.
You might remember last year we had a string of 23 degree New Moons - all in various aspects to dwarf planet Eris and that 23 degrees all starting rather 'late in the game'. Now, we have all these 27 degree Full Moons - all in various aspects to Pluto (and Sedna/Algol) and all bringing the Moon to a tense final aspect/opposition - the Moon's closing aspect being 'the last play of the game'.
And this month in particular, the Moon coming off that challenging closing aspect and moving a few hours later into Leo, the Sun's domain and the sign of her detriment might feel particularly tough (the Leo Moon though does end on the 20th with a smooth trine to Mars, so there's that).
OK, back to this chart!
The Moon is in a close opposition to Pluto. Pluto is naturally connected to Scorpio (modern rulership) and our collective 8th house and rules such matters as life/death, what is hidden, sex, reproduction, power, transformation, other people's resources/money, taxes, insurance, inheritance, third party situations.
Power and how we deal with power is a MAJOR Plutonian issue for us at both an individual and a group level.
Pluto, God of the underworld, rules the stuff we have stuffed. The shadow self - the real self we buried to survive. His themes include guilt, resentment, control, revenge, manipulation, jealousy, etc. There is often a kind of 'horror story' connected to our natal Pluto placement AND the stuff we carry in our 8th house. It's a childhood story, yes, but the reason we magnetized it to us in childhood in the first place is because of an even deeper ancestral/past life horror story.
Maybe it's the story (chapter in the book/in life) we read under the covers with a flashlight or skip over entirely only to discover later we need to go back there to fill in the missing details.
Our shadow self is what was hidden/given up to ensure going-on-being in our earliest years. It is not
so much our anti-social traits, but the creative potential that we repressed, both individually and collectively,
out of the need to preserve our emerging self from repeated
unmanageable blows of fate.
This well-timed opposition to Pluto is maybe even more important than another opposition to Pluto, not that any Pluto opposition will be ignored :) - because during this Moon's lunar cycle the South Node (what is holding us back) moves into Scorpio and starts answering to Pluto.
So, here is the LIGHT of the Full Moon to force our head out from under those covers. Maybe to see 'what is holding us back' more clearly.
As a Scorpio rising with an 8th house Cancer Moon, I don't hesitate to call myself, warts and all, a Plutonian person. From experience, I believe the greatest healing for our Pluto nightmares isn't years spent on the psychologist's couch, so much as reaching for the highest aspects of Taurus (Scorpio's polarity sign) - SIMPLICITY and STEWARDSHIP. Scorpios will sometimes tell me they thrive on chaos, and this may be true for some people, but most 'Pluto problems' and an opposition to the Moon in feeling/vulnerable Cancer will probably not feel especially 'thriving' - can be greatly helped by making things more simple and focusing on what we are stewarding/nurturing - there is even a SMOOTH/OPPORTUNISTIC trine to Mama-bear Ceres nearing the end of her time in Taurus, 'back in the garden', to help things fall into place when we lean in this direction.
There is an 'out-of-sign' sextile to the North Node in Gemini (more choices, new facts, keeping things small and local) and a waning trine to Neptune (ancestral help, inspiration, imagination) to help us through this one.
The Full Moon also has an important inconjunct to Mars (Mars now conjunct the Sun of that first U.S. vax chart - Mars the trigger so triggering a light on what has and hasn't been accomplished).
A rock and a hard place. Cancer/Sagittarius. Home/safety/security at
odds with adventure/what is foreign/that maybe greener grass over there. Mars wants to GO, but the Moon says - stay home/stay safe. Some give and take is needed.
Maybe during this Full Moon (with one eye on that upcoming South Node Scorpio) we might SEE/FEEL what is dying/scaring the hell out of us/coming out of the shadows. We don't want to stuff it because we are going to have enough to unpack over the next 18 months with the South Node in Scorpio. We want to feel it without being consumed/smothered by it. We will probably need to LEAN INTO, what IS working, what is comfortable, what is most simple. This 'simple' thing is not always going to be easy, because Uranus has been in our Taurus house for the last couple years knocking over the furniture. Simple doesn't mean avoiding the mess. But what mess can be cleaned up/simplified? Or what part of this mess can we live with right now? Or how can make a practical plan for the mess, but also spend some comfortable time in the 'non-messy'? Am I making sense here? We have to get ourselves untangled from whatever is most complicated/crisis driven AND WE KNOW WHAT THIS IS. This Moon can bring something like this TO A HEAD. Self-care will matter at this Full Moon. Mother issues can be helped/healed through time spent with Mother Earth.
People with Pluto/Moon or Scorpio Moon/8th house Moon or Cancer aspects (Sag risings) or people with planets/points nearest 27 degrees of the cardinal signs - Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn might be feeling this energy strongest. Maybe people who have lost their mother/lost their mothering. Feelings of resentment might come up involving children or a feeling of holding onto children in a life or death manner or grief around lost children or what our children are losing. The scars left from lack of/cut-off early nurturing can be exposed to us, too. The Moon/Pluto is a very good combination for anything that deals with subtlety. We can really tune into the motivations of other people now.
Cancer Moons can like to hide, but the Full Moon isn't a time that allows hiding (still we might need some time alone/take it). The night sky is ILLUMINATED, so we want to hunker down, but something is happening that isn't allowing this 'hunkering' to be comfortable. Full Moons can bring endings/culminations, but maybe here whatever is ending isn't a comfortable ending. Because HERE is Pluto. The truth, the secret that comes out, the fear of death or the actual death/loss, the power struggle, the obsession, the jealousy/resentment, the deep grief, the manipulation - the thing we can't control.
For some, this very emotional/vulnerable Full Moon can bring up depression/anxiety issues. Perhaps anxiety/depression is simply what naturally happens to spontaneous aliveness when it is dismembered and buried out of the need to 'protect' ourselves. If life’s excitement can't be entered into maybe it is always very likely to assume pathological expression.
What can we do to feel more alive?
No more 'waiting' for things to go back to what was working before or what was comfortable before. No more 'waiting' around passively for something to happen - it will and we might not like it! We might not be able to do everything right now, but what can we do? Mercury is about to move through multiple squares with Uranus and during these tangles Uranus is going to station direct, followed by Mercury. There isn't only the change that comes our way there is the change that we create!
Millions of people not creating any change, allow these energies to run amok.
The highest energy of Pluto is the energy of the Pheonix - which rises from the ashes. These Full Moons in relation to Pluto are like mini collective deaths and rebirths. This one may be the most strongly felt/the most challenged, but it is also the one with the strongest Moon - in her home sign and sextiling Ceres, so we'll keep that in mind as we move through the next couple weeks and process our feelings with what comes up.
This is getting awfully wordy - but let's take a fast look at those asteroids.
Asteroid Pandora (pandemic and first woman /we'll get back to her in the U.S. Pluto return series) trines the Moon from the very end of Scorpio, answering to Pluto, and we can see ' the brakes are off' with omicron and our 'first woman' story-line that has been previously set into motion here in the U.S. This 'brakes are off' is not necessarily a bad thing and that is supported by benevolent Venus's conjunction (as omicron was announced) to the January 2020 degree where Saturn met Pluto (as China announced to the WHO the virus had jumped countries/official start of pandemic).
The Moon/Sun are squared by asteroids Achilles in Aries and asteroids Elatus and Haumea in Libra which form a Grand Cardinal Cross. This shows the need to START something/initiate change. Makes me think of the anxiety/depression symptoms as we struggle for spontaneous aliveness. Haumea is a Hawaiian creator-God energy. She was discovered in December 2004 at 12 degrees Libra and tightly conjunct asteroid Tsunemi, two days after a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed over 200,000 people - she was named for a scientist, but it is thought the sound of names can carry the meaning of a word they closely resemble. Elatus was a centaur killed by the poisoned arrow that went on to injure Chiron's knee/foot setting that whole part of Chiron's story into motion. Achilles was the great warrior/hero of the Trojan War and was raised by Chiron (his human-mother had attempted at his birth to make Achilles immortal by holding him in the River Styx, holding him by his heel that was the one part of his body "un-dipped" and later vulnerable). Achilles also died by an arrow through his vulnerable heel/foot. Maybe something here about 'shooting ourselves in the foot'? Maybe something about 'the shots'. Mars in Sag is now on the Sun of that first U.S. shot chart and he was on the natal Chiron of the U.S. birth chart during that first shot, which started on an Eclipse, so pretty wildcard energy back then.
HERE is a post about that.
The Full Moon is also in an opportunistic sextile to Sedna (we talked about her HERE) and, with Sedna at 28 degrees, and being a VERY slow mover, the other 27 degree Full Moons have been/will be talking to her, too! And that aspect is applying/building, so a very strong one. The Moon also sextiles malevolent fixed star Algol, pretty much merged with Sedna these past couple years.
We will talk about Sedna and Algol in the U.S. Pluto return post.
To bottom line something here - the Sun is conjunct Pluto - a light on power/powerlessness. Pluto is requiring we harness and redirect our solar power. The Sun in Cappy is determined anyway, with the tenacity and guts to be who he wants to be. Pluto respects this. The Moon, across the skies in her home sign of Cancer is determined, too. And Pluto and the Moon are both water planets and both have a talent for hiding/repressing feelings, intuitively knowing these stored memories can be PAINFUL. Maybe the biggest difference here is the way the Moon/Cancer holds on to this emotional baggage and Pluto/Scorpio can drag the deadwood/fear-based crap into the here-and-now and let the Sun's fire burn it up. Pluto brings the tough love. With the Sun's bright light, maybe we can see the ways we have built our house on the shifting sands of other people's values/money/resources/agendas and through outdated authority contracts (the ways we've given our power away), some as old as time itself.
Maybe this powerful Cancer Full Moon asks us, in her time of fullness, what we need to let go of/give birth to, to come home to ourselves.
It's a BIG Full Moon - playing out over the next two weeks as things change and then change again.
Buckle up. Take care of yourself. Life has our backs, truly, truly.
xo all - I hope something in here is helpful. Back with part I of the U.S. Pluto return series.
