Full Moon in Cancer

The first Full Moon of 2025, January 13th, has La Luna shining brightly in her home sign of Cancer.

Here, the Moon is able to express her deepest emotions, to feel fully and wholly. Empathetic and safety-oriented, this lunation brings to light events of the last several months, urging a balance of inner and outer security. For, in order to grow tall, we need to nourish our deepest roots. We need to feel safe enough in our internal world to be successful in the outer. This is the crux of the Full Moon in Cancer.

The Sun, in steady, grounded Capricorn, serves as the perfect counterbalance for the sensitive Cancerian. With the Moon conjunct to a still-retrograde Mars, reason, practicality, and level-headedness are resources to turn to when feelings run high and emotions threaten to spill out and drown both ourselves and those around us.

Yet, the stern Sun also needs the softer and more nurturing energy of this motherly Moon.

Capricorn, as the archetypal Father, provides structure and external safety for Lunar energy to flow and feel. At the center of these polarities is the Inner Child—the one that may be calling out for nurturing, the one that may be prone to reactivity, not always realizing that feelings—no matter how strongly they’re experienced—are not always facts.

Martian energy indicates that there’s a sense of being driven by pure instinct and feeling. Decisions and choices arise from our gut, from our intuition. We now possess the courage of conviction. If emotions have been held for too long, they will, undoubtedly, bubble up and spill over in an attempt to protect and defend what we most hold dear.

This may be our peace, our security, our safety, our family, our friends. Defending that which we love is the higher calling of this Full Moon. Yet, collapsing into passive-aggressive behavior, into a space where we’re nurturing everyone else, yet not honoring or communicating our own needs, is where the sacred work lies. The Full Moon brings it all to a head, allowing for the opportunity to express and release any frustration, any pent-up resentment, albeit in a way that’s non-destructive and mature.

This is where Neptune steps in: the trine from the compassionate Mystic softens the sharper energies of La Luna and the God of War. It lends an even deeper, almost psychic slant. It’s representative of the fact that our souls are, in fact, driving this chariot. That it’s not just about our emotional needs, but about something more.

As we clamor to create safety, we also create the space and opportunity for spiritual development. We learn to forgive and release, to surrender all that which we simply cannot control. We learn boundaries, of where our limits of giving, protecting, and nurturing are. We learn to turn inwards and lend that nurturing to those who need it the most—ourselves.