Full Moon @ 24 degrees Cancer 00'
January 13, 2025
2:27 PM EDT
5:27 PM PDT
January's Full Moon in tropical Cancer (and the first Full Moon of 2025) synchronistically culminates alongside Mars' building opposition to the Sun and the peak of its retrograde cycle. This suggests that, especially alongside this Full Moon and days surrounding it, the Mars archetype is getting particularly louder than usual. Mars is also at its brightest in the night sky and entirely visible due to its solar opposition.
Mars is, firstly, the archetypal warrior and trailblazer. It has synchro-symbolic ties to the more instinctual domains of the human mind and psyche--aggression, flight or fight responses, sexual desire. Both conscious and unconscious influences over willpower and volition fall into the Martian archetypal domain, our ability or inability to take action, impulses, fears, and emotional triggers.
A powerful Mars in the sign of Cancer, a water sign with its own symbolic ties to more unconscious undercurrents via its rulership by the Moon itself, is likely to feel more experientially and subjectively instinctual and impulsive than usual, especially on an emotional level. This can very well present us with a more emotionally volatile Full Moon that can amplify triggers and reactions. Sexuality or aggression can play a dominant role here.
Considering Mars' ongoing retrograde motion in opposition to Pluto, there is also that inevitable shadow current to much of what we're involved in personally (and collectively), such as a darker, perhaps ominous undercurrent to circumstances. It is likely to feel emotionally and psychically heavy. It is a confrontation with shadow. Ways in which we're confronted with deeply entrenched instinctual impulses that influence our choices, actions, and behaviors are likely facing many of us.
This is a Full Moon to be considerably careful and mindful of impulsive actions and choices, a time to reflect more deeply on what drives our behaviors and decision-making rather than forcing ourselves to make major choices unless there is no other option.
It is a Full Moon that can shift us more internally than externally (though, as always with astrology, there will be more external catalysts in various manifestations). Mars is uncomfortable in Cancer because it is not a sign interested with achievement and the outer world. Mars in Cancer is more protective of what is sacred and vulnerable, more fixated on taking the lead with healing, nurturing, care, and domestic matters.
With that, it can reflect some powerful and intense experiences, but those that are less visible to others, more low-key and intimate than overt and ostentatious. That is likely where these energies are leading us to a breakthrough or culmination at the heart of very personal matters and experiences, things that shift us ever so subtly but can have powerful reverberations.