Aries Full Moon: Courage to be Whole

The first Full Moon after eclipse season arrives in Aries at 9:49 am PST/ 12:49 pm EST on Sept 26 in the first sign of the zodiac; the spark of life. It is the instinct that says: I am. I desire. I will.

But before we talk about beginnings, movement and desire, we need to talk about grief. Because this isn't a Full Moon asking us to bypass what hurts in the name of moving forward.

Full moons are often spoken about as times to release, but I don't work with them that way. A full moon is an illumination... The light is turned all the way up, allowing us to witness something that may have previously existed in shadow. Sometimes what we see hurts, and sometimes it's beautiful. Often it can be both - life and death coexisting, reminding us what it means to be alive.

This Full Moon arrives immediately after eclipse season, carrying us into a new chapter while simultaneously illuminating what we are still mourning from the one that came before. The card I pulled for this lunation speaks of mourning - and the question that immediately came through was: How do you soften when grief wants to harden you? How do you allow yourself to descend fully into the feeling; grief, rage, longing, disappointment, whatever is actually there; without making a home inside of it? Mars in Cancer tells us the only way out really is through our own ocean.

THE BODY KEEPS THE TRUTH

Mars rules this Aries Full Moon, and it's moving through the final degree of Cancer while squaring Chiron at the final degree of Aries. This is an anaretic degree - symbolizing catharsis and completion.

Cancer brings us into memory, attachment, belonging, tenderness and the places we learned what safety feels like. Chiron in Aries speaks to wounds around the self; the places we learned that being fully ourselves could cost us love, belonging or connection.

And at the final degrees of these signs, something wants to be felt... Not intellectually understood, reframed into a lesson, or immediately transformed into gratitude. Just felt.

This tense aspect illuminates the wounds we would rather cut away from ourselves entirely... the needy part, angry part, grieving part, the part that wants more, the part that is terrified of being abandoned, or the part that is equally terrified that intimacy will swallow us whole. We can spend years trying to transcend these parts of ourselves. But whatever we exile has a funny way of finding us again... Sometimes through the mirros we encounter, or through situations that press directly against the wound we've spent years pretending isn't there. The relational mirrors keeps appearing until we are willing to look. This lunation tells us that healing isn't finally becoming someone who doesn't have the wound, but being able to look at that part of yourself and say: Of course you're here. I understand why you feel this way. You don't have to disappear for me to love you.

ARIES FULL MOON: SELF + OTHER

Every Aries Full Moon illuminates the Aries–Libra axis. Self and other. Independence and interdependence. Me and we. Most of us have learned to protect ourselves by leaning toward one end of that spectrum. Maybe you learned to abandon yourself to preserve connection... You compromise, shrink or accept less than you need because losing someone feels more frightening than losing yourself. Perhaps you learned the opposite... You protect your autonomy at all costs, keep relationships casual, or you convince yourself you don't need anyone because needing someone means risking engulfment or loss.

Neither strategy makes is wrong - it's simply habitual and protective. Both tell us something about what we've learned intimacy costs. This Full Moon asks us to witness where we currently exist on that spectrum without judgment. Because Aries teaches us to belong to ourselves, but Libra reminds us that the self does not develop in isolation.

We are social beings; we discover ourselves through relationship and learn through the mirror of the other. We need solitude and togetherness. The work isn't choosing one forever; it's learning how to remain ourselves while allowing ourselves to be deeply met.

WHAT IF THE DREAM HAS TO CHANGE?

This Full Moon returns us to the beginning of Aries; the same territory activated by the Saturn–Neptune conjunction earlier this year. Something was seeded there.

Now, with the Moon meeting Neptune, perhaps we're seeing the dream differently..

Maybe something needs to dissolve; not because you failed to manifest it, or because you weren't worthy of receiving it, but because reality is asking you to loosen your grip on the form you thought your life needed to take. There is grief in that. We may grieve timelines, possibilities, versions of ourselves, or the futures we briefly touched in our imaginations. Can you mourn the possibility without continuing to wait for it? Can you let something be beautiful and done? Sometimes grieving isn't throwing something into the fire and declaring yourself healed.. sometimes it's: This mattered to me. It didn't become what I hoped it would. And I am still open to the magic of life.

DESIRE IS EVIDENCE OF LIFE

This is where Mars enters the story again... because he doesn't only speak to anger, action or conflict. He speaks to desire. The thing that gets your blood pumping, the hunger, the heat, and the wanting itself. The instinct that moves through the body and says: I want that.

It then asks: What am I willing to do about it?

Aries is the first spark of the zodiac. The impulse to move toward life, to reach, pursue and begin again. With Mars at the final degree of Cancer, this Full Moon is asking us to listen to what the emotional body wants. What do you want when you stop telling yourself what you should want? What does your body reach for? What kind of life makes something inside you come alive? And what happens when admitting what you want touches the wound?

Because with Mars squaring Chiron in Aries, desire itself may expose something tender...

Wanting requires vulnerability; admitting we want something is to acknowledge that we may not receive it...To reach toward someone means risking that they won't reach back. To admit that we want intimacy means admitting that intimacy has the power to hurt us. Sometimes disappointment teaches us to protect ourselves by wanting less. We may call it detachment, freedom, independence, going with the flow... but underneath it is simply a body that remembers what happened when it reached in the past.

This Full Moon isn't asking you to stop wanting because wanting has hurt you. It is asking you to become more honest about what you want; and more discerning about where you direct your life force in pursuit of it. There is a difference between pursuing what you desire and pursuing something that's not actually available to you. There's a difference between choosing yourself and convincing yourself you don't need anyone. Maybe the medicine of this lunation is not wanting less, but learning to stop abandoning yourself in pursuit of what you want.

CHOOSING YOURSELF DOESN'T HAVE TO MEAN CHOOSING SOLITUDE

This Aries–Libra story has always been incredibly personal for me. For years, I confused maintaining love with compromising myself. I married someone I deeply loved while knowing there were parts of myself, my desires and the life I wanted that weren't being fully met. There were truths I could feel long before I was ready to admit them... but I ignored them. I pushed forward and abandoned parts of myself because I believed that was the price of keeping love in my life.

Eventually, I had to choose myself... and after ending my marriage, my freedom became deeply sacred. I had spent so long compromising parts of myself for partnership that I swung toward the opposite end of the spectrum. I didn't want another relationship because life taught me that it meant that I wasn't free to pursue what I desired. So I only wanted freedom, fun, and to entirely belong to myself. But we can never truly exist without relating... so since then, almost every connection I had has mirrored something back to me about this polarity I was living in.

Continuously drawn to the kind of chemistry my natal Scorpio Venus craves; magnetism, depth, recognition and the feeling of being seen... over and over again, I had to confront that chemistry alone couldn't meet the things I truly needed.

I had to become honest with myself about the care I require when I give someone intimate access to my body and inner world. And I've had to notice the places where I was still overriding what I already knew; allowing chemistry, possibility or potential to carry me further into something than my deeper knowing wanted me to go. That is one of the patterns I am witnessing under this Full Moon. Not my capacity to care deeply, or my desire for intimacy, not even the mirrors themselves... but the version of me who believed she had to abandon what she knew in order to keep possibility alive. Simultaneously, I also the version of me who thought the only alternative was not needing anyone at all.

Because choosing myself doesn't have to mean choosing solitude. Freedom doesn't have to mean withholding myself from intimacy. Maybe that is part of Aries medicine: belonging to yourself deeply enough that you can relate to someone without disappearing inside of it.

MARS REACHES. VENUS RECEIVES.

All of this is unfolding while Venus (ruler of the Libra Sun) moves through the depths of Scorpio toward her retrograde station on October 3 (and I'll be taking you through a powerful 3-part embodiment journey for this!). Mars and Venus speak to different parts of our relationship with desire.

Mars asks: What do I want? Where is my life force trying to take me? What am I willing to move toward? Venus asks: What do I value? What brings me pleasure? What am I available to receive? Mars is the wanting and Venus is our relationship to what we find desirable... and our capacity to recognize, value and receive what actually feels good.

Sometimes those things aren't aligned... Sometimes we know exactly what we value, but we continue directing our desire toward people, places and possibilities incapable of giving it to us. Sometimes we spend so much energy pursuing that we never leave space to receive. And sometimes we become so afraid of disappointment that we stop reaching altogether.

This is part of the territory Venus will take us into as she retrogrades through Scorpio and Libra. Because Venus in Scorpio doesn't want the polished answer... she wants what's underneath... beneath attraction, chemistry, or the stories we tell ourselves about why we want what we want. Underneath what we say we're available for... beneath our fear of being alone or our fear of being consumed. Venus has already begun her unfolding conversation with Pluto, a conversation she will return to throughout this retrograde cycle later in Cotober and early December. This is excavation: Does what I pursue actually reflect what I value? Am I directing my energy toward people, experiences and possibilities capable of giving me what I say I want? Can I want something deeply without making its arrival evidence of my worth?

This is where the Aries–Libra axis becomes so alive. Self and other. Agency and receptivity. Reaching and receiving. We need both.

FEEL IT. THEN MOVE.

This Full Moon arrives as we enter the darker half of the year... and yet Aries is the sign of new life. Illuminating the axis of death and birth, grief and love, ending and beginning, darkness and fire. These polarities are what make us feel alive...

So cry about it, feel the fucking thing, feel the rage, grieve the past. But don't confuse grief with the death of desire. Don't let disappointment convince you to stop wanting. Because beneath the grief, there is still heat. There's still something inside you reaching toward tomorrow. Desire is evidence that there is still life moving through you. That's what Aries ultimately reminds us. We may fall down, grieve, feel the thing.... but eventually something inside us whispers: I'm still here.

This lunation's invitation is to simply witness. To fall, to tell yourself the truth, to love parts of yourself you've exiled, to mourn what's ended and then to stand up. To ask yourself what you want now - and to move toward your fucking life.

PS. dive deeper with the embodiment practice + journal prompts below, and even deeper in my Earth + Sky Spiral Collective - doors are open now AND you get the 3 part Venus rx Embodiment journey as part of this membership (normally $111)

Embodiment Practice | Feel the Fire

This practice isn't about releasing an emotion or trying to change how you feel. It's about giving the feeling somewhere to move.

Begin lying down or seated with one hand over your heart and one over your lower belly.

Close your eyes, notice what is living in your body today?

Notice its temperature, its weight, its shape. Don't name the story yet. Simply stay with sensation + breathe into that place. And ask: What am I feeling? Grief. Anger. Longing. Fear. Desire. Maybe several things exist at once. Let them.

When your body wants to move, follow it. Start small. Rock. Sway. Curl inward. Press your hands into the earth. Let the movement become larger if it wants to. Shake your hands. Shake your legs. Stomp. Push. Reach. Contract. Expand.

Put on a song that makes you feel something and give yourself permission to stop making the movement beautiful. If anger is there, let your body show you anger. If grief is there, let your body show you grief. Nothing needs to make sense.

When you feel the energy begin to shift, come to standing. Feel both feet underneath you. Let your spine lengthen. Take up space. Place your hands somewhere on your body that makes you feel yourself. And ask: What do I actually want now? Let your body respond.

Notice whether how it wants to move.. Reach. Open. Protect. Expand. Stay.

Then ask: What does choosing myself feel like in my body? Let your body find the posture.

Stay there. Breathe.

Follow with an Aries Lunar Tea + the journal prompts below.

Find 3° Aries/Libra in your natal chart. What house does this Full Moon fall in, and what area of life is being illuminated with themes mentioned above?

What might you be mourning right now; an old identity, a dream, a possibility, etc? Beneath it all - what still makes you feel alive?

What parts of yourself do you still believe make you difficult to love? What happens when you offer those parts acceptance instead of trying to fix, hide or sever them?

What do you actually want; beneath what you think you should want? How do you want to move towards that now?