Full Moon in Libra April 16 12:55 pm MT

Full Moon in Libra 26º opposite Sun in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn

This full moon glows in Libra, sitting across from the sun in Aries. Full moons are always a time of integration, of navigating the polarity of two opposite signs, of exploding the binary by embodying the paradox of the axis.

This is also the last moon before eclipse season begins (next new moon on April 30), so it’s our last good window for working with the moon for manifesting and release before we go quiet for the eclipses. (The eclipses are periods where the light is blocked or darkened, and are associated with bigger, collective, “fated” energies, and not times where I recommend setting intentions or trying to direct the energy.)

Aries is the sign of the individual, of the self—it’s catch-phrase is “I am.” Aries is the beginning, the birth of spring, the individuating into a contained and separate self. Aries is incarnation, is being born into a body, a skin, the development of an ego with visions and plans and goals. Aries is the seedling, cracking itself open, reaching against all odds up through the dark soil for a light it can only imagine. Aries is the bravery and audacity of life—unfurling itself in defiance each spring after the long lonely death of winter.

Libra, on the other hand, is the sign of the other, of relating and relationship, of partner and collaboration and working together. Libra is the beginning of winter—and reminds us that community, collaboration, mutual support and reciprocity—is how we survive the dark hunger of the fallow season.

This axis instructs us that we must know ourselves as individual and separate, so that we can learn to remember it is our interconnectedness that both keeps us and makes us alive.

It’s about learning to relate and connect while retaining our wholeness and maintaining our boundaries to do so.

This moon is asking us to examine how we come into communion with others—where we are overly dependent or independent—and how we can better honor and practice interdependence. And how, both personally and collectively, our very survival depends on it.

And how much more clear that has become these past few years.

Pluto Square—A Reckoning with the Unconscious

The sun and moon sit in a t-square to Pluto, which makes this lunation all the more important—and intense.

A square from Pluto always asks us to make conscious the subterranean, ignored or repressed beliefs and feelings, which bubble up to the surface in our unconscious (and less than desirable) habits and patterns.

(Let me rephrase that—a square from Pluto doesn’t ask, it forces. Pluto is not big on niceties.)

That said, if we work with this energy consciously, take responsibility into our own hands, Pluto respects that—by which I mean, we’re already honoring and working with the Plutonian energy—so it’s less likely to explode into our lives to get our attention. And the events and situations that rhyme with this energy may be less harrowing as a result.

Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life, and you will call it fate.”

We will keep creating old patterns, calling in people who trigger old wounds, old stories—until the day we claim those beliefs and stories as our own.

Until we recognize the parts of ourselves—abandoned, rather feral, wandering the dark caverns of our psyches—as us, and do the work to reclaim them. To take responsibility for them, for their love and care. Until we reintegrate them into ourselves and make ourselves whole again.

I want to be careful to identify this as agency—not as victim blaming. It is not your fault bad things happened to you and it is not your fault if they continue happening, if the pattern has repeated. Rather, I’m positing, that the pattern may be repeating, because bad things happened to you, wounded you, and now those hurt parts are drawn to those patterns again—because they are familiar, but also, I believe, because you are looking for opportunities to heal.

A full moon-sun t-square to Pluto is the time to bring the unconscious to the light, and take control of your own fate.

Note: I’m speaking on a personal scale here; larger collective shadows like systemic oppression and war operate on a much more complex and communal scale. Those are elements of the collective unconscious and not any one person’s fault or responsibility. I do, however, believe doing our own shadow work has a profound impact or effect on these grand, collective wounds.

Renewal and Rebirth

So, this talk of shadow work is all well and good, but what do we do with what we’ve made conscious once it’s there? How do we work with these repressed stories once we bring them to the light?

For me, especially these last few months—and with both this full moon and the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction we had on April 12, which has a strong influence on this lunation and period as well—this work has focused on forgiveness. And the concept of forgiveness has expanded and evolved as I work with it.

Forgiveness has become less about the other person, and more about making myself whole again after a hurt, a wound, a traumatic experience.

Calling back the parts of myself I abandoned, left, lost—and having compassion and forgiveness for the parts of me that did the leaving, that didn’t honor my own boundaries, that chose other over myself, that ran from the depth of my own feeling.

Shayla Oulette Stonechild (@shayla0h, host: @matriarch.movement) has a post on IG that I loved.

The caption reads:

“Forgiveness isn’t easy. Forgiveness is reclaiming the fragments that you may have lost within yourself - or the parts of you that you may have given to someone else.
Forgiveness is more about you, than it is the other person. It is a way of clearing, cleansing and purifying that channel so that person, situation, that thing, no longer has control, bitterness or resentment coming from you. 
Forgiveness is you taking your power back.”

Inspired by her, the following ritual and writing prompt center this act of self forgiveness.

Full Moon Ritual and Writing Prompt

Note: These prompts and ritual can go quite deep and bring up trauma. Go only to the level that feels safe and comfortable and I highly recommend working with wounds that are not your deepest traumas on this; and then working with the deeper traumas with the support of a therapist or other professional.

It is not usually our early or most traumatic moments we’re forgiving here, either—it’s usually the patterns and situations that form in response to those traumas that we need to forgive, so we can reunite with the young, traumatized self who feels familiar with these circumstances, to give that self the safety to grow and change.

As always, read through the exercises before doing them and perform them only if they feel right and supportive for you in this moment.

Full Moon Journal Writing Prompt—Self-Forgiveness

1. Make a list of people, events or situations you’d like to forgive, and/or you find yourself resisting forgiving.

2. Now, for each item on the list, think of ways you’d like to (or resist) forgiving yourself for that situation. For choosing someone or something over yourself, for abandoning yourself or leaving your feelings, for losing yourself to someone else’s needs, for not trusting your own intuition, etc.

3. Try to hold as much compassion and gentleness for yourself as you can muster as you make this list. Bring this list to the following ritual.

Full Moon Ritual—Moon Bath

1. Find a place outside or near a window, where the moonlight pours in, where you lay in its puddle.

2. As you lie on the ground, in the moonlight, feel the ground, the floor, the earth beneath you. If you are inside, let your awareness drop through any flooring material (and/or levels under you), all the way to the earth.

3. Notice the sensation of being held, supported by the ground, by the earth. Feel where your body touches it, how it is held, how stable and sturdy the earth is below you. How you can lean into it, melt into; how it will support you. How gravity holds you each moment.

4. Now notice the moonlight and how it pours over you, wraps you, holds you. Feel how you are suspended between earth and sky. How these particles of light from lightyears away touch and reach you and everything around you. How deeply connected we are. Even as we are separate and whole in ourselves.

5. Now bring up your list of things you’d like to forgive in yourself (and/or others). Read them aloud if you’d like, and as you say them, feel them melting into the ground beneath you. Allow the earth to take them, as she takes all refuse and excrement, and compost and recycle them into new growth and rebirth.

6. If you feel called to forgive others as you do this, that is welcome as well.

7. Allow the moon’s light and witness to support you in releasing these old wounds and stories.

8. When you’re finished, with the support of the moon and the earth, call any parts of yourself that you left or got stuck in old situations, people, or events, call them back to you, welcome them home. Make space for them and let them know they are forgiven, they are loved.

9. Make the following offer to yourself, the earth, and all beings: May you know peace.

10. Close the ritual when you are ready by giving thanks to the earth and the moon and yourself.

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash