Our first Full Moon of the new year will occur at 2:02 AM (5:02 ET) of January 3 at 13 Cancer, with the Sun at 13 Capricorn. This lunation’s moniker is the Wolf Moon. It’s cold, and it’s time to howl!
Cancer is the Moon’s home sign. Its element is water. Its mode is cardinal, initiatory. Cancer’s totem animals are the crab and the turtle. They carry their own means of self-protection wherever they go.
In traditional gender-binary astrology, Cancer is associated with the Great Mother and Capricorn—ruled by Saturn/Chronos—is the sign of Father Time. Truth, though, is that mothering and fathering are creative, nurturing processes done by both men and women. The Cancer/Capricorn sign polarity is, more generally, simply a parental axis. Cancer’s drive is to give birth and to make sure everyone’s safe and well-fed. Capricorn will scale heights and depths to build something impressive that lasts.
At the January 3 lunation, the Moon is applying–meaning moving toward– a conjunction with Jupiter in Cancer. Jupiter’s the planetary player of expansion and purposefulness, orbiting the Sun at such a rate that it spends about a year in each sign. Jupiter’s passage through Cancer (June 9, 2025 to June 30, 2026) punctuates the Cancerian need for roots, to belong to something that can be felt, in the heart, as family.
The chart for the January 3 Full Moon features harmonious aspects (120-degree trines and 60-degree sextiles) between the Sun, opposite the Moon, and the Moon’s own nodes, those invisible points in the sky where the Moon’s orbit around the Earth intersects with the Earth’s path around the Sun. The symbolism of the lunar nodes is studied in many different types of astrology, a consensus being that they represent something about our individual and collective destinies.
At the beginning of this new calendar year, there’s a quiet beauty with the Sun opposite the Moon, forming easeful trines and sextiles with the Moon’s nodes, in the elements of water and earth, i.e. yin/receptive signs. Despite all the turmoil in our external worlds, the Sky speaks to places of refuge, in the metaphoric arms of Mother and Father.
The most prominent feature of the January 3 lunation is the Capricorn stellium (a line-up of three or more planets in the same sign.) which will grow tighter in the coming days. On January 3, the Sun at 13 degrees of Capricorn is flanked by Venus at 12 and Mars at 14 Capricorn, with Mercury, having just entered Capricorn on January 2, moving quickly to catch up with the Sun, Venus, and Mars by mid-month.
Venus and Mars, together in action in status-oriented Capricorn, highlight the desire to do good work and the effort needed to make partnerships function well.
Between January 6 and 9, precise conjunctions will form between Venus and the Sun, then Venus and Mars, and then the Sun in Mars. This is “like an extended power-packed sun point trio,” writes my friend and astrology teacher Julija Simas of the Cosmic Intelligence Agency. “Together in Capricorn,” Julija writes, the Sun, Venus and Mars “bring about a certain cosmic alchemy of purposeful transition, one that means business, one that demands that certain things get done.”
“Serious effort” is an apt pair of watchwords for January. For whatever kind of work one loves doing, now’s the time to hit the ground running.
Blessings for the Cancer Full Moon!
~ Sara
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