By
Alexander Baker
The Full Wolf Moon in Cancer exacted at 5:27pm ET on Monday, January 13th, and is now conjunct Mars, whose retrograde stretch in the cardinal water sign retraces our forms across the surface of its fall, a place it first entered on September 4th and returned to on January 6th.
Mars — the planet whose name is an anagram for both ‘rams’ and ‘arms’ — bears a directness and emboldened aggression that can grow uncomfortable in the waters of Cancer, home of the Moon, whose focus on memory, nurture, and the fostering of emotional continuity become hotly interwoven when the red planet is here. The sign of Cancer has much to do with home itself, emotional safety, and intimacy born of shared instinctual awareness among those one calls family.
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the city of your humble narrator, Cancer was Rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of the Moon’s peak fullness, with Mars conjunct the Ascendant degree so closely there was a separation of only five minutes. Curiously, I locked myself out of the house not two hours later, my only spare key being in the possession of a Mars in Cancer friend who’s going through it, and — in true Capricorn ‘verticality meets Mer-goat’ fashion, had to climb from my neighbor’s icy roof and in through one of my third floor office windows to re-enter.
With all of my landlord’s spare keys being at a garage in Highland Park, I was the true highlander that moment, seeming to bind together every dimension of the Full Moon in Cancer naturally opposed to the Sun in Capricorn, Mars well in the mix with Luna here to symbolic extremes. And on the topic of extremes, as well as Mars in Cancer protectiveness: that window wouldn’t have even been unlocked if I hadn’t left an extra A/C unit in it, taught in the frame, radiator heat right beneath… because who knows these days? Space roast, coast to coast.
The Moon bears association with receptivity, openings, and windows as it were; Cancer’s connection to home, domicile and safety was obvious — my trying every ground floor window just in case did not go unnoticed — and Capricorn’s symbol of the Goat is often related to the sign’s keenness on ascent. While its ruling planet Saturn brings loss, death, grief, dissolution and a sense of hard limits, its home signs of Capricorn and Aquarius can show varying interest in scaling or rattling material and social structures, sometimes as a psychological response to or preparation for the threat of loss itself, as well as a concern with death and restoration.
Mars in Cancer certainly played its role, given the appearance of breaking and entering (Mars gotta stay out of jail), or the sense of threatened safety that can come when someone raps their knuckles across your door after sundown to ask if they can use your roof. My own inner turbulence at all of this was present, if only to me, as I never leave my house without a carabiner on my waist, and I felt myself a bit held up on a couple underworldly quests — unable to immediately re-enter my home, unable to get into my car. Of course, the Cancer/Capricorn axis rules my 9th/3rd houses, the house axis associated with Long Journeys and Short Journeys. My long journey to finish this article was more than held up anyway, then completely revised to tell an emblematic tale. It’s not that all this was even particularly eventful for me — it’s just that sometimes the symbols speak all but literally.
Once I did recover my keys and get inside my ride, I put on “Silence is the Way” featuring Laura Mvula on vocals, from a record Robert Glasper produced using Miles Davis’ music over soulful and subtle beats. Before that, I was singing to myself the Jeff Buckley lyric, “You’re a woman, I’m a calf / You’re a window, I’m a knife” and immediately recalled how Moon/Mars that second line is.
It’s really the Moon, at home in Cancer, and ruling our Mars, that brings some comfort amidst tempestuous waves. Yes, while the Moon loves company, Moon-Mars contacts are not known for an even temperament, no matter the sign. Together in Cancer, they can flit from tenderness and protectiveness to hyper-reactionary defensiveness, even emotional paranoia.
Forever quoting Diana Rose Harper about Mars in Cancer “raging against the insufficiency of care,” it’s likely that under a configuration such as this, we might go between gentle, understanding frames of mind, concerned with the suffering of others, and inner seething at times we’ve been wronged, unable to transcend our own sense of violation. The Cancer/Capricorn axis has perhaps the strongest associations with memory in all of astrology, along with Moon-Mercury conjunctions, so it’s possible that the heavy yin placements across our current skies yield an internality that’s spending quite a bit of time on the past.
There is much fodder for creativity here, however, as Moon-Mars in Cancer loves soothing its volatility and angst with rich imaginal activity. Reconnecting with books, music, film, and art that were important in childhood; the evocation of a favorite home-cooked meal; time spent turning gloominess or grief into the stuff of creativity and reordering of the external world. The Cancer/Capricorn axis tends to excel at the latter in particular.
A reminder as to the timeline of this Mars retrograde…
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September 4, 2024: Mars enters Cancer
November 3, 2024: Mars enters Leo
December 6, 2024: Mars begins its retrograde motion
January 6, 2025: Mars re-enters Cancer during its retrograde
February 23, 2025: Mars turns direct in Cancer
April 18, 2025: Mars re-enters Leo
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This Full Moon also sees the entrance of the North Node into Pisces, and thus the South Node into Virgo. Their naturally retrograde motion means the North Node is in even closer proximity to Neptune, not just by 2° orb but now within the same sign. The North Node’s hunger for external manifestation will see much emphasis placed on Piscean matters, particularly of the third decan — fulfillment, desire, satiety, spirituality, ’the urge to merge’ — with the backdraft of course a risk of becoming illusion-prone, or drinking too deeply from the cup of marauding visions.
The South Node in Virgo will give an opportunity to reevaluate our relationship to the deluge of stimuli and information surrounding us, as Virgo’s propensity for discernment and whittling away at excess can help refine our experiences of what is most oversaturated in the surrounding world… which will continue no matter, but with the North Node in Pisces taking on new flavors and hunger thereof.
More to come… in the meantime, you can subscribe to the Reverie Astrology Youtube channel and join the Patreon for early access and exclusives to further transmute ur angst.
As always, swim well stargazers ~
—A.B.
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