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Happy New Year, star seeds.
As we burn what’s been and look forward to what will be, we do so under the light of the first full moon of 2025.
When is the full moon in January 2025?
The Wolf Moon arrives on Monday, January 13th at 5:27 pm Eastern Time — at 23º59 degrees in the sign of Cancer.
Full moons mark the midway point of a 29.5-day lunar cycle, which begins with the dark night, sown seeds — and fresh potential of the new moon.
As the full moon rises and shines, it casts a glaring, culminative light on what can no longer be ignored or endured.
The sign in which the full moon falls lends specific energy to this phase of the lunar cycle.
In this case, we have the emotionally sunburned, sentimental face tattoos, smother mother, home is where the hurt is, promise you’ll never leave me, hard shell, soft belly sign of Cancer.
Cancer is ruled by the moon, and when the full moon falls in this sign, we are at our moodiest, mooniest, and most vulnerable.
Under a Cancer full moon, emotions run high, and our proverbial feels run deep, deep, deep.
Think belly aches, blue notes, apex ennui, and increased nipple sensitivity.
January Full Moon
Cancer rules the root system, mother’s milk and the umbilical apron strings that tie us to the past — the homes we are born into and the homes we build of our bodies and for ourselves.
As such, Cancer is the most nostalgic sign in the zodiac, a bit of a blessing and a bane — depending on where and how you cast your reflective lens.
Idealizing a lost relationship? Candy coating your childhood? Self-destructive wistfulness? These tendencies might pacify us in the present moment but serve only and ever to paralyze our progress.
This full moon will be conjunct Mars, our warrior planet of will and conflict, currently retrograding in the sign of the crab.
When the planet of war backpaddles through the waters of memory and mothering, we go in, look for a nip to nourish us, and harken back to the days of yore that have made us who we are.
Yet, while this retrograde and this lunation ask us to look at the past, they encourage us to do so with the explicit intention of building from it — rather than longing for it or be crippled by it.
As the full moon in Cancer rises, the sun in Capricorn will form a trine with Uranus, the planet of chaos and genius, currently holding court in Taurus.
This aspect lends a kind of unhinged brilliance to the day, encouraging creative risks, interesting wagers, and new sexual positions.
The moon in Cancer will trine Neptune, our planet of psychic phenomena, and surrender, which is currently moving through the opiate fish pond of Pisces. Neptune and the moon are at home in these respective water signs, and together, they conspire to bring on catharsis, be it a flood of tears, dream downloads from long-dead ancestors, and/or poetic levels of emotional processing.
As Cancer Moon native and doomed romantic Lord Byron maintained, “The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.”
Purposeful pain and sublime suffering? Can dig.
For more insights into what the month ahead and 2025 at large holds for your sign, be sure to read your January 2025 horoscope as well as sex and love predictions for each sign in 2025 and major astrological shifts for the whole damn world in 2025.
Full moon January 2025: The Axis of foundation and ambition
During a full moon, the sun and moon are on opposite sides of the Earth and in opposite zodiac signs or polarities.
The full moon in Cancer coincides with the sun shining in boot-strapping, belt-tightening, legacy-building Capricorn. This is the axis of foundation and ambition. In terms of archetypes, Cancer is the cosmic mother, and Capricorn is the stern, celestial father.
Cancer leads with feeling, and Capricorn with form — yet both ultimately seek security while struggling with vulnerability and issues of care as control.
Because full moons demand that we address what we can no longer repress, this full moon is a call to reparent ourselves with tenderness and structure, kindness, and accountability.
Why is it called a wolf moon?
January’s full moon is known as the wolf moon, as it is believed that the howling song of these pack predators can be heard most clearly in the earliest month of the year. The wolf’s spiritual symbolism recalls lessons of autonomy, communion, and actualization.
The term “lone wolf” is a bit of a misnomer, as wolves are pack animals that strike out on their own — not because they prefer solitude but because they seek something more, somewhere beyond, to find a mate, territory, or pack of their own.
What does the Wolf Moon mean?
I encourage you to consider the nature of the wolf under the light of this moon. If you have bound yourself to a bloodline, place, relationship, story, or pattern that is limiting you in any way, you have the right and the responsibility to retreat into the company of yourself with the express purpose of finding out and firming up what you need.
The pack, home, and partner you deserve await you on the other side of this wilderness.
Wolf moon rituals
Because love — to paraphrase James Baldwin — is a growing up, learning to love the child we were includes forgiving ourselves and those who failed us.
Progress asks us to recognize that a state of blame is a state of bondage. To live the life we want, we need unconditional love (Cancer) and uncompromising boundaries (Capricorn).
My preferred exercise for this lunation is to write a list of what you needed as a child and weren’t given. See if and how you can give yourself those things in some literal or metaphorical way this year.
I highly recommend incorporating the following affirmations, courtesy of Sarah Faith Gottesdiener — author and founder of The Moon Studio — into your Full Wolf Moon in Cancer rituals.
I stay devoted to all my rebirths.
Every day, I become closer and closer to the person I needed when I was young.
Every day, I become more and more the person I was never allowed to be.
I vow to experience as much of the splendor of the world as I can before I leave it.
I vow to let the world experience me at my most splendid.
I want to live in a world that I love, and so, I create it.
I love myself. I become love itself.
When is the next full moon?
The next full moon will be the Full Snow moon in Leo — rising, shining, and mane shaking on February. 12, 2025, at 8:53 a.m. EST.
Astrology 101: Your guide to the star
Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture, and personal experience. To book a reading, visit her website.
