The Full Moon In Capricorn Encourages You To Respect Your Limits

To look at a full moon is to look for fullness in yourself, a glowing quiet in the spirit. To be with the full moon is to remember that our relationships cannot complete us, they can only work at our borders, showing us our limits and beckoning us past them. The Capricorn full moon makes a square to Eris in Aries, an opposition to Mercury. She plays at the edge of our erotic landscape, pushing boundaries, daring her lovers to say when to draw the line for themselves.

Teacher of intergalactic reciprocity, she offers us the light she collects and glows with Earthshine. The moon is our cosmic constant. In Capricorn, the full moon revels in her work, kinwork, lovework. She reflects the Cancerian Sun and knows that what is given is only as good as where it comes from.

The Capricorn full moon knows that respecting your limit is the key to giving authentically and without resentment. Burdened by her proximity to Pluto, she understands that sometimes shadows can obscure the lines we draw around ourselves to keep each other safe. And while it’s true that we are often shadowed by structures and beliefs much older than us, it is also true that we have the power to move out from the umbra of their influence.

The sextile that the moon applies to Neptune in Pisces is both an invitation and a reminder: When you do not feel safe in the world you have helped build, another world is possible. But, like time, transcendence is not linear. To move forward, it is sometimes necessary to go back to the source while remembering that to honour the origin is not to be stuck in the past or mine that past for answers.

In this way, world-building is not so different from making a meal. What you make is a form of sustenance, or nurturance, a key to the future even if that future is simply the end of an arduous day. The power of what you make, its impact and resonance, relies partly on method — which is not without history — and partly on the life of each ingredient. Mercury, the planet of communication, the god who sends messages between worlds, pulls at the moon from across the wheel.

Mercury makes a sextile to both Uranus and the North Node in Taurus, reveling in the turning over of old technologies, outdated systems of power. At the same time, Mercury maintains a square to Chiron in Aries, reminding us that where there was once pain, now is well of wisdom. To go back to the source is to face what once felt unfaceable, to go to the well alone and return with water for the collective meal.

In her book Mercy, Cancerian poet Lucille Clifton transcribed messages she received from The Ones, spirits she communicated with in the 1970s and through much of her later years. These communications began when Clifton parted the veil and connected with departed family members but soon transformed into a ritual practice engaging a wider web of spirits who spoke of the Earth’s state. “when you come again / and you will come again,” she transcribed, “the air / you have polluted / you will breathe.”  “the patience / of the universe / is not without / an end” they warned. “so might it / slowly / turn its back // so might it / slowly / walk away // leaving you alone / in the world you leave your children.”

These warnings, now almost half a century old, reflect keenly on the state of the world today — a state Clifton’s transcriptions foretold. In many ways, their resonance is a kind of sorrow, especially for those who could not take the warnings to heart, who hoped the future might somehow escape the clutches of the past.

Here we are, in the umbra of that sorrow, in a world that is unprotected, in bodies that are unprotected. Security, we are reminded, is not something we earn in relationships, not an agreement between two people or between sovereign bodies. Security is an internal state, a dedication and a commitment to protect the fullness we feel when we spend time with the moon, and build worlds with each other.