What better way to stretch into the first full week of Cancer season than by soaking up the light of a full moon in Capricorn? The moon is Cancer’s ruler, after all, and time spent under the stars of one’s opposite is time spent reckoning with the decisions that define us, learning who we are by understanding who we are not. In truth, no sign exists fully without its opposition. The tension between Capricorn and Cancer is a living tension, a push and pull that exemplifies the dual nature of all things. It is the source and drive behind eros, the negotiation of power. Between the two signs we have images as divergent as the nursing parent and the untouchable entrepreneur, the home cook and the top chef. Of course, images are deceiving. As the guardian and the disciplinarian, both signs nurture and build. Both speak the language of security and structure, of foundation and legacy.
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Cancer is cardinal water while Capricorn is a cardinal earth. Cancer is ruled by the moon, which changes signs every two to three days. Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, which changes signs every two to three years. Change is the constant here, but Cancerian change is ritual while Capricorn change is gradual. Cancer weathers constant environmental shifts through a process of attunement and retreat. Capricorn influences the nature and direction of that change through a steady application of will and resistance.
Right before the full moon, the Sun will have just made a trine to Jupiter. Following the full moon, Jupiter will make a sextile to the moon. Both of these are supportive flowing aspects, they encourage us to grapple with our feelings around permission and consent, around expanding our circles and our opportunities. These encouragements are echoed in the aspects that make up Thursday's lunation, a tight crossing of oppositions between the moon and the Sun, Venus in Cancer and Pluto in Capricorn, and a looser opposition between Mars and Saturn. Together, we are called to feel through contraction and expansion as modes that inform each other: the pleasure of saying yes informed by the steadiness of no.
Under the sun’s rays in Cancer, we are called to reconnect with loved ones and tune in to the joy that is available, as well as the grief. We are called, once again, to negotiate the limits of our social capacity — to stand before each other both familiar and changed utterly. The Capricorn full moon holds us through it. It marks the end of an eclipse cycle (which lasts approximately 35 days, having begun with the lunar Eclipse on May 26th). In doing so, this full moon offers Earthlings yet another way to mark the end of one thing, and the beginning of something else.
An opportunity for closure can feel like an opportunity for release on this full moon. Which is a good thing, because Capricorn energy thrives under pressure and pursues it. Just because one works well under pressure doesn’t mean one lives well, and it is the work of the Capricorn moon to recognize that too much pressure compromises a system over time. Delaying gratification only works if we continually build our relationship with what gratifies us, if the resistance feels just as natural as the reward.