The 2023 Cancer Full Moon reaches its maximum phase at 4:33p PST on Tuesday, 26th December 2023 at 4°58’. This is the last major Moon phase of 2023, and it’s an exceptionally potent one. That’s because the astrological sign of Cancer is ruled by the Moon, which means that the Moon is in its home sign which amplifies its energy.
A Full Moon is a physical Moon-Sun opposition, which places the Cancer Moon directly opposite the Capricorn Sun, reflecting the Sun’s light. This brings us into a hyperawareness of how we feel about who we are in the world, and that may challenge some of us to align and balance who we are on the outside (professional/societally/public identity) with who we are on the inside (emotionally/personally/private identity). Capricorn, being our ambitions, goals, and societal status (cardinal earth), is what we tell ourselves we want to be, do, and achieve in this world as a matter of our role, position, and status in our community and in the world. With Cancer reflecting Capricorn’s light, we’re being asked how we feel about who we are being in the world, and through this heightened awareness of our emotional truths about ourselves, we’re being asked if we want to make a change internally, externally, and for some of us, possibly both.
This 2023 Cancer Full Moon gifts us with an opportunity to choose who and how we want to be in this world, and if that choice requires a change in our status quo, then it’s time to make that change. Whether planning a new course of action for a future date or taking a bold action now, it’s time to stop talking and start doing.
Of course, this is where things get interesting as Cancer is cardinal water energy, which is initiative emotion. The first water sign in the natural order of the Zodiac, this sign represents our personal, individual, and original emotions. When I say ‘original’, I mean that Cancer represents where we learn how to feel our emotions, and where we learn or condition ourselves for our emotions to be evoked. Cancer has a strong emotionally nurturing energy often associated with home, family, and/or the personal self or the private persona. It is also considered the “mother” or maternal energy of the Zodiac. Its natural domain – the fourth house of your astrology chart – is where you learn what makes you feel “at home” and emotionally safe and secure as you move through life, while Cancer’s placement in your chart reveals where you feel most comfortable sharing your emotional and intuitive truths. The Moon’s placement reveals which area of your life your emotions tend to be most fully expressed and how you tend to express or utilize them. All three of these placements are important, especially during this 2023 Cancer Full Moon.
Because Cancer is associated with our emotional origins (which are usually our childhood homes and our families), this sign is also often associated with our individual and collective pasts. This is where we look for the original emotional imprints – both our joys and our pains. This 2023 Cancer Full Moon brings opportunities for us to recall and possibly restore some of our past joys in our lives, but it gives us opportunities to recall, work through, and heal some of the deepest wounds as well.
The funny thing about humans is that we say we’re open to change, but when opportunities for change present themselves, we often resist them, fighting them with every fiber of our being. We tend to stick with what is familiar, tried-and-true… even if it’s uncomfortable or unhealthy for us. We’d rather stay in or with what we know than to move on from it. This 2023 Cancer Full Moon highlights these dilemmas, and finds many of us stuck in our pasts rather than being present to the steps we’re taking now and/or conscious of the steps we’re taking into our future.
The 2023 Cancer Full Moon serves as a reminder that at this time of holiday blessings and oft-empty promises to make changes in ourselves and our lives, now really is the time to make these changes. Now is the time to set our intentions, to take actual steps, and to forge ahead on the path to be who we say we want to be.
Yet it’s not just about who we want to be. Many of us may be noticing there’s also a great deal of the past coming to light to be dealt with and healed in who we’re currently being. Many of us are feeling a great deal of resistance to this healing, and may perceive it as being forced to face histories and legacies that we don’t want to face, admit to, or take responsibility for.
Mercury Retrograde (currently in Sagittarius) is party to bringing these matters up yet again because they are of paramount importance for us to face and deal with now. There are factual truths which must be faced in order for us to grow, expand, and move forward, not only as the collective of humanity, nation, culture, or community, but as our individual, personal, private selves living our private lives. These “moments of truth” make this 2023 Cancer Full Moon phase a peak period of reckoning – a time to acknowledge the Universe is demanding that we “course-correct”. Add the fact that Mercury Retrograde conjuncts Mars in Sagittarius, and we can recognize how our current conditions are practically begging us to take action to correct our courses, individually and collectively.
No one likes to be told they’re bad or wrong, that they made bad or poor choices for themselves and their lives, or wants to acknowledge that they’ve benefitted from something horrible or criminal done in the past. Yet that is what we’re each and all facing now, and we get to choose whether or not we’re going to admit how we got to where we are now. This 2023 Cancer Full Moon is definitely not allowing any of us to get off the hook for this one, so this is the first step we’re being guided to take now – acknowledgment of our past.
Then, in order to make the collective shift (or to see the logical sense in making it), we must make the shifts within ourselves. This is the biggest challenge of this 2023 Cancer Full Moon because we must acknowledge where we’ve had it correct… but also admit to ourselves where we’ve had it wrong. Of course, we may feel a certain way about taking these action steps to change our lives.
So, the question that arises: Why do you feel the way you feel about taking these steps?
The answer: Because you’ve been conditioned and/or you’ve conditioned yourself to feel the way you feel about them.
The task here is first admitting what we’ve chosen to leave behind and/or carry forward. There are a few of us who have managed to bring some of our joys forward into our lives, but many of us have chosen to carry forward our pains. Some of us have tried to stay in joys which are coming to an end and find ourselves resisting their endings now. Others of us have stayed in our pain for too long, missing out on possible experiences of joy in our lives. And for others still, we’ve tried to run away from past pains, only to discover that we’ve brought them with us into everything we think and do.
With a new calendar year coming up, the Full Moon phase, and the numerological energies present, it’s time to clear out the past pains and joys so the new joys can come in. The 2023 Cancer Full Moon occurs on a 9 Universal Day of fulfillments, completions, and endings in the Americas, far West Africa, and the furthest west points of Europe; and a 1 Universal Day of beginnings and initiations throughout the rest of the world. All of this is happening near the end of the 1 Universal Month and 7 Universal Year energies which give us all the information and insights we need to think things through and make choices and/or plans, but also give us enough to take the necessary actions to move forward and upward in our lives.
Note that the majority of the world is experiencing a double 1 energy with the day and the month – this is powerful in regard to setting intentions and taking the first steps into what may be coming next. As full moons represent fulfillment and completion, this is a strong message – almost a last chance call – to clear out of your life whatever (and whomever) is not aligned with the new beginnings you intend to bring forth in your life. This really is a clearing and cleansing of the past… if you allow it to be.
For those in the 9 Universal Day zones, it’s definitely a time to bring certain matters and aspects of your life to a close… or risk having them brought to a close for you. You get to choose some of these endings. However, other things may come to an end on their own. Whatever ends at this time isn’t meant to punish you – it’s meant to clear the path for something new and true to who you are becoming (or have the potential to become). Don’t fight these endings and closings that area happening in your life now. Allow them to happen, for in doing so, you’re setting yourself free of what’s been holding you back, even if you didn’t realize that’s what it was doing.
For deeper insights into the energies of this 2023 Cancer Full Moon, here are the astrological transits within 3-5° orb at the time of the Full Moon’s maximum phase:
- BOWL: Capricorn 1 Sun sextile Pisces Saturn sextile (Taurus Jupiter Retrograde conjunct White Moon Selena) sextile Cancer Moon (2-5°) – The reining-in of dreams and ideals, understanding that focus and discipline and physical-material-financial resources are required if dreams are to be realized… these requirements will assist in discerning delusion from aspiration
- YOD: Virgo Black Moon Lilith quincunx Pisces Saturn quincunx Scorpio Pallas Athena (15-16°) – Patterns of ill intent and/or dysfunction are being brought to the surface for healing; root causes of pain and suffering that can no longer be denied or hidden in the shadows are surfacing to be faced and healed.
- Sagittarius Mercury Retrograde conjunct Mars (23-25°) – You may not like what you’re being told, but you should probably listen to it anyway. If you’re hearing it repeatedly, it may be because it’s a message intended for you, trying to wake you up to something you need to know in order to course-correct your life journey. If it scares you, it’s time to move through the fear. The message is only going to get louder the more you try to ignore it, so…
- Scorpio Venus trine Pisces Neptune (25-26°) – There may be an idealistic notion of what it means to be intimate with another individual in play right now. However, this isn’t about sex – it’s about emotional and spiritual vulnerability. The intimacy is “into me I see”, and sharing what you see within the deepest and darkest depths of yourself with another individual. This is about really allowing another person to know you, and the individual and partnership growth and expansion that is possible out of that sharing.
- Scorpio Venus sextile Capricorn Pluto (26-29°) – Allowing yourself to be emotionally and spiritually vulnerable with others helps you move through and overcome your fears of change regarding the ongoing transformation of our societal institutions. The world is changing – it’s best that you do your best to keep up.
- Scorpio Venus semi-sextile (Sagittarius Mercury Retrograde conjunct Mars) (23-26°) – Emotional and spiritual vulnerability in your one-on-one relationships of any kind will likely result in an expansion of opportunities available to you. Just when you thought you didn’t have any other choice, another option appears. Don’t let these second chances pass you by.
- Scorpio Pallas Athena Semi-sextile Sagittarius Ceres (13-15°) – If you really value truth, you get to acknowledge your emotion-driven behavior patterns. By allowing yourself to admit what really drives some of your behavior patterns, you come into better and stronger alignment with your authentic self.
- (Sagittarius Mercury Retrograde conjunct Mars) square Pisces Neptune (23-25°) – It may not be ideal, but that doesn’t make it wrong, In fact, taking action now may prove exactly what is needed in order for you to break you out of your delusions and into factual reality where you can make some real (positive and productive) moves to grow and expand your life.
- Aries Chiron Stationary trine Sagittarius Ceres (13-15°) – When you choose to heal yourself, you may find that you’re no longer able to take on the pain of others, which frees you up to align with your own inner truth and your most authentic self-expression in the world. Leave their healing to them – take on your own healing for you and the lives you get to touch by living as your true self.
- (Aries North Node conjunct Eris) trine (Sagittarius Mercury Retrograde conjunct Mars) (22-25°) – We’re being individually and collectively called to honor our individual selves by embracing our weirdness. Whatever has made us outcasts or “others” in the past gives us strength now, and the more feedback we receive about what we do in/through our weirdness, the more we may find the courage to take bold actions as our authentic and fully-expressed selves.
- Virgo Juno square Sagittarius Mars (20-23°) – Your commitment to “the job” of serving others may make it difficult for you to take action for your own health, wellness, and authentic growth and expansion. The tension between these two areas of your life is likely to build until you make a choice between the two.
The energy of the 2023 Cancer Full Moon will be felt from Saturday 23rd December through Friday 29th December 2023. Do your best to use this time to come to terms with your past, and to claim your present and future. Only you can choose your emotional healing and change your life, and you do so by making the choices and taking the necessary actions. Take the risk. Take the leap of faith. Now is the time to for you to make the change.
Thank you for reading and sharing Signs and Numbers. Until next time…
~ Light, Love, and Blessings,
Grace
