the full moon in scorpio for writers

eclipse season is OVER

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Tonight’s Full Moon, which occurs at 4* Scorpio, arrives at 7:48pm Eastern, officially cleansing us of eclipse season’s troubles. A much needed bath. The last few weeks have, like an earthquake, shaken loose that which was not bolted down. With powerful lunations visibly passing over my home here in the US, the effects were especially felt. Even my non-astrologically literate friends felt it: the exhaustion, the release, the invitation to something new — but not yet fully formed. 

It is fitting that the lunation that ushers us out of eclipse season lights up the well of Scorpio: the deep churn of lakebed sediment, infinitesimally shifting over time until one day, we awaken and realize we are made New. The purgative, cathartic quality of this Full Moon is further emphasized by the moon’s only aspect — it is just turning away from a frictive conversation with lord of the underworld // bringer of all things transformation, Pluto. Something has been unearthed. Something has been forever changed. 

When meditating on this moon, images that arose included: 

• a woman breaking the surface of a lake, gasping as she comes up for air

• the initial wet, mucky, slow moments in which a creature emerges from a chrysalis or cocoon 

• similarly, the afterbirth of a human labor — the joy after painful endurance, while Creator and Created both are still covered in blood and placenta 

The common thread between these images is endurance, followed by release. It’s not just that something has been growing, or coming to culmination, since the last New Moon in Scorpio on November 13, 2023. Something, especially here in the Scorpio part of your chart, has been like a trial or a tribulation. The final passing through the birth canal was during eclipse season and Mercury Rx, for fuck’s sake. Whatever changes have been shifting at the bottom of your personal lake, this last push feels extreme: the moment where you think it is not possible, there is not enough air, just before you break the surface after too long underwater. 

This moon arrives in the part of Scorpio (or, the decan) that astro-mage Austin Coppock calls “The Jawbone.” Here, we confront our hunger and the desires that feel just out of reach. Here also lies the moon’s deepest degree of debility: inasmuch as the moon is what sates our hunger, what nourishes us, what brings us safety, it is in this part of the zodiac where we find ourselves insatiable — along with all the related and inferred discontents that such a state brings. 

Our last 6-month journey has, perhaps, made us more aware of the places we do not feel safe or sated, of the ways in which our hunger feels unmanageable or unmet. Any frustration around this lunation is likely not just around the slowness of time, the impatience with the work, but also manifesting as a desire to push against The Powers That Be, against the Haves and the Have Nots, against the forces in life, personal and systemic, that make things harder than they have to be. 

We break the surface of ourselves, and cry out in hunger. Haven’t we done enough already?  

Creatively, it can feel impossible to endure in this state of not enough, of expectation or anticipation, of but why? It is in these moments where we meet our basest needs, our most ugly and (seemingly) unacceptable desires, and confront the reality of ourselves, reflected in the surface of the water as in a mirror. When we are still in the water, in the lake, we can’t see ourselves. It is only upon catharsis, or completion, that we can truly look around and reckon with the consequences we have wrought. 

This eclipse season, my partner and I mainlined the first two seasons of The Wheel of Time. (Starts slow, but very worth a watch.) As I dwelt on the astrology and events of the last few weeks, a scene from the second season immediately came forth as being Relevant to this process of learning, and making, and reaping consequences. It was not like the other images I had thought of; not like birth or its aftermath, the constriction before the full breath. 

Rather, this is a scene that highlights the process of filtration.

Isn’t this so much of what life is? Filtering difficulty/pain into something that’s drinkable? Even new humans are born in a fit of blood. Nothing comes out “clean.” Everything is part of the process. 

Nynaeve, the character who drinks her still-dirty bucket water rather than submit to instructor Alanna’s teachings, is, in this moment, a beautiful example of someone who cannot handle their hunger. Who would rather avoid it than be vulnerable in front of others. Whose distaste for authority and systems means she avoids a vital part of herself (her magic) altogether.

Transformation is not pretty, and the process of confronting our most tender, vulnerable hungers is not a pretty one. Like Alanna says to her students in The Wheel of Time, “It will take you many tries… but it will get better.” 

How do we confront the voracious within us, especially in the aftermath of such a raw eclipse season, when the world is falling apart at the seams? By trying. By showing up. By setting reasonable expectations for effort and improvement. By acknowledging that that which moves through and around us is as powerful, if not more so, than we are. By working with rather than against. By being willing to be held accountable, and to hold others accountable.

And by being willing to show up as less-than-perfect.

Hard. But worth it.

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Join us for the next 6-week session of Showing Up to the Work, which starts next Monday! Deadline to sign up is Sunday, April 28th.

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ICYMI!

I have a new artist interview out with the brilliant astrologer Diana Rose Harper. And I was so grateful to join

Jane Ratcliffe

’s wonderful interview series earlier this week. Read my interview “An Enspirited World” with her here. I also wrote about the astrological timeline of a life, and major transits we experience outside of the Saturn Return, in the latest Ask Jeanna column.

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