← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 148/235
Full Moon
What it is
A Full Moon is the moment the Moon stands directly opposite the Sun — an opposition of the two lights, 180° apart. The Earth lies between them, so the whole face the Sun lights is turned towards us, and the Moon rises as the Sun sets. It comes about fourteen or fifteen days after each New Moon, once in every 29½-day lunation.
Because the Moon is opposite the Sun, a Full Moon always falls across a pair of opposite signs: with the Sun in Aries, the Full Moon is in Libra; with the Sun in Sagittarius, in Gemini.
In the lunation cycle
The Full Moon is the cycle's high point. Dane Rudhyar called the Full Moons the ever-renewed symbol of illumination and clear, objective vision: what was set going at the New Moon has grown into form and can now be seen for what it is. After it the light wanes, and the second half of the cycle is read as a time of sharing, digesting and letting go. A Full Moon that falls close to the Moon's nodes is a lunar eclipse.
How it is read
The tradition reads a Full Moon through its axis. The Sun's sign and the Moon's sign are the two sides of a balance — Aries and Libra, self and other; Taurus and Scorpio, what is mine and what is shared — and the Full Moon tends to bring that tension into the open, asking for both sides to be weighed. It is associated with culmination, results and clarity, and with emotions running higher than usual.
In a personal chart, attention goes to:
- the pair of houses the axis runs across — the areas of life brought to a head;
- natal planets near either end — a Full Moon on a natal planet, or across the Ascendant–Descendant axis, is felt more personally.
In world astrology, a Full Moon is cast for a capital, like a New Moon, and read through what lands on its angles there.