Our emotional experience, as humans, is nuanced and complex; as someone with Cancer rising, a Nadir Sun and a chart brimming with Neptunian energy, I find the concept of “primary” and “secondary” emotions quite hard to grasp.

Chances are, most of us have felt emotions we couldn’t quite name, at some point in our life. All of us have cried tears of joy or anger, smiled through the pain and stood quiet and unbothered in the eye of the storm. Surface emotions. Deep, abysmal emotions. Our own. Other people’s — living, as well as dead.

Whatever our stance on the subject, the Full Moon arriving on January 10, at 20 degrees of the dainty, effusive sign of Cancer, 7:21 PM UTC, is guaranteed to stir the full range of our emotional capability. Not only is the mistress of the night at peak strength in her own sign; this particular Full Moon will also be a penumbral lunar eclipse, capping off the tumultuous, at times gut-wrenching eclipse season that begun with December’s New Moon in Capricorn. A culmination (Full Moon), which will bring private, domestic and emotional matters to a head, while pointing the way towards the future (the north node of the moon is in Cancer, too).

A nuanced, complex experience in its own right, one that asks us to be present yet centered, open yet grounded, vulnerable yet ready.

In the chart for the event, the Moon almost looks like a brave, solitary opponent, weathering the storm of the Capricorn stellium. The Sun, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto will be stacked up in the stern sign of the Mer-Goat, together with asteroid Ceres and the South Node of the Moon. A severe, almost strident juxtaposition: facts and subjectivity, rules and instinct, self-mastery versus emotional programming. What is right versus what feels safe, familiar. The logical, grown-up thing to do, that challenges your emotional attachments and evokes the ghosts of times long gone. An unsettling watershed.

Saturn and Pluto will be perfecting their union, and the Sun will also be conjoining Mercury almost by the minute, thus making the Cosmic Messenger a fundamental player in the scenario of this plenilune. There will be announcements, revelations or confessions that will elicit impassionate, visceral responses — perhaps complex, too. And nuanced. Heartbreak mixed with relief?

Deep within our hearts, we are aware that an era is ending so that another one can begin. The South Node of the Moon transiting the sign of Capricorn has made it abundantly clear: embracing our duties, taking our worldly milestones seriously, incrementing our personal power and authority so that we, too, can play our part in dismantling the outdated, oppressive structures of our society are all paramount tasks at this time, but they’re merely the starting point of our collective and personal journey. It may feel bittersweet to achieve a goal while simultaneously having to detach from it, because our path is already taking us elsewhere — forward, within, towards a re-negotiation of roles within our private sphere, a redefinition of what constitutes “shelter”, the (re)creation of a safe space where our inner life can thrive and where we can protect and nourish something else, a dream that is closer to our heart than any socially sanctioned achievement will ever be.

It all sounds so circular and cyclical, but that’s the nature of the Moon after all. An endless homecoming, lunation after lunation. We’re getting a little step closer to home under this Eclipse, even though the road might seem twisted and bumpy.

Still, this Full Moon in Cancer will also receive a pacifying trine from poetic, ethereal Neptune herself: this aspect will take the edge off the potent eclipse energy, while allowing us to embrace and transcend the immediacy of our emotional responses. Flow. Faith. Not quite the healing already — Chiron in Aries is squaring the Nodal Axis: healing will unfold, but past and future need to be confronted first — but the promise of it. A sense of alignment that can crack our heart open, if we let it. Acceptance. Release. All the nuances of our emotional spectrum blending into one. Somewhere in there we could find joy and relief, as well.

If you want to know how the upcoming Full Moon in Cancer may affect you, you can request a personalized reading. Tarot readings are also available.

Photo by Genessa Panainte on Unsplash.