Full Moon in Leo: Inner Fire

We’re now moving into the Leo Full Moon. The Moon prepares for this through a series of meetings:

Just past the opposition to Saturn, the Moon will trine Chiron. Soon after that, a square to Uranus forms before the moment of the Full Moon itself.

As we’ve seen over and over again in the past year, each lunation pulls in the wider energies of our time.

This Full Moon at 9 Leo stakes out their own territory across from Saturn, the Sun, and Jupiter in Aquarius, and squaring Mars and Uranus in Taurus. The trine to Chiron the wounded healer will still be felt.

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Feeling, emotion, passion, and creative fire are all central to this Full Moon. Leo is a personal sign, the place of the heart, of our courage, the connection to our life force and our joy.

Sure, we can find in Leo a grasping for attention, a confirmation that we’re seen in the world. Leo can be a place of empty celebrity and participation trophies.

But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking to be seen. Infants must command attention to survive. As this time of social isolation has shown, the basics of shared experience, talking, gathering, sharing meals, just being together, are vital to our health in every way.

Leo, ultimately, is not satisfied with just showing up. This is sign of the Sun, the core of our life purpose as well as life force. Here we long for recognition and appreciation. Leo wants their time in the spotlight to share what is deeply true and real and passionate.

The Aquarius planets show us how the world crowds in on us these days. It takes deliberate effort to separate from the news cycle, even when we know we need a break. Carving out time for our own creative work can feel impossible, or even inappropriate, with so much at stake.

This Leo Moon will illuminate where we are in that balance.

Where is 9 Leo in your birth chart? This is a place you’ll want to check. I have Leo Rising, so using whole sign houses, this Full Moon falls in my First House of self. I have been grappling with finding the right balance between my own work and giving time and attention to wider issues for many months now.

But my Ascendant is very late in Leo, so using Placidus, the quadrant house system I prefer, this becomes a Twelfth House Full Moon. This is a complicated house that includes our connection to the wider cosmos, our sense of the beyond-human world, and an awareness of the losses necessarily built in to any human life.

This Full Moon in the Twelfth House might shine a light on how world events have affected our sense of connection and belonging. It could also highlight where our hearts need the space and the time to cope with loss.

These are examples, showing how each of our responses to this Full Moon will be personal, possibly intensely so.

This theme of balancing the personal with the global has been front and center for me since the last Full Moon, the Cancer Full Moon that brought 2020 to a close.

Last year, global events pushed themselves into the center of astrology. As in many other fields, astrology had to rebalance concepts of personal guidance and self actualization with crafting appropriate responses to worldwide dangers.

This Leo Moon may illuminate some of that as well.

Narcissism is one face of Leo. When a craving for attention becomes central to the personality, and when an individual has some access to charisma, then a manipulative bending of others’ wills, a deliberate distortion of others’ thinking, becomes part of a personal agenda.

Where have we been drawn in by seductive and compelling messages or individuals? Have we chosen to amplify such messages as a way to gain our own attention, or to align ourselves with power?

A shadow side of Aquarius is fanaticism. With Saturn and Jupiter flanking the Sun, we can definitely feel the power of the collective. The Leo Moon allows us the space and focus to ask, which messages are true? And especially, which messages are true for me? Which resonate with my heart’s core?

This is a day, a time, for checking in with your heart. If you’re feeling burnt out, exhausted, depleted, look for ways to stoke your inner flame. Sometimes rest can be a creative and redemptive act. Generally, though, Leo looks for avenues for personal expression.

What brings you joy? Where can you create beauty? What ignites your energy? What lights you up?

That trine to Chiron, the wounded healer, highlights the positive link between creative expression and healing.

For those of us who write, sometimes we don’t know what we feel until we see what we say. Working with color and form, or sound and movement, can bring us into levels of expression and understanding that are deeper than words. There are as many ways to be creative as you can imagine.

Venus, a planet linked to creativity, is conjunct Pluto in Capricorn. When we create, we transform. We literally create new forms. Even if they are temporary and private ones, they are new and brought into being through our efforts.

The Venus–Pluto conjunction reminds us that creative expression transforms us as well. As we connect with our inner fire, our authentic self, and bring something of its essence into the world, we too are transformed.

This bright, passionate, creative Full Moon also ushers us into this year’s first Mercury retrograde. We’re already in the retrograde shadow. Mercury will station early on January 30 and move back through Aquarius until February 19.

Whatever this Full Moon illuminates can become a focus of our Mercury retrograde exploration. In fact this Leo Full Moon encourages us to bring passion and creative fire into our time of reflecting on community and vision and other cerebral Aquarian things.

Light candles today. Red, orange, or yellow ones if you have them. Grab paper and color and combine them. Move your body. Sing. Loud. Write some words, or just say them. Out loud. Play. Get passionate.

No expression has to be public, or large, or permanent. Perhaps you need something small and manageable. Connect with something that warms your heart. Connect with joy.

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The astrological charts are my own. The images in this post include the title,
adapted from the flame by Cullan Smith,
and the following images:
face in red light by Noah Buscher,
figure in the bright sun by Jude Beck,and
bright paint by Taelynn Christopher