Individual Together
April 12, 2025 at 8:22 EST
Full Moon at 23°19’’ Libra
The Full Moon in Libra arrives each year after the Aries Equinox. The Earth freshly awake from winter slumber, for a brief moment we’re reminded that Spring emergence is harmonized by Winter’s death. How quickly we lose that sense of balance as the light grows, boosted by daylight savings, distorting our connection to the cyclical rhythms that sustain us.
This year that distortion has felt thick, packed with the instability of collective chaos and full of cosmic rarities. Since the beginning of 2025, there have only been five days (February 24-28) that an inner planet wasn’t retrograde. On March 31, Neptune, the planet of dreams and delusion moved into Aries for the first time since 1861, and between now and July 7th, the three other giant reality-shaping planets will also change signs – something that hasn’t occurred in such a short time span in at least 5,000 years.
While Aries is a sign of fire, and the place where the Sun is known to be in exaltation, Mars, the planetary guide to Aries has been debilitated in the sensitive waters of Cancer for what feels like eternity (September 4 - November 3 and then retrograding back into Cancer on January 6 where it will be until April 18). Meanwhile, Venus, the guide to Libra sign of air, is in the watery depths of Pisces, where she is exalted yet cozied up to Saturn, the planet that governs loss and maturation. As the year goes on, the energetic field that has been earth and water dominant yields to air and fire. We’ve been in the throes of this transition, as if we’re trying to light a log that’s wet and rotting and there’s more smoke than there is heat.
At this Full Moon, as the self-interested zeal of Aries is interrupted by Libra’s orientation towards relationships and justice, it’s becoming abundantly more clear that we can’t get where we want to go on initiative alone: we must also mind the collective that sustains us. These lessons have been building for the last two years and came to a head at the last Aries New Moon Solar Eclipse on March 29. Reckoning with the ways pulling ourselves up from our bootstraps has failed us, a new culture is brewing in which we can be individuals, together. But to start this new beginning, seriously releasing is in order.
Aries is the sign of war, but if you’re constantly in battle, it’s yourself that you’re at war with. With ever increasing military expansion, that’s the cultural directive. But with Mars, Aries’ guide in Cancer, we’ve been slowing down to question what it is we’re actually protecting.
How often do you spend on the defensive, ready to figuratively attack? Many of us go through life in hyper vigilance, our nervous systems operating as if under constant threat. We don’t realize the threat is our own repression - at war against the parts of ourselves deemed unworthy, weak, or unlovable. At war against the simplicity of being - the mystery of becoming. We hold onto all our roles and projects, clenching, refusing to let down. If we’re managing five things, we carry all five at all times. We sleep with them and rise with them, never trusting ourselves to leave their side. As if our productivity is our weapon. As if our busyness keeps us safe. We wear our hard work and independence like badges of honor, blind to the fact we wear them like a mask. We fully identify with what we’re doing, unaware that the ‘individuality’ in the rugged individualism we’ve been chasing has morphed into a cog in a near broken down machine.
All opposites balance each other but Aries and Libra especially so. As the sign of the self, Aries is the gateway to all experience, and as the sign of relationship or other, Libra is the gateway through which that experience is expanded and refined. It is through the mirror of our relationships that we catch ourselves on the hamster wheel of our stress patterns, as our internal systems contort to the pressure we put them under attempting homeostasis. It is through the mirror of others that we define ourselves – individually and culturally - discerning what we value from what we don’t. And as we go through life, what we like and value in our life and therefore our relationships (Venus / Libra) naturally evolve as we become more authentically ourselves and develop the courage to claim our life force energy to feed our personal passion (Aries / Mars).
But for this process to be effective, there has to be a loss, and that is what the conjunction of Saturn and Venus at this full moon is here to teach us. How can we find balance if our arms and heads are overflowing with things we can no longer bear to carry and thoughts we can’t possibly keep track of? We have to let go of and limit what feels inauthentic – what we no longer like and no longer value – if we want integrity, depth, and maturation. That doesn’t have to mean a physical removal, in fact it’s more important for it to be energetic. Speaking from experience, if you try to remove something physically before you’ve disengage energetically, you can chop it up & burn it to ash, but it will magically put itself back together and find its way right back upon your shoulders. The physical weight we carry is a result of the energetic weight we engage with. Limitations and releasing is not so much about cutting out or letting go but letting be. Co-existing with your ambitions, neuroses and desires while knowing you are not them. Your effort is not the most important thing.
Oftentimes we struggle to put something down because that situation is symbolic of an energy much deeper, more historic. For example, we struggle to put down a work project because some part of us feels unworthy or is afraid of being abandoned — even left alone to die. Once you address the core need for love, nurturing, and protection, the weight more easily dissolves and with it, the attachment to the outcome. You can make small changes like tapping into breath and presence before you speak with a triggering co-worker as to limit your engagement. You can choose to not give a project your all, or even do the radical thing of forgoing something altogether — realizing you can be safe and well and happy without feeding unrealistic standards of production.
We may struggle to take space from a relationship because we fear we’re not okay on our own, that we’re unlovable, or that if we choose to do what makes us happy we’ll be punished or ridiculed. Once you affirm your capacity to build mutual connection with people who respect you for both your similarities and differences, you realize that there is no victim and perpetrator, we’re all just humans working to fulfill our own needs and desires. You may start to integrate that only by standing in your authenticity can you give others the opportunity to love you for who you really are - maintaining the boundaries that Prentis Hemphill says are the distance at which you can love others and yourself simultaneously.
These are generalizations, but I offer them as food for thought with what is at the root of the things you might have the most difficulty letting go of. The things that you may try to nip in the bud while leaving the roots. Personally in doing this work, what I’ve found is that to get to that deeper part and really tend to her, I had to slow way down. I had to create more unstructured downtime for play and relaxation - for long walks in the woods, watching TV, reading or journaling. I had to build trust with the parts of me that formed to be accepted by the tribe. I had to welcome back the parts of me that were exiled, causing me to reject my intuition, suppressing unworthiness and shame. In welcoming back all these parts of me, I had to, and still have to, hold space for them to explore who they want to be after they retire from their roles protecting me, overworking to contort myself in attempts to keep me safe. This is an ongoing journey of finding safety in the mystery of my becoming — allowing space to define and redefine my individuality day by day, moment by moment, and allowing space for others to do the same. Rather than clinging to the delusion of a stagnant identity anchored to metrics of production and performance, I can allow myself the freedom of impermanence and exploration. I can embrace the joy of being a novice at knowing who I am and what I like, no longer stuck reacting to my circumstances as I was in my early life, ill-equipped to cultivate a sense of safety and an environment I wanted to be in. I can relish the awe of seeing more and more color as I heal the fight or flight triggers that cause me to think in black and white.
To be individuals, together, we have to understand why we feel we must sacrifice ourselves, becoming fragments of a whole. As Mars finishes his transformation in Cancer, what have you learned about the ways you go to war with yourself? Where has a mindset of scarcity sent you to battle pursuing an endless quest of more and preventing you from accessing the resources you already have? As Venus and Saturn are together in Pisces, pinpoint what you need to limit to live your values more deeply. As Venus stations direct on April 12th with the full moon, what relationship or relationship dynamics have come up that are no longer reflective of your values, especially those related to compassion, your dreams, and sense of spirituality? As Mercury stationed direct on April 7, what have you learned about how your style of communication can foster connection and unity or disconnection and distortion? How might you combine these lessons to set a compassionate boundary in relationships or situations that are feeling inauthentic, such as by communicating that you need to take space to meet your own needs and you’ll be back in touch when you’re ready? Or refusing to engage with a colleagues’ paranoia or delusion by carrying on with clarity, positivity, and willing connection?
This is all one step in a bigger story that’s unfolding over the next several months, but it’s an important step. As always, share any thoughts or questions in the comments below - I love hearing from you.
Wishing you nourishing reflection and many full moon blessings <3
