This week we have the final Full Moon of 2023 in the sign of the Divine Mother – Cancer. This is an energy that is calling you home to yourself – to realize that no matter where you live, the true home you are looking for can only be found within. Playing into this Moon is a fair bit of Shiva energy, which suggest there is something big you are being called to let go of. Shiva is the destroyer of ignorance, and so you can find that this Full Moon calls you into a culmination of the spiritual initiation you have been having over the last 18 months. Cancer is a water sign. Like all water signs, it heightens our emotions and asks us to become vulnerable enough to explore our deeper waters. Cancer is the sign of the crab and reminds us that we each have a unique shell. This shell protects us from the outside world while keeping our feelings close to our hearts. It serves the essential function of keeping our subjective world contained until we are ready to share it with others.
THE FINAL FULL MOON OF THE YEAR
The Cancer Full Moon on the 26th-27th of December is the Final Full Moon of 2023. The lunar energy we leave a year on often indicates something about the emotion or trajectory of that year. As a sign that is deeply sensitive, and who’s greatest longing is to find home – you might notice that the idea of being more vulnerable, letting your guard down, moving more in time with nature, connecting deeper with the divine feminine and finding home particularly within (or even changing homes) have been big themes this year. This Full Moon marks the culmination of this energy. It’s a time to reflect, and have reverence for the journey your soul has led you on as a part of your ongoing evolution.
THIS WILL MARK 18 MONTHS OF SPIRITUAL INITIATION
This particular Full Moon marks the culmination of a journey you have been on both in the physical and the metaphysical world. This has been one of spiritual initiation, of diving deeper into your connection to Mother Nature and the infinite everything in however it has manifested for you – be that God, Goddess, Parashakti, Shekinah etc. If you can think back to the 28th-30th of June 2022, this is when this energy started brewing, and when you were called to set out on journey to reconnect with your own sense of home. For each of us this will take different shapes, this can show up as a shift in the relationship with your Mother (or Maternal Figure), finding a new place to live or a new way of living, or being challenged to remember your connection to the divine mother (the ultimate home). However it has shown up, this period has been one of spiritual initiation. One which has shifted how you see the world, called in more compassion and opened your ability to hold + experience emotion.
THIS IS THE ENERGY OF THE MOTHER
The big theme for this Full Moon is the idea of ‘Mother’. This is the archetype that Cancer embodies, it is an energy that is the caregiver, the protector and the creator. The Mother is our first home (when we are in the womb), and then we all become Mother’s (regardless of sex) when we make a home for ourselves. The ultimate Mother is the Mother Nature, she from which we came and who as we shift in consciousness realize as our own true self. As such this Full Moon can see this Mothering energy building within you. This can manifest as moving homes, the finalization of a home you have been building, doing something within the home to reflect this shift (redecorating or renovating), deepening the relationship with our own mothers (our first homes) and for some of you becoming mothers for the first time (be that through the birth of a child or a project coming into manifestation). Throughout this full Moon in Cancer, give yourself space to feel. Take a break in your daily life and slow down to invite your feelings to the surface of your conscious mind. Full Moons provide time for reflection. With this one coming at the end of the year, it has an even more reflective tone. Look back on your journey this year. Give space to emotions you may have suppressed because you were too busy to deal with them or could not process them when they arrived. Allow the past twelve months to complete themselves on this day, energetically and emotionally, by holding space for unresolved feelings.
Give attention and compassion to unprocessed emotions and allow them to be felt and released. Hold space for it all, the higher frequency emotions and the lower ones. Remember to be aware of your joy, love, and gratitude, as these feelings also deserve acknowledgment. As you go through the emotions of the past year, say goodbye to the ones you no longer want. Thank them for teaching you, then decide how you will transform them.
As you sit with some of your deepest feelings, know they are temporary. They will pass, even if they feel permanent in the moment. As you bring awareness to them, they will naturally shift, unburdening you and making you feel energetically lighter. They will also open the doorway to your intuition. To fully access our inner knowledge, we must be able to feel. If we suppress our feelings, we become unable to access our intuition. We then get lost in a sea of logic and practicalities, forgetting the answers we seek lie just beneath the emotions we are trying to avoid.