Full Moon

At Full Moon the Earth sits between the Sun and the Moon, so the entire face turned toward us is in sunlight. The disc is complete, and because the light arrives almost straight on there are virtually no shadows — which is why craters that look dramatic at other phases seem to disappear.

It rises at about sunset and sets at about sunrise, so it is above the horizon for the whole night. It is roughly twelve times brighter than a First Quarter Moon, far more than the doubled area alone would suggest.

When the alignment is exact the Moon passes into the Earth's shadow and we get a lunar eclipse, which is why every lunar eclipse falls on a Full Moon. During totality it usually turns a deep coppery red, lit only by sunlight bent through the whole ring of Earth's atmosphere — every sunrise and sunset on the planet, at once.

The Full Moon is culmination, and it is also exposure. Nothing is hidden at this phase, which is why it has attracted more folklore than all the others combined.

It is traditionally the time of completion, of release and of heightened feeling — the point at which what was begun in the dark becomes fully visible, including the parts nobody planned to show. Practices attached to it are almost always about seeing clearly and then letting go.

For those born under it, life runs at higher contrast. The joys are larger, the difficulties are larger, and there have been very few mild years. You have fewer places to hide than most people, and you make other people more visible to themselves simply by being in the room. The lesson of the phase is integration: meeting all of what is lit, not only the flattering parts.

The Full Moon's emblems are the mirror, the full cup, the open eye, the ripe fruit — everything complete and everything revealed.

It is the most heavily symbolised phase in human culture, associated with harvest festivals, with madness, with transformation, and with truth-telling. The word lunatic descends from it, which says something about how uncomfortable total visibility makes us.

It belongs to midnight and to the element of water in its highest state: the tide at its fullest reach. Old calendars used it for gathering, celebrating and concluding — never for beginning.

Its colour is white, the colour that contains every other and conceals none of them.

You were born under the fullest light of the cycle, when nothing is hidden. The Full Moon is the phase of culmination and of exposure — everything visible, everything vivid, nowhere to put a shadow. To arrive here is to live at higher contrast than most people: your joys are larger, your difficulties are larger, and very little in your life has ever been mild.

The Full Moon is total light, and its lesson is integration. What is fully lit includes the parts you would rather not look at, and the work is to meet all of it without flinching or performing. Your practice is honesty followed by rest. Feel it completely, say it plainly, then let the light go down again — it always does, and that is not failure.