SACRED TENSIONS + CELESTIAL Alignments: A Libra Full Moon Transition

The Libra Full Moon is coming in hot and heavy at 5:22 p.m. US/Pacific on April 12, ushering in a period of high energy and enthusiasm that lasts the entire month of April. If you’ve felt like you’re lagging behind or dragging your feet, this is a turnaround time where the mind of Mercury turns direct on April 7, the harmonies of Venus resume direct motion on April 12, and the most memorable Mars retrograde of 2024-2025 wraps up with a bang!

Mars describes our mission in life and what we wish to champion. 

While he makes his third and final opposition to the evolutionary force of Pluto (exact April 18), the spotlight of the Sun will make a tense T-square aspect with these two. You will be sorting out who you’re traveling with and why, and you may have a much shorter fuse than usual.

Dance like you mean it to work off Mars-Pluto energy!

Or, try pursuing more vigorous outdoor activities. If mobility is problematic, then watching imaginative action-adventure films or documentaries, as well as using active imagination to explore jungles and climb mountains, can also help regulate an overly confrontational mood. Blowing off excess steam can leave you with a zeal that is much more manageable, where you are less likely to be possessed by forces that overpower your better judgment.

Another aspect that figures heavily into the month is Saturn-Neptune. Maintaining a regular spiritual practice is an excellent way to channel some otherwise confusing or even distressing currents contained within the longer Saturn conjunct Neptune cycle (March 2024 - May 2027), which is seeking to seed a new imagination during their passage through the initiatic sign of Aries. This is not a passive process or an object to buy ready-made off the shelf. You can participate in this great unfoloding by creating a relationship with all the beings everywhere, seen and unseen, who are our kin, companions, guides, and friends, honoring the divine presence of all who animate the Dream of the Earth.

Sun Conjunct Chiron

Mars-Pluto’s primal aggression and will to power create a tense Grand Cross aspect pattern with this Full Moon, ushering in a highly energetic mood that persists through late April. 

Full Moons alone pull up tides of heightened emotion, and with the Mars-Pluto Grand Cross in the mix, your ability to assert yourself or to protect your interests is likely to be stirred up. This may be the moment you break a stalemate or feel like you’re finally gaining some ground. On the other hand, some of us will have to summon the wisdom of self-restraint not to sabotage ourselves with compulsive or wantonly destructive behavior, choosing instead to play a much longer game. It could take some effort to align the extreme courage and endurance of Mars opposite Pluto with our guiding values and principles.

We are, after all, also animals with an instinctual response to events in our lives. 

The conscious self of the Sun is making a conjunction to half-animal, half-human Chiron (exact with the Full Moon on April 12), a symbol that describes the human struggle to be self-aware and yet also entirely instinctual at the same time. The power of empathy and compassion seems to be central to working successfully with Chiron’s influence, bridging the divide that you can feel between yourself and others—or between parts of yourself that may be alienated.

Chiron’s involvement in this lunation suggests that you may receive important insight into early childhood or family-driven patterns that are unhealthy for you to perpetuate or perhaps dynamics that have grown stagnant and debilitating over the years. It could also be a potent time of reuniting with fragments of yourself that had to be left behind due to a lack of safety or trauma. Allowing stuck emotions to flow forth and dissipate through tears, speech, or writing can be very supportive for any of these scenarios, freeing you from the ghosts of the past and allowing you to create the security you need now.

Mars Opposite Pluto

Mars Sextile Uranus + Trine Neptune

While the forceful expression of Mars opposing the Shakti power of Pluto (exact April 18) may grab most of our attention, Mars is also importantly activating the more subtle but no less powerful influence of the Uranus sextile Neptune world transit (August 2023 - June 2029), making exact aspects to those planets on April 4 and April 9 respectively. As Mars retrograde’s review of our ambitions, independence, and goals or mission in life wraps up, our relationship to the divine is emphasized.

Many things have been slowly working underground and out of view since October 2024. The final phase of this Mars retrograde could involve more deliberately connecting into a mycelial web of relationships, both seen and unseen, as we sink our imagination into our relationship with that which is greater than we are. Acts of service to those in need and actively connecting to our vision for a healthy, desirable, luminous future can sustain our action and provide a meaningful stabilizing connection to the longer arcs of history.

Mars Retrograde

⚈ Mars enters retrograde shadow at 17° Cancer on Oct. 4, 2024

⚈ Mars stations retrograde at 6° Leo on Dec. 6, 2024

⚈ Mars stations direct at 17° Cancer on Feb. 23, 2025

⚈ Mars leaves retrograde shadow at 6° Leo on May 3, 2025

Mercury + Venus Conjunct Saturn-Neptune

Many of us are looking forward after casting our gaze backward with so many retrograde planets. Along with Mars, messenger Mercury returned to direct motion on April 7, and sociable Venus is also moving forward again under the Libra Full Moon. Yet Mercury and Venus continue to tangle with the world-transforming transit of Saturn conjunct Neptune (March 2024 to May 2027), as their retrograde paths since January and February have already crossed that combination twice.

This last pass speaks to aligning our hearts with our minds, our words with our deeds, and allowing what is past to assume its proper placement in our lives. As confusing as this year may get, it is urgent to walk a mystical path with practical feet, to quote cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien. This means keeping one foot in the mundane world (Saturn) and another in the vast, deep imagination (Neptune), seeing the sacred in all things.

A consistent spiritual practice channels Saturn-Neptune into forms that help us make sense of suffering and joy and help us discern reality from fantasy. Slowing down—even slower than we may initially think—and grounding the body-mind by walking barefoot on the Earth supports a generative engagement with the imagination. Venus’ final conjunction with Neptune (exact May 2) suggests making time to revel in the beauty of Earth and our cosmos, making time for awe and wonder. We might wonder about the truth in the statement of the writer and grief literacy advocate Stephen Jenkinson, himself awestruck by the astonishing act of cultivating food with the wild Earth: “Ultimately, your capacity to be grateful for being alive is rooted in the fact that everything is bigger than you.”

Venus Retrograde

⚈ Venus enters retrograde shadow at 24° Pisces on Jan. 27, 2025

⚈ Venus stations retrograde at 10° Aries on March 1, 2025

⚈ Venus stations direct at 24° Pisces on April 12, 2025

⚈ Venus leaves retrograde shadow at 10° Aries on May 16, 2025

Full Moon in Libra by Moon Sign

Aries Moon
The Libra Full Moon is calling you to your edge, Aries Moon, to find yourself fully alive, as in the words of the poem penned by poet Dawna Markova: “I choose to inhabit my days,/ to allow my living to open me,/ to make me less afraid,/ more accessible, /to loosen my heart/ until it becomes a wing,/ a torch, a promise.”

Taurus Moon
The Libra Full Moon points out the delicate balance between duty and pleasure, collaboration and friendship, what is simply filling a need in the moment and what is of true and enduring value. It’s essential not to push yourself and others too hard, Taurus Moon, and to lift your head from what preoccupies you long enough to see what it’s all for.

Gemini Moon
What if the divine dream could move through your life, Gemini Moon? What if there were sweet union and bliss even under the Libra Full Moon? While reality is rarely so one-sided, there is both healing and power in connecting with the Good Dream of the Earth, to allow your heart to wander into the place where the blessings are.

Cancer Moon
What is left in the wake of your life, what ripples behind the small vessel you’ve ridden through the vast tempest of this life, Cancer Moon—this is what is illuminated by the Full Moon in Libra. You’re here to make it count this time, and that seems less about what others do or do not do and much more about your connection to Soul, to meaning, to your purpose.

Leo Moon
The thrill of the chase may emerge under the powerful gaze of the Libra Full Moon, and you must become aware of all the ancestral patterns that feed into your role as the pursuer or the pursued. Only then can your vitality become free to express itself with a joy for life, Leo Moon, while being fully mindful of the sovereignty of others.

Virgo Moon
Some ill-fitting part of your life may start to chafe badly under the Libra Full Moon. You’re meant to grow, expand, and inhabit the fullness of your life, Virgo Moon. Trying to stay small, hidden, or insignificant about your true significance can give way now—it’s okay to reach for the Sun.

Libra Moon
This is your Full Moon of 2025, Libra Moon! It’s set to ignite your creative passions, ideas, productions, and machinations. You may enjoy how much goodness flows into your life through new connections as you begin to share your inspiration with others. Just beware of seeking too much external validation. Rather, let your inner Muse’s delight guide you through rich and vital territory.

Scorpio Moon
A break with tradition, that is the only thing that will do. The Libra Full Moon calls out to your more irreverent side, Scorpio Moon, the one of you that knows how to step outside of the usual framework to make history new.

Sagittarius Moon
This lunation could clarify your differentiation from the crowd, Sag Moon, primarily how you differ from important friend groups or professional associations. The Libra Full Moon invites you to move through any vulnerability you may experience through these differences and into the confidence to make decisions per your own philosophy and value set.

Capricorn Moon
Your heart is set to melt under the radiance of beauty, friendship, and the small and great kindnesses we can receive and offer to this world, Capricorn Moon. If the season past has locked part of your heart in ice, then the thaw begins under the powerful light of the Full Moon in Libra.

Aquarius Moon
If your ire gets kicked up under the Libra Full Moon, it could help to imagine yourself as part of some larger entity, a more significant force belonging to life. Clarity comes when you remove the personal sting from whatever provokes your anger, Aquarius Moon, helping you make much better decisions. The observation of Lao Tzu might then guide your response: “Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.”

Pisces Moon
The Full Moon in Libra may be a crucial catalyst for shedding affections or addictions or obsessions that no longer serve you, Pisces Moon. This lunation speaks of the work involved in collaborating with turning your ship towards calmer, more enjoyable seas. It’s an auspicious time to dedicate yourself to building the foundations of your emotional well-being.