Your One Wild and Precious Life

Full moon at 24° of Aries

David Garland photographs reflections of light - this one is called Extolment.

In the dark hours of Thursday morning, at 4:26am PT, the moon will be full and bright and loud at 24° of Aries. There’s no relaxing in the lead up to an Aries full moon. Aries is cardinal, initiating fire, ruled by the forceful, fiery warrior planet Mars. It’s electric and impulsive, self-starting and independent, frustrated and full of spontaneous physical energy and no chill. Aries is represented by the ram, so just imagine the primal power and force behind a ram’s horns, charging an opponent or obstacle. That’s what Aries wants: to be a Force, fully realized, fully alive and embodied, free to push the world into new more personally pleasing shapes.

Aries is the first sign of the Zodiac, so metaphysically speaking, it’s just big, obvious commencement energy. It’s teaching us how to transform potential energy into kinetic energy, ideas into actions. But more importantly it’s teaching us who we really are—what our true nature is. It wants us to think less, and act out more. It wants us to to make fewer decisions from our mind, and more from our gut, our core physical intelligence. Aries lessons are always in service to fearlessly exploring the nature of this incarnation, so we can more freely be who we really are, and become who we are here to become. Wherever Aries leads in your chart, that’s where impulsiveness and spontaneity and being true to yourself will be your strengths.

As with all full moons, this is a moment of tension between oppositional energies. The Sun is in its final week in Libra right now, the sign of harmonious relationships and social order and the sweet rule of law. Aries stands opposite Libra on the Zodiac wheel, and so the full moon here is temporarily shining its light on the opposite of all that Libra relationality—it’s highlighting the project of knowing ourselves and our own will, and maybe doing some holy shit-starting from that place. As with all oppositional archetypal pairs, the work over time is to tolerate or withstand the tension they create with their very different styles and needs. Rather than trying to solve or simplify things by denying whichever one is inconvenient at the moment, we learn how to let things be complicated; how to let ourselves be complex and whole, and let others be complex and whole. We learn how to give it time, for things to evolve and transform.

This is also the culmination of a current that initiated on the very powerful total solar eclipse in Aries back in April (Remember Who You Are). It’s possible that over the last six months, you’ve been learning a great deal from your own inner teacher, reforging some bonds with repressed self-parts, and generally feeling your own vibration and voice in brand new ways. As this full moon crests and then spills over, a new current will initiate—a current of liberation, capable of shedding more of what we no longer need and removing the final, most fearsome obstacles to being more freely ourselves. This full moon is just the latest in a long series of intense events in Aries over the last six years, and I think we are really feeling it now, as the effects are cumulative. Chiron the wounded healer has been here since 2018, getting occasionally activated, and it will be here for a couple more years, until 2027. Jupiter, planet of generosity and expansion and spirituality, transited Aries from 2022-2023. Then last year, just as Jupiter was wrapping up its expansion, the hungry, demanding north node of increase also arrived in Aries, sending the Chiron in Aries project and all other Aries projects into overdrive.

There are a lot ways to look at this time of extensive healing and growth Aries. One is that it’s gotten us to take on the big, scary work of healing our connection with ourself, and especially our self-definitions. Chiron has been bringing up all the ways we have given away our power and allowed others to define us, especially the harder-to-get-to stories we internalized as kids. We are now the ones perpetuating these false or painful stories or definitions, and we are the only ones that can interrupt them. By the end of its transit, Chiron wants us to be embracing our true selves, all the good and the not so good parts, and to be proceeding from authentic self-connection, self-respect, self-trust, and real deal self-love. We are sacred beings, deserving of being treated like sacred beings, and that begins inside, with how we see ourselves and treat ourselves. Chiron is at 21° of Aries this full moon, so it’s close; we can expect this ongoing healing work to get highlighted this week.

The north node is also still here a little while longer, now at 6° of Aries. It’s been pushing us, hard, for more than a year now, to lean into our own agency and power. Like a big part of how we heal is not just by releasing harmful self-definitions, but also by owning the ways we’ve shied away from using our power and voice, and taking responsibility for our part in perpetuating unhealthy power dynamics in our relationships. If we have relied on passive defenses rather than direct, assertive communication; held our tongues to keep the peace; not been fully honest, out of fear of rejection or abandonment; if we have routinely prioritized others’ needs over our own, and not demanded some reciprocity, all that has to stop. At every level, in every part of our lives, it has to stop. A fully healed Aries doesn’t have any of those problems! It has other problems!

Finally, I think all this activation in Aries has been pushing us to take our creative lifeforce seriously, and to take our relationship with it further. When we shed more of what is not us, we free up the enormous amount of energy that it takes to repress our natural instincts and expression. When we seize opportunities to speak up, it helps us practice not just using our voice for catharsis and expression, but using it in a good way, meaning an effective and communicative way. When we set boundaries verbally and enforce them consistently, we get better at transmitting our power energetically. We have to do all of this to fight for a life that actually resonates with our deepest truth. In order to have relationships—and a world—where we share power equitably and for real, no one can be allowed to shrink from the task and responsibility of knowing themselves and exercising their power.

We’ve come a long way, truly, and this next six months will push us to face even more of our fear of change, to get even braver. Both Mars and Pluto are complexifying this moment, and placing some conditions on the current of liberation Aries is kicking off. Aries’ ruler Mars is currently at 22° Cancer, in a close square with the Moon. It’s a placement of mutual reception, meaning Mars is in the Moon’s home sign and the Moon is in Mar’s home sign. Neither is comfortable, but these are perfect conditions for forcing a greater sympathy and integration between these two very different parts of us. What it means for us practically on this full moon, is that if we want to access our energy and drive and creative lifeforce at this time, we have to go through the sensitive emotional waters of Cancer, and show some respect to whatever is there. We need to feel our feelings and check in on our bodies and attend to our unmet needs. There’s something big here, for some of us—many of us live with a great deal of inner conflict around our bodies. We might feel resentful or angry about the body’s needs and sensitivities, and how it compromises or restrains what we can do. We might be frightened of the power of our feelings. We might struggle with our own body-images, and loving our own physical forms.

What I know is this: I can only end the war with my body by accepting it and embracing my body exactly as it is; by regularly giving it my warm, neutral, loving attention; and by honoring its intelligence and wisdom. I have a unique and ever-changing nature that I will always be learning more about. My body will naturally resist any attempts at domination from a shaming or disrespectful source—including my own mind or ego. Then it will take a tremendous amount of effort to overcome that resistance and direct my body’s activities; it will be physically draining. When instead, I love my body as-is, and respect my body and its wise limits, there is enough internal affinity to initiate self-communication. Now I can freely receive my own instincts and intuitive signals, and while I may not understand it easily, I can study the language of that, so I can start to discern more clearly what’s a yes and a no for me. This allows me to learn what my creative lifeforce needs day by day, so that it can thrive. This is primal ground for learning embodied agency and personal power.

Thanks for letting me go on about that a bit! I get excited about the body and cultivating its wisdom and power! The full moon is also in a square with Pluto at 29° of Capricorn, so it continues to feel like everything is connected to that final project—integrating Pluto’s transformational shadow work in Capricorn over the last 16 years, making some real moves towards knowing our purpose and manifesting our life’s work, and generally getting serious about living the precious life we’ve been entrusted with. The message is: healing our stuck survival physiology, removing blocks to our creative life force, restoring the flow of our emotions, that’s not a separate project from knowing what we are here to do. I’ve been thinking all week of Peter Levine, the creator of Somatic Experiencing trauma healing work and one of my main teachers. One of the workshops I took with him, he had us all walking and circulating around the room, saying aloud to ourselves and each other, “I’m here and I’m real.” IT was surprisingly potent. It had this magic way of dissolving dissociation, and bringing us more clearly and vibrantly into our own bodies and into the room and into the present moment. There’s something like that happening now; as we speak up more and more for ourselves, declaring our truth, as we accept the discomfort of standing in our power and sometimes disappointing others, we are getting more real.

If you are really in it this week, if life and the work feels impossible, it might help to remember seriousness and discipline are not really Aries’ department. Aries is the youngest in nature of the zodiac archetypes, and its deeper spiritual teachings reflect that. If this Aries full moon had some medicine to give us, to get through this moment, it would first be a reminder that hard work will only get you so far. We really need play. We really really need it. Conscious play is rejuvenating, it increases our lifeforce and creativity. If you don’t remember the last time you engaged in spontaneous dancing or singing or games or silly dumb shit or whatever is good to you, please get on that. Aries is also saying this: worry less about how you will have what you want. Instead, focus on being the person that has that thing. Let yourself imagine, right now, how it would feel to already have what you want. You don’t have to wait for that feeling. You can conjure it now, try it on now, embody it now. Then, start moving through your life with that feeling, and being the person that has that feeling. It will bring this new reality closer. Eventually, what you seek will no longer be separate from you.

David Garland’s Declarations

Save the Date: Upcoming Live Talk On the Day Before the Election

My good friend Amber Tamblyn has a Substack called Listening In the Dark, named for the brilliant essay collection she dreamed and co-wrote, on women reclaiming the power of intuition. Amber hosts a monthly live gathering for her community of paid subscribers called The Short and Sweet, and she has invited me to be her guest for next month’s gathering, happening on Zoom on Monday, November 4th at 6pm PST/9pm EST—the day before the election. Amber and I will be talking openly (probably too openly!) about our long friendship with each other and politics, but also my work as a somatic trauma therapist. Our main goal is to do some nervous system regulation together, to better protect and sustain us as we head into that high stakes, peak stress week. All my paid subscribers will also be invited and, getting the link to this Zoom call! Save that date if you want in!

Ritual & Writing Prompts

For paid subscribers, some shortcut links to the archive of writings on Aries in In the River of What’s Happening Now and specific suggestions for ritually working with this full moon to call in big healing and greater freedom. And as always, a generative creative writing prompt brought to you by my mind in collaboration with the current astrology.

(Disclaimer: Prompts are suggestions, not instructions. Play with what inspires you, ignore what’s doesn’t, relate with it and adapt it in any way you see fit.)

The Aries archive

Remember Who You Are - new moon solar eclipse at 19° of Aries (spring 2024)

The Voice, Unafraid, Changes Everything - full moon at 6° of Aries (fall 2023)

Quantum Leaping - new moon total solar eclipse at 29° of Aries (spring 2023)

The Gospel of Neuroplasticity - new moon at 0° of Aries (spring equinox 2023)

Everyone Who Loves You Wants to See You Shine - full moon at 16° of Aries (Fall 2022)