How the New and Full Moons Determine Your Year

Tracking the exact degrees of every lunation in 2025.

Happy New Year!!

I’m kicking off our first newsletter of 2025 by talking about the moon, which is the most important planet to watch in terms of how any given day or week might go for you. Every single month, we get both a new moon and a full moon, which tell of bigger themes you will encounter over a four week long period. I want to zoom in a bit further here though, and examine how the degrees at which the new and full moons fall in each sign of the zodiac will determine how major a specific year will be for you. Before we get into it though, I have some monthly recommendations. I forgot I used to include this as a section in the free monthly newsletter, and I miss sharing the stuff I love!

Reading rec: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. I am currently flying through this book and am almost done, and I can already tell that it will be one of my favorite books of the year. It’s about a young woman who is born in the 17th century and basically makes a bargain with the devil to be able to live forever, but in return she will be forgotten by everyone she meets. It jumps back and forth between the past and present day and tackles bigger picture questions like “if you aren’t remembered in history, was your life that successful?”

Clothing rec: I have been living in this Quince cashmere sweatsuit since Christmas.

Lifestyle rec: I have gotten really into trying out a lot of different workout classes recently. Mars spending a large part of 2025 in my 12th house has me wanting to prioritize wellness, and I’m seeing how exercising regularly is helping my mental health. A workout I am loving right now is Liftonic, for anyone based in New York. The whole class is weight lifting and ab work to fun music.

Okay, on to our main topic.

Having the new and full moon each month is a constant, but depending on if a lunation is happening at the same exact degree or within a 3 degree orb of a planet or angle in your chart will indicate that that specific calendar year will be one where greater change is happening in your life (especially if the planet affected is your sun, moon, an angle, or a ruling planet of one of the angles). Once that year is over, it may stand out to you as being a much more significant twelve months, and the themes of the angle or the planet closely impacted by a lunation will have likely played a big role in why that year was so meaningful. Let’s walk through an example to further illustrate this concept.

The new moon in Capricorn that just took place on December 30 happened at 9 degrees of Capricorn. In the below chart, you can see that this person has their Capricorn moon at 10 degrees. (For people who are new to looking at charts, the degree is always the bigger number found to the side of a planetary symbol.) Therefore, this person would feel the impacts of this new moon super strongly in the realm of their home, living situation, and how they process their emotions (all lunar themes). 2025 may be a big year, especially concentrated right around this new moon date, in terms of moving, seeing changes happen in the family, and getting a fresh start in these areas of their life. To contrast, the new moon in Capricorn in 2024 happened at 20 degrees of Capricorn, so for this person it likely wouldn’t have been as eventful, because it was taking place 10 degrees away from their Capricorn moon, a little too far away to make a huge impact.

Above, the 10 degree December 2024 new moon happening right on top of this person’s natal moon in Capricorn.

Above, the 20 degrees January 2024 new moon in Capricorn from last year happened further away from this person’s natal moon in Capricorn, and was therefore not as impactful.

So while yes, a new moon and a full moon will happen across a pair of houses in your chart each month and awaken themes there, the lunations that occur right on top of natal planets and angles will be the ones you want to take special note of. Let’s now look at how you can identify every single new and full moon coming up in 2025, including the eclipses, and see how they will impact your individual chart.

If you visit this link here, it will take you to a lunation feature on astro-seek.com, one of my favorite free websites for pulling up your birth chart. From there, you can enter in your birth data, but before you hit “calculate chart” make sure to…

• Enter your current city as your birth city, not that it changes anything that much. But for all predictive techniques I use the birth city, not the city in which you’re currently living. There’s something about the place in which you were born that is super significant throughout your entire lifetime.

• under the drop down where it says “orb” it will automatically say “less than 5.” You could change that to” less than 3” if you want to narrow it down a bit. The smaller the orb between a new moon or a full moon and a natal placement in your chart, the bigger deal it is.

• Under the drop down that says “house system” I advise selecting “whole sign.” It’s easier to read your chart that way and more accurate in my opinion when it comes to predictive astrology.

• You can leave everything else on the data entry page as is.

When you calculate the chart, you will see your chart with the 2025 new and full moons positioned around it. They are numbered in order of when they occur throughout the year. If you locate the moon labeled #1 you will see that it is in Cancer, since that is the first lunation of 2025, happening on January 13. The dark circles indicate new moons, the silver circles indicate full moons, the orange are lunar eclipses, and the black circles with yellow numbers in them are solar eclipses.

As you scroll down, this website has made it easy for you by listing out when a new or full moon is happening in conjunction with one or more of your natal planets. You may even want to write down the dates of these new and full moons or make a mental note that the themes of that planet or angle affected will be a bigger deal this year than in another year. Looking at my own chart example below, you can see that the January 29 new moon in Aquarius is happening at 9 degrees of Aquarius, which is only 3 degrees away from my natal Sun, 2 degrees away from my Mercury, and a little over 4 degrees away from my descendant angle. The themes associated with the Sun (identity, personal goals, image), Mercury (communication), and the descendant (partnerships, other people) will be brought up super strongly that month and even for the entire year. Last year’s new moon in Aquarius was further away from all of these planets in my chart, so I didn’t feel these themes as strongly.

As a side note, within this list of new and full moons happening in 2025, several of these lunations will be eclipses. Out of a series of eclipses happening back and forth across a pair of signs (2025 will be mainly Pisces/Virgo eclipses), if you happen to have a lot of significant chart placements in one or maybe both of these two signs, the eclipse that falls closest in degree to the planet or angle in that sign will be the most important eclipse date to watch and will serve as the biggest catalyst for change.

Let’s now look at some example charts to see how the exact degrees of a new and full moon can define a person’s entire year. The first chart below is that of Margot Robbie. In 2023, there was a new moon in Cancer that happened on July 17 at 24 degrees of Cancer, only 1 degree away from her natal 23 degrees Cancer ascendant. Just several days after that new moon, the Barbie movie premiered, and she was in the spotlight not only for that month but also for a lot of 2023. That Cancer new moon in 2023, exactly conjunct her ascendant, proved to be more important than a typical Cancer new moon would be.

Above, the July 2023 new moon in Cancer fell right on Margot Robbie’s ascendant.

A similar example can be found in the chart of Martha Stewart, pictured below. In November 2024, a new moon took place at 9 degrees of Scorpio, just one degree away from her 10 degree Scorpio ascendant. A few days after this Scorpio new moon occurred, a documentary about her life and career was released on Netflix, making her more relevant and in the public eye for that month of November and also in 2024 in general. She also published a cookbook right around this time too. In addition, the new moon in Leo in August 2024 at 12 degrees of Leo happened only 2 degrees from her natal Sun in Leo at 10 degrees. The Sun also happens to be the ruling planet of her Leo Midheaven, so with two lunations this year that impacted such prominent, public facing parts of her chart, it makes sense that she has had a lot more visibility recently.

Above, the new moon on November 1, 2024, happening right on Martha Stewart’s Scorpio ascendant.

Above, the August 2024 new moon in Leo happening at 12 degrees of Leo, only 2 degrees away from Martha’s Sun.

To look at a non career related one, below is the chart of my husband. We got married in June 2024, so let’s look at how the lunations in 2024 made this a bigger year for relationships for him. On June 6, there was a new moon in Gemini at 16 degrees, and this lunation fell 3 degrees away from his 19 degree Gemini Venus in his 7th house. So even though he has a new moon in Gemini fall in his 7th house every year at the end of May/beginning of June, this one was more impactful because it happened so close to his Venus in the 7th house. In addition, the April solar eclipse that happened at 19 degrees of Aries happened 1 degree away from his 18 degree Mercury in Aries. This is super significant, because Mercury is the ruling planet of his Gemini 7th house.

Above, the June 6, 2024 new moon in Gemini fell 3 degrees away from my husband’s natal 7th house Venus.

Above, the April 8, 2024 new moon solar eclipse in Aries fell 1 degree away from my husband’s natal Mercury, the ruler of his 7th house.

We have already touched upon this a little in the above examples, but I wanted to emphasize how important it is when a planet is affected super closely by a new or full moon that you are also looking to see what houses or angles that planet rules in your chart in addition to the house in which it is located. The themes of those other houses in the chart will be extra relevant as well. If you want to go further with the concept of ruling planets, I did a whole newsletter on this topic a few months ago.

Also, we’ve mainly been looking at conjunctions here with the new and full moons to natal placements, but to take this exercise a step further, you can identify when a new or full moon makes an exact square or opposition to placements in your chart too. For instance, the new moon in Capricorn at 9 degrees that we just had a few days ago fell exactly opposite to my natal Mars in Cancer at 11 degrees, seen in the chart above. Mars rules my 4th house of home, and within hours of this new moon taking place, my husband and I got news that our new apartment is finally move-in ready! So a major event that involves home and my living situation got activated when a new moon occurred exactly opposite, within 2 degrees, to the 4th house ruler.

Take some time to play around with what we’ve just been over, and if you have any literal examples of when a new moon or full moon has affected a planet or angle in your chart and something very literal has happened related to it, please leave your story in the comments below!