Ready yourself for release during April’s full pink moon in Scorpio

As Nick Drake promised, there’s a pink moon on the way, my babies.

April has thus far been a fresh kind of hell, and we will not go gently or sweetly into the pastures of Taurus season nor this lunation. Hot take: the cosmos are not done with us yet.

If your eclipse season has seemed suspiciously low-key and your retrograde eerily easy, this full pink moon may be your point of departure, descent and deepening.

The full moon forever falls in the opposite sign the sun is moving through; this week, the moon is brooding in the heady, hypnotic sign of Scorpio while the sun squints in the pleasure-prone pastures of Taurus.

Rising on April 23 at 7:49 p.m. EST at 4 degrees of Scorpio, this full moon will bring to the surface all manner of parasites and pain in need of purging. This is the first time the sun and moon have directly interfaced since the cosmic upheaval of the April 8 eclipse.

Scorpio and Taurus are both fixed signs that go hard and hold on tight.

Themes for this lunation include power, intimacy, resources, release and self-rescue.

Taurus rules the throat and is associated with consumption and the tangible in all its glorious forms. In contrast and complement, Scorpio rules the bowels and the genitals and is associated with expulsion and release, power in all of its expressions.

This is the axis of life and death, sustenance and survival, what feeds us and what feeds from us — and so light and breezy it ain’t. One Reddit thread calls this “the worst axis in the zodiac,” but that is more a reflection of the intensity of both than the failings of either.

As above, so below

The ruling planet of Scorpio is Pluto, named for the ancient god of the underworld and easily the most heavy-metal deity in the pantheon.

Bro had a helmet that made him invisible and a name mere mortals feared to speak aloud. Sacrifices made to Pluto were carried out under the cloak of night (obvi), and the blood of the dead was left to creep and seep into the earth.

Apropos of this, the planet represents death, rebirth, endings, severance, shadow work and transformation through trauma.

An integral part of Pluto’s mythology is his abduction/seduction of Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, goddess of the harvest. Legend has it that when the blushing maiden Persephone was out plucking flowers, the ground beneath her opened and Pluto appeared. She went with him, by threat or intrigue (reports vary), into the depths of the underworld where she became the pomegranate seed-sucking queen of the dead.

Engulfed in grief, Persephone’s mother brought blight and famine to the earth. She implored Zeus/Jupiter to return her daughter to the land of the living. A bargain was struck, with Persephone spending half the year in hell (coinciding with the seasons of fall and winter) and half the year above ground (coinciding with spring and summer.)

Hell on Earth

The archetypes of Persephone and Pluto represent the Taurus/Scorpio axis, where we must descend to discover (Scorpio) our true nature (Taurus). This axis, this moon and this myth serve to teach us that we can survive more than we imagine, and real power is found in reconfiguring ourselves after devastation.

Taurus wants to eat cheese, luxuriate in the sunshine, masturbate and pick flowers in a field — and while that’s all well and good, a life of pastoral pleasure without formative pain is a limited life indeed. Suffering (which consequently, comes from the Latin “to bear” from below) is an essential part of our soul’s development and, good gods, we can’t truly know the fullness of spring and the taste of a sun-warmed strawberry without enduring the cutting cold and fallow fields of winter.

Tense AF T-square

While the sun shines in Taurus and the moon broods in Scorpio, the energies of both will form a powerful T-square with Pluto, the planet of death and rebirth in Aquarius. Read more about the intense effects of this aspect here.

Pink moon meaning

Despite the moniker, the Scorpio moon will not appear pink on April 23.

Neigh, April’s full moon is named for the blooming return of the ground phlox, a sprawling wildflower also known as the creeping phlox (more apropos for Scorpio), moss phlox or moss pink.

Other names for April’s full moon include such fertility-forward titles as the sprouting grass moon, the egg moon and, among coastal tribes, the fish moon, as this was the time shad species swam upstream to spawn.

After all, folks, aren’t we all just trying to swim upstream to spawn?

In all of those names, we see the primal pulse of new life. It’s an open call to cut free from old roots and make room for what wants to sprout up.

As a result of the full moon shining in a fixed sign, these are the folks that will be feeling the effects of the lunation most acutely — looking at you, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. If you have major placements that fall under those signs, take extra good care of yourself in the coming days.

Welcome grief like the gift that it is, greet what rises with determination, and grow with grit toward a state of grace.

Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports back on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture, and personal experience. She is also an accomplished writer who has profiled a variety of artists and performers, as well as extensively chronicled her experiences while traveling. Among the many intriguing topics she has tackled are cemetery etiquette, her love for dive bars, Cuban Airbnbs, a “girl’s guide” to strip clubs, and the “weirdest” foods available abroad.