The Moon will reach its full phase with the Sun on February 1, 2026 at 2:09 p.m. Pacific time, at 13 Leo, with the Sun at 13 Aquarius. This lunation is traditionally called the Snow Moon or Storm Moon. It’s freezing cold in much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Each Full Moon time highlights an axis of two polar opposite signs, with the Moon, symbolically, casting maximum light on things that are normally harder to see.
Leo is our fixed fire sign opposite Aquarius, fixed air. Both of these signs are about the self and how individuals negotiate relations with others. Leo’s drive is for passionate, creative self-expression, preferably on stage with an admiring audience. When the Moon is in Leo, as it will be on February 1, one might feel a burning desire to have some wacky fun—while also making a fashion statement and impressing one’s companions.
Aquarius’ style is more about individual functioning within groups and for causes. Aquarians may come off as aloof, not caring as much as Leos about other people’s views of them.
Leo is the one zodiacal sign that’s “ruled” by the Sun, meaning that every year the Leo Full Moon is “ruled” by the sign of Aquarius. What makes this year’s Leo Full Moon different is that the Aquarius Sun is now flanked, on one side, by Mercury and Venus conjoined in Aquarius, and one the other side by Mars and Pluto conjoined in Aquarius. A group of planets in the same sign is called a stellium. Five together is unusual. The effect is to intensify any one of the sign’s possible manifestations.
Aquarius is famously known as a sign of technological innovation and liberatory, democratic impulses. But that’s in Aquarius’ guise as the sign ruled by Uranus, a planet far out from the Sun, discovered only in modern times (1781). For millennia, astrologers considered Aquarius’ ruling planet to be Saturn–the furthest planet from the Sun still visible to the human eye—understood to symbolize limits and structures that are old and unlikely to change. (Astrologers debate whether the relatively recently discovered planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto “rule” any of the 12 signs. I’m in the camp that thinks they don’t, that the outer, “transpersonal” planets are in a category of their own.)
For most of January, the sky featured a four-body stellium in Capricorn, the earth sign also ruled by Saturn. Now the sky is dominated by Saturn’s home air sign Aquarius.
I write often in glowing terms about Saturn as the Great Teacher for making wise effort and building things that last. Yet for every archetype, including everything in astrology, there is light and shadow. Saturn represents the endings of things, including the struggles of archaic institutions and ideologies to fight brutally to survive.
For most of the past three years, Saturn has been in Pisces, the sign of dissolving boundaries and of the overwhelming sense of the unknown. Saturn dipped into fiery Aries briefly in the spring and summer of 2025 before it moved back into Pisces in September. On February 13, Saturn will “ingress” Aries again, where it will make an exact conjunction with Neptune, the planetary force of altruistic dreams as well as nightmarish delusions, on February 20. This is the beginning of a 36-year cycle between Saturn and Neptune, their union a call to make dreams real.
Sign changes of the slower-moving planets mark changes not just for us as individuals but for the whole of humanity. Aries is first in the zodiac. Its totem is a charging ram. Its mission is every newborn creature’s instinctive will to survive. The fire of Aries is destructive while also illuminating. Aries is courage in the face of potential extinction. It is the sign of the Warrior, for good or for ill. We have a large, but not exclusive, degree of choice and agency in how events unfold.
Blessings for the Leo Full Moon!
~ Sara
Sara R. Diamond, an astrologer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a life-long student and practitioner in several esoteric paths. Her style of astrology combines modern-psychological astrology with insights from traditional astrology. Sara is also an estate planning attorney. In addition, she has published four books on right-wing movements in the United States and earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. You are invited to contact Sara via her website at www.SaraDiamondAstrology.com.
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