Full Moon Tattoo Meaning
Culmination, fullness, illumination, and the peak before the wane.
The full moon is the moon at its peak — a complete circle of light flooding the night, the lunar power at its height. It has been blamed for madness and the rising of werewolves, celebrated as the festival of reunion, and revered as the moment of greatest magic and culmination. To carry the full moon is to carry fullness, culmination, and heightened power — the complete bright circle at the peak of its cycle, the time of fruition and revelation, the height of lunar energy that stirs the blood and lights the whole of the night.
The full moon has long been blamed for stirring madness, strange behavior, and the eruption of the beast in human beings. The very word 'lunatic' comes from the Latin luna, 'moon,' from the ancient and enduring belief that the full moon could derange the mind, that its light could drive people to madness or wildness — and folk wisdom still holds that hospitals, police, and emergency rooms grow busier and people stranger under a full moon. The moon that governs the tides was thought to pull on the fluids and passions of the body and mind.
The most dramatic expression is the werewolf, the human who transforms into a ravening beast under the light of the full moon — the moon calling forth the animal hidden beneath the human face. Whether as madness, restlessness, heightened emotion, or the unleashing of the wild self, the full moon became the emblem of the heightened, the uncanny, and the loosing of what is normally restrained. The full moon of lunacy is the moon that stirs the beast — the light that gives us the word 'lunatic,' blamed for madness, wildness, and heightened passions, and that calls forth the werewolf and the wild self hidden beneath the human face.
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