The square on the way down
About three weeks into the cycle the Moon reaches the Last Quarter — half-lit, but now waning, losing light on its way back to dark. It is a square, a 90° angle to the Sun, the tense aspect that demands action; but a waning square turns toward clearing rather than building. Where the Full Moon showed the harvest, the Last Quarter cuts back the spent growth so the ground is ready again. The half Moon now rises after midnight and hangs into the morning — fitting for the sign that does its deepest work out of sight.
Releasing in fixed water
When the Last Quarter Moon is in Scorpio, the Sun sits in Leo — the same Scorpio–Aquarius modality clash gives way here to a Scorpio Moon under a Leo Sun, fixed water beneath fixed fire. Here is the anchor: of all twelve signs, Scorpio is the one that understands release. It is the sign of endings, of what dies so something can be remade — so a Last Quarter, the cycle's own letting-go phase, lands in Scorpio with unusual force. This is the most thorough release point of the year.
But Scorpio's relationship to letting go is double-edged. Fixed water can release with surgical clarity — or it can refuse, holding a grudge, a tie, or a secret long past its time, mistaking the grip for loyalty or power. The Leo Sun adds its own resistance: it does not want to release a role that flatters it, a story in which it looks good. So the friction of this lunation is between Scorpio's deep capacity to end things cleanly and the pull — from both signs — to keep clutching what is already over.
Cutting the thread
The craft of this Moon is the clean cut, made privately and without theatre. Scorpio releases worst when it dramatizes the ending or weaponizes it; it releases best when it simply, finally, lets the thing die. Name one thing that is genuinely over but that you keep alive by a single thread — a grudge you rehearse, a connection that only drains, a self-image you have outgrown. Then cut that thread before the next New Moon: not with a scene, but with the quiet finality Scorpio is actually built for. No last word. No looking back to check whether it stayed dead.
The invitation
The Scorpio Last Quarter is the year's most powerful permission to end something well. Use the sign's real gift — not the clinging, not the scorching, but the clean release that makes room — and meet the New Moon with your hands genuinely empty and ready.