The Bitter Truth About Astrology & Your Full Moon Rituals
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The Bitter Truth About Astrology & Your Full Moon Rituals
By [Hind Silkan] | Personal Essay
I used to be that girl.
The one with the birth chart saved in her notes app. The one who'd text her friends "Mercury retrograde, don't make any big decisions" like it was a public service announcement. The one who'd light a candle on a full moon, journal her intentions, charge her crystals on the windowsill, and genuinely believe she was doing something sacred something that was for her.
I wasn't lost. I was searching. And astrology felt like the most spiritually fluent language I'd ever spoken.
So when I tell you it was one of the hardest things I walked away from after taking my shahada I need you to understand what I mean. I'm not talking about giving up a hobby. I'm talking about dismantling an entire framework through which I understood myself, other people, and the universe.
This is that story.
The Appeal Was Real — Let's Not Pretend Otherwise
Before I say anything else, I want to honour where a lot of us started.
For many women especially those of us who are neurodivergent, who grew up feeling like we didn't quite fit the world we were handed astrology offered something genuinely valuable: language. A framework for understanding why you feel things so intensely. Why certain relationships drain you and others feel like home. Why you move through the world differently.
One revert Muslim woman described it honestly on Medium: "When I read my birth chart and see my Cancer Moon in the 11th house, I don't think, 'This defines me forever.' I think, 'Wow, no wonder I feel things so deeply in friendships.'" That resonance is real. The mirror astrology holds up can feel like the first time someone sees you.
Full moon rituals, in particular, offer something almost therapeutic a monthly pause. A moment to reflect, release, and reset. The practice of sitting quietly in full moon energy, meditating on the past cycle, is something millions of women reach for as a way to honour their emotional rhythms.
I get it. I lived it.
But here's what no one in the astrology community told me and what I had to learn the long, tender way.
What It Actually Is
The appeal of astrology is that it feels like guidance. Something outside yourself that knows you better than you know yourself. Something that can tell you when to move, when to stay still, when to trust, when to guard your heart.
But this is exactly what Islamic scholars have identified as the spiritual danger at its core that astrology is, at its root, a search for certainty about the unseen. It fosters dependency on external sources rather than trust in something greater.
And when I really sat with that — I knew it was true from my own experience.
How many times had I made a decision and then checked if Mercury was in retrograde to decide whether it was valid? How many times had I dismissed someone because "of course he's a Scorpio"? How many times had I felt genuine anxiety about a planetary transit the way another person might feel anxiety about a doctor's appointment?
I wasn't empowered. I was outsourcing my intuition to a system that didn't actually know me at all.
The Full Moon Rituals : A Closer Look
The full moon ritual world is beautiful on the surface. Candles. Journaling. Water bowls. Intentions written on paper and burned. It looks like self-care. It feels like spirituality.
But when I started reading about Islam, I came across a hadith that stopped me completely.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) addressed his companions after it rained one night and some of them attributed the rain to the influence of a star. He drew a line not harshly, but clearly: "Among My servants are those who believe in Me and disbelieve in the stars, and among them are those who disbelieve in Me and believe in the stars. Whoever says, 'We have been granted rain by the grace and mercy of Allah,' that one believes in Me and disbelieves in the stars."
I read that and I genuinely sat in silence for a while.
Because I had been someone who believed the stars were speaking to me. Who thought the full moon in Scorpio was the reason I was emotional. Who gave the moon credit that, if I'm honest, belonged somewhere else entirely.
What Conversion Actually Feels Like — The Unseen Grief
Nobody talks about this part.
When you become Muslim especially as a revert who came from a witchy, mystical, New Age background there's a grief nobody prepares you for. You're not just changing religion. You're shedding an identity that protected you when nothing else did.
For many of us who are neurodivergent, astrology and moon rituals weren't just spirituality they were community. They were the Instagram accounts that made us feel less weird. The friends who did full moon circles with us. The language that made our sensitivity feel like a superpower rather than a disorder.
Walking away from it can feel like losing your people.
Karen Danielson, who converted to Islam at 19, described it simply but powerfully: "Islam is not about converting culture; it's about converting faith and spirituality and understanding." That distinction took me a long time to truly hold. My neurodivergence didn't go anywhere. My sensitivity didn't go anywhere. My love of the moon, of reflection, of meaning-making none of that left me.
What left was the belief that the stars were the ones running the show.
What I Found on the Other Side
Here's the part I wish someone had written for me when I was still holding a rose quartz crystal in one hand and a Quran in the other, genuinely not knowing how to reconcile them.
Islam gave me something astrology never could: tawakkul complete trust and surrender to Allah. Not surrender in the passive, give-up sense. Surrender in the sense of: I don't need to decode the universe. I need to trust the One who designed it.
Engaging with astrology fosters dependency on external sources for guidance rather than relying on God. The psychological reality is that belief in astrological predictions can lead people to make decisions based on fear or false hope, undermining their own autonomy and rational thinking.
When I stopped checking planetary transits, something unexpected happened I started trusting myself more. My own instincts. My own prayers. My own relationship with Allah, who, unlike any birth chart, actually knows me my destiny, my path, every detail of what is written for me.
The full moon still rises. I still find it beautiful. But now when I see it, I think of the One who hung it there not of what energy it's supposedly projecting onto my life.
For the Girl Who's Still in the In-Between
If you're reading this and you're somewhere in the middle still scrolling Co-Star, still showing up to moon circles, but something in you is shifting I want to say this gently:
You're not being asked to give up your depth. Your sensitivity. Your love of ritual and reflection and meaning.
You're being asked to redirect it.
The longing that astrology was feeding that hunger for guidance, for being known, for signs that you're on the right path that longing is sacred. It was always pointing toward something real. It just got handed a substitute.
The moon is a sign. The stars are signs. When the Prophet's companions assumed a star caused the rain, he didn't tell them the stars weren't real. He redirected their awe toward the One who created them.
That's all I'm doing here.
Not taking anything away. Just pointing toward the source.
A Note on Neurodivergence & Faith
One more thing — because this is close to my heart.
A lot of us with ADHD, autism, or otherwise neurodivergent minds are drawn to systems like astrology because they offer pattern, structure, and a sense of being understood. The irony is that Islam, with its rhythms of prayer five times a day, the lunar Islamic calendar, the structure of Ramadan, offers exactly that, just anchored in something real.
The moon you've been ritualising around? In Islam, it marks time. It marks fasting. It marks Eid. The lunar calendar is literally built into the faith.
Your sensitivity, your depth, your need for meaning , none of that makes you a bad Muslim or a bad believer. It might actually make you a very natural one.
I'm still figuring this out, one day at a time. If this resonated with you, come find me, I talk about faith, neurodivergence, clean living, and the beautiful mess of being human.