You have the three checks. Now run them as one pass, because they correct each other. Open your natal placements first, then the transit chart for the full moon you are reading.
House. Find the Moon’s degree and sign, then locate which house of your chart holds it. This is the topic. A Moon in your 6th house points at work, health and daily routine — the skipped checkup, the job that eats your evenings, the habit you keep meaning to fix. A Moon in your 11th points at friends, groups and long-term plans. Same lunation, different life.
Axis. The Sun sits opposite, so it occupies the house across from the Moon. Write both houses side by side. If the Moon is in your 4th and the Sun in your 10th, the pressure runs between home and career — exactly the classic version of that standoff. That pairing is what the lunation is asking you to balance.
Nearest contact. Count the degrees between the Moon or Sun and your natal planets, and check both sides of the axis, because a full moon pushes in two directions at once: a natal planet near the Sun’s degree carries the release-and-let-go half, while the Moon side carries what is surfacing. Conjunctions count within 3°; oppositions count within 5°.
The numbers do the filtering. If your natal Moon is at 4° Aries and the transiting full Moon is at 3.62° Aries, that is a 0.38° conjunction — take it seriously. If your natal Moon sits at 12° Aries, the same lunation is nine degrees away: relevant to your chart as a general climate, but not a personal trigger this month.
Practical example. Say your natal Venus is at 2° Scorpio. At the Taurus full Moon of October 26, 2026, the Moon sits at 2.76° Taurus — a 0.76° opposition, inside the 5° orb and tight. Money, values or a relationship arrangement reaches a peak you can act on. If your Venus sits at 14° Scorpio instead, the same Moon is decoration. That Venus reading is a worked illustration, not a claim about your chart; your own degrees come from the transit chart calculator.