Moon phase
Opposite the sun and fully lit — the one phase everybody can find without being told how.
These are associations the community holds, not settled fact — the more a reading is shared, the bolder it sits.
The full moon is the instant the moon stands opposite the sun, a hundred and eighty degrees of elongation, with the whole visible face lit. It rises about sunset, sets about sunrise, and is up all night. Because it is opposite the sun it is also the only phase at which a lunar eclipse can happen — and it does not happen most months, because the moon's orbit is tilted about five degrees and usually passes above or below the Earth's shadow.
A word on the names. Wolf Moon, Sturgeon Moon and the rest circulate through twentieth-century almanacs, and the attributions attached to them are frequently unsourced and sometimes plainly wrong, including claims made on behalf of Indigenous peoples who were not asked. Use them if you like the sound of them; do not repeat the provenance unchecked.
Practice here is culmination: charging, divination, gratitude, and looking hard at something in good light. It is also the phase most likely to be over-scheduled, the practitioner having been told it is the important one. It is not more powerful than the rest of the cycle. It is only easier to see.
Readings practitioners have offered, ordered by how many recognise them. Take what serves, leave the rest.
Carried forward
James Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890)
Frazer notes how many charms specify the moon must be full and visible, and how often the charm requires the practitioner to be looking at it while speaking. He suspects the requirement is doing real work — not on the moon, but on the person, who must go outside, wait, and mean it.
Carried forward
Common in contemporary practice
Tools and jars set on a sill overnight to charge. Cloud is generally held not to matter, on the reasoning that the moon is up regardless — a piece of theology worth noticing, since it decides the practice is about timing rather than light.
Credit what you carry. Much of this comes from living traditions, and some of it from traditions that are closed — held by particular peoples and not offered for general use. Where you know whose practice a reading came from, name them; where you don't, say that too.