In Each Other’s Care—Cancer New Moon—July 17th.
Emotional dependency is not immature or pathological. It’s our greatest strength—Sue Johnson.
After the hottest June on record, July’s green days stretch languidly towards the blue dome of the horizon.
We’re now past the midsummer solstice, the turning point in the solar/lunar cycle. Now the Sun moves through Cancer and the days grow shorter as we circle back into the dark.
A powerful lineage of moon-goddesses encircles Cancer. Cancer is bound to the archetype of the feminine, the creatrix mother, who cradles us in protective arms. Cancer is associated with the element of life-giving water, with feelings that ebb and flow like the tides. Wombs, cradles, caves, cellars, hotels, and homes are all Cancer-ruled. Cancer encompasses the comfort of kinship, the safety of belonging.
As the Sun and Moon meet in Cancer, we attune to the cry of something needing our fierce protection, perhaps without holding on too tightly to the outcome. This might be a physical property or an energetic boundary, a now-adult child, soon to leave home, or the grief we feel as a relationship fractures and we must let go.
This New Moon opposes uncompromising Pluto, a regenerative energy, charged with both destruction and rebirth. Pluto/Moon transits are fleeting, yet this could be an opportunity to resolve a destructive power struggle in a relationship or change a thought or a behaviour that keeps on producing the same result. Einstein is often quoted as saying, “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”. And in the superb symbolism of astrological language, this new moon also squares Chiron, offering a way to shelter in each other as we repair and re-connect deeply once more.
For millennia, indigenous wisdom has described a vital energy force, a biofield that permeates our energy system. If we are bathed in anger, chronic anxiety, or despair in our homes or offices, these disturbances to our energy systems will colour our interactions with others and the world we see around us. They will eventually manifest physically. Writes Stan Tatkin, author of the new book, In Each Other’s Care, “your personal growth depends on your relationship remaining safe and secure at all times, because if either of you feel the least bit unsafe, untrusting, or insecure, you won’t have the internal resources for personal growth. Instead, your mind and body will be preoccupied by doubt and threat.”
The highs and lows of our cherished relationships intensified this month.
Mars moved into detail-orientated Virgo on July 10th making an exact opposition to Saturn on July 20th-21st, as we re-set our intention to connect to our hearts, and manage the tendency to return to default settings of anger, anxiety, or negativity.
On July 12th, the Moon’s North Node slipped back from Venus-ruled Taurus into Mars-ruled Aries. The South Node is now in Libra, a powerful cosmic push to cleanse and release old ways of relating and stretch beyond our cultural conditioning, our calcified roles as we bring our heartfelt intention to relating more generously to those around us.
The Moon’s Nodes aren’t planets, they are sensitive points that mark the moon’s path around her sister Earth as she crosses the ecliptic, and they move backwards through the signs of Aries and Libra till January 2025. In Western astrology, the North Node is what the heart longs for, a celestial arrow pointing at our evoltionary path towards our becoming and engaging with more sensitivity and conscious awareness with the web of connection that unites all living things. Yet, going towards what we yearn for so often feels uncomfortable and alien. The South Node pulls us back to familiar places of ease or discomfort. We may attempt to follow our North Node pathway towards growth and fulfillment of our birth right, our destiny; yet we may hestitate, turn back at an important threshold crossing as we succumb to fear of failure or rejection.
South Node behaviours are usually most apparent when we are children. They are easy to express because they are often safe and familiar. As the South Node moves through Libra, the shadowy aspects of that sign will be evident in our relationships and of course played out in world events.
Libra is a cool aesthetic air sign, frustratingly prone to procrastination, compromise, or injustice that festers in a relationship built on flimsy scaffolding. The North Node in Aries is bolstered by assertive Mars the war-god. This is where we collectively and personally will need to find the courage to defend someone or something we care for. If we’re coupled, it’s unlikely that our relationship dance has always been in sync, without strife. As the world becomes increasingly complex, more preoccupied with virtual realities, we might notice how we distance and avoid being in this reality, how we take each other for granted, ignore our partner’s needs and longings. This nodal shift asks us to take care of unfinished business, focus on what is right in the relationship, reassess what is not working, and be kind and respectful to each other.
As the Nodes move across our own birth chart, we will need to rouse our inner war goddess, and act with focus and determination when boundaries are crossed, implementing grand, generous gestures to repair, amend, make things right.
Acts of kindness, sincere words of appreciation and gratitude calm the amygdala which continuously scans the environment for threat. Touch and eye contact decrease depression, boost oxytocin levels, and strengthen the immune system.
“Unconditional love is reserved for children and pets,” writes psychologist Stan Tatkin. “Your lives as well as your happiness depend on each other as competent caregivers. Your abilities to be better people, creative, successful, good parents, good friends, good employers, hinge on you being good at each other.”
As the Nodes travel through Aries and Libra, may we devote our energies to fostering nourishing and tender connections, to attuning to the needs and longings of those we love.
“Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. The world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world.”
To book an astrology appointment, please get in touch, I would love to hear from you: ingrid@trueheartwork.com
We don’t reach the mountaintop from the mountaintop. We start at the bottom and climb up. Blood is involved—Cheryl Strayed.
We learn to love ourselves precisely because we have experienced being loved by someone. We learn to take care of ourselves because somebody has taken care of us. Our self-worth and self-esteem also develop because of other people―Stan Tatkin.
Gemini’s two brightest stars are Castor and Pollux, twin brothers, twin souls. When his brother, Castor died in battle, a bereft Pollux implored Zeus to allow him to die also. Zeus agreed and now they are sibling stars, twin souls. In Gemini we encounter the Other that comes in the guise of the Twin Soul, the phosphorus twin flame who burns into our life like a shooting star. Twin souls rarely appear by choice. They appear in many guises. Often the timing is all wrong, circumstances impossible, yet there’s a recognition that pulls us together again across lifetimes. A divine Grace that directs us with absolute certainty towards a life we would never have imagined.
At this new moon time, may the motif of the Soulmate enrich our imagination this month. May the winged sandals of Mercury carry us towards those extra-ordinary encounters that bring everything into focus. May the mythic Twins preside over those soulful tugs that herald of radical change in the way we live and the way we love.
Break the tyranny of your ordinary awareness. The rest will begin to unfold itself—Cynthia Bourgeault.
Venus enters her Retrograde Shadow on June 19th and will descend into darkness for 40 days and 40 nights from July 23rd (28° Leo) to September 5th, finally leaving the shadowy Retrograde landscape on October 7th. This Venus Retrograde ingress has a disruptive energy as Venus will consort with unpredictable Uranus on July 1st, a call to be creative, resourceful and wise. Venus Retrograde periods invite us to reflect upon who and what we hold dear to our hearts. Venus presides over love and beauty, aesthetics and quite literally, money and social events. Many astrologers suggest it might be wise to postpone a marriage or commit to any important financial venture, invasive “cosmetic” procedures, home renovation.
The opposition of the sun and the moon tonight is a reminder that what we relegate to the dark side of the moon will emerge in our experiences and circumstances—the peace loving yoga teacher who meets a confrontational student, the idealistic social worker who encounters hatred and bigotry.
Nature is not a place to visit, it is home―Gary Snyder.
On May 19th, the Sun and Moon caress the cool, soft flanks of Taurus. Her fleeting embrace with the sun is a heartbeat that pulses through our bodies, a monthly reminder that we are stardust, sea-borne, rooted in our animal bodies. New moons are celestial pause points. Tender moments when we can begin again, this time more gently, more slowly, more tenderly. To focus on one thing at a time. This is our prompt to breathe in beauty and cherish our belonging in the delicate web of life. Virginia Woolf remembers a moment of grace in a garden in St Ives, “It seemed suddenly plain that the flower itself was a part of the earth, that a ring enclosed what was the flower, and that was the real flower, part earth, part flower.”
Midsummer Celebration of Light—June 24th 