Refuge—Sun in Cancer—June 21st – July 22nd.

We are not the survival of the fittest. We are the survival of the nurtured—Luis Cozolino.

An excess of light shimmers, bright and strange. In a warming world, June’s torrid heat has enveloped Europe, exposing fault-lines in infrastructures, the fragility of our human bodies. The midsummer sun entered the sign of Cancer on the solstice, June 21^st, and days later, on June 24^th, the earth heaved and cracked and tall buildings crumbled in Venezuela. As traumatised people pray for the recovery of missing loved ones or sit in shock on the rubble of their homes, underfunded healthcare systems are at breaking point. Saturn, moving uneasily through the fire sign of Aries, makes a grim, uncompromising square to the sun in Cancer in the birth chart for Venezuela.

Mars and Uranus meet in the heavens this week, exact conjunction on July 4^th, escalating passion, stirring up an erratic, electric energy that may erupt in violence as anti-immigration protests in South Africa on June 30^th, the day of the full moon. Fear and hatred spill over the sprawl of squatter camps, lap against the high walls and electric fences that encircle the high-security enclaves of South Africa.

Just two days before the mid-summer solstice, Chiron (archetype of the wounded healer) crossed the threshold into Taurus, marking the start of an eight-year passage through that sign. Taurus encompasses those things we value: money, belongings, as well as the earthy physicality of our bodies. The passage of Chiron in Taurus (2026-2034) will also highlight the plight of those whose lives have been upended by war, natural disaster, extreme weather, and by political contrivance.

Refugee. “One who flees to a refuge or shelter or place of safety.” The word came to be associated with the French Huguenots who were driven from their Motherland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685.)  Many fled to a wild colony on the tip of Africa, bringing their skills in wine making and their Calvinist faith to South Africa.

Nelson Mandela welcomed African immigrants after his election in 1994. Many have lived in South Africa, raised their families, and contributed to the economy, for decades. Now, thousands of men, women and children are being returned to their homelands, homes torched, lives in danger, as xenophobia festers.

Chiron entered Taurus in 1926, heralding a global economic depression, unemployment and poverty, and the climate crisis of the Dust Bowl that devastated ecology and agriculture in the US and Canada in the 1930s and 40s.

Chiron last entered Taurus in May 1976 and British taps ran dry during the heatwave and severe drought, as temperatures of 32°C caused 250 deaths and a sharp rise in food prices. Scientists warned us that our world was warming due to high greenhouse gas emissions. Now, fifty years on, 32°C has become the new normal. The UK Met Office has issued a new projection of temperatures that may peak at 45°C in England in 2050s. As Chiron last moved through Taurus, Margaret Thatcher’s policies provoked the biggest industrial dispute in post-war Britain with devastating economic consequences.

On the morning of June 16^th, 1976, students protested in the streets of Soweto, their protests met with whips, guns and trudgens. A darkly defining moment in South African history. Millions of refugees fled Mozambique between 1976-1977 as Chiron moved through Taurus, and millions more were violently displaced from their homes and communities during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that began in 1979. An archaic fear fuels violence. Endemic poverty and rampant unemployment make immigrants an easy target for hatred rather than holding the government to account. Historically, the passage of Chiron through Taurus highlights economic hardship, inequality, the often-literal wounding of our earth and misuse of resources.

As the collective anxiety escalates, our human response to suffering can be caring or cruel. For thousands of years, humans have lived, survived, in small groups. These bonds of connection are hard-wired in our brains, in our nervous systems, as well as primitive strategies for survival—fear, competition, power over others we see as inferior.

Physician Dr Paul Brand recalls attending a lecture delivered by Margaret Mead, the renowned anthropologist. Dr Brand recalls she was asked what she would consider to be the earliest signs of Civilization. She responded by saying that it wasn’t the arrow heads, clay pots ,or a delicate string of beads. Instead she showed her audience an ancient human femur bone with a thickened fracture that had healed. The odds of survival would have been slim. “Such signs of healing are never found among the remains of the earliest, fiercest societies. We find clues of violence. A rib agonisingly splintered by an arrowhead, a skull crushed by a heavy stone. This healed bone suggests that someone must have cared enough to hunt for this person, to bring food, to nurture them.”

Cancerian Nelson Mandela was fondly addressed as Tata, which means “father”. To millions of South Africans, he was “Father of the Nation”.  He was born on July 18^th, 1918, into the Thembu Royal Family in Mvevo. The sun, Pluto and Jupiter were in Cancer that day, and it is likely that the moon was in Scorpio. This suggests powerful undercurrents of emotion, as Cancer and Scorpio are water signs, and signs of profound sensitivity, attunement to the emotional currents around them. Barbara Masekela, says of Mandela, “when you worked closely with him, there was always a kind of deep sadness.”

Scorpio’s steady self-control, Cancer’s compassion, the ability to command respect (Mercury conjunct Saturn in Leo) and his courage in skilfully navigating treacherous negotiations – with activist prisoners, the ANC, and the South African authorities would have been aided by his Mars in diplomatic Libra and Venus in agile Gemini. His birth name was Rolihlahla. A name that in isiXhosa, means “pulling the branches of a tree,” or the one who challenges the status quo. A troublemaker. On the first day of school, his teacher, Miss Mdingane told him that his new name was Nelson, an English name that would be easier to pronounce, she said.  So, Nelson was his name, yet those qualities of his birth-name were what sustained him during his 27 years of confinement, physical and emotional suffering. He left a legacy of courage and compassion as he guided his beloved Motherland towards a collective healing after decades of deep collective trauma. In the poet Mario Benedetti’s powerful words, “it is only when we cease sparing ourselves and start spending ourselves that we come truly alive.”

Cancer has for thousands of years been depicted as a hard-shelled creature with a soft centre – a tortoise in Babylon, a scarab beetle in ancient Egypt.

In Greek myth, it was Hera, protectress of families, archetypal Mother, who asked the little crab to wound the hero Herakles. It dug it’s claws into his ankle and was crushed under his enormous foot.

As a reward for this ultimate sacrifice, Hera placed the crab in the constellation of Cancer, a glittering symbol of its service to her.

Most leaders today will not bequeath a legacy of statesmanship, courage and compassion, like Rolihlahla Mandela. But when we touch something greater than we are, we change inside. When we cease sparing ourselves and start spending ourselves, that we become truly alive.

For a personal astrology consultation, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com