New Moon in Cancer

Note: All timings are based on my Australian time-zone. Anyone needing the New Moon Ritual pattern explained, please see the start of the Capricorn New Moon entry. Also note that i aim to put up a new post on or just before the Full Moon - so mark your calendar or send me an email and i can put you on the notification list.

Cancer New Moon, 10 July 2021

Belated-Solstice Blessings! We had a beautiful opportunity to catch Jupiter’s attention while he stationed on the Solstice near the fixed star Formalhaut. Hopefully you all took advantage! (to learn more about this and other fixed stars, here's one option: https://darkstarastrology.com/fomalhaut/).

But we are here to talk about the upcoming New Moon in Cancer!... at 18 degrees (so if you know your chart and have anything on the 18 degree mark regardless of sign, you can begin to feel into how this New Moon Cancer energy plays with that area of your chart/life). Cancer, the crab – also called the Great Mother Nurturer, is cardinal water. Water element – governing the emotions and feeling sense. The kind of knowing that arises from empathy. Water element, where flow and change dominate. Cardinal is beginning energy - that initiator that is the seed or spark, the place where the changing ways of the mutable energy sends out a little root and seeks to take hold. Cancer rules the 4th house of home and roots and closets. The 4th house speaks to our bloodlines, our ancestors. It is said that when folks don’t know us, they experience our 10th house – our reputations; when they meet us, they experience our 1st house – our personaes; when they form partnerships (of all kinds) with us, they experience our 7th house...but the 4th house, these are our kindred - those who see us as we are in our most private selves. The lunar energies like being in Cancer, because the Moon rules this sign. So it feels quite at home here. Energies maximize their potential when in rulership. Remember that strong does not always mean helpful. We can have a weak response and that does not change the strength of the energy – its just as happy to fill our sails if we head in an unhelpful direction as when we aim our intentions to our best possibilities. So Cancer as the ruler of the deepest most ‘bottom’ part of the chart often has an insular feeling. It is the homebody in us, the nester. Cancer is very capable of defending its privacy and its sanctity. When overwhelmed Cancer retreats; when it wants something it grabs hold with incredible tenacity; when it wants to go somewhere, it often gets there by going sideways. As Great Mother, this is the part of us that intuitively knows how to tend and heal. She is where we go for comfort, solace, nourishment. This is her high expression. Low vibration Cancer is the caregiver who uses the tasks of giving to avoid tending to self and delving into its own dark murky closets, blocking the flow of its own bloodlines with yet another person or situation that ‘needs their help’. The garbage can that results from this is often victim mentality running rampant (for both the nurturer and the nurtured), as does drama. Cancer has a very unique ability to keep calm and address what is needed in drama. I heard Tyson Yunkaporta say in an interview that ‘trauma is pain for which we have failed to find meaning’. It struck me as deeply true. To step that further, it seems to me that drama might be what most often use to distract ourselves from our trauma. If we never allow ourselves to explore our trauma, without the loud, distracting drama, how can we ever find that meaning? Cancer when in right relationship is really amazing at giving us insights and intuition at our darkest murkiest depths. It can lend us great tenacity to stay with the feeling, however tidal or stormy and it can nudge us lovingly into a sideways step of tremendous healing, by offering perspectives that do not negate our reality but sees instead the long line of potential built up through many changing and moving cycles. At it’s best Cancer empowers us to stand strong and tall in our root and feel supported, guided and even carried by our kindred. It gives us a belonging place, where we can be as we are. In Cancer energy, we can let go and become fully naked and vulnerable because we know our kindred hold us and not only protect us, but keep us from straying from our own path.

Cancer teaches us about boundaries by giving us a container to pour ourselves into. It shows us how to have a firm shell so that we can be tender and mushy inside. So this is a time to let go a bit of all those external responsibilities (both real and imagined) and turn our attentions inward and down into ourselves. Cancer is at its fullest empowerment in the outside world when its own root is well nourished. Retreat is often key, but if you have had plenty of self-care and feel a full cup, then this is a potent time for us to be generous with our excess. What we offer as overflow at this time has great healing potential. It does pay to err on the side of caution (as any self-possessed crab would do) and be very honest when deciding which side of that fence you land. Consider yourselves warned, as Venus and Mars are forming a conjunction in Leo at the time of the New Moon and so there will be plenty of opportunity for melodrama should you feel inspired to feed shadow Cancer and continue to avoid finding meaning for your own pain. If however, empowering and healing yourself and others seems a far more interesting path, then this Mars-Venus conjunction (exact on the 13th) helps us to merge passion and creativity in ways that work in symbiosis with the people around us, really spreading rippling of waves of Cancer’s nourturement and healing potential deep into our communities. Remember that the New Moons are seeding times. What is sown during them gets harvested later when the Moon returns to that same sign in its Full form. Lets all endeavor to be kind to our future selves (to say nothing of our greater human family), by maximizing this Cancer New Moon!

Useful activities at this time – PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR OWN SELF CARE HABITS (!!!) and do what is in your power to course correct. Remember that rest and hydration can easily account for half of most healing. Good nutrition is the third leg of that tripod. Helpful Cancer is about taking responsibility for your own healing before taking care of others. So remember to put on your own oxygen mask FIRST. That does not mean that you can’t invite your love to lay down for a nap with you! Or how about making an extra large nutritious meal and pop half of it in one of those plastic containers threatening to take over your kitchen and give it to your neighbor (then go home and have a nice quiet delicious meal by yourself). Cancer energy is about the healing that comes from candle lit baths. It knows to add salts and rose petals (rose is a plant that teaches how to open wide the heart and remain full able to protect itself – like Cancer, it teaches about necessary and healthy boundaries). Not everyone finds their feelings in baths or pillows (my Moon is in Taurus, so those work for me), but each of us has a way that acts as a door to our feeling place, where we can peel off some of our skin and touch our own vulnerability. Do what works for you. Do it with intention. Do it as an offering and celebration to your own beingness. Tend to yourself as you wished others would’ve tended to you. This is a great time to journal to your inner child or better yet have your inner child write you a letter of its needs. An easy and eye opening practice: using your non-dominant hand, write a letter to yourself – don’t think to hard about what to say, just write what comes up. Allow feeling to express itself using the limitation of dexterity to force concise expression. Its also a beautiful time to do any ancestral work you have been interested in exploring.

This is not a time to waste energy on surface interactions. Cancer is a deep diver. Make better choices at this time as to where you put the energy of your intentions. It is a good time to open up your proverbial closet and reacquaint yourself with all you’ve shoved in there to deal with later. Maybe just pick one thing – just reach an arm in through the crack of the door and grab whatever fistful you can. Haul it out into the light and carry it around with you in your awareness. How can YOU bring more nourturement to this one thing? What is a way you can retell that old story from a perspective with more healing potential? You don’t have to commit to anything or even change your mind, all you have to do is feel around to see where you can and are able to soften. Or spend more time watching your mind. If you catch it chattering away, key in. There is potential here. Pause, take a deep centering grounding breath and move your intention lower, beneath the mind, into your heart space, into your feeling place. Try to sit with the feelings, let them be vague or strong or swirling. Let the words bounce around on the choppy surface and move past them deeper down into the emotional currents causing all the surface tension. There is often a knee-jerk that comes when telling someone to feel their feelings. “But what if it overwhelms me?” What if it doesn’t? What if you come to understand the container that is you more deeply, by realizing the depth of your own capacity, the strength of your own tenacity, the wondrous ability you have to heal. Like the crab, we are made to contain our tenderest self. That part of us is designed to live in tidal areas and thrive in the ebb and flow of powerful currents, relentless waves, murky visibility. If you find yourself in a cloudy or tumultuous situation, bring your intention there. Bring your pause, bring your centering love. You don’t need to fix anything; you don’t need to do anything. Just breathe right there in that feeling place and let all the waters bath you with their crashing and their fury.

Rituals at this time… well baths of course! I’ve already gone there, but to take it up a notch you can create your own version of indigenous healing practices from the America’s (where I have come across them at any rate, though I am sure all medicine peoples used some version of this practice): The Plant Bath or ‘Plant Cleansing’. Go take a walk and listen to the land, feel for the plants that call to you, pick yourself a lovely bouquet of greenery and flowers (avoiding any spiky and nettle-like things). It doesn’t have to be a giant bundle, just a small fistful will do. Remember to give thanks to the plant when you pick them. You can leave an offering of a few strands of hair, or a song. If this is unavailable to you, go and buy a small bouquet of flowers. In either case, let the plant know you wish to use it for a healing ritual. You can hold your ritual in the bath (or better yet outside). Just fill a bucket with water (warm it if you like) and dip in your bouquet stirring it clockwise and seeding it with your prayer or intention for self-healing. It is best to try not limit yourself by using words. The emotions here are key. Just feel into your feelings. Push your feelings into the water. Allow any and all feelings to rise up. Whatever they are, let them come. See if you can nudge yourself down into those more complicated feelings, those that confuse you and leave you sore and tired. Push those feelings into the water and just keep stirring clockwise. Do this long enough that you are actually feeling your feelings, not just thinking about your feelings. If you fear that your feelings are too big for you to contain then draw a bold symbol of Cancer on the side of your bucket beforehand or any personal symbol that you resonate with. Stir those feelings into the water. Own your own vulnerability and reach into the patterns of creation and simply ask for help. Ask to be held. Ask to be fed. Ask to be healed. Then take that bouquet that you have been stirring the waters clockwise with, and give yourself a cleansing with them, starting at the tippy-top of your head and working down. Keep dipping and cleansing, patting and brushing every part of your body. Be sure to get those closed more private, tender places where all your lymphs reside. Brush and pat all the way down your legs and over the tops of your feet. Finish with the soles. Repeat from the top of your head to your soles, however many times you wish. When you feel ready, if possible let yourself dry off naturally. When you go to empty your bucket, imagine your grief, your sorrow, your hunger, your pain – whatever ails you - being drawn from you and carried away with the water. Thank the water. Then go and eat something with intention (think fruit or nut rather than Twinky). Just a small bite of something, taken and experienced with deep attention. Always as you create emptiness, you put in a seed to fill it. Thank the plants in your bouquet for their healing medicine.

So go on then, off you go...make some plans! Schedule in "me-time" on the 10th and practice for the following two weeks taking responsibility for your own self-care.