The Cancer New Moon is on June 25th at 6:31 EDT. In the video, I talk about how all the old patterns of violence that we are seeing in the world are projections of the wound arising from the traumatized mothering, or nurturing part of our human nature. The clarion call in the chart is to heal this principle.
Indeed, everything we are seeing in the world is that clarion call. Humans as a whole, I believe, can no longer take this pattern, and it is up to each of us to heal the piece of it that we carry in ourselves so that the truth of our innate nurturing spirit can once again comfort and cohere us - whether again or for the first time, I don’t know. But the time has come to integrate and anchor it within ourselves, and that can only happen one step at a time as each of us heals.
One thing I didn’t cover in the video portion of this post is that, with the North Node in Pisces, the call of these times is to dream the world of humanity, the nature of humanity, that we want to see, and experience. The reason I say that is because the nodes move backwards through the chart. Thus, the North Node in Pisces, rather than preparing for Aries, is preparing for Aquarius - our trajectory as human beings - the future of humanity.
Mars, the action principle in the chart, is in Virgo and in a slightly wide quindecile with the North Node. The quindecile represents a pressure point that I like to compare to going through the birth canal. As we go through the birth canal, we are being squeezed and pressed, but it’s not for nothing. It is essential for preparing us for the new realm we are moving into.
The Sabian symbol for Mars’ degree, according to James Burgess, is “A man dreaming of fairies.” These times are not for fantasizing about the glories of war. That dream is an expression of the fractured nurturing spirit of the human being - of humanity. It is the dream that has been driving us for millennia. But it can’t abide any longer.
Seeing it playing out in the world as we are right now, we have the opportunity to make a different choice - to tune into the subtle energies within ourselves and around us, to recognize that we are always held, and to re-member that in us - to practice the skill of it so that we, as individuals and as a collective human organism, can cohere again within the all-encompassing embrace of the love all around us.
Transcipt
Hi everyone. This is Ellen from the astrology journal. I want to talk about the chart for the Cancer New Moon that is occurring on June 25 at 6:31 Eastern Daylight Time. So I'm recording this in the evening on the 24th.
The theme that I see in this chart, I would say it boils down to this idea of the outcast feminine, the outcast, nurturing principle in particular, being projected back at us as trauma. And I would say the work is, the question we have to ask is how can we heal that trauma. And I don't know how to do that at the collective level but within each of us, you know, we can do the work of healing that trauma within us. And as we each do that, then that can contribute to the healing of the collective.
So where am I getting this idea from? Well, first of all, the Sun and the Moon are both in Cancer. It's a Cancer New Moon and Cancer is the idea of the nurturing principle, the mothering principle. But we'll just call it the nurturing principle. It's not male or female, it's nurturance. We all have that within us.
And then there's this interesting thing going on in the chart with Venus and the Cancer archetype playing out together. So Venus… I'm sorry…the Sun and the Moon are at four degrees of Cancer and that's the first decan, the first 10 degrees of Cancer. And that, if we use the Chaldean order of planets, that is ruled by Venus. So we have this Venus Cancer. And Venus has to do with this idea of mirror. It's relationship. It's also mirror. And we if we just stick with the idea of relationship, we can say that's the nurturing, nurturing relationship. And so if the nurturing principle has been outcast, has been traumatized and outcast, then the mirror we're getting back when we are being raised and nurtured is a traumatized nurturance. That's what we're getting back and it's very difficult to establish security within oneself when what is being mirrored back is a fractured, a traumatized, nurturing principle. So that's part of the puzzle.
And then, if we look at Venus itself, we have Venus here at 19 degrees of Taurus. And 19 degrees of Taurus is in the second decan of Taurus, from 10 to 20 degrees. And that, using the Chaldea order of planets, is ruled by the moon. So we have the Moon and Venus, again - a correlation between those two. And the Moon is actually exalted in Taurus. So Venus is in its own rulership in Taurus, but it's also the sign where the Moon is exalted. So there's Moon Venus here also. Taurus, in particular, is about this idea of grounding, anchoring.
When I think about Taurus I like to think about - I think it's called regenerative forestry. I can’t remember the exact name. In desert areas, what happens is that trees will grow to a certain point, but they won't be able to grow beyond that certain point, because they'll have too many shoots going out in too many different directions, and so there isn't enough energy to support all of that different growth that's happening. And so they don't make it beyond that point, they'll get grazed or whatever beforehand. But if you prune them, this is what they have rediscovered. Apparently, this used to be a practice back in the day or something.
But if you prune them, then they can quickly - all of that energy that was trying to keep going all the different shoots, now it only has to focus on a few, and it can rapidly grow. And by rapidly growing, it grows much more quickly beyond the danger time. And so it can root, and it can start to grow girth, and it can grow in security and stability. So when I think about Taurus, that's what I think about. That's the process I think about. It's this idea of calling back…
If we think about Aries as this time when we're just going in all different directions - and this is what we're supposed to be doing, in a sense, so that we can get all this experience, all of this feedback. We know who we are inside, but we don't necessarily have the mirror back. We don't necessarily have the resonance back in terms of what's out in the world. So we go out and we get all of these different resonances back, and then we have those, and we can bring them into Taurus.
And in Taurus, now it's time to be like, okay, of all these things, all of these resonances, all these sticks, you can say, this bundle of sticks that I've brought into Taurus, who is actually me? We think about Aries as asking, Who am I? But I think that answer doesn't really get resolved until Taurus. Taurus is, okay, we have all these things. What’s worthy? Where is my worth in all of this? Where are my gifts and talents in all of this? Okay, all these things are great and they're interesting, and all that kind of stuff. But what's actually me? What in all those things is actually mean? What do I want to anchor? What do I want to build? What do I want to grow?
So what Venus in the second decan of Taurus is saying, with the second decan being moved by the Moon, and also with Taurus and Cancer being in a natural sextile, and the Moon naturally exalted Taurus. The idea is that we need that nurturance principle to be able to sink our roots into the ground and to grow. We need to be protected. The other piece of that regenerative agriculture story - or forestry story - that I was saying - the other piece is that the trees need to be protected. So that's another piece. We need to be protected. We need that relational bond where somebody can protect us, so that we can grow, so that we can start to establish ourselves.
And with the mother principle or the nurturing principle, whether it’s an actual mother or someone else, with that nurturing principle having been disrupted, having been traumatized, a lot of us haven't gotten that and so we're moving through the world not fully anchored. And it's not because we're bad, it's not because we're doing anything wrong. It's not anything. It's because our beings and our bodies are naturally compensating for that mirrored reflection back of trauma and the inability of that nurturing principle in the world to support us in grounding and growing in ourselves.
Jupiter is conjunct the New Moon, and that's that idea of compensation. Jupiter is truth and lies. It's what we believe. It's all of that. So we can live a lie because we've been traumatized, and that lie is our compensation that's really there to kind of like support our survival. Taurus is also be about this idea of survival. And there is a semi-square relationship between Venus and then Jupiter, the Moon and the Sun. So they're directly related by aspect in this chart.
In terms of beliefs, we can choose to believe in something like our superiority or our entitlement because that's the compensation that allows us to keep going, that allows us to protect our egoic identity - Cancer ego - which is a really important part of our identity. It's part of what helps us establish ourselves in this body, in this lifetime, in this incarnation.
So then there's a third piece to this, and that is where Pluto is, which is we've been looking at this a lot. Pluto is at three degrees of Aquarius. That is the first decan of Aquarius. And you see here, using the Chaldean decan, Venus is there. So here we have Venus ruling the first decan of Aquarius and Aquarius has to do with this idea of trauma. And then Pluto's relationship to the Moon and the nurturing principle - in evolutionary astrology, Pluto is the soul, and then the South Node of the Moon represents the past life trajectory, past life history of this soul. And we can think about that as the foundation we come in with. And that’s a really important foundation. We need that foundation so that we can continue to evolve. If that foundation - if it’s off, if it’s been traumatized, if that's what we’re coming in with, we don't have that foundation we need to be able to continue to evolve towards the North Node. And that’s what the North Node represents. And it’s the North Node of the Moon. The North Node of the Moon represents the future trajectory of the soul, where it’s evolving to or what it’s evolving to.
And then the Moon itself, and, again, this is evolutionary astrology, is the current life, the current incarnatation of the soul. So there is a connection between Pluto and this nurturing principle in that everything that the Moon is related to - the Moon itself, the South Node, and the North Node - are aspects of the soul, are time-specific aspects of the soul - the past, the present, and the future. And then Pluto is the part of us that sort of gives rise to the soul. I’m sorry. Those incarnations come from the soul. You could say it spawns them, or it sprouts them, or something like that.
So here, Venus and Aquarius, just looking at Pluto and Aquarius with the Venus Deccan rulership. It's the idea of the projection. It's the idea of the traumatized nurturance being projected into the world and mirrored back to us. So we look at everything that's happening right now, and you think about the times we're in, which is this really monumental shift in Ages. The opportunity in all this, as hard as it all is to see, the opportunity in all this is that we're seeing the underbelly mirrored back to us. And that underbelly is all of the trauma that has been the result of the nurturance principle having been outcast from our society. That's how I'm reading this chart.
The one pattern in the chart is a yod that's pointing to Pluto. So Pluto is the focal point in this chart, and I would say that has to do with the soul of humanity, because soul is Pluto, Aquarius is humanity. It's also the soul as it relates to individuation. Aquarius is both the individuated human and the collective human organism, you could say - humanity as a whole. And the way that I like to sort of blend those two, to understand those two, is that the work, the job, you could say, of the collective, is to support, or we could say, nurture the individual, so that the individual can anchor in who it is, so it knows who it is, and so it can establish itself and develop itself and develop its gifts, it’s talents - all that.
And then the individual, in turn, in my view, naturally gives back to the collective. So I think that's how it's meant to work. And I think humans naturally just want to give back. I don't think that's an aberration. I think that's normal. But we’ve somehow - the trauma has interrupted, I think, that natural flow. And instead of nurturing the individual, it's sort of requiring, it's been requiring the individual to conform and form itself, sort of away from who it is, until we get this blurred picture of what we are as a humanity, and we end up not living up to our potential as either individuals or as humanity as a whole. That's, again, my thoughts about that.
So the opportunity for all of us is, if we think about the mirroring principle of Venus… This is something my first - what I would call my first - spiritual teacher taught. It’s the idea of the mirror - that if we’re noticing something in the world, that is a reflection back of something that's going on with us. What that reflection is may not be, there’s people bombing other countries therefore I must be bombing other people . It’s not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence like that. But there’s something there that is in us, and so we are noticing it because it’s a mirror back reflecting for us. And so the opportunity in that for us is to heal, to tune in and it’s like what is that that’s in me? And how can I heal that - whatever that is in me. And my belief is - I’m not saying that collective action, that sort of thing, isn’t necessary. But my focus tends to be on the inner realm and what we can each do there is do the work of healing ourselves. If we all do the work of healing ourselves, I think then there isn't space for forces that might come in to disrupt humanity.
So I'll give an example from my life that I think relates to this. So I'm gay, and I was born in the 1960s so I was coming out in the 1980s - this was before the gay rights movement really picked up. In fact, I went to a really liberal college and it was not really okay to be gay there at that time. So it was a very different world. And eventually, what happened is the gay rights movement decided to focus on gay marriage, and eventually they sort of won. I don't know how to say that, but their efforts produced results, in that it became much easier, legally, and then just also moving around, being gay.
So before that became the norm, I would be concerned about, I would always want to make sure if I was going to rent from somebody, are they okay with gay people, right? ‘Cause I don’t want to live there if they're not, and you know, it was kind of an issue. And then you’re also assessing safety and all that kind of stuff. So when I actually grew up in New England, but then I moved out to the Midwest for like, a quarter century or so, and then I moved back here. And I was living in a place that was relatively safe for gay people. But I came back here to New England, and this was after there was a lot - like Vermont went through its whole process of embracing gay rights, I guess you could say. And then Massachusetts - it’s courts said gay marriage is ok and all of that kind of stuff. So they really went through it.
And when I came back, it was like living in a different universe. It felt very - like I remember calling somebody up because I was looking for a place to rent, and I said, I'm gay. Is that a problem? He's like, No. And it was somebody that, just to stereotype, it was somebody who just sort of the voice and all that kind of stuff, I would have imagined would have had a really hard time with that, maybe, before. So it was just a sea change in experience. And I was able to walk easier, I was able to breathe easier, that sort of thing.
But what I would say is that while I was able to do that, there was still trauma that I hadn't resolved. And actually, by being able to breathe easier, in a way, I didn't have to address that trauma. So I think we all need two pieces. We need a safe environment. It's very difficult to heal if you're constantly being traumatized. But we also need to not rest on our laurels, I guess you could say. That would be a Jupiter kind of a thing - rest on our laurels when it's safe. Like, we still need to be doing the work. So now, in these times, you know, there's some diciness going on around GLBT rights, you know. There's definitely some inclination on the powers to sort of undo some of that stuff. And so it’s an interesting experience for me. And so I'm having to just note. It's like, oh, interesting, I didn't do enough work. There's still more to do. Maybe I won't say it as I didn't do enough work. There's still more work for me to do.
And so that's the kind of thing I want to sort of bring up - is just the idea that it's extremely helpful for when things in the world change. But when things in the world change without the inner reality changing, I don't think what's changed in the world can truly, truly take hold. And what I think is, if we can do that inner healing, and we're all just really solid in ourselves, and we can, you know, raise one another, or nurture one another, all of that - then we're not going to be creating these traumatized pieces of ourselves that are going to be putting us in these kinds of situations that we're In.
So I hope that makes sense. I'll just walk through really briefly some of the - I like to look at the Sabian symbols and the Tarot associations with the decans. So for the Cancer, New Moon at four degrees of Cancer. And we would look at five degrees. So the fourth degree of a sign is the fifth degree because every sign starts at zero degees. So four degrees of Cancer, or five degrees of Cancer is “An automobile is wrecked by a train.” And that's by James Burgess. If you look at Lynda Hill and I think even Dane Rudhyar, you'll see something more like a car is racing a train. And the general consensus is that this is the idea, very much in alignment with Aquarius, of the individual and the collective. And so what happens when you have traumatized souls trying to protect their egos, trying to keep themselves alive - Taurus - within the context of a fractured, a traumatized nurturing principle?
Well, maybe you get a bunch of people, especially to think about Aquarius - the individual and the collective. Maybe you get people who are, you know, they're determined to beat the collective, or drive their car into the collective, or something like that. They're no longer working together with and contributing in positive ways to the society, the collective. Instead, they're traumatizing - by their actions, they're traumatizing. And then, on the other hand, you have the collective that's just barreling down on the individual, this sort of traumatized collective that's barreling down on the individual, not allowing room for growth. Maybe that's a way to think about it.
So that's an interesting way to think about this Sabian symbol, especially in the light of Pluto in Aquarius in these particular times. We're moving into the Aquarian Age. So what we're wanting to heal is the relationship between the individual and the collective in a way. And I'm not sure that can be healed if we don't re-integrate the nurturing principle in us. And the North Node, actually, interestingly, is in Pisces. So we have…
A quick aside. Mars is in Virgo, and it's in conjunct Pluto. And that inconjunct is about this idea of making adjustments. And I talked a lot about this in the chart reading that I did for the Summer Solstice because Pluto and Mars were inconjunct in that chart. So Mars is the action principle, but it's in Virgo which is not conducive to, you know, barreling - it’s not really conducive to an excessive show of energy. In Virgo, what it's being asked to do is to refine its action - Virgo refinement - to refine its action. And we can say that this inconjunct to Pluto, this idea of making adjustments - the refinement has to do with this idea of what we're seeing - the trauma w'e’re seeing in the world - seeing that trauma, recognizing how our actions potentially contribute to that because if we haven't been properly nurtured, we may be - our will may be more taking over. We can think about the car racing the train as the will, our will might be out of whack, out of balance. And so there's this idea. It's like, no, we have to learn how to actually use our will. We have to learn the skill of action, the skill of our will. We have to refine those.
So the decan symbolism for Mars at four degrees of Virgo - that's the first decan of Virgo - is the Eight of Pentacles. And that has to do with “apprenticeship, repetition, or repetitive tasks, mastery, skill development,” and that is how we refine ourselves. It's not just barreling about willy nilly. It's entering into a practice. And by entering into a practice, that's how we start to bring ourselves back into adjustment with Pluto, which is what's - you can almost think about Pluto at the focal point of this yod as like the call - what's calling us to it. So what's calling us to it is Pluto - three degrees of Aquarius - “a Hindu healer” within the context of “conflict, disagreement, competition, defeat…” etc. So the intention here is to bring healing to this pattern that's been playing out in humanity, and we do that through learning the art and skill of our will and our action principles - how we take action in the world.
The Tarot card associated for the first decan of Cancer is the Two of Cups, which is, based on Biddy tarot, “unified love, partnership, mutual attraction.” So if you just think about - this is maybe the attachment principle in the context of Cancer, and in the context of Venus here, also. So Cancer - the mother-child relationship, the mother-baby, the newborn baby. So we can think about this as the natural love that exudes from the nurturing other who raises us and tends us and the baby and the child. There’s just this natural, precious love that exists there. And when that isn't there, when the nurturing principle has been traumatized, then things might get out of whack, and we might grow up to be like, you know, screw the collective. I'm just going to race the collective. I'm not going to contribute to the collective. I'm just going to try to get my way with the collective, all that sort of thing. And at the same time the collective pushing back on the individual. But what's really happening there is there's trauma. And so both sides are trying to compensate - Jupiter.
So I think there's more that I could say, but I think I'll leave it there. I think that's enough. I think that gives the essence of what I'm seeing in the chart.
I talk from my experiences in life and the healing experiences that I've had, and so I have my unique way of seeing in the chart. I offer it in the hopes that it wil offer insight and be helpful. But if it doesn't do that for you, that's okay. It's just not right for you. And the most important thing that I feel like we can all do for ourselves - and actually this brings in the theme of Venus, is listen within. Venus right now is in Taurus, and Venus is the listening principle. It's the relationship and it’s the listening principle. And so we can all almost think about relationship as being about listening. In Taurus, it's about listening to ourselves, learning ourselves through listening to, you know, our senses, to how we feel, etc, etc.
And then in Libra, Venus also rules Libra. That's relationship with other. So there we're listening to the other, and part of what might be fractured is our ability to listen to the other, because we haven't really fully learned to listen to ourselves, or we haven't fully been able to anchor our ability to listen to ourselves. So I think that maybe one of the biggest messages is just learning to listen to ourselves, to our own truth, and doing that from a place of worth, and if our worth is fractured, recognizing that as a place that we can give our attention to see if we can start healing ourselves there.
So, that I guess is what I have to say, and, again, I hope it was something helpful for you.
Cancer New Moon Chart
Other Writing
I published the fourth article in the series on the decans. In that article, I introduced a decanic mandala. I then published another article taking the idea of a mandala a step further with the idea that, if we can map the notes and frequencies to the chart, we can find its song. You can read them by clicking on the blocks below.
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