SOLSTICE & SOLAR ECLIPSE IN CANCER
The shifting seas of eclipse and retrograde season continue this week.
On June 18, Mercury stationed retrograde in Cancer. This retrograde journey continues through July 12.
Mercury in Cancer brings an attunement to emotional expression, and this retrograde period will offer an invitation for reflection and recollection in matters of home and heart.
Cancer is a sign that's known for nostalgia and sentimentality, perhaps because memory and emotion are not bound by the constraints of linear time. We still hold the vibrational link to people, places, and moments in our past.
This will be a time of looking back to witness and integrate the past so that we can eventually move forward to what's next.
This weekend's Solstice Solar Eclipse portal is a key moment in a larger process of revelation and reckoning. Seeds of reparation and reconciliation may be planted in the fertile space of this potent New Moon, though the fruition of what is seeded here may not be evident for some time.
It begins with Solstice on June 20, when the Sun reaches a point of maximum polarity.
In Western astrology, the Summer Solstice is the moment when the Sun enters the sign of Cancer. Here in the northern hemisphere this is the longest day of the year and marks the beginning of the summer season.
This year with the impact of COVID-19, it’s not feeling as joyous and full of revelry as usual, and we have the astrology to match this more inward and reflective energy.
On June 21, the Moon also enters Cancer, its sign of rulership, and joins the Sun in a New Moon Solar Eclipse. This eclipse happens at 0º Cancer, a critical degree that heightens the sense of starting anew, as does the nearby North Node at 29º Gemini.
To get a sense of this moment, consider that the Sun, at the height of its light and power, joins with the Moon in Cancer. The Sun drops into the void, shining inward to illuminate the mystery as the universal womb of the Great Mother and Mystery envelopes us.
Cancer is associated with mothering, compassion, belonging, home and family, ancestors, safety as well as intuition, dreams, and empathic sensitivity that aid in caring for those in our inner circle.
Indeed we each have a need for a sense of safety, warmth, and love. Home is where the heart is, a place where we are welcomed in our humanity and gently held with compassion.
And yet for most of us, our humanity has not always been welcomed with love. Many of us have experienced trauma in our lives at the hands of people who were supposed to care for us, and under cultures and systems of domination.
Modern Western culture as a whole is not especially emotionally literate and many of us lack embodied attunement to our emotions.
These experiences can leave us feeling disconnected from a sense of home within ourselves or unsafe in connection with others. It may then feel safer to relate through the distance of intellect, or not at all.
This process, as always, is happening both personally and collectively as the need for ancestral and cultural healing comes to prominence. Here in Turtle Island (the so-called United States) this is especially evident in the uprising and strengthening Movement for Black Lives. [see below for resources]
Jupiter and Pluto, both retrograde, join in Capricorn, amplifying awareness of the deep shadows (rooted in deeper wounding) that we are reckoning with including white supremacy culture and anti-blackness. We’re especially called at this time to examine all the ways that each of us are part of the systems of oppression that overshadow our lives. [See below for recommended resources.]
Mars in Pisces is widely T-square the lunar nodes and the eclipse point, bringing sacred rage and energy to apply evolutionary tension.
Saturn retrograde at 0º Aquarius highlights the paradigm restructuring process that is taking place. It starts inside us and our immediate communities, both local (rooted in place) and virtual networks (another dimension). The review and reckoning continues as Saturn will re-enter Capricorn on July 1 for the rest of the year, bringing the focus back to restructuring social institutions.
In these fraught times, we are being invited to grow our capacity for compassion, tending communities and cultures of care, and deepening relationship with beings in our local space (whether in flesh or in spirit).
Imagine the power of the divine mother's love for all children of the Earth. Channeling this love into our hearts, letting it fill us, and illuminate the path to compassionate action is the antidote to the systems of domination, control and heartless exploitation that have nearly destroyed our planet.
If we want a world with more heart, with more belonging, with more connection, it starts with each of us.
Key transits:
June 18, 2020 at 12:59 am EDT ~ Mercury stations retrograde at 14º Cancer
June 20, 2020 ~ Solstice & Sun enters Cancer at 5:43 pm EDT
June 21, 2020 at 2:42 am EDT ~ New Moon Solar Eclipse at 0º Cancer
June 23, 2020 at 12:32 am EDT ~ Mercury stations retrograde at 20º Pisces
June 25, 2020 at 2:48 am EDT ~ Venus stations direct at 5º Gemini
June 27, 2020 at 9:45 pm EDT ~ Mars enters Aries
ANTI-RACISM RESOURCES:
Free cultural somatics e-course on healing racialized trauma with Resmaa Menakem
Recommended reading:
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem
Feeling anxious, down or unsettled? I have something that might help:
INNER SANCTUARY GUIDED JOURNEY
In this 20 minute guided audio meditation, you will activate a pathway to your inner sanctuary, a safe and supportive state of being within you.
Follow the guided imagery to relax your nervous system and enjoy a gentle journey into your own sacred space.
You can follow this pathway any time you'd like to cultivate a sense of calm and supportive connection.
If you’d like personal guidance and support to navigate and integrate these energies, I’d love to meet with you for an Akashic Guidance session to access your soul’s own clarity, wisdom, and healing.