New Moon in Cancer
[[This horoscope may be felt most powerfully for folks with Taurus or Libra Rising, Sun or Moon Signs, or other prominent planetary placements in these signs]]
Venus, the planet of Love, Beauty and Harmony has been moving through a malefic enclosure between Mars and Saturn, since July 6th and until the 13th, when it conjoins Mars in Leo. The Mars-Venus conjunction early next week will be a sweet alignment and opportunity to recalibrate — to digest, call our energy in, and adapt according to the information that has come between May 14th and July 7th (Mercury Rx, including the retroshades). This may help bring awareness and balance to masculine and feminine energies so that our words and our actions (what is visible, linear, measurable) communicate the same message as the energy from which they come (what is invisible, nonlinear, immeasurable). So that we can more clearly broadcast to the world who we are, from a place of greater Self-belonging, Wholeness, resonance with our soul’s purpose, and inner peace.
Until then …
Venus will be in an alchemical process that has to do with confronting and processing intergenerational insecurities that we’ve inherited, held in place by loops of punitive discipline (criticism, punishment, shaming, rejection, withholding of love) that diminish our personal sense of abundance and worthiness, and condition us to perpetuate the pattern by framing and seeking experiences of fairness, peace or beauty within our own lives — with our partners, with our children, with our bank accounts, etc — from that limited perceptual field of insecurity. This limitation is expanded by practicing allowing what is arising in the here and now, to strengthen our vessel's capacity to belong to our Wholeness and to keep Loving ourselves beyond our comfort zone.
Last Tuesday's Venus-Saturn opposition may have revealed insecurity that stems from the chronic battle to maintain an inner split or divide against the inevitability of our own healing and return Home. Saturn may have revealed the insecurity that arises from chronic attempts to keep at bay our own shadow, and the associated fear that if it is revealed … we will, ourselves, be rejected. Be deemed unlovable. Unworthy of relationship. This insecurity manifests as chronic validation-seeking (… which is not to say that enjoying validation isn’t healthy and totally human). It echoes from early childhood experiences of parental or familial insecurities rooted in their own inner splits, which echoes from the cultural context of their generation, which echoes from that one before that. And so on.
But Cancer season teaches us that we already contain it all. Cancer is Cardinal Water. Aligning with Cancer, we awaken to ourselves as the Ocean that contains everything. Not just what is pleasing, but also that which we assert we are absolutely not. Egoism, narcissism, envy, contempt, impatience, hatred, rage.
Venus wants to tell the world who we are through similarity (“I’m like this”). Saturn tends to want to define us more by what we are not (“I’m not like that”). And as Venus and Saturn formed an opposition on July 6th, tension mounted around this polarization within ourselves. Then, as Venus formed a square to Uranus on July 8th, this tension may have reached a climax and propelled an outburst that unveiled to us … we contain everything.
As long as I don’t see and take responsibility for the qualities in me that are so unappetizing to Venus’ palate, I will be at the mercy of them. As long as I am driven by this knee-jerk reaction — “But that’s not who I am!” (Saturn) — I am pushing away the possibility of actually being and resonating as the person I want to be in the world, aligning with what I value, and creating true harmony (Venus).
The Mercury-Neptune square overlapping with this malefic enclosure really confused where exactly (or when) we are able to point the finger of blame or claim the position of rightness/goodness. This may have created a mental situation in which every door we opened in search of an Other to define ourselves as alike or against, brought us face to face with ourselves. With the only one we can hold accountable — ourselves. Just ourselves.
We step into Adult Consciousness as we grow our capacity to encounter conflict, disappointment, or failure — to hear the negative ego stories about ourselves or the other that pop up in reaction — and, yet still, keep returning to the present moment, returning to the body, and beginning again from there. Not punishing, controlling, fixing or disciplining. But receiving information and using it to transition from punitive to transformative justice (alchemizing Venus through this malefic enclosure) within our own mind-body-soul.
Because if I stand in my Wholeness, committed to bearing witness to my part in co-creating this knot ... I (nobody else) am positioned to contain the inner child fear that, what will end up being witnessed in the process, is what is bad and unlovable about me. That I might be rejected. I will have to hear the negative ego stories that say I must remain in this limited part of myself, this little teaspoon of the ocean, in order to stay in relationship with the Ocean. It makes no sense. But the body, which holds all that subconscious programming, does feel unsafe and the ego will use those feelings as factual evidence for its story.
So this malefic enclosure around Venus, arriving at this particular point in 2021 astrology, is growing our capacity to be the parental container for the echoes of intergenerational and pathological insecurities that feed egoism (supremacy, oppression), and dis-cover the security that arises from that capacity to feel more deeply. To be present with big emotions in the body. Cancer season.
This is an important focus, as the second week of this lunation cycle will again churn up hard-to-contain energies, contact core insecurities, activating core survival mechanisms. It's helpful to know this, heading into the month, so that you can practice holding onto yourself with somatic or polyvagal exercises (examples coming in the next email) at lower levels of activation, as we all head into this particular portal.
Because on Saturday July 17th, at 3:46 PM, the Sun forms its annual opposition to Pluto. While always intense, this one is more interesting than most Sun-Pluto oppositions, given that it is landing in a build-up towards a Full Moon on the 23rd that will land at the same degree as the Great Conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn. So ... what is unearthed over the course of that week has to do with this massive new chapter, or epoch, opening for humanity and your role in it.
If you want to learn more about these themes, contextualize what's happening within your soul’s journey, unpack the last lunation cycle, and receive validation and guidance for this lunation cycle — sign up today to snag a reading with me.
New Moon Blessings,
Nicole
