At 11:40pm PDT tonight, the Sun and Moon will come together at 0-degrees of Cancer, generating the New Moon that kicks off the next lunar cycle. Of course, this New Moon is also an eclipse, so it has the transformative and integrating power of that phenomenon, and the intentions we set now have far reaching impact. And of course, the Sun at 0-degrees of Cancer is also the Solstice, one of the four pillars of how we mark our solar year. Both Mercury and Venus are retrograde, so the unconscious has tremendous sway over what is going on; it feels a little like the patients are running the asylum at the moment. There is a lot of fear-driven language out there about this weekend, and how fatalistic it might be. Don’t go there. We have more resilience than we have even begun to tap into. We got this, no matter what.
Every six months, the geometrical alignment of the Earth, Sun and Moon is such that the relentless beam of light that is our consciousness, is broken. We get to shut down the system and restart it, very much like turning your computer off, and back on again. There is a bit of a miracle that, from our perspective here on Earth, the Sun is exactly 400 times larger than the Moon. This is what allows the visage of the Moon to completely block the light of the Sun. It may even be so that this perfect alignment is what allows the consciousness of our Being to have generated organic life in the first place. So, while every solar eclipse is interpreted like any New Moon, when it is an eclipse, the entire system is being rebooted.
Our relationship to the Sun is everything about how we move through life. Each solstice and equinox are also the beginning of each of our seasons, and it is because we have these seasons that life and civilization has been able to thrive here. We lost our direct connection with this once we moved out of agrarian living, but our inner link to sunlight is just as palpable as it ever was. In our intellectual processing of life, we may not know about this direct connection, but the pineal gland in the brain of every sentient being on the planet is dialed in to the shifting rays of the Sun as we move through the solar year. You may now know how this works; but your body does.
In the Equinoxes, we celebrate balance and wholeness with days and nights of equal length for the whole planet simultaneously. But at each Solstice, one hemisphere honors the light while the other hemisphere remembers the light while it is darkest. This is where we must work with binary code. Up/down. In breath, out breath. Birth, death. Least light, most light. So, while the north holds the greater expansion of our relationship to the Sun, do not forget that the opposite is occurring for our counterparts down under. There is balance and harmony in this as well, but in order to feel that balance and harmony, you have to widen your scope to a more global view. Isn’t that an apropos image for this time? The longest day in the north is the shortest day in the south. But put them together, and it is possible to see the wholeness, but only when you consider both what is true for you personally, and what is true for the collective.
The backdrop to this New Moon is powerful. First and foremost, both Mercury and Venus are retrograde, and so our minds and hearts have both dropped a tether into the unconscious. As a result, we are in a deep process of rewiring our thinking/feeling mechanism. In fact, Venus is in a sign that is very mental (Gemini), and Mercury is retrograde in the most tender, feeling oriented sign of Cancer. The world is changing so dramatically, and how we see things (Mercury) and how we feel about life (Venus) is changing too. What is juicy about this is that any important intentions we set now have more power to them, because the door to the unconscious is wide open. That said, we will not be able to quite make sense of what exactly is shifting inside of us until a number of weeks have passed, and these two personal planets return to their direct posture at the end of July.
On the side of this lunation is a tremendous Sextile between Mars and Neptune in Pisces on the one hand, and Pluto and Jupiter in Capricorn in the other. The Mars/Neptune side of this equation is what allows us to walk a higher, more spiritually grounded walk. Pluto and Jupiter reflect all the enormous transformation that is taking place in our world this year. You can probably see what I am building to here. With all of the revolutionary change taking place right now (Pluto/Jupiter), the only way to move forward with any sort of grace, ease and dignity, will be through a deep and abiding spiritual practice (Mars/Neptune).
Mars in this equation is key, for he represents how we embody our consciousness. He will be going retrograde later this year, and intentions set now will be directly dialed into the depths of our unconscious while he is in Pisces (the sign that invented the unconscious). Then he moves into his ruling sign of Aries in a week, and he will stay there for months because of his retrograde in September. Every element of our consciousness is being rewired this year with all three personal planets going retrograde within a few months of each other. This is extremely rare, and with all the outer change that is taking place, these three retrogrades will allow us each to incorporate and integrate the new world we are birthing, directly into our bodies. One of the challenges will be how long it will take, and how layered the experience will be; it will take some time to figure this all out.
One last powerful thread to this eclipse is the relationship between the New Moon and Saturn, who is holding space at 0-degrees of Aquarius. Aquarius invented the idea of a unified global consciousness in which all beings are cared for equally. This is, in fact, the hallmark of the Age we are helping to birth. Saturn moving back and forth between Capricorn and Aquarius this year is showing us – as only the Great Teacher can – just how much work is necessary to create that brand-new Utopian world. The geometry between the New Moon and Saturn is the Great Eliminator, the 150-degree angle that shows us the fork in the road, and, if we are paying attention, the new path we are meant to take. My colleague Monique Ruffin likes to say that Cancer is where we learn to come home to ourselves. But the days where care for the self as separate from care for the world are gone. Let this moment be that for you; come home to your Self, and then consider how you wish to serve others, and then continue to assist the world in this mighty ascension.
