The beginning of Summer, when the Sun moves into the sign of Cancer, arrives one day ahead of our first Cancer new Moon this year.  With this first of 2 new Moons in Cancer falling within the 3-day-long solar standstill of Summer Solstice (the folks out here are celebrating the ’09 Summer of Love’ and the artistic power of the 60s is back on Broadway!), this Summer Solstice will be powerful.  With the Moon at its closest to Earth, the psychic atmosphere will be humming.

 

What will set it vibrating?  Lots of things.  The strongest energy influencing this season and new Moon is the planet Pluto, in the beginning degrees of Capricorn opposite the Cancer Sun and Moon.  Since October 2008, when Pluto first entered Capricorn, the sign of our collective institutions, such as governments, corporations, financial systems, we have seen the structural decay at the root of our patriarchal (Capricorn symbolizes the Father and the State) vision of life.  Money, domination, power and greed can’t be the values we base our lives on.  Pluto, as the energy of death and re-birth, will reform these systems, whether we like it or not.  It will be our choice to deal with it consciously or not.  We have the capability to really transform the world; we just have to go about it with determination and vision.

 

We can’t put new wine into old wineskins anymore.  Pluto stands opposite the Sun and Moon this Summer Solstice (Winter Solstice down South) and demands a different birth – the birth of a new God/dess image.  What will humanity choose?  A warrior god, a nurturing mother, or perhaps an equal couple, man and woman, god and goddess creating a new world together.  It’s our choice.

 

Pluto energy demands that we get rid of whatever is worn out and dead.  Opposite the Cancer energies, it demands an honest appraisal of our emotional needs and our security issues.  It forces us to look at the issues of power (Pluto) and love (Cancer).  Which is more important to you? Because love cannot flourish where power holds sway.  We can be empowered by love, but if we love power for its own sake, we lose out on love.   

 

As Lord of Death, Pluto is the Great Initiator.  Pluto shows us the depths and makes us confront ourselves, so we can also reach for the heights.  We need to go through a death so that the new life we want to create has a chance to grow into its own creative power.  That’s what these next few years will provide us – a space to accept the death and re-birth of our world.  Pluto is also the god of hidden wealth, and promises that anyone who ventures into the underworld has an opportunity to reclaim her/his part of the collective wealth of our species. 

 

So in the midst of this high holiday of summer light and delight (remember A Midsummer’s Night Dream takes place at Summer Solstice), we are confronted with the task to face our mortality.  Take death as your advisor and make something of yourself.  The 2 Cancer new Moons will offer the nurturing you need.  Instead of wasting your energy on worry, focus it on creativity.  What is the most creative use of your time?  What creative ideas do you need to nurture? 

 

There is also the re-energized ongoing opposition between Uranus (the New) and Saturn (the Old), once again gearing up for a third opposition now that Saturn is moving forward again in Virgo (get your life in order) and Uranus (the vision and the possibilities) is slowing down to turn retrograde on July 1^st.  We can see this energy at work in Iran as the people there take to the streets to fight for change and their human rights. This is the beginning of the next part of the 60s cycle, when Pluto, Uranus and Saturn form a T-square, and the energy pushes for real change, that will continue through 2011.  For us, it’s time to integrate the next level of our vision.  These 2 planets will oppose each other again September 15^th. 

 

Next, there will be 2 new Moons in Cancer, with an unusual 3 (2 lunar and 1 solar) eclipses in July and August.  Eclipses end and begin new cycles of growth.  Every 12 to 18 months the lunar cycle flips and it begins with either a double new or full Moon, because there is a 13^th lunar month we have to integrate into our modern solar calendar.  The last doubling up of full moons in one sign occurred in May 2008.  When it happens, we get a blue moon – two full moons in the same zodiac sign in the month. 

 

We’ve just come through the part of the larger cycle where the new Moon comes before the full Moon in the lunar cycle.  Then when the cycle shifts at the 2^nd new Moon in Cancer on July 21, the next full Moon will be in an incompatible sign (Cancer/Aquarius instead of the usual Cancer/ Capricorn), So that Aquarius full Moon now comes before the Leo new Moon!  That’s the part of the cycle we’re shifting into this astrological month.  It changes your perspective – you get to see yourself from a different angle.  It’s not always comfortable because it’s an adjustment period.  So take it slow.

 

With 2 new Moons in Cancer this month, the cosmic story is telling us to plant well and often, and to water your new life from the vast ocean of the collective unconscious:J  know what your heart wants, so later you will use your talents to get it; nurture what’s important to you, and love it so well that it grows and blossoms; be aware of your feelings, both ‘good and bad’, then drop the judgment and just listen to what they tell you about yourself and the world; be open to images and visions and be creative with the answers you receive. 

 

Trust yourself!  When the Sun moves into Cancer, the Great Mother appears again to enrich the new life growing within you. It’s a time for family and home.  With Pluto traveling through the opposite sign of Capricorn, we’ll re-discover how important family and home really are as our cultural structures get renewed.  Perhaps we’ll finally pay mothers and fathers to stay home and raise their kids well. 

 

Cancer is attuned to the Moon and to the oceans and tides, the vast surging waters that originally gave us life.  It is attuned to the soul.  We treat our souls like we treat the oceans, not seeing its real value, polluting it with toxic ideas and images.  (Holllywood, it’s time to go green and stop polluting our psyches!)  Now we have dead zones of plastic garbage, larger than the state of Texas, floating out in the Pacific.  Isn’t it time we stopped using plastic?  Isn’t it time to stop being afraid (Cancer does have security issues) and start trusting that you have the answers inside you?  Your soul wants you to pay attention and nurture the seed ideas, the newborn projects, with care and devotion. 

 

As someone with a natal Cancer Moon, I can say truthfully that there’s nothing so wonderful as a well functioning Cancer Moon, for it gives you vast resources and the instinctive wisdom of LIFE so you can nurture other life-forms. Who doesn’t need a really good mother once in a while?  We’ve forgotten to respect the archetype of ‘Mother’ or see its sacred function.

 

That’s what the Summer Solstice is all about.  If we lived within the cycle of the seasons, we’d know that Summer Solstice marks the culmination of the building, outgoing, light yang energy and the beginning of the ingoing, reflective, dark yin energy. The Mother mediates the transition, just as She does at Winter Solstice when She gives birth to the Son/Sun.

 

This is a time for women to be honored as Lover and Mother, desired and valued for her fertile wisdom.  And just as the Sun sends his light, strong and full, to be received by the Earth during these days to ensure the harvest, it is time for men to show us their higher consciousness, their awareness of how important LIFE is to them.  This is the time of the Sacred Marriage between Heaven and Earth.  On a human scale, it is a time for men and women to honor each other and find common ground, and for individuals to unite their masculine and feminine energies. 

 

You can read a Summer Solstice story at: Star of the Bards. 

 

On that more human scale, this Summer Solstice and Cancer new Moon is blessed by the 2^nd conjunction of Venus and Mars this year.  The first occurred just after Venus turned direct in April at 30 Pisces.  Now at 16 Taurus, a power gate of manifestation, Venus and Mars come together in their own Sacred Marriage.  They trine Saturn in Virgo, grounding in this new vision of love and compassion into our daily lives and our sense of service.  Are you beginning to see how layered the symbolism is this season?

 

The Sabian symbol for the Venus/Mars conjunction at 30 Pisces, the very last degree of the Zodiac, reads: A majestic rock formation resembling a face is idealized by a boy who takes it as his ideal of greatness.  As he grows up, he begins to look like it.  This symbolizes a consciousness which knows how to manifest higher symbolic truths, the archetypal man or woman.  A spiritual revelation of an immortal ideal.  We need to connect to and then protect a new compassionate vision of life.

 

This is the spiritual vision planted in our cosmos last April 21^st.  Now, Venus and Mars, Love and Desire, wholeness and separateness, Yin and Yang, want to manifest concretely as they come together at 16 Taurus: An old man is attempting with a degree of success unsuspected by him, to reveal the Mysteries to a motley group.  This is a symbol of a natural, earthy wisdom, in which truth is mixed with legends, dreams, superstitions and religious ideas.  It appears the group, (the word motley calls up images of hippie flower children, doesn’t it?) GETS IT!   That might be a strong intention for any rituals you do at this time.  Invoke the idea that people, including yourself, ‘get it’. 

 

The Sabian symbol for the new Moon at 2 Cancer is: A man on a magic carpet observes vast vistas below.  This symbol indicates that we have to elevate our consciousness, our view of the world, and our personal standpoint to get the big picture.  Can we transcend duality – at least for the moment of the sacred marriage?  Can we come away with a clearer vision of what’s going on?  It’s time to ‘let go of remote control’ (as Michael Franti puts it) and fly free with our innate ‘magical’ powers of Imagination.  John Lennon would say, Imagine!  And then take your premonitions and visions seriously.  They might be colored by your complexes and you might see through them to a different truth.  Or they might be the truth, and then you have to find ways to honor them.

 

Opposed to this image is Pluto’s degree, 2 Capricorn: Three rose windows in a gothic cathedral, one damaged by war.  The rose windows originated from the oculus windows, the round eye, which let light into the church or temple. The Gothic Rose Windows are circular and beautifully colorful.  They are Western mandalas, depicting Christ or Mary the Mother in the center, with the saints and angelic powers and earth powers spreading out from the center.  The damaged window is an image of collective loss of faith, or the hope for peace and equality brought about by the terrors of war.  Perhaps Pluto is showing us that while the patriarchy itself carries the seeds of self-destruction, we can still access the inner wisdom that originally gave rise to the old vision. 

 

We need a new vision of spirit, of divinity, of collective life.  That’s what Pluto in Capricorn is facilitating with the destruction of the end game of patriarchy: our modern, capitalistic nation-states and corporations.  This Summer Solstice we need to gather with our loved ones and celebrate life, and open ourselves to the creative imagination that can help us transform our lives and our world.