New Moon are shadow times. The night sky is dark. We feel a shift and know a new cycle of growth is beginning, but we can’t see it yet. We plant our seeds, make our wishes, with hope, trusting the help we need will come.
This New Moon will brim over with New-Mooness. Because of its patterns, there is an added sense of not being able to see clearly. We will feel tremendous potential, great forces at work, without being able to make out exactly what they are. The challenge will be to flow with this Moon in good ways.
On July 4, we welcome the New Moon in Cancer, which arrives just after noon here in Ireland, at 7 am EDT, and 4am PDT. Cancer is the Moon’s own sign, her home of homes. So right away we know this is a very moon-filled New Moon. Cancer is the cardinal, or initiating, Water sign. This sign, like the Moon, feels all the feels. Water flows, takes many shapes, is pliable, is adaptable, soothes, cleanses … and is also inexorable, one of the powers that shapes our lands through gentle rains, fierce storms, terrible floods.
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Cancer is the crab, a creature who lives at the edge of waters, who has no internal skeleton and so seeks to contain itself within its shell. For Cancer, the shell, the boundary, is essential. Without having a wall around the castle, Cancer is too vulnerable. Cancer can be the most nurturing and supportive of signs, the sign associated with motherhood and mother love. But always within the walls. We take care of our own. The rest of you, keep out.
So this New Moon is all about that line, that boundary of caring. This New Moon is about what home feels like, and what feels like home.
Depending on your chart, you might feel issues surfacing in many areas. The New Moon falls at 12 degrees of Cancer. There is, in addition, a lot of focus on the middle degrees, so any planets or points you have there will be touched in some way.
For information on how to get a copy of your birth chart, and how to work with New Moons in general, please use the links to see my pages. I always recommend getting a copy of your own chart. It’s where it all starts!
So, we might experience the sense of home within our own bodies. Do we feel safe in our own skin? Do we feel “at home,” meaning, accepting, even loving ourselves? If we lack safety, what needs to change? If we are harsh with our self criticism, how can we be more loving? These could be areas for New Moon wishes.
Cancer is a very emotional sign, so it’s positive that Mercury, also in Cancer, is closest to the New Moon. Positive, that is, if we use Mercury’s clarity of thought to maintain enough healthy distance from the tides of emotion to gain insight. Less positive if we find our thinking hijacked by intense emotions and throw rationality out the window.
We might experience this sense of home in relation to family, clan, or tribe. Who is my family? Am I connected to my birth family? My ancestry? Have I created a new tribe, a clan of like-minded and like-hearted people I now belong to? Do I feel secure in my place in a community? Do I have a social life that supports and nurtures me? These also can become New Moon wishes.
Venus, likewise in Cancer, is also close to the New Moon. She’s pulled ahead of the Sun, but is still close enough to be felt. Issues of relationship might feel especially emotionally charged. We can also feel where we are in our own creative expression. We might have strong feelings about financial security. We might feel strongly about issues of social justice, especially relating to inclusion and exclusion.
And, yes, this New Moon can bring up feelings about nations, states, and “race”––that completely fictitious idea that we humans can divide our family up based on physical characteristics or “blood.” (We can’t.) As we identify with a particular ethnic or cultural group, is this a strengthening thing, based in a positive sense of tradition? Or are we erecting walls that serve to divide and exclude only?
The New Moon in Cancer will bring up feelings about all these issues. Emotion is what Cancer does. Can we allow space for whatever feelings arise? Can we welcome them, even, especially, the “difficult” ones? At this time in history, there is plenty of evidence that learning to work with emotions in healthy ways is vitally important to our survival. The patterns of the New Moon support this view.
The New Moon receives a close trine from Neptune in Pisces. Neptune is strong here. She can widen our horizons, gently but clearly showing us how we are all connected. Or, she can fuel our deepest delusions, allowing us to convince ourselves that without our walls, we will die. How we experience our own feelings will make the difference.
This New Moon is connected to the Moon’s Nodes, trining the South Node of the past and sextiling the North Node of the future. There is a real sense of history being made now, a feeling (that word again) that how current crises are handled will determine our future for some time to come.
The UN Refugee Agency reports over 65 million people forcible displaced in the world today. There are over 20 million refugees, and 10 million stateless people. Over half the world’s refugees come from Afghanistan, Somalia, and Syria, three countries torn by wars for which the developed West bears direct responsibility. Notice I am not saying “sole,” I am saying “direct.” And at this time, millions of people in the developed West are embracing anti-immigrant policies in very emotional and sometimes violent ways. The sense of being at a turning point as a species is hard to escape.
But New Moons are personal things, a Cancer New Moon especially so. Where do each of us feel at home in the world? Who are we prepared to embrace as family? Who would we prefer to stay away from? Who might we violently reject?
There is a Welsh word called hireath that is difficult to translate fully into English. It means a longing for home, but it’s a special kind of longing. Hireath includes a kind of grief for a home that is lost, sometimes for a home we imagine but never existed.
We all can find this somewhere inside ourselves, this sense of longing for a kind of Golden Age, even if we know logically it never happened. This longing for a place of simplicity, community, stability, security, and love often lies buried beneath the most vicious xenophobia.
Pluto the inescapable is also part of this New Moon. He sits opposite the Sun and Moon, trines the North Node, and sextiles the South. So, we have a rectangle: Sun, Moon, Mercury opposite Pluto, with Neptune and the South Node in one corner, and Jupiter and the North Node in the other. No wonder we feel we’re at a crossroads.
Pluto applies pressure and won’t let up. He says, this is the cost of your feelings. This is the cost of your walls. This is the cost of your longing. Not convinced yet? Here’s more cost. Pluto is all about the consequences. He’s the guy who makes sure that, in the end, the piper gets paid. He is not pretty. He can feel downright mean. He can seem to be tearing stuff down just for the fun of seeing it fall. But really, he’s got our best interests at heart. He’s the cosmic quality assurance guy who says, hmmmm, you really want to get on that bus? My tests say it’s going over the cliff at the first curve. Sometimes, we insist on getting on the bus anyway. I’m not sure the ensuing crash is Pluto’s fault.
OK, so, this New Moon is starting to sound like a real downer. To be honest, it might feel like one. But–and this is an important point–it doesn’t have to. There is always hope. There are always options. Jupiter sits with the North Node. He’s in Virgo, not his cosy home place, but he’s there helping us find better ways. Oddly enough, Saturn can help too. He still squares Neptune, and is inconjunct the New Moon. While these are awkward, challenging aspects, they could be just what we need to pull out of a Neptune, Pisces, Cancer, New Moon emotion funk.
Saturn, Jupiter, and, yes, Pluto, can help us see what needs to be done next. They can help us build doors instead of walls. They can help us work through, and keep working through, the difficult, deep-seated, long-standing, emotional issues that fuel all the hateful -isms that poison our societies.
This is a New Moon for making wishes about home. We want to feel safe in our own skins. We long for stable, secure communities. We yearn for family, clan, and tribe. All of these are good things. Can we plant seeds to grow good things for everyone? May it be so.
Angela locke
That is so wise, Thank you Mary Pat for you amazing overview of where we are- on the cusp of change!
Diana Hayes
I feel at home and my welcome mat is out.