Times are Tender, and Getting Tenderer

New moon at 24° Cancer

Monday morning, July 17th, at 11:32am PST, the moon goes dark and renews herself at 24° Cancer, the moon’s sensitive, watery home sign. Cancer is the great water mother, an archetype of nurturing, protection, and caregiving. The wisdom of Cancer is moon wisdom. It’s attuned to the intelligence of the body, the emotions, the imagination and felt sense, our ways of encountering the whole unconscious matrix that gives rise to this conscious experience of being. This cellular intelligence naturally wants to avoid what is toxic and go towards what is nourishing. It knows exactly what we need, and how much is enough. Of course, we can easily get disconnected from these instincts, or we may never have learned how to understand and respect this body wisdom in the first place, mind over matter and all that. And if that’s the case, a new moon in Cancer can reconnect and re-entrain us. It can restore the flow of our own emotional waters and then teach us how to listen to our impulses and feelings and symptoms, so that we can figure out what our needs are now and how to honor them.

Your well-being in the house that Cancer leads in your chart, and your well-being in the house that houses your natal moon, both can have an outsized say in your well-being overall. These are also places where you are likely to experience heightened sensitivity, insecurity, and defensive patterns. If you know how to work with that sensitivity, to honor it and support it rather than suppressing or denying it, it will be one of your most important gifts. In its heart, Cancer is driven by a very practical compassion. There is big meaningful work to do in the world, a call to take on what matters most and build real things to meet real needs. But if we do that from a disconnected, de-sensitized state, we can be easily pushed us into overwork, or into taking on responsibilities that aren’t ours. Over-extraction and abuse of our precious resources has consequences. We need to acknowledge and understand our limits, include them and work with them. We need to learn how to read the physical intelligence that tells us when we are near or at a limit, or when something isn’t ours to carry or do. Then we discover how to stretch our capacity rather than stressing it, avoiding burnout and collapse, and enabling organic, sustainable, cyclic growth.

This year began with a full moon in Cancer (Open Channel) on January 6th. It felt like this invitation to do a deep inventory on our needs and then take action to rebalance our load. It was trying to prepare us for these big changes this year that we didn’t know were coming yet. It might have highlighted where our energetic cups were empty, or where we had been cosigning on the depletion of our lifeforce. And then it initiated a current of liberation, a clearing of any patterns that were particularly draining or simply needed to be let go in service of an evolution that was happening. Maybe you can see now, six months later, what has changed or been released. On this new moon, that emptying out is officially complete, for now. We are on some new ground, and we have a chance to start over. A new current of manifestation is beginning.

A new moon in Cancer is often an excellent moon to initiate new experiments or do a little manifestation magic, but this one is in a near-opposition to Pluto in Capricorn. The themes of the last full moon are still resonating, and we should be integrating or at least keeping sincerely in mind what we were shown or what we’ve learned. If you are going to do any formal intention setting with this moon, make sure it’s the kind of thing that would have Pluto’s blessing, something to do with death/rebirth and transformation, or healing our relationship to our own power, or confronting abuses of power. Like, anyone who’s on labor strike right now, or supports those who are striking, should sew a seed to weaken corporate greed, and protect artists and the dignity and value of their work. If in your own personal life, you want to transform your connection to your own body, your own creative lifeforce, your own power, and if you are willing to go to the Plutonian depths to get there, by all means, make that wish with some water ritualing. It’s also ok to just sit this one out, to decline calling in any more intensity at this time, and allow life to take its already-intense course.

There is a lot of big astrological weather this week; some significant waves are coming. This new moon is taking place as the lunar nodes are shifting. We are completing a year-and-a-half of eclipses in Taurus and Scorpio, and now the north node and its energy of increase is moving into Aries, and the south node with its energy of clearing is moving into Libra. So the tide is changing, and the new focus is going to be on healing toxic relationship dynamics and emboldening personal power. On Thursday, Mars in Virgo will be in an exact opposition to Saturn in Pisces, and its likely going to show us a major conflict or obstacle that we really don’t want to make time for, but that we absolutely have to make time for. Mars opposing Saturn sets up the conditions that force us to work through something hard for us, but also give us the courage to do it. Then on Friday, the Sun perfects its opposition to Pluto and squares the lunar nodes, intensifying things. And then on Saturday, the Sun enters Leo, and Venus stations retrograde in Leo. A Venus retrograde is always an underworld journey, and all underworld journeys begin with a descent down into the heart, down into the body and the feelings. Which brings us back to whatever gifts Cancer is trying to give us right now.

Times are tender, and getting tenderer. A little tenderness might not cut it anymore. We are going to need a lot of it. Give yourself permission to feel your feelings and have needs and tend to those needs. Take some extra permission from me on top of that: you are allowed to feel feelings and to be needy. You are also allowed to take time and space to process. As you process, be open to your feelings changing, your needs changing, and like, your entire being changing. That’s usually how it goes. Extend this same grace and permission to others. Everyone is going through a lot. When in doubt or struggle, or like when you’re about to walk into a difficult conversation, you can always turn to the classic prayer for love and compassion for all sentient beings, like really lock it in before proceeding. Or you can use mine: “Oh heart, great sage of love, show me what you’re made of.”

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Ritual & Writing Prompts

(Reminder: Prompts are suggestions, not instructions. They are limitations that can be changed into different limitations. Play with what sounds good to you, ignore what’s doesn’t, and adapt in any way you see fit.)