New Moon in Cancer: Entering the Narrows

“The world will be saved by the Western Woman.” Dalai Lama

I keep emphasizing that 2022 is a pivotal year. For the USA, it is the year of our Pluto return. The first conjunction took place on February 20th, the second will happen this July 11th, and we will close out the year with its final exact conjunction on December 28th. By the end of this year will either meet Pluto’s challenge, or lose our democracy. Pluto in Capricorn is revealing the corruption and vulnerability of our institutions as well the devastating consequences of our patriarchal, capitalistic values.

I have also suggested that with the nodes on the Taurus/Scorpio axis, we are addressing our toxic past and making choices that will determine the viability not only of our democracy, but of our planet to support human life in the future.

Our government is struggling to function despite the deep rift between our political parties. The systems and institutions we depend upon are breaking down – health care, economy, legal and justice, even basic civility. Democracy is under attack as state legislatures deprive citizens of their right to vote while giving children the right to bear arms! And our Supreme Court, which has the final say, supports it all. Today, as I write this, they have overturned Roe vs. Wade. Yesterday they struck down a New York law that required applicants to give a good reason for carrying a concealed weapon. WTF! And in a final outrageous act of the week, they took away our Miranda rights. Will we wake up in time and defend our precious freedom?

I know that many of you like to read about love and spirituality as well as positive dreams for the future. And I have written about that because we have been steeped in so much fear, anger, hatred, violence and discord that I felt it was important to balance those energies and offer hope. But it is time to open our eyes and take a good hard look at ourselves – assess our values and stand up for them. That’s why I feel it’s a good time to address spiritual bypassing.

In our patriarchal system, we have been taught to repress our “negative” emotions. Think of the conditioning in our childhood. Girls heard comments like “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Or “You’re so much prettier when you smile.” Or “No one wants to see an angry woman.” Or maybe we were just taught to be lady-like, always cheerful, demure and silent. Boys on the other hand were taught to stiffen their upper lips, take it like a man, don’t be a baby. For them the only acceptable emotion was anger which they learned at an early age to express as violence. But fear, sadness, disappointment, sensitivity or any display of emotion other than anger was considered unmanly.

Many of us broke away from this oppression in the 60’s and 70’s, embraced psychotherapy, felt our pain and healed our wounds, but many of us opted to bypass that step and go straight for enlightenment. This is spiritual bypassing. New Age spirituality offered an escape from our pain, but ultimately became yet another source of repression because now it wasn’t spiritual to be angry, or depressed or fearful. So we avoided these emotions, or at least hid them from view. We bypassed processing our pain and abandoned ourselves.

The problem is that we cannot have a healthy spiritual life without a healthy physical one, and we are not physically healthy when our emotions are festering in the subconscious. Repressed emotions will express through uncontrollable outbursts of which we are ashamed, or we will project them onto others, or they will manifest as illness. Spirituality isn’t about denying our physicality, or any part of our humanness. It is about experiencing all of what it means to be human and integrating it into our innate spiritual essence.

So why am I writing about this now? Because we are entering what a former teacher of mine called “The Narrows.” A good metaphor for this passage is the birth process. Before we emerge into a new life, we are squeezed through a very dark and tight canal. From now until the end of the year we will experience intense pressure. Our character and values will be challenged and we will be asked to dig deep within for strength and faith. How do we find that strength? We feel our feelings – all of them – even the ones that frighten us with their power, because that’s the point – emotions carry power and they can either have power over us, or we can integrate them and own that power for ourselves.

That brings us to the New Moon in Cancer. With perfect timing, the energetic context of July is the watery, emotional realm of Cancer.

New Moon in Cancer

On June 28th at 7:52 p.m. Pacific time, the Sun and Moon join Black Moon Lilith in the USA 7th House conjunct our Cancer stellium of Venus, Jupiter and the Sun. We collectively have a Cancer Sun and will soon celebrate our birthday on the 4th of July. So let’s look at the meaning of Cancer.

This sign is associated with motherhood, nurturing, protection, safety and the security of mother-love. The Moon rules this sign as well as our emotional bodies. Cancer is associated with the 4th House where our tender psyches should have learned self-love through our mothers, but within our patriarchal paradigm we were conditioned to compare, compete and comply. We learned as girls that we were second class citizens. As we competed, boys and girls alike learned failure and the sting of not measuring up. Our impressionable psyches were warped by false values. We became insecure and fearful. We developed compensating defenses and moved further away from our original divine essence.

Fear is the shadow side of Cancer and defense is the symptom. Our nuclear arsenal is the perfect example of our extreme insecurity as a nation. On the personal level, however, we developed our own arsenal of ego defenses. We learned denial, rationalization, projection, sublimation, suppression, compensation, escapism, fantasy, reaction formation which included blaming and shaming, self-pity and victimhood, aggression and attack, avoidance through humor and many other creative ways to protect our fragile egos. All of these defenses build walls around us that prevent authenticity and true intimacy. Ego defenses are the source of all our relationship problems. And the 7th House is all about relationship.

Our Cancer Sun is 8 degrees away from the natal conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. Our true identity is one of faith, optimism, idealism, an appreciation of beauty, love, peace and harmony, but our Sun is squared by Saturn in the 10th – the patriarchal club that restricts our naturally loving, generous nature and replaces it with a commitment (Saturn is conjunct Juno) to the pursuit of wealth and power. With wealth and power comes the fear of loss and the need for defense.

So let’s take a look at Black Moon Lilith. The first wife of Adam, Lilith is the original manifestation of the Feminine. Created simultaneously with Adam and made of the same “clay,” Lilith expected to be the equal of Adam. But Adam didn’t want an equal partner. He wanted to dominate and Lilith wouldn’t comply. Patriarchal myth banished her, turned her into a demon who spawned other demons and like Eve, the second wife, she became the source of Evil in the world.

It’s time to rewrite this myth. It is not evil to demand our innate equality. Religious myths try to control women, just as the Supreme Court and the Republican party are trying to do. It’s time to feel our anger, our rage at five thousand years of repression, our outrage at the injustice of a government that takes food from the mouths of starving children, locks up immigrant babies after snatching them from the arms of their mothers, gives automatic rifles to children who then murder other children, denies women their sovereignty in making their own choices for their health. Enough is enough!

So how do we take back our power? We stop complying. We stop suppressing our outrage. We let our feelings surface and we feel them. Our emotions carry not only power, but information. We can listen to them, open to them in meditation, journal about them and let them guide us. We’ve been taught to mistrust both our bodies and our feelings. This is just another disempowerment. Our emotions let us know our values, our wounds, our boundaries. They are precious and when we respect them, and feel them completely, they bring healing.

And how to express them? At the ballot box. We can disempower every politician who advocates for injustice, who supports the lies of our former president, who invades the sovereignty of women, who seeks to squeeze the poor and middle class to bloat the wealth of the few at the top of our imbalanced social pyramid, who votes against our attempts to address our climate crisis, or regulate the glut of guns and mass murders of our children. We can hand the patriarchy a big surprise in November and begin to turn this unwieldy, off-course ship of state around. We can reclaim our true national identity and secure our democracy by electing representatives who will strengthen our Union. We can live up to our role as leaders and fulfill the prediction of the Dalai Lama.

The Power of this New Moon

There is great power available to us at this New Moon. The Sun and Moon at 7+ degrees of Cancer are opposite Quaoar the dwarf planet named after the god/dess who creates with joy through song and dance, not struggle, conflict and domination. Dwarf planets are found in the Kuiper Belt, the new frontier of our solar system as well as our consciousness. These planets represent new powers and faculties available to us if we seek them.

In addition Jupiter at 7+ Aries is opposite MakeMake in Libra, the shaman of the Kuiper Belt, and the second brightest planet after Pluto. This dwarf is the higher octave of Uranus, the planet of high energy, insight, revolutionary change, unexpected events and surprises. While Uranus introduces us to unseen realms, MakeMake broadens our perspective to include cultural awareness. Throughout the month of July the North Node and Uranus are moving toward a conjunction at 18+ degrees of Taurus. The North Node is the portal to our future and Uranus is planning a big surprise that may change our course in unexpected ways. We are headed for a climax of some sort on or around July 31st. It may simply be a piece of new information that triggers a wave of change. We will see.

These two axes form a Grand Cardinal Cross meaning that they are all square one another and in Cardinal signs, the signs that initiate change. To work with a Grand Cross, we find our center so we are not pulled out of balance. We can invite the shaman to guide us, we can sing our joy into manifestation, we can feel our feelings deeply and integrate their power and we can gather faith and optimism from Jupiter.

In addition there is a Grand Trine in Air signs between Venus at 7+ Gemini, MakeMake at 7 Libra and Chariklo at 7+ Aquarius. Chariklo was an integral part of the Saturn/Pluto conjunction back in January of 2020 when things came to a boil. This lovely centaur provides a healing context for our transformational journey. Heart/brain coherence is taken to another level when Venus falls into resonance with MakeMake the symbol of keen vision, expansiveness and freedom of Spirit.

Other Planetary Players

I mentioned that Pluto will make its exact return on July 11th, but it is already within 47 minutes of arc. Chariklo is conjunct our South Node in Aquarius, supporting the healing of our Union as we address our collective wounds. Plus, we are having an Ixion return suggesting that we can transform lawlessness into progressive humanitarian reform.

The trickiest of the conjunctions is that between Eris and Mars. Eris has been assisting the transformation of our culture through its square to Pluto over the past few years. Mars is adding its energy to our discord. Things will heat up even more this month. We will be tempted to feel ill will, to resort to our old defenses. But it’s important to remember that Eris is single minded. She demands equality and authenticity. She is the revealer of ego defenses so we can take advantage of her power and watch ourselves for clues.

As we approach The Narrows, we must set aside bulky baggage. That means taking responsibility for our own reactive defenses. How do we defend our fragile egos? And when did we learn these defenses? Obviously in our tender years when we had no other recourse. But we are adults now and need to claim our freedom from the domination of habitual defensiveness. We can make a final sweep of our murky subconscious and bring light to the corners where our fears and wounds are hiding. While it might be painful at first to see and surrender our defenses, to feel and release the wounds of the past, the joy of our emerging authenticity will reward us beyond expectation and we will reclaim our power.

Haumea is opposite the Mars/Eris conjunction and square Pluto within 5 minutes of arc. This beautiful dwarf planet is assuring us of regeneration and rebirth. She is creating a new reality behind the scenes, even as old systems crumble.

Neptune turns retrograde on the New Moon. It will station direct in December exactly opposite its natal position in the USA chart, emphasizing the spiritual context of this year. We tend to separate politics and spirituality, but politics is about our relationship with each other and how we order our society. Democracy is about our freedom which is an evolutionary and spiritual issue. And it’s about our Union which is the context of our freedom. While this may seem like a paradox, freedom is about maturity which carries with it responsibility. We are no longer children who need to be controlled. We are outgrowing our adolescence, which is the evolutionary stage our nation has been in for well over a century. We are stepping into Spiritual Adulthood, taking responsibility for ourselves, and to one another. These are Aquarian themes. We are making the transition from one era to the next. The Aquarian Age can be glorious if we live up to its potential, but it can turn into a robotic nightmare, if we resist our growth.

Neptune asks us to surrender to the flow of Spirit which seeks to unite us, to remind us that we are One with all creation. It’s time to move beyond creeds and patriarchal power systems inherent in our contemporary religions, and nourish our relationship with the sacredness of all life.

I know that’s a lot of information. You may want to take it in small bites. Systems collapse when the center no longer holds. Our spiritual mission right now is to hold the center with our power and authenticity.

Here’s a calendar of events to help you navigate the next two weeks.

         June 28  New Moon, Sun Square Jupiter, Venus sextile Jupiter

                        Neptune turns retrograde

         July 1     Mars square Pluto – watch out for fireworks

         July 4     Pallas moves into Gemini – warrior for justice

                        Mars moves into Taurus – devote time to pleasure

                        Mercury moves into Cancer – relax the mind, tune into feelings

         July 7.     Vesta turns retrograde at 7 Pisces – reflect on devotion to Oneness and all that is sacred

         July 8      Mercury squares Jupiter – expand the mind

         July 10.   Sun sextile Uranus – high energy, sense of freedom

         July 11.   USA Pluto Return

         July 12.   Sun sextile North Node – Are you on course to the future you desire?

         July 13    Full Moon in Capricorn – I’ll be back

                         Mercury sextile Uranus – listen for insights

                         Venus square Neptune – expanding love