With the Sun and Mercury leaving the quicksilver territory of Gemini, there is a significant shift in pace and the tone of things with the two now in Cancer. As you will know Cancer is a water sign of tremendous depth, a profoundly caring and maternal energy but also one that can have significant armouring around such deeply emotional and sensitive territory.

Cancerian drives are slower, more measured and with an eye on what contributes to greater quality, stability and, to what is more emotionally valuable. As a cardinal sign, it does have its own way of initiating action in the world but one much quieter than that of its companions Gemini and Leo.

This month though these differences are even more significant especially with Leo, as Venus and Mars and some very powerful companions have gathered together the sign of the Lion, which as we will see will manifest in some dramatic and erratic expressions from this great extrovert.

So, one of our juggles this month is to balance the different needs of Cancer and Leo, of emotional security and safety versus passionate engagement in the world.

Yes, these all gathered last month in ways that shed both light and mental attention to the balancing acts between committed relationship and individual freedom, between worldly and spiritual life, between our commitments to others and our commitment to our own individuation. As I mentioned last month, on the deepest level this is a version of the sacred marriage, between the Queen and the Yogi, but for the average mortal all this is more likely to take the form of tension rather than consummation!

Here that Cancerian foursome join positively with a Jupiter Saturn sextile which provides a stabilising influence month but one which is a healthy mix of expansion and consolidation, movement with healthy realism, an openness to grace coupled with flexible self-discipline.

Both are very supportive of the relationship and spiritual opportunities of the multi-conjunction in Cancer, while gently empowering our ability to create in the world, especially in areas that are emotionally important for us.

We start the month with the Moon at the very end of Scorpio, where she creates a brilliant grand trine for spiritual development in general and specifically with connecting to the deep sacred feminine. She trines Neptune in Pisces, a gentle yet powerful expansion of psychic emotional openness and sensitivity.

The two in turn trine an extremely potent conjunction of Kali and Hekate in Cancer that can ripple through our lower chakras, awaken the multiple skills of the Witch Queen/Medicine Woman, coupled with the raw tantric and spiritually radical Kali. The psychic doorways are open here for the reclamation of the dark feminine, for balancing out some of the upper chakra tendencies of Neptune and, for enhanced practices around spiritual and shamanic midwifery, sacred women’s business and any other forms of work with the primal layers of self.

(You can see why we are running the Conception to Birth workshop this month! Go here to book in.)

As we’ve already seen, Juno the goddess of marriage, is highlighted by the Sun and Mercury, sextiled by her mythological husband, Jupiter and trined by the stabilising Saturn (who also happens to be her father-in-law!) Generally, speaking she is in a good place. However………

This is a powerful stellium. On its own, Venus and Mars together in Leo is a feisty, passionate and highly erotic meeting of this archetypal couple. However, they won’t come to a perfect culmination, as just as Venus gets within 4° of Mars, she starts to slow in preparation for going retrograde on July 23rd. Nevertheless, the emotional and sexual heat from them is still strong at the start of the month.

The two however are sandwiched in between the Black Moon in earlier Leo, and Pallas Athena in later Leo, starting the month with all of them conjuncting each other. This is not a new process as three of them started gathering around the slower Black Moon in the last weeks of June, a significant intensification around the energies of each.

The Black Moon (called the Black Moon Lilith by some authors) represents the dark face of great mother and is an agent of intense empowerment and purification, of dredging up unhealed psychological, ancestral and karmic legacies that have been hindering our capacity to love (Venus) to own our healthy warrior energies (Mars) and to bring our heightened intelligence (Pallas Athena) into the world. Her actions are very Plutonian if you are unfamiliar with her.

As many of you will know, the Moon’s Nodes are not physical points but are energy vortexes represented by where the path that the Moon draws around us intersects with the path of the Sun. In our natal charts they are both important karmic points and, tell us a lot about our soul’s journey in this lifetime. While the South Node can represent collective past life karmas, good and difficult, that we have bought with us into this lifetime, the North Node offers vision around what our soul would like to manifest before we leave this body.

The South Node going into Libra, and into the house or houses where the sign lives in our birthcharts, speaks of revealing past influences on relationship dynamics, inner and outer balances, the gracious use of the human intellect as well is it shadows, and on how we approach conflict and discord.

With the North Node going into Aries, it all about moving away from over-dependencies in relationships without losing its supportive benefits, while owning more of the fiery, self-directed, passionate and spontaneous parts of self that wishes to express independently and courageously in the world.

So, my friends, its going to be a big month.

Go well with it all, take care and jump at the opportunities.

With love and blessings,

Daniel