Cancer New Moon: At the Bending

Welcome to the Cancer New Moon. It’s not only the solstice and the start of a new season, but it’s a solar eclipse, too, a time of supercharged new beginnings. The great stage of our lives rearrange. New characters and set pieces come in. Others leave.

To understand this eclipse and the story that will weave its way through the next six months, we need to follow the threads to its origins two years before. A solar eclipse in July 2018 marked the beginning of a series of eclipses in both Cancer and its opposing sign of Capricorn, eclipses designed to pushed us towards opening our hearts and making new connections. But first we had to confront the shadow self within that was preventing us from being open. This 2018 solar eclipse, after all, closely opposed Pluto.

Here we are two years later and this solar eclipse is the coda to that story that began in 2018. Are our hearts more open? Are we getting what we need in order to feel nourished, safe, secure? Or are we still encumbered by the past, by self sabotage?

2020 has been an interesting year to put it mildly. We began the year with a potent and titanic alignment of Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn. Old structures had to come down, especially structures that oppress. Our old stories need to be dismantled. It has and continues to be an imperative. (You can now watch my full Starstruck 2020 astrology talk on the Saturn-Pluto conjunction for free here.)

The Cancer New Moon solar eclipse feels like a rebirth. Right on the solstice point, it bisects 2020 into two distinct halves. Before and after? Old and new? Or at least two distinct processes in a series of events that have and and will change us.

The solar eclipse is right on the lunar nodes at 29 Gemini, a hint at a new story that’s emerging, but one that needs discernment and clarity in order to make the right choice. The North Node can also propel us forward towards something that may feel fated or marks the timeline of our lives. The events that unfold in June and July 2020 could be critical.

Speaking of critical, the solar eclipse makes a square to Mars in Pisces, right on the south bending of the lunar nodes. We’re at a major turning point. But one where we need to surrender to something that’s out of our hands. Emotions are coming up — deep emotions, emotions buried in our psyche as well as our collective emotional body that need to be released.

If you’re feeling something around this new moon solar eclipse don’t be surprised. It may be an ache or something existential in nature. The solar eclipse also makes a square to Chiron in Aries, which may press on old scar tissue, a sharpness that echos something from the past, something may be calling on us to be brave and move forward.

Cancer is a sign that needs to be fed. It needs nurturing, care, and soothing. We need to be nourished and fed. Actively work towards and create that for yourself in the second half of the year if not the second half of June and into the beginning of July. Also, pay attention to Mars’s arrival at the end of Pisces June 25-26 and its arrival in Aries on June 27 for a clearer idea of what this eclipse is all about.