When the Sun moves into the sign of Cancer, summer officially begins in the Northern Hemisphere. Cancer, along with Aries, Libra & Capricorn are initiatory in nature and so our drive to act is stimulated at the change of season. Yet each season has it’s elemental flavor and effects the motivations behind the action. In the spring when the Sun enters Aries we have the drive to be, to exist, to act from an instinctual level. In Libra our motivation is to relate, in Capricorn our motivation is to utilize. Cancer’s motivation is to feel. So when the Sun enters Cancer our feeling nature is highlighted. Cancer also deals with the idea of nurturing, family, clan & survival through the creation of family.

Cancer is concerned with emotional and physical security. That is why people with a heavy Cancer emphasis in their charts can be both highly self-protective & rabidly protective of their loved ones and their ‘home’. When feeling secure Cancer can be the most generous of signs yet when stressed they can be manipulated through fear to shut down and fight to the death for ‘family & country’ as it where.

Generally the chart for the Summer Solstice can give us the flavor of the Summer and this chart is no different. Summer 2012 is quite the flavorful mélange. As always the movement of the Sun into Cancer puts us in an introspective frame of mind. Feelings around the past, especially those concerning family can rise up into our consciousness. The fact that in the chart for this Summer Solstice, the Moon & Mercury are also in Cancer further emphasizes that tendency.

Venus still retrograde in the sign of Gemini continues to require us to re-evaluate our values especially what we think, the actual mental constructs that determine what we deem as essential in our lives and our relationships. Are there ‘thought forms’ that no longer serve us. Instead of looking for answers from a solely mental perspective we are being asked to compare how our ideas line up with our feelings. We can no longer go along unconsciously. We must take each of our mental ‘sacred cows’ and see if in fact they are in alignment with what our heart dictates. Venus is the planet of Love after all. And in this chart she makes an opportunistic sextile to Uranus: opening up to new ideas coming from a more self-empowered place. And she makes in irritating in conjunct to Pluto in Capricorn, requiring us to make mental adjustments concerning our needs and the needs of others. We must come to understand that its not just about us, it’s about everyone. We all deserve love, we all deserve our essential needs met, food, shelter, clothing, peace, opportunity to expand our minds, yet with the system as it stands (although perhaps not for long!) only relatively few get to experience that.

The Planet Neptune continues to square the nodes of the Moon, as it has been doing since the spring. Neptune helps to dissolve the boundaries so no matter how hard we attempt to keep the walls up, they will come down. Our shared humanity, our shared feelings, our shared experiences. We will be feeling it all. We can no longer separate ourselves from our brothers and sisters or from the other creatures that inhabit this planet. Charity surely does start at home, and hat home is our heart. This Neptune aspect can also create a lot of confusion and escapist tendencies. It is important that we give ourselves some rest from the onslaught of feelings that swirl around us, yet we cannot stay there, we must participate in this great shift we find ourselves in. The Sun in Cancer will make that obvious to us, moving in to figure out our feelings, then moving out to express and live our new understanding.

The other two transpersonal planets Pluto and Uranus are within minutes of their exact first quarter square which is exact on June 24th. Often the energy of any aspect is most potent when it is getting close to exact, or what is called ‘applying’. First quarter squares (90 degrees) are call ‘crisis in action’ squares, so we are feeling the need to act. This need is subconscious & it feels as if our lives depend on it and in point of fact it does. We can no longer live unconsciously. Most people who read these type of articles already know that we co-create this world. We have awakened to that fact, yet the majority of people remain sleeping. This Uranus/Pluto square (the first of 7 that run from 2012-2015 is the alarm clock for the slumbering masses. With that in mind we must get our own house in order and become lights on the path for others, for our brothers and sisters. For we are them and they are we. We’re all in this together, lets create something beautiful.

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On occasion when New Moons are at the beginning of a sign, as the last New Moon was at 1 degree of Gemini , there are actually two New Moons in the sign. This is the case with this latest New Moon on June 19th which occurs at 29 degrees of Gemini.

New Moons are seed times and the last one at 1 degree of Gemini was also a solar eclipse. That particular New Moon was more about starting the process of releasing ideas that were outmoded, that no longer serve the evolution of the self and the planet. Between that New Moon on the 20th of May and this New Moon on the 19th of June, we have been re-evaluating many of our long cherished ideas about what is important to us and worth our time, and what is not.

Venus the planet of Love which deals with both our essential needs and our need to relate has been moving retrograde in Gemini the whole time (having gone retrograde back on May 15th). Retrogression (the apparent backward movement of a planet from our vantage point on earth) is a time of re-evaluation. Astronomically when a planet is retrograde the are actually closer to the earth than when they are not. So our values, our needs and our relationships have been at the forefront of our minds. There was also something very unique about the time between these New Moons in Gemini and it also has to do with Venus. On June 5th Venus moved across the face of the Sun, this is called a Venus occultation. This only occurs twice every century or so. Both times it occurs it happens within 8 years of each other. So the first occultation of Venus was in 2004 and this last one was just a few weeks ago. This will not happen again until 2117.

The Mayans said that when Venus conjoins with the Sun she disappears from the sky and descends into hell. Venus disappeared from the evening sky on May 30th and was ‘reborn’ as the morning star on June 14th. The symbolism inherent in this is the death of the old and the birth of the new. If we look at our lives over the last few weeks we can certainly find this theme very prominently. I dare say if we try to relate in the same old way we will begin to feel uneasy and what worked in the past will not work now.

The death and rebirth of Venus is also symbolic of the rebirth of the feminine. During the first decade of the 21st century especially after 9/11 the woman’s movement and the power of the feminine was overshadowed by the more male war-mongering side of our nature. As first world countries waged war on countries where woman’s rights were severely limited the voice of the feminine was lost. I remember a male acquaintance making the comment that he thought I might be “for” the War in Iraq because of how terribly they treated their women. ‘War never improves the lives of woman and children.” was my reply.

We are on the precipice of great change, as the structure of society shifts right beneath our feet. 6500 years of patriarchal dominance is quite enough. And the last 2000 years of religious and social conditioning that has created a hierarchal structure where the few control the lives of the many is against the Laws of Nature. We can no longer live the way we do; as if tomorrow will never come. Using up our resources and raping Mother Earth in the process. ‘Fracting’ for oil and gas, deep water drilling for oil, nuclear energy, environmental pollution, being in state of constant war while so many are dying of starvation and for the lack of the basics is a sin against nature and a death sentence for our children, our children’s children, and our children’s children’s children. Native cultures say that in the decisions we make today, we must consider how it will affect 7 generations from now.

We are waking up from this nightmare we have co-created, some consciously (the ruling elite, if I may borrow a term from my conspiracy-minded friends) but mostly unconsciously as we spend all our time thinking about what we fear instead of what we love. We love our family, our children, our friends, the earth beneath our feet, our health, our pets, why are we not choosing from that place?

This New Moon in Gemini asks us to plant the seeds to think differently, to think from our hearts and love with our minds (Venus in Gemini). For the divine feminine to awaken in all of us, to find balance and stop this culture of death we find ourselves in. We can do this, yet we must do this together. Find the commonality of being human. Join with the human family and all the creatures that share this beautiful blue marble in the sky. This is it folks, do or die, it ‘s our choice.

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The energy of Aries is initiatory and instinctual, the seeds that have been germinating beneath the Earth start to poke up through the ground as the landscape turns from browns and grays to green. So as the Sun inhabits Aries we too feel the stirrings of the new, the promise of spring as the seeds we have been germinating over the winter begin to poke out of the metaphorical ground that is our life.

This Vernal Equinox is somewhat muted however, the get up and go we experience at this time is a bit slow starting. One reason, among many for this is that the ruler of Aries, Mars, is in retrograde motion. This apparent backward motion of the Red Planet in the sky, takes the point off of Aries sword. The normal “fools jump in, where angels fear to tread” modus operandi of Aries is ‘off line’. With Mars retrograde we are being asked to look before we leap and to practice considered action. And with Mars in the sign of Virgo, we are also being asked to clean up the details that still need cleaning. It’s almost like this time around we have to act with maturity, instead of childlike folly.

The chart for this Equinox has a Moon in Pisces, the sign before Aries and the last sign of the zodiac. The Moon symbolizes our emotions, so although our heads may be looking to the future our hearts remain in the past. There are emotional issues that we are still working through. So as the Equinox chart is one that carries it’s influence throughout the season, Spring will be balanced between moving ahead and looking back. We cannot expect a different world if we continue to be driven by the same emotional wounds we’ve had in the past. This is not merely an opportunity to heal the past, it is an imperative.

Besides the Sun being in Aries, both Mercury and Uranus are in Aries, tightly conjoined to the Sun. Mercury is our left brain, our conscious mind, Uranus is our individuated unconscious. Uranus holds the keys to the past, both our most recent past (that connected to the present incarnation) and our past lives. It also contains the blueprints to the future. So flashes of intuition are bound to come through, memories, visions and the like pop up like Jack in the boxes, surprising us, scaring us & in some cases delighting us. These flashes have somewhat of a destabilizing effect to the generally ordered left brain. It is important to let these flashes move through us and not get into fear concerning their meaning. Evolution unfolds in it’s own time. Although it’s fair to say that evolution is on the fast track. Keeping centered during this process is a challenge, yet it’s a challenge worth taking. Some of these flashes can create crisis, which always brings us into the present moment. If we practice presence already it may not be necessary for the crisis to occur.

The grand earth trine that has been in effect for much of March continues to influence us this spring. There is powerful energy of manifestation available to us, however there is a caveat. The caveat being, that if we want to bring abundance into our life, we must be willing to let go of past emotional patterns that tie us to our wounds. A hand that is closed cannot receive, and so we must first let go to gain.

The last thing to mention is that all the personal planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus & Mars), those planets that deal with our everyday mundane existence, are being influenced through aspects to the Transpersonal Planets (Uranus, Neptune & Pluto). The Transpersonal planets also called Ambassadors of the Galaxy by seminal astrologer Dane Rudhyar, bring the unconscious evolutionary forces to bear upon us. There is not a single part of our lives that is not being touched by these transformational forces. There is no fighting this shift, we are here to bear witness to it, move through it, and work with it.

Through acceptance of what is, we can help ourselves at this very transformative time. Evolution will occur with or without us, we may as well go with the flow and ride the wave of change, instead of getting pummeled by it’s fury.

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