...Sit down and listen to the wind singing in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing, and the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now.
Not who you'd like to be, but the being right here
before you, inside you, around you. All of you is holy.
You’re already more than whatever you can know.
Breathe out, look in, let go. -John Welwood
The January 17 Full Moon at 27 Cancer opens up a space for us to engage our feeling nature, where we can catch up with ourselves.
Cancer is about our physical home and at being at home in ourselves.
Cancer is about Mother and our capacity to nurture ourselves and what we love.
Cancer is about family and feeling our sense of belonging to a people, an ancestral line, and to the family of all creation.
Cancer, as a water sign, amplifies the sensitive and tender side of us, drawing us and into an intimacy with our humanity and the rhythms of our physical body.
In recent weeks, we have been encouraged to be strong and to assume responsibility for our long range goals and what we want to accomplish (Sun and multiple planets in Capricorn). Dedication, commitment and persistence have been key words to live by. The Full Moon counters this movement with its directive to move in a balanced way that includes nourishing our inner well-being and the personal aspects of our life.
The Cancer Moon illuminates our feeling nature. We are prompted to soften, slow down and attune to our sensitivity, allowing a spaciousness for feelings to surface and be acknowledged. We are reminded of the importance of self-care as an integral component in our approach to the challenges, deadlines, and plans that lay before us. The Full Moon announces that this is an opportune moment to take the time to catch up with ourselves - to to feel and integrate events, learnings, jolts, successes and surprises of recent weeks, months or even years.
Cancer’s constellation is the Crab. The Crab's soft, vulnerable and sensitive core self is encased in a hard shell that protects the crab from the dangers of the world. There is a time wear our armor and brave the elements, and there is a time to enter a safe place where can set the armor aside and be with the treasure we are protecting: the soft, tender and loving part of ourselves. The renewed intimacy with ourselves may not be all sweetness as buried feelings of grief, disappointment, or loneliness may surface to be acknowledged
We may encounter a circumstance that causes us to slow down, to be at home, or to cease some activity. We are to welcome this. I am currently snowed in as are many people in the Midwest and southeastern U.S. We are to hold this winter event as a gift.
Many years ago, when I first moved to North Carolina, I had thought to write the mayor of my town a letter outlining the benefits of investing in snow plows. I wanted to point out that while the investment was substantial, the cost of having the town shut down for days on end was in the long run much more costly. My years of living in New England had me oriented to efficiency and productivity, such that unplowed roads were a hindrance to staying on task. I am glad I never wrote the letter.
Instead, I began to see the wisdom of the southern perspective that does not equate time with money, or productivity as the goal to which everything must align. Over the last decades, southern cities have progressively succumbed to capitalist ideals, but still there is a sentiment that built into the seasons are times that offer us enforced rest, quiet and inactivity. The loss of revenue (that results from a weather event that grinds all activity to a standstill) becomes a good exchange for what is nurtured when the perpetual motion of worldly life is put on hold.
The Cancer Moon offers invites us to press the pause button. By taking a time out, we will emerge nourished and renewed so that we can avoid becoming increasingly fragmented, depleted and overextended. If we ignore the invitation now to slow down, continue to set our feelings aside, and delay our need for concentrated self-nurturance in the name of some dedicated commitment to achieving something in the world, we may likely feel increasing overwhelmed and exhausted in the coming weeks.
“The best and most beautiful things in the world
cannot be seen or even touched.
They must be felt with the heart” ― Helen Keller
An Invitation to be Fascinated with what is Emerging from Within
Pluto opposing the Full Moon amplifies our feelings and brings to the surface unmet needs. We may feel unusually defensive and vulnerable.
Sun square Pluto. We can feel the drive to get something done, but also an awareness that we may be pushing ourselves at the expense of our own well-being. Some new information or revelation about ourselves may come to light that has been in the shadows, just outside the periphery of our vision. Something wants to be recognized and by integrating it into our awareness, we will feel increased vitality.
Moon square Pluto. We are needing a safe place, a home, in which to meet, feel and integrate feelings that are surfacing. Pluto in Capricorn is reflecting the profound changes unfolding within society. We may not be able to solve circumstances that are not in our control, but we can allow ourselves to feel what these new realities stir in us. We can honor feelings of shame, grief, anger or disappointment. By not avoiding, denying, repressing or projecting our feelings, we can find a new sense of balance and wholeness with who we are now and who we are becoming.
A Time of Reflection – More Questions than Answers
Venus and Mercury Retrograde
With both Venus and Mercury Retrograde, we are doubly urged to take a step back, to re-evaluate and re-consider our plans. Seeking answers may not be as fruitful as in deeply engaging the right questions and then engaging in the research, contemplation and conversations that generate fresh perspective. Let the questions carry us into a new way of seeing, of understanding, that will then translate into an improved approach to our life.
Venus Retrograde (December 19 – January 28), we are contemplating our relationships and what we want to shift so they are more satisfying and less draining. We are looking at our responsibilities to others and where we need to step up to the plate as well as what responsibilities we are ready to relinquish. Venus trine Uranus is breaking down barriers of self-negation so that we can hold ourselves in higher esteem. If we can feel our worthiness, our self-worth, than we will better love what we love, desire what we want, and receive the love that is being offered us.
Mercury Retrograde (January 14 – February 5) Mercury is stimulating the Saturn/Uranus square that permeates the landscape of 2021 and 2022 that has us straddling the old way of doing things with a new way that calls to us. Our minds (Mercury) are generating big questions that have us contemplating the big picture and future direction. We are seeking objectivity and rational understanding of the changes are happening. We are wanting to discern fact from fiction, propaganda from reality, hype from true threat. In recent years, we have experienced a wobbling of some area of our life we thought was stable and enduring. Critical thinking is amplified as we test and poke around in the details for clear perspective (Mercury conjunct Saturn). Simultaneously, e can have flashes of insight and inspired visions about truths that were previously obscured (Mercury square Uranus).
We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being.
We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time.
But that is not true. Our time is first of all for us to be. To be what?
To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving.
And that is what the world needs most.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The Full Moon in Context with Larger Astrological Movements
North Node Sextile Cancer Moon. The North Node is our collective future; in Taurus for the next 18 months, we are to move towards simplifying our lives. We are to release attachments and desires that tie us to the past and complicate our life. The Cancer Moon illuminates a growing need to get back to the basics of what creates a meaningful life. Drama, complexity and spreading ourselves thin in the name of an ambition complicates and takes us further from what will nourish and sustain us. We are to recognize what has value, what will truly take care of us, and to shape our life accordingly.
The Full Moon illuminates the U.S Pluto Return (2022 – 2023). Transiting Sun has conjoined Pluto to initiate the Pluto Return. It is a time of reckoning, soul searching and potential crisis for the U.S. as it is compelled to take a hard look at the values that define the country. The constitution, government leadership, and financial system will all be areas of intense debate, crisis and transformation. Secrets being kept from the public can come to light (Sun/Pluto conjunct US Pluto). The Cancer Moon represents the people and it currently stands in opposition to the structures and authorities (Capricorn) that are working against the interests of the people.
Jupiter joins Neptune in Pisces. We are being offered an expanded and inspired perspective in which to navigate the big changes and shifts taking place for humanity - a perspective that extends beyond the narrow focus of 21st century societal concerns. We can readily tap into eternal truths, touch the divine, open to the intuitive and access creative forces. We can sense how the concerns we collectively are facing today are happening within the context of earth's 4-billion year evolution that sustains a vast ecosystem of beauty and terrestrial life. The interplay between the creational divine and the world of matter must be regained for the human species to come into balance with the planet that gives and renews life.
Jupiter and Pisces provide the opening for us each to reconnect to the living world and not feel so isolated and powerless. Opening to this profound connection we innately have with all creation is accentuated at the Full Moon and will continued to be offered in the coming months. To embrace this potentiality, we must first heed the message of the Full Moon and take time to go within, be intimate with ourselves, feel what there is to feel, let ourselves receive, and know our worthiness. If we value ourselves, we can then extend that value to the people and world around us.