The New Moon in Cancer arrived at 6:57pm EST this evening of July 5th, 2024.  With both the Sun and Moon together in Cancer and thus under the rule of the Moon itself, we might be especially drawn to examine the auspices of Luna by way of her opening aspects to the planets as this cycle begins to unfold — namely, a trine to Saturn in Pisces.

While Saturn and its yin home of Capricorn across from Cancer very much represent ‘gravity and gravitas’ as the scholar Richard Tarnas wrote, the Moon and the element of Water she’s enmeshed with refer to ‘gravitation’ itself.  The Moon’s effects on everything from tides to triage intake are well documented and widely perceived, as they are on bodily biorhythms, some rather bloody and profoundly purgative in nature.

That the Moon has gravitational effects on Earth is a given here, but there is something more to be said about Water — the astrological and alchemical element associated with the Moon’s home of Cancer, Mars’ nocturnal home of Scorpio, and Jupiter’s nocturnal home of Pisces — and Water’s connection to lunar/cancerian themes such as what we feel drawn to… by way of comfort, safety, nurture, family, lineage, roots, belonging.

The Moon is the most changeable of entities in the planetary pantheon; the psychosomatic body, the dispenser of aspects, the many faces of the goddess.  Her home domicile of Cancer evokes not just ‘nurture’ but a deep instinctual knowledge of cycles, like the lapping of ocean waves across millions of years, stirring sea creatures into legs that might take them to land…

… and it is not so different from the way Earth’s primary motion pulls things from the 4th House to the 3rd House — the Joy of the Moon — in approach of the 2nd, 1st and thus the horizon.  The 3rd is all the journeys around the anchor that move us lightly from the root — the flutter of doors in a home where all orbits around the grandmother, an elder matriarch who has watched beings come and go, along with the stories wrapping them like wings of a dove folding ‘round… and so she watches children run about, through this door, that patch of grass, along with the stories and spritely characters floating about their shoulders.

Such is how the Moon and her home of Cancer oppose Saturn and its home of Capricorn — the amniotic, the formless void of cosmos that births things into being, into form, into skeleton, into concretization of light… such is the seesaw of Cancer and Capricorn.  Love and Time.

There is a curious parallel from Fire and Water in alchemical and astrological languages, to Electromagnetism and Gravitation in quantum physics.  Be with me a moment — I’m not trying to brand some new ‘unified field theory’, or re-brand as “Alexander Baker for you, bringing an empirical touch to the woo.”  If I lose you, or things seem a bit abstract, feel free to skip down to the list of themes to feel around for this new moon…

The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s concept of ‘fourness’ refers to how Fire, Earth, Air and Water served as the basis for his devising psychological typology as Intuition, Sensation, Thinking and Feeling.  He referred to this, among other things, as the ‘quaternity of the psyche.’  In fact, the Myers-Briggs system of psychological typology reflects the three different ways that elemental ‘fourness’ can be paired.

The jungian concept of ‘fourness’ refers to not just a quantity four, but a quality of four.  Much like any ‘twoness’ or polarity — light and dark, north and south, mind and body, right and wrong — are not just a quantity of two, but a quality of two, a quality of perceived opposition… ‘fourness’ refers to the way in which four unfolds from two.  Not just up and down, but out and in.

Strange, then, how much Fire, Water, Earth and Air seem correlated by Electromagnetism, Gravitation, the Strong Forces and the Weak Forces in quantum physics.  Are these equivalent?  Probably not — fourness is pretty complex.  And yet all point to how the mandala of the cross is pulled from a central place, the very glyph for earth being the encircling thereof.

It is as natural to symbol systems and sciences on this planet as the four cardinal directions…

… and none of it Would unfold quite this way if we didn’t live on a planet where the Moon, our satellite, our mirror, perfectly eclipses the Sun.

Where standing on the equator, there is nearly equal parts night and day, with several minutes more in day’s favor.

Where just as the Sun is ‘the Logos’ — knowledge, truth, and that which reveals… the Moon is ‘Eros’ — love, receptivity, and that which is yet to be revealed.  Our reflection, catching and dispelling all it touches, all that touches it… dark and just now renewed.

The events that unfold across this lunar cycle are themselves yet to be revealed… and the significations of this new moon will be as multivalent as our satellite’s flickering company across this solar system sanctuary, mirroring back to us the knowledge of the Sun made enfleshed, when wed to Form and motion of purpose here.  But here are some of the themes and questions I’ve noticed — in my own life, and in the lives of those around my winding narratives…

*roots, lineage, restful rejoining
*to bind, to reconnect, to trace back to the source
*similarities and differences of vision, but receiving others the same
*discussions surrounding boundaries, steered with an emotional intelligence
*an awareness of the oft contrast between inner happiness and external ‘progress’
*some degree of consideration, or at worst choice paralysis, in considering paths to take
*what does safety feel and look like for me, right now?
*is what I’m doing emotionally sustainable?
*is what I’m doing satisfying a need for continuity?
*reconciling this with the paradox that all will pass, all will fade
*does dwelling on the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ nurture me in any way?
*are there bigger ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ out there that need my attention?
*do I feel emotional seen, validated, honored by my environment and those in it?
*where is the ‘desire body’ pointing… is it different from what the mind beholds?
*am I giving myself permission to contain many conflicting parts?

With the goddess of love Venus, Star of Aphrodite, also in Cancer to be met by the Moon in several hours, and the more fiery relating of Mars closing in on a conjunction to Uranus in Taurus on the 15th, it’s possible that the themes of this new moon lean relational in nature, conjuring as many Jupiter in Gemini questions and ‘what ifs’ than concrete answers.  But the nature of the Moon, and the earthly waters it steers, is to flow…

Swim well stargazers ~

—A.B.

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