The Summer Solstice arrived yesterday, the Sun newly into tropical Cancer joining Mercury and Venus, and the Full Moon in Capricorn — the first of two this Cancer season! — arrives this evening.

From the inhalation of Spring, with Gemini’s restless lungful taking in every idea and potentiality, the held breath of Summer delights in the nurturing peak of light which announces its commencement.  Ever fading from June 20th onward until the Winter Solstice beckons its slow return, the light of the Sun’s nourishment is cared for, proudly strut and tended across the arc of summer in the temperate Northern Hemisphere.

Tonight’s full moon, a ‘Strawberry Moon’ as it goes, is also a full moon at maximum ‘major standstill’, where the Moon “rises at its most extreme southern point and will travel closest to the ground that it ever gets” in the Northern Hemisphere, as the astrologer Linea Van Horn mentioned.  The inverse is true for those in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is furthest.  These ‘extremes’ of closeness and distance, as shown by this lunation, are an event stretching into 2025 that happens only once every 18.6 years.  A treat for the eyes come sundown, in stretches of the world’s northern half.

The psychological climate through this lunar cycle has been curious.  It opened two weeks ago with a New Moon in Gemini square to Saturn in Pisces.  Gemini conjures not the weighty gavel or banquet knives of Libra, or the electric wall-rattling of Aquarius; it is a birdsong and fluttering in the heart-mind of spring, a pluralism and at times whirlwind of contradictory decision-making which might seem to carry as much weight as the winds scattering pollen here and there.  Gemini’s ruler Mercury tends to the Sun’s instinct in a shared love of play.

But the New Moon’s square to Saturn two weeks ago showed that even in the spriteliness of Spring, the crossroads of decision do carry weight — and it is that same Saturn in Pisces which rules this Full Moon.

The Moon is a reflective light, the dispenser of fortune — connected to the body, environment, psychosomatics, the people, one’s context… the ensoulment of the Sun’s light in its testament to eternal spirit.  The Full Moon in Capricorn, the peak of this lunar cycle, asks us to consider the manifold decisions, the changing mercurial dialogues, the seesaws of the One and the Many, of the Present and the Future, that offer us the choice to stay embodied through ‘the Task.’

Cancer rules over enclosed bodies of water, and it’s said that cyclical lapping of waves against rock and sand helped sea creatures evolve legs to take to land.  Cancer’s knowledge of cycles is like this, and the repeating acts of nurture that engender a sense of continuity are often key in the hearts of this sign and its place in each of us.

Capricorn rules over mountains, and is lorded by Saturn, the gatekeeper planet of the perceived boundary between corporeal and spiritual worlds.  Capricorn likes to game its way out of the system, seemingly on worldly terms first, as if to sport the jewel of endurance and say, “See? I did it ‘their way’ too, as I did it mine.”  Sometimes this instinct can express itself as a perceived keenness on coloring inside the lines, which isn’t wrong per se — but such characterizations of earth signs are sometimes reductive post-Silicon Valley boom bullshit found on old late 90’s HTML astrology websites and their lingering dregs.  The mystery of our inner lives often knows no palette or linework that orderly… such awareness of worldly boundaries helps anchor the spectrum of spirits swirling within, the quiet knowing of trials and triumphs to come.

Whether from friends, family, work associates, clients (my books are closed at present)… I’ve heard more in the last month than in quite some time, even from people often of decidedly singular mind, that they find themselves at a bit of an impasse.  Even those who like choosing ‘more than one thing’ have, in a number of scenarios, been met with some pretty decisive forks in the road.

A Venus in Gemini friend of mine I work with, in this case speaking about a romantic narrative, said to me “I like having the different parts of my life… but sometimes if you don’t make a choice, you lose both.”  Apply that to whatever realm of existence one might right now, but this Full Moon in Capricorn asks us, among other things, to stay grounded amidst the Change — the name of the decan of Capricorn this lunation falls in.  The Cancer Sun desires just as much that we stay enfleshed, and remember our corporeal visits here as we ride the tide… remembering that, like this Moon ever so close to the Earth, one which perfectly mirrors the Sun — our choices have gravity, no matter how pressing or playful.

—A.B.

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