“From opaque rock
springs clear water.
The skull’s hard cup
holds clarity.
Drink, traveller.
Be mindful. Drink.”

The new Moon on July 4th opens the lunation at 12°54′ of tropical Cancer and brings a much needed sense of caution and caring to the ongoing momentum of the times. The events generated through the previous lunation have shown us much, about the power of consequence and responsibility towards aforethought, as well as the need to hold the highest of aspirations before us, shared as a collective, and this lunation brings these qualites home amidst a time of turbulence and radical restructuring.

If the turbulence of the times is proving too much for you, this lunation says step off the gas a while and regroup – nurture and care for what is close to hand; even though there may be a battle raging outside, tending home and hearth and keeping the sacred fire burning is equally vital, giving to all our doings in the world their core meaning.

If on the other hand you are feeling fired up and ready to go, have donned your sacred war paint and can feel the adrenalin pumping, the lunation says, first check that your personal house is in order before rejoining the battle – that means knowing where you stand and what you are fighting for, ie. the true value of what you are leaving behind, as well as what you are taking beyond the threshold.

It is going to be a tender month, highly sensitive around current boundary issues, protective of vulnerabilities and prone to further bruising where the punches have already landed. But, embedded within the Cancerian field are sensitive points that indicate a much more far-reaching necessity for our times. Their triggering casts a much needed longer term view on where our current conflicts of interest could lead us. It comes down to remembering what the most important things in life are, before everything else.

With both Venus and Mercury in Cancer at new Moon this is perhaps a reminder that it is the women and children, the feminine and our future, who must come first in all our considerations. But, it is also a sign of the times that communications and money, awareness and values, are colouring the bigger picture.

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As Michael Meade said in a recent video, we are experiencing ‘a world gone wrong’, and this is no time for narrow mindedness. That could well be the defining issue that not only decided the UK’s vote to leave the EU, but, puts the quality of this lunation into its sharpest, if not global perspective. Perhaps nowhere has the sucker punch been more fully felt during the last lunation than in the world of politics, economics and personal freedoms, as personified for example by the UK’s referendum on June 23rd 2016.

The foxes have been in the hen house – and, not just for the Brits, it is time to count our chickens. With the Moon in Cancer we should be under no illusions about the more far reaching relevance of this outcome either, regardless our nationality, but especially in view of our own domicile status, where-ever we are.

With the election of new European ‘Heads’ pending, stalling and shuddering in the aftermath of Brexit, and the US elections poised on a knife edge of legal investigations, also reflecting tensions between political tribalism, economic truths and social conscience, the Cancer Moon puts us in mind of why we are facing such tough choices at home. It also illustrates why the globalist economic agenda is falling apart.

Boundary issues and the domestic value of foreign currency are bound to be highlighted with this new Moon, and this builds upon tensions within the international flow of trade and commerce that have been defining the new partnerships now being formed between East and West. The NM quincunxes Saturn in Sagittarius and trines Neptune in Pisces putting international relations into the front-line, an influence that favours restructuring agreements and the dissolution of obstacles to ‘free trade’, where they exist. There is in this a movement away from not only the old hegemonies of ideological power, but, from old politics itself as the defining characteristic of their realisation, a point further indicated in Venus strong aspects to Uranus, Mars, Pluto and Jupiter at new Moon.

The British referendum delivered what may be the coup-de-gras in globalist ideologies around foreign investment, at least amongst European States, but the ripples of the vote reach much further – the TTIP was already all but over for Europe, with a unanimous vote ‘in favour’ necessary within the EU for its ratification, and five European nations now showing significant dissent. The dollar and the TPP will be coming under more pressure over the coming months as the USA’s 7th, 8th and 9th house planets, Uranus, Venus, Jupiter, the Sun,  Mercury and Neptune are activated. The USA’s north node in Leo is also going to be directly triggered by the next new Moon on August 2nd.

Pluto already opposes the Independence Day Sun that this new Moon falls upon, and, in the Brexit day chart Uranus, Eris and Ceres in Aries squared the USA’s 8th house Mercury in Cancer, exactly where Venus is now applying pressure. The talk will all be about following the money as the old ‘western alliance’ picks up the pieces.

The shift in power at the heart of the financial markets that was already underway is now being stimulated to firm up new alliances. Watch this space, especially in respect of new trading agreements between Europe and the East; there’s a new Silk Road being built and much of the turmoil in the Middle East is around trying to disrupt the flow of traffic along it. Who is funding who and to what ends, we may ask. But, that EU vote has an astrological signature that illustrates all to clearly where the real power lies.

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In the last post, without directly referencing Brexit, I tried to indicate that the astrology favoured an ‘out’ vote win, but, with a certain inevitability, the planets have now pushed the issue of sovereignty even further to the front, and in so doing reveal something of the longer term focus that this historic vote brings to us all.

Of all the days that David Cameron could have chosen to hold the referendum on he chose this one! On June 23rd at midday GMT Ceres and Uranus met at 23° Aries and gave us the signature aspect of the moment – as mentioned Eris, an indicator of discord and disruption, was involved in their meeting, but, just hours later the deed was done and the UK voted to leave the European Union by a majority of just 4%. The tar-brushing that has followed has been a revelation to us all, and it ain’t over yet.

Uranus meeting with Ceres,  or Demeter as the ancient Greeks called her, only happens once in every 89 years – the parallels between 2016 and 1927 give much food for thought. Catastrophic floods and earthquakes took hundreds of thousands of lives during 1927, typhoons and hurricanes wrought havoc in the USA; both US and British troops were involved in conflicts on foreign soil, the Chinese regime became formally militarised and Stalin took control of the Soviet Union, the Irish Free State gained independence; diplomatic relations, not least of all between the West and the communist block, were stretched to breaking point, many civilians in both Europe and the USA were shot by police while protesting their social rights; this was also the year that saw international radio, television and flights become established, Heisenberg formulated his famous ‘uncertainty principle’ and Fritz Lang’s iconic film Metropolis premiered. The list goes on…..

The conflicts of the time seem all too familiar; we have not moved on so much as come back around to the same old story with the same old players vying for the same old ‘power’, and the future we might have perceived through the smoke and first flickering images of new technologies has turned out to be dangerously unacknowledged for its warnings and prescience. In some ways our technology, like our symptomatic hypocritical obsession with political correctness, has made us both more sensitive to and less resilient around the threats we share with that time. Interestingly a wave of influenza swept the UK in 1927 killing up to a thousand people a week as Uranus quincunxed Neptune, then on the Leo Virgo cusp; Uranus hovered over the Aries Pisces border, was transited by Jupiter in the process and, just as they are in this time, both Saturn and Mars were transiting the first two decans of Sagittarius in 1927.

But, here’s a curious thing – as the UK’s 1801 national chart reveals, Ceres was discovered in the same year and on the same day as the United Kingdom ratified the Acts of Union. The two are intimately tied together. Pluto’s transformative influence is still in orb of the UK’s Sun and will oppose the UK’s 10th house Cancer Moon in 2018-19. Ultimately, Pluto will trine the UK’s natal Ceres in 23° Taurus, by which time Jupiter’s exact quincunx to natal Ceres and the Moon, and semi-sextile to transiting Pluto will almost certainly see all former ties severed between the UK and EU. The intervening time is all about negotiating a viable path to the future, a path that must be forward looking enough to carry the wishes of the people, as the Moons North node will cross the UK’s natal Moon at the exact moment when Mars opposes Jupiter from Gemini, semi-sextile Ceres. Its all about the timing, not so much ‘whether’ as ‘when’. This was a result already written in the stars – Cameron should have consulted an astrologer! Maybe he did…..too many condemning fingerprints have been left on what transpired.

In fact, as the myth shows, Ceres knows how to drive a hard bargain, but, she does also has something to say about power sharing – while she gives the best of the plutocrats a run for their money, she ultimately makes them an offer they can’t refuse and, in the process, brings a new template to the table that rewrites the rules of power. She does so in accordance with natural law. Equal distribution of power through a balance between Pluto’s (Hades) entropic and her own negentropic forces was the bargain Ceres drove in the myth.

In this is a multi-layered reflection of the times, on the face of it a recognition of the natural wisdom of the goddess as embodied in the seasonal cycle on the one hand and of the power of the Mother, Demeter, on the other as fierce and fearless protector of children, her own somewhat wayward and impressionable daughter Persephone not withstanding. But, more than anything else this conjunction between Uranus, Ceres and Eris gave us an indication that a radical new direction must be undertaken, both in respect of power, the environment, the politics of choice, as outlined in Eris own story, and the fundamental balance between destructive and creative forces, all of which are being played out globally on a very human scale.

Interestingly, Pluto ties the new Moon chart into the natal chart of the UK’s queen as well, although this in no way intends to draw any parallels between Ceres and ER2! If anything it points up her own plutocratic role in the world. The July new Moon falls exactly on Elizabeth Regina’s natal 6th house Pluto, and Venus is exactly conjunct the royal north node and DC. But, foreign money was always the means to an end in filling the coffers of the so called House of Windsor. Perhaps the plug will be pulled once Uranus introduces a whole new set of values and rules into international trading when he enters Taurus in 2018 and makes three transits over her maj’s Sun at 0° Taurus – will she survive until her nodal return on his third pass, three years from now? Given the signs I somehow doubt it, and her passing, whether from power or life, will be another global history making event. The world will undoubtedly have already undergone many changes by then, as it is, but the Uranium industry will never be the same….

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Its an odd Moon to begin a lunation with as sovereignty is very much at the heart of it all and Cancer harkens back to a time of tribal affiliations in which the Mother ruled the traditions that carried the common wealth of the people forward. This image and its focus is not arbitrary here either. Conjunct with Mercury in the July NM chart is the asteroid Kronos.

Many astrologers associate Kronos with the highest station of things, their own sovereignty, as well as their highest and most meaningful values, and it is through the search for those values in both our words, thoughts and children that Kronos gives Mercury his role in Cancer now. We are becoming aware of their future as the question in our own hands perhaps more now than ever. However, these are innate values, all too well known to our ancestors that are given a new reminder through this lunation.

In Cancer, Pluto, Jupiter and Saturn all have their own north nodes. This shows us a future, a commonality to all people alive now, and a key indicator of how our future could take shape in our own lives, and must in those that follow us. The power of life is nurtured in Cancer, our own ability to care for the Earth, for our human family and the protection of Earth’s children. The nodes indicate a way in which we can limit the use of our power according to a more deeply rooted, far-sighted and wise understanding, giving it a quality more at home on this planet than our current anthropocentric hedonism allows. There is a shared Cancerian quality of service as well as instinctive and empathic protection inherent in these planetary nodes, a promise that could be fulfilled, of new life under the Sun and Moon. But, we must honour our commitment to see it through and not succumb to the Capricornian temptations of the past, or suffer their wounds again.

The Sun and Moon meet at  NM with the asteroid Eurydike, the inter-planetary body astrology associates with ‘dependence’. In leading Eurydice back from Hades, Orpheus, for all his magic and boundary crossing skills, was unable to resist the temptation to look back and, consequently, the ‘plutocratic’ rule he had been asked to observe was broken.

It is a poigniant reminder that even while, in the form of Pluto, Jupiter and Saturn’s south nodes, Capricorn holds our ancestral memories of a past that saw the destruction of the Mother goddess civilisations, our focus must remain on the present and how this relates to where we are headed. This is how it is with the nodal axis. We cannot go back, not without great or even unthinkable risk, but, can however carry the gifts as well as the most important lessons of the past forward with us, in creating our path towards a future built upon common ground. In fact, our future and the Earth it is built upon depend upon it.

“From their houses, from their town
rainbow people come walking
the dark paths between the stars,
the bright tracks on water
of the moon, of the sun.
Tall and long legged,
lithe and long armed,
they follow the fog pumas
beside the wind coyotes,
passing the rain bears
under the still air hawks
on the paths of sunlight,
on the tracks of moonlight,
on the ways of starlight,
on the dark roads.
They climb the ladders of the wind,
the stairways of cloud.
They descend the ladders of air,
the steps of rain falling.
The closed eye sees them.
The deaf ear hears them.
The still mouth speaks to them.
The still hand touches them.
Going to sleep we awaken to them,
walking the ways of their town.
Dying we live them,
entering their beautiful houses.”

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Poems by Ursula Le Guin from ‘Always Coming Home’ :
~ Bone Poem VI
~ The Madrone Lodge Song of Mica of Sinshan

Images, with thanks to the artists :
Stone Arch ~ artist unknown
Goose Feathers ~ Andy Goldsworthy
Inuksuk ~ traditional Inuit
Nest ~ Nils Udo
Balancing ~ Adrian Gray