Astrology of 6/21 – 6/27: New Moon in Cancer & Love in Action

This week after a New Moon in Cancer, Mars in Cancer will form aspects with Jupiter in Libra and Neptune in Pisces and Mercury in Cancer quickly follows suit. Mars and Mercury are within orb of conjunction, making these two archetypes an intertwined force. This is the kind of week where emotions run high, and like Mars, this raw energy can be channeled.

Let’s take a look at some of these archetypes for background:

Mars and Cancer cares about what’s safe and what is not safe – threatening safety is a form of violence in Mars in Cancer. Within this archetypal combination, we may find an image of a person who experiences a violent or hostile holding container while they are developing (such as an early home environment or culture) – and this person will likely have many internalized tensions as well. From an early age, they had to learn how to fight or how to defend themselves. Conversely, sometimes those inner-tensions can come first from our vantage point. Mars in Cancer can speak to inner-tensions which draw in what I would call close enemies: external contacts can get yoked into these internal conflicts. Being full of inner-tension or defensiveness tints reality toward conflict, and conflict may ensue. The conflict may then be made more entrenched once in action, triggering more cycles of defensiveness, and so on. Whether it’s the chicken or the egg, these realities are often cyclical.

Mars in Cancer is among many images: the warrior who breaks into tears, the weapon used to defend oneself at home from an intruder, the bully who learns to confront their feelings, the hug that was really awkward and terse, the embrace that let you melt and feel safe entirely, intuitive touch, hurting someone before they can hurt you, the will to take care or to nurture, the protector, the person who gets into a bar fight for looking at someone the wrong way, the person who runs away from home to be safe, a soldier back from war and now a new parent.

Feel the tensions of this archetype? Mars in Cancer is a season for applied emotional intelligence. It asks us to liberate our subconscious impulses but use that same vitality in a way that is protective and that nurtures what is precious to our experience.

Beings need love and support to work through stuff. Mars in Cancer’s defenses are being worked through this week with contacts to planets Jupiter and Neptune. The yoga of these transits may be to become more conscious of one’s defenses and to mature relative to that. (Mars is applying toward an opposition to Pluto in Capricorn) Are there any ways we are psychologically at odds, psychologically at combat? Or, are there ongoing challenges in our lives we need to lean into that we’ve previously been running away from?

The life force of Mars in Cancer is of extremely vitalizing intimacy; the way that loving touch & connection actually surges people with vitality and happiness. The conflict is in how deeply this kind of care can be needed and what kind of thorns come up in its absence that further repel the necessary comfort that is desired, whether this is in a moment, or historically passed down generations. And really, love and tenderness is just a basic human need whether or not we are conditioned otherwise. Babies don’t survive if they aren’t touched. Mars in Cancer can spur us to actively hold, whether we are holding loved ones or ourselves. It’s the active choice to be tender, rather than to run away. It’s the quality of tenderness under duress; or tenderness that heals violence.

(Top image: Michael David Adams)

Here’s our week:

June 21

Mercury enters Cancer: 2:58 AM PDT & Sun conjunct Mercury: 7:14 AM PDT

(Image: Ponyo)

• The ingress of Mercury into Cancer is quickly met with a conjunction to the Sun. This transit brings light to our inner-thought processes and amplifies them. It would not be surprising to feel like one’s emotions are more dramatic than usual. An image for the archetype of Cancer can be a dog – dogs are super expressive creatures who emote quite clearly their happiness or sadness and their emotions are pulled with the tides – happy when their human friend comes home, happy when they see another dog, sad when their human friend goes away, territorial when they meet a dog they don’t like, etc. Knowing this, you may choose to put yourself in situations which support your happiness! Because all the feels are incoming & loud, so you may as well facilitate a good experience. This may include ceremony around grief or sadness as well – finding a way to use it creatively and express it where before one could not. If you’re the kind of person whose apt to, try not to internalize guilt or shame for having a lot of emotions at this time, perhaps more than ordinarily. These are emotional transits.
• It’s always interesting to track the messenger at the time of a Mercury-Sun conjunction… what kind of news are you receiving?

June 23

New Moon in Cancer: 7:31 PM PDT

• This New Moon is not forming all too many aspects, but there is an out-of-sign square to Chiron in Pisces we may want to take into account. This can mean engaging a new protective mechanism or nurturance practice to an ongoing wound, or place of spiritual opening (or both). We have a poignant opportunity to give love and care. And it may be an entirely new emotional experiment relative to an ongoing existential or spiritual crisis. How might the path of least resistance be so loving and comforting, rather than apathetic and defeated? Can we find a way to be at home with the wave we’re currently riding, and catch it’s frequency so that we really are riding it – not just trying to find it, trying not to drown, trying to fight it, etc. When we find the wave, we know.

(Image: Finding Nemo)

June 24

Venus in Taurus trine Pluto in Capricorn: 1:57 AM PDT

• Option to work through internalized sense of what sexy needs to be based off of conditioning, rather than being located in the body’s natural authority. This transit can indicate transformation of that complex by deeper embodiment; finding value in one’s own embodied experience in a totally internal way. It speaks to the need or the process of finding an empowering sense of value within one’s own self and how there is a magnetic quality to this which may attract deeper satisfaction within one’s experience.
• Body power; deepening into it, or awakening it by getting tuned into the body’s responses to things and how there is a natural intelligence at work that we are often culturally trained to ignore: re-training it or remembering it is a source of empowerment as well as a pathway to having healthy boundaries.

Mars in Cancer square Jupiter in Libra: 11:07 PM PDT

• Taking the time to judge just how much it is we are motivated by comfort or discomfort; and which is the magic pill needed at any given time.
• An open wound gets offended at touch. Mars and Cancer are both very instinctual archetypes, sometimes unconscious, such that it’s easy to locate the thing that rubbed against the wound as the problem, rather than examining the wound itself.
• Most everyone has some kind of edge; a line that can’t be crossed or violated without damage to their sense of safety within the context of a relationship. Sometimes we take this line for granted and are just aware not to cross it, and maybe other times we (in anger) do cross it. Jupiter here speaks to the benefit of being judicious about these critical lines of safety (in ourselves and others), while Mars may be feeling the urge to push boundaries.
• One’s comfort zone can courageously expand and transform with this transit – we also see a T-square to Pluto in Capricorn involved! This will, however, hinge upon the levels of trust and competency available or sought out within the situation. Being vulnerable is great, but there are ways to be foolhardy in one’s vulnerability – there is still the issue of the competency one is expecting to meet, like some proverbial trust fall. Do you let anyone hold your heart cause you’re so openly trusting, or do you have a screening process? How smart, or alternately rigid is that screening process? It’s not to say there is a definitively right answer, but this can be something that is being deliberated.

(Image: “The Charming But Alarming Snake Charmer”)

• The avoidance of, or choice to actively engage in, philosophies that threaten one’s ego.
• The quality of retreat, rest, recharging, and connecting with close ones and taking it easy, being important this week.

June 25

Mars in Cancer trine Neptune in Pisces: 11:19 PM PDT

• The possibility for one’s emotional defenses (in a particular area, likely) to dissolve because one has transcended the need to protect that developing aspect of self.
• The ease for personal tensions (Mars in Cancer) to be projected onto the Universe itself like something mysterious and out there is getting to you. The need to take care of that kind of externalization of inner-tension by examining the inner-counterpart to mysterious sources of un-ease.
• The courage that may be transmitted through meditations/prayers of aligning with the totality and benevolence of the Universe, feeling the quality of protection and safety in of itself, easing dualism.

June 27

Mercury in Cancer square Jupiter in Libra: 11:21 AM PDT

(also here, is a T-square to Pluto in Capricorn that is within orb.)

• This transit holds very similar themes to the Mars transits above, but this time it is in the sphere of information, thought, and theoretical. When Mercury-Mars are conjunct, the planets affect one another, meaning we may have more thought about our actions or we may act without thinking. Sometimes people’s language comes across more harshly or aggressively.
• This can speak to the importance to have uncomfortable conversations, whether it is with ourselves or with others. It might mean looking into information or hearing perspectives that challenge us. It can be the breaking point of a defensive structure which is what makes the information so alien or threatening in the first place. It can be like uncomfortable awakening.
• Asking new questions when we come to places we see as our edge; what makes us uncomfortable – and really listening for the answers. Whether the question is posed aloud or not; the question is a pathway to new information, and a new question is also going to shake up the routine types of information coming through.
• It may become especially relevant that in cases of heated disagreement, people are not just arguing about ideas – people are defending their emotional security, as well. It can appear to be really immature and aggravating when someone has abandoned logic or common sense just to stand their ground. Whether you look down on this or not, there are ways to build bridges and build peace without decimating other people’s emotional security just because they’re wrong. Connection is going to help; and it stretches both conflicting parties to find it.

Mercury in Cancer trine Neptune in Pisces: 5:23 PM PDT

• Words of comfort have a transpersonal effect at this time – speaking kindly to yourself and others can go a long way in expanding compassion and transpersonal healing on this planet. It can serve as a basic reminder of love existing as a place we have the choice to travel to, love as an identity we can be at any time.
• Changing one’s emotional perspective yields a new reality theater – the maya/illusion shifts.

Thank you for meditating on the planets with me this week! I hope that these thoughts may be helpful and resourceful to you as you engage personally with these transits. Please share your thoughts in the comments, let me know how your week is going, or write to me personally at sabrina@monarchastrology.com. I really love hearing from you! You may also join my mailing list here to get these weekly forecasts sent to your inbox!

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Have a beautiful week,

~Sabrina Monarch

Sabrina Monarch is a soul-centered Evolutionary Astrologer who publishes weekly astrological forecasts. She has been collecting astrological experience for over a decade. She also enjoys kundalini and ashtanga yoga, hiking and creative writing.