June 20 - July 22, 2021
Cancer season, and the livin’ is easy. We are travelling with the Sun, through the solstitial gateway, and entering the dog days of summer. Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high. This place offers us a bounty for the senses: it is a land of milk and honey, with fruits of the sea, tea and sympathy, soul food, Watermelon Sugar highs, Strawberry Wine, and Lemonade. It feels like melanin and motherland. It sounds like moody blues and unchained melodies. And it smells like sunscreen and salty air.
When the Sun enters the Moon’s sign, you take your shoes off at the door. You respect your elders and salute their household gods; learn their rules (and their recipes), and respect their privacy. You can also turn on some music, get cozy, and breathe a long sigh of relief, as you are in good and loving hands. With the Golden God leading the way, keep following the yellow brick road, ‘cause there’s no place like home.
Under the Crab’s auspices, we are tenderhearted and (but for our meager shells) thin-skinned. We are also creative and imaginative. Our receptivity ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes. In the realm of emotions, Cancerians hold it down for the rest of the zodiac, with the lap, the bosom, the meal, or the empathetic ear always at the ready. They are the guardians of their tribe: the memory-keepers, caregivers, historians and healers. The founders and foremothers. Who keeps your flame? Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? Most likely a Cancer. The world can be a cruel and unsafe place, but these lunar souls make it a little less so. So hush, little baby, don’t you cry…
We’ve just about reached the midpoint of the year, which, for us in the northern hemisphere, is the period of greatest light, and the Sun’s time to shine. It is also the second of three times this year that Saturn in Aquarius will square off with Uranus in Taurus. In one corner, the earth god, timekeeper, and golden age relic. In another, the rebel, the awakener, and lawbreaker. The old king versus the jester. The child-gobbler versus the fire starter. It’s an event you want to tune into, or at least be aware of. The Moon, traveling through Leo, kicks off the occasion with sparks and ceremony. Venus will arrive in the lion’s sign at the end of the month, and Mars, already there, will reach the Saturn-Uranus crosshairs in early July, just in time for our country’s birthday. Fireworks indeed!
Saturn and Uranus are doing this dance for the better part of this entire year, and the last time they met in exact aspect was in February. This time around, however, Saturn is retrograde, which brings us back to the Sun.
The story of retrograde Saturn, like all retrogrades, is a story of its relationship to the Sun, via our perspective here on Earth. Astrologically, the two represent different aspects of the Father archetype, informing how we grow, develop, define ourselves, and build our lives. As backward-moving Saturn engages with the Sun, it constellates in the human psyche themes of Ego and authority. “How safe is it for me to shine?” is one question we might ask ourselves. We might also look back at our earliest containers, our parents and/or our protectors, and evaluate how they shaped our relationship to childhood, and to adulthood. Themes of individuation, self-expression, inner resources, boundaries, and rules are also up for review.
Uranus, meanwhile, is exactly conjunct asteroid Ceres, the mythic Mother, bringing up stories of separation and reunion, abundance and lack, wisdom lost and remembered, nature as cruel and kind, and our marriage to this earth, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse.
Fathers and mothers. Time and seasons. Past and future. Inheritance and legacy. Values and self-worth. All fall under the vast umbrella of this Saturn-Uranus square, which spans outward to all of the four fixed signs. Now, and this year, we (as individuals and as a collective) are slowly remembering what we had forgotten. We are wanting to be held without being swallowed up. We are wanting to honor our parents without owing them. We are choosing where to adhere and where to break free. And, with the gods’ encouragement, we are walking the evolutionary path to becoming more ourselves.
June 11 - July 29, 2021
Pride. Honor. Valor. Excellence. These are the gifts of Mars in Leo. Today, the god of war advances out of Cancer into the sovereign’s sign, head high and headstrong. With him he carries lance and laurel wreath; his shield, crest, coat of arms and other devices of nobility marking him with distinction. He commands our attention, as he basks in the light, his solar crown a symbol, not of divine right, but of triumph.
The raw energy of Mars becomes refined in Leo, but no less passionate. This configuration gives birth to decorated leaders, feline huntresses and bold thespians—magnetic souls, fueled by love, admiration and loyalty, and ready to reciprocate by entertaining, inspiring, protecting, or even sacrificing themselves, in the extreme. In transit, it ignites our inner flames; and our warmth—or ire—pulses with lifeblood, radiating outward, emanating our expression. But in the fixed sign we are steady in our core. Ideally, during this time, we stay away from tyranny and egotism. We want the confidence without the conceit. We aim to be centered in Self without being self-centered; to be assertive but not aggressive, fierce but not savage, daring but not rash. Mars in Leo teaches us that courage, like the word itself, comes from the heart. Does your heart burn with love or loathing? Both will motivate you to pursue your goals, to succeed, and to overcome, but only a champion of love is worthy of the crown.
