“The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence; the past is a place of learning, not a place of living.” — Roy T. Bennet
«Our souls do not like stagnation. Our souls aspire toward growth, that is, toward remembering all that we have forgotten due to our trip to this place, the earth» — Malidoma Somé
:: new Moon in Cancer :: partial solar eclipse :: finding refuge ::
On Friday morning, we cross the threshold of the new Moon in Cancer. The monthly meeting of the Sun and the Moon is in the sign linked to lunar qualities. The sign of Cancer and our satellite Moon have a long-shared journey. They speak to us of the past, of our origin, of the ancestral place from where we came. It is a journey through the spiral of memory, an internal process thanks to which we can travel through time.
It is a faraway place that lives in us through the continuity of our blood and of the genetic code which we are. The Moon and Cancer speak to us of the history and the lineage of our waters. Our memory lives in in our veins, cells, tissues, organs. That is why this lunar sign is linked to family, to our mother, to our gestation, to our birth.
Everything is expressed through our body: how was it formed? How was our mother when we grew in her womb? What was fed to us, materially and emotionally? What conditions influenced her waters, our waters? How were we nourished? How was our birth? How were we cared for or not cared for? How was her post-natal emotional state? How did it affect us?
So, in the realm of Cancer, lunar landscapes speak to us of these forgotten imprints that condition us from inside, from the depth of our cells, tissues and organs. That is why the Moon is linked to the unconscious, to that which acts invisibly and influences our present. That is why it is linked to the somatic. That is why the most powerful voice of our unconscious is that of our body.
In the spiral of time, thanks to consciousness and will in the present, the past is a place that we can visit. We can decide from our will in the today to go back in time in order to remember, to rescue memories, to listen to silenced voices, to discover hidden pain, to open secret doors. We call it soul retrieval, the process of recovering parts of our psyche that have been trapped in scenes that imprison and block our energy.
This imprisoned energy speaks to us through symptoms. Corporal symptoms, to the extent that our body is an avatar of these memories. Emotional and energetic symptoms, since our emotions, our waters, which want to move and circulate, speak to us through our responses to triggers in the present that activate answers from the past. Mental symptoms, since it is our beliefs that determine our responses.
At some time in our life we have all lived through the experience of responding to situations from an unconscious place, as if we did not have authority over our reactions, as if we were not in charge of ourselves.
The scenes of the present, triggers of hidden memories, usually activate our defensive responses. These responses are part of our protective energetic body, which like the shell of the crab (Cancer) fulfil the function of defending and protecting the tender, the vulnerable, the wounded, the sensitive, the soft. These defenses take on different voices, varying from person to person. The three defensive responses in the face of stress are paralysis or freezing, fleeing and/or defensive attack.
That part of us which is scared to go to the past – in order to see the imprints, the root causes of what has been activated in the present – defends and protects itself. Fear of feeling the pain again. Fear of seeing the truth. Fear of the unknown that lives within us, inside, in the depths. But if we can recognize the voice of the symptom as an invitation to disarm our defensive responses then we can liberate the part of our memory trapped in imprints from the past.
This liberation rescues the energy from obscurity, brings it to the present. Through this process what we tend to feel is more vitality, more lightness and more consciousness of the power of our presence to discern and to act, to create.
This new Moon is Cancer is also a partial eclipse of the Sun. The nodes of the Moon continue in the Aquarius-Leo axis however, being now in the last degrees of their transit through these signs, overlap with the following signs. The nodes move inversely to the planets which is why the next evolutionary step of the nodal axis will be into Cancer and Capricorn.
There is still another lunar eclipse in Aquarius (the 27th of July) and a solar eclipse in Leo (the 11th of August). Apart from being fully in the second eclipse season of 2018 (February was the first), we are also going to have three eclipses in succession. One of them, in Cancer, is a preamble for the next evolutionary cycle that starts on the 9th November of this year with the entry of the north node of the Moon into Cancer and of the south node of the Moon into Capricorn.
This summer, with the July and August eclipses, we close a phase of growth linked to the Aquarius-Leo axis. At the same time, we are opening the doors of the next evolutionary ecosystem that will accompany us until May of 2020.
That is why the landscape of this new Moon in Cancer seems like a bubble that produces in us a feeling of strangeness and of being bewildered or lost. It is a change of script that interrupts the narrative continuity through which we are living. It is a narrative that overlaps with another. It is as if we were going in one direction, following our vision and our heart, and suddenly we find ourselves kidnapped, captured by an energetic ecosystem that returns us to places from the past, internal and external, which we thought were resolved.
If we feel ourselves to be going through ghostly landscapes, populated by old phantoms, we are under the influence of this Moon. If certain links challenge us to look towards the past, to recover memories of our unconscious action, we are under the influence of this Moon. If old wounds from our family system emerge now it is because we are under the influence of this Moon.
If our body demands attention, rest, care, love and silence it is that this Moon is speaking to us. If we need to retire in order to digest and integrate the deep movement that this Moon is making in our waters, we are listening to the Moon and its messages.
If we are wishing to look straight into the heart of an old conflict we are listening to this Moon. If we are disposed to disarm our defensive responses and go to the heart of the frozen memory which wants to flow, we are accepting collaboration with the energy of this Moon.
This is the path in benevolence that this lunation offers to us. A deeply liberating and healing potential that asks that we assume the courage of not fleeing from that past that calls to us today.
The Moon speaks to us of our entire lineage, our grandmothers and grandfathers, our ancestors. It also speaks to us of the collective consciousness. It is likely that the ghosts that surround us in the full light of day are also the voices of the trans-generational collective that asks for our attention and presence in order to liberate, with love and consciousness, old patterns which dominate us from our unconscious.
This journey to the past (intimate, relational and transpersonal) is furthermore accentuated by the retrogradations of Pluto and Saturn in Capricorn, Mars in Aquarius and Chiron in Aries. Jupiter has just gone direct again in Scorpio, speaking to us of an expansive movement of energy. However, Jupiter is navigating through the deep waters of the underworld, meaning that we cannot count on this energy to relieve us of the heaviness and of the profundities that this Moon offers to us.
The memories that have been asleep in the unconscious emerge. The badly managed issues from the past present themselves so that, if we are able to, we can correct them. The silenced voices of our genealogical family tree – that speak to us through our emotions, our spirit and moods, our body – ask for light, ask for consciousness. The fears of our childhood, the traumas of our past, everything moves – like the Moon, like time – to remind us that the darkness that seems to want to cover our light, is a voice that deserves our attention, listening and presence.
Eclipses usually mobilize deep archaic fears. The ancients said that each eclipse is a portal through which the dragon of the sky comes to show us the gateway to our growth. They are opportunities for liberation and for evolution and, at the same time, bring up to the consciousness landscapes that for many may be distressing and sinister since what they ask us for is consciousness and presence in the darkness. Consciousness and presence crowned with the courage and the will to look at the debts of the past that come to knock on our door, to say to us, this is not the way. It is an opportunity to disarm patterns and create new codes. With what purpose? For what, asks our exhausted soul?
The answer is in maintaining our intention, our aim and our service. There is a small door, named humility, which asks us that we return to live in the day to day, that perhaps we are trapped in narratives that are a little big for us and that what our body and soul desire is a bit of stability and security. This is the deep theme of this lunation. Do we feel secure? Are we protected, looked after?
At the moment, we find this security thanks to Venus in Virgo, making an earth trine with Uranus in Taurus and Saturn in Capricorn. It is not the most glamorous energy of the Zodiac, but it is the most useful and sustaining. Venus in Virgo speaks to us of using our hands, creating without aspirations of recognition or fame. It speaks to us of looking after the details, of honoring our day-to-day, of living in and making beautiful our personal time. It also indicates to us that we can find refuge in the Earth, the water of a river or the sea, the plants and the trees. It speaks to us of honoring the language of the Earth and making it ours through our silence and reverence. It tells us that refuge and the return home to which we aspire is in the Earth itself, in our own body and in our self-care practices.
:: dancing with the shadow:
The Moon in Cancer is in exact opposition to Pluto in Capricorn. This is an aspect that tells us that the furthest planet from the Earth (Pluto) and the closest satellite to the Earth (the Moon) are looking at each other in the mirror. Is it a recognition or is it a projective confrontation? Do we dare to look at ourselves in our shared shadow or do we prefer to reject ourselves? Are we disposed to journey together through the underworlds which emerge or are we convinced that the underworld is for others, not us?
If we have felt under attack, in a territory of struggle, of confrontation in which we have had to put up boundaries, defend our truth and our space, then we are living through the projective dramatization of the Moon and the eclipse. It is likely that it will be in our interpersonal relationships that we will see how the mirrors that previously reflected our light now reflect our shadow.
It is easier to see the demons outside of ourselves than to see those within. It is easier to struggle outwardly than to face up to our responsibility and assume the consequences of our actions. It is easier because it is what we have learnt, to project outwardly. The Moon, however, tells us that what we see outside of ourselves is a reflection of what is inside of us.
The possible confusion between what belongs to one and what belongs to another speaks to us of a lack of limits, of a lack of clear definition of our personal energetic space. We can feel invaded, violated in our energetic intimacy, and not really know that it is happening, because we have not fully charted the realm of our shadow. If we do not know our shadow, if we are not able to integrate it, it possesses us, takes hold of us and leads us to act unconsciously.
With Mars retrograde in Aquarius and Chiron now retrograde in Aries, assertive exchanges are not an easy task. The attempt to make our truth valued, to put a limit to the mental violence of attacks, to the feeling of not being respected, listened to, honored, valued, validated, speaks to us of a volatile, even dangerous terrain, since it can awaken deep wounds. Who or what situation has opened our wound? Can we recognize and live through the pain or do we need to defend ourselves, attack or flee?
Perhaps the key under this Moon – and in this eclipse season – is to recognize the hidden pattern behind any situation which challenges us. Instead of remaining on the surface of the struggle, to be right or to win, rather it is about entering into the profundities of our soul and psyche in order to recover the memories which wish to be liberated.
Whoever is not able to listen to us or to accept us has their work to do. Whoever we cannot listen to or accept, invites us to do our own work. There is a hidden treasure behind rejection. That which we reject invites us to look within ourselves in order to construct a path of acceptance. We cannot accept outwardly that which we have not accepted inwardly, and it is this reciprocal dynamic which invites us to do the emotional and somatic work.
If we just want to remain on the surface, if we just want to go outwardly and if we go with haste (voice of the unconscious), it is very difficult for us to look after ourselves, for us to look after others and for us to let ourselves be looked after.
In the end, our collective wound is in the relational maternal-family dynamic that shows us where we have not received what we needed. The care that we needed may not have been given and now, under this Moon, under this eclipse and in this energetic ecosystem, we may realize that we do not know how to look after ourselves, that we do not remember how to look after others.
So, the north node of the Moon shows us that the evolutionary direction, both collectively and personally, is in looking at and healing the archetype of the mother and her relationship with our inner child. This is the evolutionary portal of the uterine memories, of the waters that move, of the waters that want to move us. That is why it is important that we recognize that any conflictive projection in which we are trapped today, that makes us feel in debt or that we are debtors, returns us to the primary ecosystem of our link with the mother.
It returns us to our arrival into the world. It returns us to a wound of spiritual identity in which feelings of abandon, exile and lack of protection may have mixed.
For many this narrative may be tiring. We can feel exhausted by this feeling of family weight, of being trapped in histories that “are not ours”. If we feel like this, it is that we have still not integrated two fundamental principles of Natural Time. One, that time is cyclical and includes a balance of light and shadow. If we negate the shadow, we are unbalanced, and we create unbalance. The other is that, in the wheel of life, our work with our lineage and ancestors is part of our vital practice. If we live without cultivating a relationship with our dead, if we have forgotten them, abandoned them, then we are blocking a natural and vital energy flow for our evolution.
The landscape for many can be heavy and dense. This is natural. We are going through an energetic storm. That is why we should go calmly, cutting out that which we need to cut out in order to look after ourselves and centering ourselves in our intention. If we look for refuge we will find it in the realm of the earth, its fruits and its flowers… but let us not forget the roots, let them not dry up or fall into obscurity, since although they may not be seen, they too are life.
Text traslation by Michael Evans
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