Soften Your Shell
Hello,
Here’s where we pause. We take a breath and soften. Releasing the chatter inside our minds and the need to know and feel ourselves feeling again. As soon as the Sun left Gemini and Cancer season kicked in I felt a palpable shift. Stirring porridge on the stove, my thoughts stopped firing and I took the deepest breath, the first huge sigh in ages. My shoulders dropped and I felt the slowdown. The instinct to stop and be still.
Cancer energy is so instinctual. Ruled by the Moon, its highly developed empathic antenna senses what we need before we do, intuitively responding to our inner calls for care. Ready to swoop in with love, nourishment and protection.
What are your instincts telling you? What are you feeling strongly that you need at this time? This very tender time. How are you protecting yourself and nurturing yourself? Is your own Moon ~ aka your emotional self ~ sending signals for some self-care?
We’re in the midst of so much change. The major energetic reset I wrote about at the beginning of the year is happening. You’re feeling it and your nervous system is likely to be feeling it even more. This Cancer season opens you up and allows you to catch up, resetting your instincts so you feel more of what’s right for you, for this year and years to come.
Now we nurture. Trusting that slowing down and softening is our best medicine.
Emotional Nourishment
A very satisfying and soulful change we’re feeling is Jupiter’s recent shift on 10 June from Gemini into Cancer. For the past year in Gemini, Jupiter ~ our meaning maker ~ was busy. Our curiosity blew up. We were inspired and lit up, wanting to know everything and communicate it to everyone. Our desire to express ourselves increased and opportunities to be heard happened. Voices got loud, very loud.
Jupiter quietens in Cancer. It reads the room better, intuitively picking up on sensitivities and soaking up its surroundings. Happiest on the home front and finding security in our sanctuary, the simplest acts of care ~ and self-care ~ are enhanced.
Every day experiences become rich, meaningful sources of inspiration.
Our gentler selves are encouraged too and for the coming year we’ll take on a more supportive role alongside each other. Wisdom will be gained from coming together and listening to our gut responses, learning about what’s felt on the inside…so much more interesting than what’s happening to our outsides. Our concerns centering on what benefits and nourishes us and helps us feel whole.
Because when we feel properly, genuinely cared for ~ and able to care for ourselves ~ we sense there’s every chance we’ll be okay. We can look forward and hope our way into the future. This is integral to Jupiter’s function in sensitive, protective Cancer. Ever-expansive Jupiter must feel connected to something greater than itself and in Cancer its care must carry beyond itself.
Your Hope Orientation
Jupiter has everything to do with our hope. We hope all day long. ‘Hope you’re well’, ‘Hope you had a lovely weekend’, ‘Hope you’re having a great week’, ‘Hope you’re okay’.
How well do you hope? In your day to day life how do you find hope? And how often do you find yourself hoping?
Jupiter’s placement in your natal chart is your inbuilt hope gauge. It’s where we find possibility, positivity, inspiration and expectation. It gives you a good time and gives you a reason to go on, connecting us with a larger picture, an expanded vision, a sense of meaning and a belief system.
Jupiter is all about meaning. A huge believer, even on our darkest day it will often find some kind of meaning ~ a sign or a symbol ~ offering a glimmer of hope. This is your faith talking, not your thinking function, intuitively knowing there’s a better way, another option for you.
‘Hope is a calling, it is a practice, a muscle. And, like any muscle, it can be flexed and strengthened.’
~ Krista Tippett
Journalist, author and broadcaster of On Being, Krista Tippett believes hope is an orientation. I agree it can be consciously cultivated and our leaning towards it strengthened, but I also know from my astrological practice ~ and you’ll know this from your own observations ~ some people have an easier time accessing hope and holding onto it. Whether its hardwiring, conditioning, life experience or a challenging astrological transit, some times feel harder than others to believe in possibility.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if astrology could answer everything and Jupiter’s transit through Cancer would turn us all into Pollyannas playing the Glad Game? It’s true, Jupiter in Cancer won’t bring sunshine and lollipops every day but it can reorient us towards what is available: a sensitivity for what’s good for us. A yearning for nourishing, life-sustaining experiences that bring meaning to our existence.
Hope builds from here. We can either muscle through these times, hardcore hurting, or soften, let go a little and catch a wave, allowing something bigger than ourselves take us higher.
Open Your Mind
A heads up, on 9 July electrifying, stimulating Uranus will flip its switch into Gemini where it intends to liberate our minds. Right now, Uranus is at 29° Taurus, the final degree, aka the anaretic degree. Here it rocks back and forth, testing our foundations, teasing us with a myriad of mindf@#ks and uncertainties as we hold on tight to what we know.
Uranus is the changemaker. Its lightning rod effect disrupts and shakes systems up, but really it isn’t unkind. It wakes us up. In Gemini it wants to free our minds so we can reconnect with our own thoughts. Thinking independently, originally, provocatively, straying from the group think herd mentality.
Prepare yourself with exposure therapy.
It’s always wise to work with Uranus rather than against it because if you don’t change, it won’t hesitate to change you. Start by refining your listening skills. Be discerning about the content you consume and the voices you listen to. That doesn’t mean staying in our thought bubbles. It means listening to all perspectives, even ones we’d rather not hear. Be curious, ask questions, find your common ground and build from there. Notice the language you use too because our words are our future. The words we commit to shape the world we live in. Being able to talk with each other begins that conversation.
For now, consider this a taster, an experiment of sorts. We’ll be finding our way through this world of enhanced communication and new ideas until 9 November when Uranus shifts back into the safety of Taurus, before properly landing in Gemini on 27 April 2026 and fully opening our ears and eyes.
Your Cancer New Moon
We’re swimming in deep emotional waters. A wellspring of feeling offering self-reflection, self-awareness and the possibility of a very real and nourishing way ahead.
But first we must feel, giving space for our emotions to find their way through us and reveal what they need ~ their complex, individual needs. This New Moon isn’t subtle. Nuanced with layers and lifetimes of built-up emotion to excavate and sort through, it’s personal and feels vulnerable. And that’s a New Moon for you ~ it’s a key unlocking a part of ourselves we’re ready to invest in.
Try not to turn away when your feelings reveal themselves. You’ll have to come out of your shell to see them, gently letting down your guard and baring your raw, molluscy self. You won’t go under because Jupiter’s wildly generous presence so close to the Sun and Moon is offering a life raft, a higher power for you to hold onto.
What can you summon internally to support you? What is the special care you can give yourself to see you through?
Just before I started writing this I read Nick Cave’s most recent issue of The Red Hand Files. In response to a reader questioning how he prepares for the intensity of his latest concerts he described how before every performance he closes his eyes for 15 minutes and brings to mind those dear to him who have passed away, assigning them qualities or powers that reflect their personalities, calling on this energy to carry him. For his youngest son Arthur, he calls on his joyfulness, for his eldest child Jethro he asks for his anarchic spirit. Courage from his mother, dynamism from his father, pure creativity from an ex-girlfriend and so on. By the time he’s finished communing with his loved ones and summoning their superpowers he feels a ‘deep spiritual empowerment’ and can take to the stage carried by ‘an energy that illuminates what is truly meaningful and what is not’. This is how he transcends himself and gives his best, never wasting the opportunity he’s been given.
This is the Cancer New Moon in operation, reminding us we need beliefs larger than ourselves to hold onto, a presence or a practice we can invoke and attach meaning to. A kind of comfort that supports us and allows us to support others in turn. Never wasting the opportunity to offer love (and self-love), nurturance and care.
This New Moon calls us to feel something greater than we understand fully, summoning faith ~ not blind faith ~ and trust that we’ll be okay.
I hope you’re feeling okay.
Love,
Kristin xxx
This Cancer New Moon will be exact at 8.31pm AEST, 3.31am Pacific Time and 11.31am GMT on 25 June. New Moon energy is felt for around three or four days so don’t worry if you’re slow to read this. The New Moon potential will still be with you.