Cancer Solar Eclipse 6/20 — Raising a New Flag

This New Moon might be the most powerful of the year.

Why?

1. We have reached the second of three eclipses. Eclipses always offer a ramp-up in intensity because they dance with the nodes of the Moon.
2. This New Moon happens at the critical degree of 0° Cancer. Critical degrees are choice points of significant change.  
3. This New Moon occurs in tandem with the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere thinning the veil of potential for a new vision.  
4. This eclipse happens on the world axis of the cardinal signs, directly squaring the Galactic Center offering a powerful doorway to discovery.
5. We also have Venus, Neptune, Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto, and Mercury retrograde. So the pauses are very real, excavating new information and truths of deep reflection and review.
6. And Mercury is retrograde in the sign of Cancer. The same sign as this New Moon.

No doubt, the themes we are living today have roots in the past. Astrology has a way of looking back to look forward. (Go here, for more on that).

New Moons are always about birthing new potential, and this theme is especially poignant with this one. Beginnings and endings, lines in the sand, clear delineations between the old and new.

The Sabian symbol for this New Moon is telling as well-

“On a ship the sailors lower an old flag and raise a new one 

Elaborating further– “A radical change of allegiance exteriorized in a symbolical act: a point of no return.”

This New Moon carries with it the potential of a massive turning point. Both the individual and the collective are asked to choose which flag to fly on the ship floating in the vast ocean of humanity itself. It highlights the need for both individual expression and collective cooperation. We each have a vital and unique part to play in the whole. This Moon reminds us to honor our own lane as well as respecting others. 

Of course, this time can also reveal some significant tension and polarity. The rising of flags can be moments of unity or conflict, depending on the flag one is flying. Polarity is not necessarily wrong, but shadow layers of strife can certainly arise if we are not radically accountable and transparent. 

Because a keyword for Cancer is family. In our personal charts, it offers insight into this force in our own lives. How we best nurture, connect, and navigate our relations with others. Cancer also represents our lineage, ancestors, and relatives that have not only passed down our inherited traits but the more profound stories we carry. The lovely and the hard. We all have generational joys and traumas, the light of strengths often born out of a tremendous challenge and the pain yet unhealed. 

Much of what is arising has been simmering for centuries, pain bodies that are ready to be honored, heard, and ultimately transformed. 

Once and for all.

 A new flag replacing the old. 

The dawn of a new day. 

Change like that is hard, though. Often we must live through the dismantling before the new is established. There is an inherent desire to hold on to the familiar, lest we splinter the reality we deem as secure. The new is often resisted because it is uncertain, risky, and rocks the foundations of our inner and outer world. The irony, of course, is that we hold onto a facade of security, ignoring the underlying truth that nothing is really certain at all. 

Times of change are going to happen with or without our permission. As the Zen proverb reminds us, the choice is ours, “Let go or be dragged”. 

At some point, we need to see the reality for what it is, not as what we may want it to be. 

In a Solar Eclipse, the Moon temporarily blocks the light of the Sun overshadowing and emphasizing the needed correction. Cancer. Additionally, Mercury began its retrograde cycle on the 18th, also in the sign of Cancer. 

Eclipses are resets and reboots. Times of powerful correction and change. What needs a reset in our current experience? What is most lacking? What is the medicine for the required healing right now? 

Empathy. 

That is the Cancerian work. To let our hearts lead. The force that seeks to understand, not dominate. The force that seeks to unite, not hate. The force that is an extension of service, not greed. The force that allows us to know the rightness or wrongness of something only by the way it feels. 

Because the gift of Cancer is empathy. To live from feeling is to live the most courageous of lives. Real strength is the ability to sit with another or ourselves in our most difficult moments. It is to admit, even embrace our uncertainty and imperfection. To make amends. To own our errors. It is to do better when we know better. 

And just to be clear, empathy doesn’t denote a lack of boundaries. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Cancer is represented by the crab- soft on the inside with a hard exoskeleton, showing that boundaries are a vital part of connection. We cannot have intention with no action, vows with no discipline, or words with no follow-through. Boundaries allow us to stand for something meaningful and more prominent than our egoic shortsightedness. To stand for what is right, not easy. It is to do the honorable thing even when no one else is looking. To allow the new, even (especially) if it challenges the status quo. 

As Howard Zinn is noted for saying (and also the title from his autobiographical memoir on social change). 

“You can’t be neutral on a moving train”. 

So, as you face this time of change, stop thinking so much about what is right and wrong, and FEEL it. Listen. Serve more. Offer support. Sit with another in their story for a while. Get out of the righteousness of your own. For when you find yourself telling another how to feel or judging another for how they feel, you are not in empathy at all. 

Choose to raise the flag and side with empathy. 

~If faced with a decision between what is right for you or for all, choose all.

~If faced with a situation where you can be divisive or kind, choose kindness. 

~If faced with a situation where you can be served or serve, choose service. 

~If faced with a situation that isn’t “affecting” you (yet), but seems to be greatly affecting others choose to help anyway. 

~If faced with a situation in which you are SURE you are right, listen more. 

~If faced with a choice point between standing up in defense of hurt on another or ignoring it, stand tall.

~If faced with a decision to honor leaders with or without empathy. Choose the ones with empathy. 

Be that kind of leader yourself.

Do the RIGHT thing. Not the easy thing.

Empathy is so challenging because to sit with another in the cave of their darkness requires we face that same darkness in ourselves. It is also why it is so vitally important. Because when we truly sit with another, honoring the sharp edges of their vulnerability, we not only help them heal a bit, but we are offered a doorway to heal ourselves.