January’s full moon in Cancer, the Moon’s own sign, is on 16th July 2014 at 4.54 am GMT and it marks the midway point of this current lunar cycle. This full moon brings light to the seeds we planted at the New Moon on 1st January. With this full moon in feeling, watery Cancer the emotional energy is flowing strongly.
But this flowing watery Cancer Moon has a few other interesting minor aspects at this time. The full Moon is making a stressful 135 degree aspect from Chiron forming a sesquiquadrate, also a square to Ceres and a conjunction with Black Moon Lilith. We might have some interesting ‘family’ themed residual issues left over from the difficult astrology over Christmas, and a lot more besides that.
A Cancer moon, Chiron, Black Moon Lilith and Ceres all make for a rather edgy combination. The theme is clearly feminine – the denied, dark feminine aspects juxtaposed with the sacred feminine, denied feelings and our relationship to the body. The underlining message is clear; what we reject in ourselves is much less scary if we have the courage to look at it now. So the awakening of strongly repressed feelings is perfect timing right now.
At the last New Moon in Capricorn on 1st January, there were some difficult and dynamic aspects to manage. But despite it being a grind, these planets, and most noticeably Mars, helped us to forge ahead and make some solid progress. All great, but this full moon tells a very different story.
I see it as this. The great SHE beneath all the roles and layers of patriarchy, culture and heredity is now no longer willing to put up and shut up. The damage that our current paradigm has created from repression of the feminine principle is now being felt at the deepest layer of our souls and quite simply it can’t be repressed anymore – the pressure is on for our healing. Our emotional inner landscape has become an archaic place within the soul and now it’s an awakening dinosaur. This will be an emotionally raw time for some so we need to take care of each other.
In addition to this, in the lower spectrum of Cancer we find what’s habitual and familiar; we are motivated by feelings of belonging and safety under the influence of a Cancer Moon. So it’s time to get in touch with what we avoid. We are habituated in what’s familiar and safe and the full moon is putting the pressure on what needs our awareness and attention. This full moon might illuminate our most entrenched and seemingly irreconcilable history. Never a bad thing.
With Cancer we connect to our Cosmic Mother, the Earth Mother and the power of her magnetics. Her lunar path is one of receiving, drawing in, focusing and grounding of light. Most of the time though we squander our light, focusing it outwards in a solar sense on outer purpose, this can also be the shadow of the month’s earlier Capricorn New Moon. Did we get sucked into chasing appreciation, recognition and other fulfilment in the outer world? Have we been avoiding inner purpose – our highest purpose of which is to be a conduit of our divinity, of love?
Despite the fact that the heightened emotions at a full Moon mean we generally express more outwardly, it rewards us to go inward right now. If we can allow these difficult planetary energies to register more on an internal level, then we can create an incredibly receptive space for powerful illumination of shadow.
It’s not about pushing or forcing right now either. Both as a world collectively and individually, we are mostly trying to flow upstream, against the flow. We don’t need any more teachers of that. Now we need to learn how to flow to the ocean, that’s downstream.
So it’s very different ground to the Capricorn new moon. It’s time to honour the feminine qualities of relationship and connection. It’s about cultivating a quality of light, an authentic feeling of safety and love within, which is able to listen to and receive others, our family and friends.
To receive others, and it’s a good time for this, we need to genuinely focus on what people are saying, if we are somewhere else thinking solely about what’s on our minds, then we are not really in relationship with that person in the moment. When the deeper qualities of the feminine principle are nurtured in our relationships something within us let’s go providing a space for alchemy. Awareness focused on the receiving helps us restore our light within.
Whether you see your purpose as making your dreams real in matter and form, having healthy relationships, or being a vehicle of love, the path feels more circular and feminine right now. We might need to relax our Capricorn flavoured expectations of life a little and trust and let things flow. Life purpose struggles to flow through a body that is always busy doing which won’t restore us right now. So open, receive and be a vessel for our highest purpose of all, a vessel for love.
