“New Moon Renewal,” chalk pastel by Maria Theresa Maggi
Welcome to Maria’s StarGarden, my dear readers. I like to ask as I begin that the forces of love and light surround us and bless our communication.
The moon is new at 14 degrees Cancer of the tropical zodiac on July 5, 2024 at 3:58 PM Pacific Daylight Time. Cancer is the fourth sign of the tropical zodiac, and the first water sign. It rules the 4th house, opposite the midheaven, sometimes referred to as the nadir. The time of day it represents on the wheel of the zodiac is midnight, and its season is Summer, ushered in when the sun moves into O degrees Cancer in the northern hemisphere. Cancer energy holds sway over our ancestral and family ties. It is naturally ruled by the moon, and it calls us to inhabit our deepest emotional instincts. It often describes the parent from whom we learned or didn’t learn how to nurture, or the parent who had the most hidden emotional impact, and what that means for us. In this way, the energy of Cancer is compels us toward the past, while also inching us toward the latter part of our lives, during which connecting to our family ties and our deep selves takes on profound and multiple meanings. If Cancer is strong in your birth chart, at the very least there is interest in the past, but often the past is also revered in some way, because it represents a time of known emotional parameters, even if those were limiting in some ways.
Last summer when I wrote about the Cancer new moon, the theme was “coming home.” This time I would say it’s “going deep.” This summer the emotional depths of Cancer relate to our family ties and our public ones, too, since Cancer rules public mood and feeling. Both these dynamics are at the forefront. All the water signs, beginning with Cancer, preside over endings, It is often when we face an ending, whether inevitable or potential, that we search or discover our emotional depths in order to deal with it. And as the new moon teaches us over and over, beginnings are often invisible, couched in what look like endings, or the seeming nothingness that often comes with them.
This summer’s new Cancer moon is in a relationship of automatic flow with Saturn retrograding in Pisces. Pisces is the last of the water signs and the ultimate “end” of the zodiac where time falls away and eternal takes over. This lunar cycle we may either be dealing with the loss of a patriarchal family member or of one who functioned as a family head. It’s also quite possible that we deal with the loss of a beloved public figure we saw as nurturing or fundamental to caring for people suffering. Since Cancer rules the stomach in the physical body, this figure or even institution could have to do with feeding people, food supplies or health around diet or food. If we don’t experience an outright loss, we might experience the loss of who we thought a leader was, or the end of an institutional program that provided such much needed nurturing for us.