Starwise Forecast
Remember: July birthday people are entitled to a 10% discount for Readings this month.
The month of Cancer, which ends on the 22nd, is usually one where we can retreat into home, family, friends, nature, that which ‘nurtures us’ and makes us feel more secure.
I certainly hope you have been and will continue to benefit from these kinds of opportunities in these uncertain and turbulent times.
Unfortunately, the sign of Cancer is also going to be aligned, at times, with the major on-going Astrological movements going on in the heavens this year, in mostly challenging but also potentially deeply healing and transformative ways this month.
During some months it seems that the faster-moving monthly transits are able to play out in more of a separate realm of influence and activity, not so directly linked to the larger archetypal, collective transits and transformations taking place.
Well, this last portion of the month of Cancer seems to have our monthly transits lining up right in the ‘cross-hairs’ of the larger collective themes at play now. So, we should all be feeling some of these things in our individual, personal lives.
And then later, we will enter into the beginning of the month of Leo on the 22nd and will have to reckon what that may entail.
1 – We enter July on the day after the Jupiter/Pluto conjunction I mentioned in last month’s forecast.
We also enter with a rising/waxing Moon until the Full Moon on the 5th.
On this very first day, however, Saturn will continue its retrograde motion and move back into the sign of Capricorn, until December 17th, when it will reenter Aquarius in time for its fateful conjunction with Jupiter in Aquarius on the Winter Solstice.
I think that the Saturn in Aquarius period, since March 21st, is relatable to all of the serious hard focus on who your tribe is, whether it’s the group that where’s a mask in public, or doesn’t, who supports the government and scientists, or those more ‘libertarian elements.’ Whether you support the protestors or the police. It is also making us look at, and get more real in a Saturnian fashion, whether the group we have been identifying with is really the group that we want to continue to be aligned with.
At a deeper level, however, Aquarius is not really about clan warfare. Aquarius really wants to bring us to universal unconditional love for everyone in whatever group it is. I think the poignancy of this Saturn in Aquarius period has been the opportunity to bring the nation or, in fact, the world, to a ‘unity moment’ in the face of crisis. I think the poignancy of the moment has been to see this opportunity, in fact more than opportunity, but a crisis of need, and see how it has been being met by the uniquely diverse unity of protestors around the world, and those of us who take the science of covid-19 seriously. But at the same time the utter disdain and lack of such unity in the halls of government thus far. Nonetheless, the challenge is to step back where we can embrace the protestors and the police.
Saturn moving back into Capricorn will probably bring the focus of attention and energy back into the halls of government, along with corporations and universities. As this is occurring with retrograde-motion, I doubt that very much new and constructive will emerge until later.
4/5- The Sun in Cancer/Moon in Capricorn Full Moon will take place at 12:44 am on the East Coast of the U.S., which means that anywhere east of there it will still be on our national holiday of July 4th.
July 4th is normally a time of a lot of Cancerian honoring of our nation, gathering of families and clans, and, hopefully, time spent in the presence of our Mother – Nature.
This year it feels more than a little foreboding with everything that is going on. In fact, later on the 5th, the Moon will conjunct the Jupiter/Pluto conjunction which is involved in the larger collective realities moving in the world, our nations and our individual lives at this time.
This Full Moon is also additionally intense as it entails a Lunar Eclipse, adding its death/rebirth energetics to the lessons being learned.
Following the Full-Moon-peaking of the oppositional tension of the Sun in Cancer conscious awareness of home/family/clan/nation/security and the Moon in Capricorn unconscious attunement to what may also be stated as security but not so much from Cancerian securities, but Capricornian securities such as material production and success, and successful/capable structures and authorities, governmental/societal rules, traditions and responsibilities, there will be a short-lived but positive, harmonious, optimistic aspect.
The Moon in Capricorn will harmonize with, sextile, Neptune in Pisces. This should help soften some of that Capricorn ‘bottom-line’ sensitivity with some compassionate, imaginative, healing, spiritual energies.
8 – Mercury in Cancer, whose rational functioning can be adversely affected by emotional feelings, will square Mars in Aries, who can be overly aggressive and combative. It could be a bit of a confusing feisty/feelie kind of day.
12 – Early in the day, Mercury will go direct which should help with some of the seeming to always going back over old stuff but never going forward feeling during this period with 5 retrograde planets right now.
Later, the Sun in Cancer will enter into a harmonious relationship, a sextile, with Neptune. A wonderful time to allow oneself to be truly blessed and supported unconditionally by the divine, nature, family, your cozy little space.
14/15 – Besides the added intensities of the New and Full Moons this month, these two days feel to be the other period of especial intensity and engagement between the personal and collective themes at play now.
On the 14th the Sun in Cancer will oppose Jupiter in Capricorn, and on the 15th it will oppose Pluto in Capricorn.
Pluto, the slowest moving of the modern traditionally accepted planets is still forcing us to look into the deepest roots of our Capricornian structures around, society, government, business or our own psyches, to see where those structures are based on fear and where they are based on love.
Jupiter in Capricorn is normally quite successful early in life in financial terms, but needs to transform to greater and greater spiritual goals, or else certain challenges and frustrations will be met.
Pluto and Jupiter are already working this out together right now, in terms of available energies of transforming our modern economy, incorporating a much deeper look into who it works for and for whom it doesn’t. Today the watery emotional energies of Cancer will be pitted against this Capricornian work, and there will be the need to accommodate to the needs of both.
20 – On the 20th we will have the annual Sun/Moon, New Moon conjunction in Cancer. It will be occurring, however, in the last degrees of the sign Cancer, right opposite all of the major Pluto/Jupiter/Saturn collectively transformative energies in Capricorn right now.
So, as with the last Full Moon, there feels to be a major focusing of the monthly Astrological key points in connection to the larger collective transformations taking place on a longer scale.
This time it will entail the New Moon, the opportunity to re-align, re-focus and re-dedicate the Solar conscious and Lunar unconscious energies, as pertaining the energies of a particular sign. At this time, it is the caring, nurturing, belonging, family, tribal, security needs of Cancer, which are always being re-aligned and re-focused at this New Moon. These, however, are going to be moving into opposition to the Jupiter in Capricorn, and then the Pluto in Capricorn and then the newly arrived Saturn in Capricorn energies.
To give the end of the day a kind of ‘final challenge,’ we will then have the Sun move into opposition to Saturn. Now predictions are always tricky because there are so many possibilities as to how things will play out. That is why I try, unless there is something more specific in play such as someone’s or a nation’s individual Astrological chart, I try to share the obvious symbologies involved to give clues as to how to recognize these things as they play out in our individual or collective lives.
Sun/Saturn aspects are usually going to involve themes of authority or authority figures, or your own confidence in your own ability to project control or authority over your own environment to others.
The polarizing energies of Cancer/Capricorn can be viewed a bit as Mom vs. Dad. These are non-politically correct stereotypes perhaps, but Cancer is the classic mother archetype: caring and nurturing but perhaps possessive and overly attached to the needs of family.
Capricorn is the classic Father archetype: loyal, dedicated to your later success in life, but also potentially overly-authoritative and restrictive as to what that success should look like.
With the Cancer New Moon, we should have this annual opportunity to really focus in on, and re-align, our values and intentions around Cancer themes.
This year, however, with the oppositions to these planets in Capricorn, and especially Saturn, the planet which rules Capricorn, it feels like there could be a big fight between Mom and Dad, or at least their need to form a new conscious partnership.
Of course, the most likely scenario is that we project the Saturnian bad-authority archetype on outer figures, i.e. the government or the media, definitely whatever political party you don’t ascribe to, etc.
This day looks painful but also looks like an opportunity for a lot of necessary ‘soul-searching’ for answers and resolutions rather than just enemies to blame.
22 – The Sun enters the month of Leo with a nice positive aspect happening.
Later in the day Mercury, now moving direct, will once again harmonize with, sextile, Uranus in Taurus. Uranus is the ‘higher octave of Mercury’ and always endows the ability to think or communicate ‘outside of the box.’
27 – There are a few Astrological transits today. The first one, however, is the longer-term 2020 dance going on between Jupiter and Neptune. They are having three harmonious sextiles this year. The first one was February 20th, right when the virus was reaching pandemic proportions, although for us here in the U.S. it was still largely active in other lands. Nonetheless, it engendered Neptunian compassion for those who were suffering as well as an awareness of a potential Neptunian vulnerability. Especially as this was something unseen, potentially deadly, difficult to control and spreading rapidly.
To understand the Jupiterian effect I can’t help but look to what Hilarion* says about Jupiter in Capricorn:
On the positive side, Jupiter well-aspected in Capricorn promises good success in the role in life, whether in a career, as a parent, or whatever. The worse the afflictions, the harder it will be to remain at the successful peak once attained. The key to dealing with Jupiter afflicted in Capricorn is to be prepared to shift goals as the life passes through its various phases. The early success in worldly terms must give way to progressively higher spiritual goals, or else frustration and loss will be encountered in terms of the role in life.
Long before the pandemic I had been feeling that all of the influences working on this Jupiter in Capricorn this year, most notably, the conjunctions with Pluto, would relate the need to effect a greater transformation of the way we live materially and in the way in which our economy works. That there needs to be ‘progressively higher spiritual goals’ rather than just a ‘survival of the fittest’ or a ‘top of the hill,’ type mentality operating it.
The vulnerability of the virus has upped the ante on that endeavor. No matter how wealthy you are, if the greater collective is not compassionately having access to adequate healthcare or enough resources, and everyone on the planet is ill and spreading the virus, being ‘on top of the hill’ is not going to be all that you once thought it might be.
This challenge is being fought in all the nations of the world and of our ability to function together as a human species.
The themes seem to be particularly poignant here in the U.S. where, at the time of this writing, states who decided to go for a pre-mature focusing on reopening of the economy are now having their greatest upsurge in new covid cases since the beginning of the crisis.
Obviously, it would be easy to apply these same symbolic themes to the current crisis around racial justice.
I don’t know where we will be with all of this when this peaks on July 27th, or during the last Jupiter/Neptune sextile on October 11th later this year, but I, for one, will be watching, and trying to benefit from this opportunity to bring in a higher orientation to my Jupiterian belief system, one that does entail true Neptunian unconditional love, compassion, and mystical surrender for all of God’s children.
Later in the day, however, we will have two shorter-lived but tense transits.
First, Venus in Gemini will square Neptune in Pisces. This shall be emotionally challenging, possibly confusing. Venus in Gemini can tend to use intellect to stabilize emotional uncertainties. This will be well neigh impossible when it is in tension with the Goddess of the Sea, in her own sign of Pisces. I get an image of an emotional, but chatty, grand-daughter at odds with, but learning to surrender to a devotional acknowledgement of the profound archetypal instincts flowing through the being of her grandmother, or her lineage of Grandmothers.
Later, Mercury in Cancer, which can also produce a mental/emotional blurredness and lack of clear effectiveness, will square Mars in Aries, which can be courageous but also overly impulsive, possibly violent and aggressive.
So, both of these aspects caution us to be active and not reactive.
It seems like a day where the best advice is to not get too caught up in the fast-moving daily irritations and challenges that will be facing us and make use of the larger harmony peaking between Jupiter and Neptune today, to help us to stay aware of the larger more important issues at hand.
30 – A couple of Mercurial aspects today, first a tense one and then a soothing, harmonious one.
First, we will have Mercury in Cancer, which I’ve described a couple times previously in this Forecast, as having a tendency to where you use your thinking to try to figure out your feelings, or your feelings have too much effect on your thinking, today moving into opposition to Jupiter in Capricorn.
Tensions with Jupiter, rather than creating conflicts tend to bring the Jupiterian normally enthusiastic, optimistic, generous, beneficent energies of Jupiter into Jupiterian exaggeration, ‘biting off more than you can chew,’ and possibly overly fanatical expressions.
Jupiter in Capricorn is certainly one of the more low-key, more serious (sometimes overly serious) practically oriented signs for Jupiter to be functioning in. It has, however, and continues to be, pretty deeply involved in some profound transformations on the planet this year through his sextiles with Neptune and, especially, his conjunctions with Pluto.
I see today’s rather short-lived transit as some mental/emotional dysfunctionality which may find itself in evidence in confronting the longer term, deeper, Capricornian material, economic, authoritative realities in our governmental/societal/individual structures. The caution I would make is to not get too pumped-up and fanatical about it, or to hook your wagon to such a type of train that may be likely to go off of the rails.
Blessings,
Steffan Vanel
* Astrology Plus by Hilarion, the book which I am always quoting from and has been out of print for some time, is now available as an EBook on Amazon.