tomarrow is the New Moon in Cancer

the moon is "exalted" in Cancer, which means that Cancer is the sign that rules the moon. the mooniest of the signs

7:19pm PDT
11° 32’

Ah…a New Moon in Cancer, our chance to be held by the sweetness of love that pulsates through every living thing. With a Sun/Moon/Venus conjunction in Cancer, this is the New Moon to completely surrender into the heart of love: compassion for self and others. On this New Moon of love, we can truly cultivate the intention for living each day as a loving, heartful, mindfully, compassionate being.

If your life has been characterized by disconnection and alienation, this is the New Moon to honestly appraise the usefulness of defending against deeply felt emotional interactions with others. This is the time to look with real compassion at the insecurities and co-dependencies that arise from refusing to recognize and deal with inner emptiness. Thanks to all the retrograde planets—Chiron in Aquarius (wounding from emotional disconnection), Uranus in Pisces/Neptune in Aquarius (awakening into oneness), Jupiter in Capricorn (practical generosity) and Pluto in Sagittarius—we may all be palpably experiencing the inner conflict of existential meaninglessness and spiritual interconnectedness. The beauty of the human heart lies is its ability to feel a full range of emotion that arises when faced with the fundamental paradox of the human condition: we are essentially alone and ultimately one with all other existent life. Humans seek love and relationship in order to feel whole; yet real wholeness arises from self-realization. If we listen to the longings of a lonely heart, we can find tools to help us surrender into the ocean of love that is always all around us; always accessible to us.

Cancer makes everything more sensitive as it heightens the brain’s natural intuitive capacities: our interactions, our ability to intuit the meta-messages of any action or statement are realized when Sun, Moon and Venus are in Cancer. With relational Jupiter opposing Venus/Moon in Cancer and inconjunct Mercury in Gemini, we can sense the meta-message behind the words, we can also feel the full impact of any interaction we might have, before it occurs. And happily, Mars in cautious, deliberate Virgo makes any action we might take more considered and careful.


Cancer is about emotional nurturance and above all craves emotional security. Need I mention that it takes at least two to heal a relationship? This means that if you want to work on a relationship, this is one of the few New Moons where ritual is best done with all involved parties present and ready to do some serious work. Remember that half the battle is finding a way to express truth with love (Moon in Cancer) and a willingness to see the reality and deeper meaning of any relationship (Jupiter in Capricorn.) And Venus in Cancer should make it a whole lot easier to listen patiently and lovingly to the responses of others.

Cancer rules family, home, and the archetypal mothering energy. Saturn in Virgo adds the energy of the archetypal father to this New Moon. This is the best New Moon to work on your home life and the quality of interaction that goes on in your family. Though nothing is more important than family, it’s hard not to get caught up in the day-to-day hassles of family life. These days, most families are overwhelmed and harried by a never-ending cycle of work, school and extra-curricular activities. Since rushed lives leave little time to just "be" together, this is the New Moon to make a commitment to bringing relaxation back into the family schedule. We all need time to stop and really appreciate our loved ones: to fully embrace them, look deeply into their eyes, allowing the heart to soar in the recognition of oneness.

Generation gaps often create poor relationships between parents and children. This is especially so with teenagers who need to separate and parents who desperately want to protect. This is a great New Moon to redefine rules and extend boundaries for teenagers, by creating a contract that is based on mutual respect, personal responsibility and trustworthiness. Supporting a teenager’s need for independence can be done with love.

This is also a great New Moon to engage in healing work around your own childhood/family system issues. Most of us come at our adult lives based on our desire to recreate or disengage from our family patterns of behavior. Astrology is a great tool for delineating introjected familial patterns of behavior that affect our behavior in current relationships. Once the issues are delineated, there are many psychotherapeutic techniques for working on healing childhood trauma, and this is a great New Moon cycle to investigate issues of and methods for emotional healing. For those of you that have emotional issues with people who are no longer available, this is the New Moon to use the powerful psychic and intuitive power of Cancer to work on an energetic level and heal your own internal pain. Sometimes Cancer never knows when to cut the cords and stop trying to take care of other people. This is the right New Moon to take a hard look at your own patterns of neediness and codependency and let go of any strong attachments to constant worry.

This is the right New Moon to begin letting go of old defense and protection mechanisms that may be doing you, and your relationships, more harm than good. Do you crave love as a way to fill up your own inner emptiness? Do you mother others as a way to bury your own inadequacies in feelings of power? Do you hold on to unhealthy relationships because of a deep sense of unworthiness? The answers to these important questions often teach us much about our own underlying motivations for being loved. Wishing yourself well with metta is a beautiful way to cultivate compassionand lovingkindness for self and others. You can find recorded metta practices on my web site: www.lisadalemiller.com/metta.htm

Cancer represents the archetypal nurturing Mother. This is a great New Moon to investigate the Sacred Feminine and incorporate this wisdom into your daily life and by extension, into our world. The Way of the Sacred Feminine is one of love, caring, understanding, compassion, peace and joy. Our world suffers from a lack of Her presence and Her values in our governmental, educational, business and religious institutions. It is of course our job to reinvigorate our workplaces, communities, schools and politics with Her wisdom. The New Moon in Cancer rules the power of the archetypal feminine. The time has come for women at every corner of the globe, of every race, every nationality and every religion, to rise up and break the cycle of female powerlessness. It is our responsibility to wake up to reality, raise our voices as one, throw off our chains, and withdraw our political and economic support from the male-dominated institutions that have failed to create a safe, secure, and fair world. Women have to support each other in an effort to take our places as heads of State, corporate leaders and religious authorities. There is no one that will free us: we must liberate ourselves and insist that the way of the heart, the language and action of love is the only policy we will support with our votes and with our dollars. Women have the power, but we consistently refuse to use it. Let us not abdicate any longer! Use some of your ritual time to release indifference and inaction and come up with a personal action-plan to empower women.

Since Cancer rules caregiving, this is the New Moon to take a good hard look at how much you give to those in need. Do you volunteer at a local school, shelter, food bank, environmental group, children’s educational service, eldercare facility or hospice? How much have you extended your definition of family? One of my favorite Cancer New Moon cycle activities is to go through my house and gather up clothing and belongings I haven’t used for the last year, and then donate them. It reduces clutter in my own life and allows me to share the wealth with others.

For those of you who use your intuitive skills in your work, this is certainly the time to start any new programs of study to increase your intuition. Those of you who call yourselves healers and spiritual teachers should use this New Moon to look at your own motivations. Do you crave attention and get off on the neediness of others? Are you disempowering through advice-giving, rather than empowering a client’s ability to find their own answers, their own inner healing? Venus, Sun and Moon in Cancer require an honest appraisal of emotional agendas. And Mars/Saturn in Virgo and Jupiter in Capricorn challenge us to consider how much our own work as healers is rooted in a narcissistic need for love and attention. So don’t be afraid to ask yourself these tough questions. In the end it can only benefit your clients.

Any of you who wish to get in touch with your own intuitive capabilities couldn’t ask for a more psychically potent New Moon than this one. Try asking for wisdom while gazing into a bowl of water or crystal ball or drawing a few cards from a Tarot deck. You will be amazed at how much contact you already have with your own inner truth. You already have your own answers, and ready access to them. It is just a matter of opening up to your own inner voice and then trusting it. This is certainly the perfect New Moon to open the channel to inner wisdom and self-knowing.

So take care of your emotional life by committing to an insistence on love and kindness in all your interactions. This is the way of Cancer!

©2008 Lisa Dale Miller
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