What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and woman?
Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising, and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant implacable resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible.
~James Joyce, Ulysses, Ithaca
The Full Moon in Cancer happens on December 25th, Christmas Day, at 6:11 a.m. EST at 3 degrees Cancer-Capricorn.
During this Full Moon Mercury and Venus are in a wide sextile, and Mercury and Mars are in a square. Though squares have the quality of Mars, and Mars is Mars, this takes place in signs that are restrained, in the case of Capricorn, and diplomatic or passive aggressive, in the case of Mars in Libra. More emphatically mitigating any potential drama is Mercury in a trine aspect to Jupiter.
Aspects like these show that it can be easy communicate jovially. It will be easier to look at the bright side of situations. If among family, it will be easier to generously overlook snide or passive aggressive comments. On the other hand the trine facilitates an easy pour of energy and Jupiter’s tendency to put more on it might make it easier to point out faults or hang-ups from the past. These might be comments that just come out as unstoppable word vomit. At the most immediate level though, this set of aspects can show up as an expansive ability to know and honor our own desires and emotional needs.
As the Moon waxes to exactly Full, Uranus stations and pivots to apparently change direction so it is possible that there is some unexpected event that takes place on this day. This can be a breakthrough, a development, an advancement, or a sense of doing whatever the hell you want without explaining yourself.
The feeling of Uranus direct is active for several days before and after its actual station, so we might notice that routines are thrown off, something about our lives is unusual, or that things in our environment are being done differently than normal. The unusual events, conversations, realizations that take place around this time are good bookmarks to note for Uranus’ next fast zip through the zodiac. Uranus will get up to 24 degrees Aries in 2016 before backtracking in to 20 degrees by year’s end.
Uranus turns direct at 16 degrees in time for the Moon in Cancer to apply a square to it while it is making an opposition to Pluto. The Moon in Cancer is a strong Moon, meaning that it can easily express significations of the Moon: nurturing, family, home-making, growing life, emotions, imagination, creativity, and artistic ability. The strength of the Moon at this time in addition to Mercury and Venus’ close aspects to Jupiter with the North Node indicate that if there is something harsh that transpires, it comes with a concurrent cushioning that serves to bless, protect, or soften.
Cancer is the sign of the weaver. I read a great short story by Lidia Yuknavitch recently, quoted here, and since I read it one line in particular has been occupying the middle quarters of my mind, coming into my conscious awareness when I’m talking with my close female friends, or thinking about disjoint ideas, or sinking into a feeling I want to embody in a particular moment, situation, or day.
The line is, “[Lithuanian Water Goddess] Laume values sincerity, and next industriousness on the part of mothers, particularly the women’s work of weaving.”
The women’s work of weaving.
What is the women’s work of weaving? Like weaving baskets? Weaving pieces of fabric into large tapestries? Weaving the past with the future? Weaving separate people into a community?
What I want it to mean is the women’s work of weaving is taking what seems unrelated and disconnected and filling in that space with a strong and invisible connecting thread.
For Cancer that thread is invisible to the eye but felt in the heart, which makes it that much stronger. Cancer is ruled by the Moon, and both sign and planet are associated with the Feminine, and strongly with Woman and Women’s issues. Ruled by the Moon, Cancer vacillates just as the face of the Moon does, and like the Moon, a part of Cancer is always hidden, even when they are shining their brightest, and even when they are among those to whom they are closest. But those who are in Cancer’s inner circle know when something is up by the swimmy look in their googly eyes.
A break for a helpful tip: Ladies, if you love or can tolerate moodiness and want someone who is going to completely nourish your body — develop intimacy with a person with a placement or two in Cancer 😉
Cancer is a sign with an innate wisdom about the cycle of life, and especially what it takes to grow and nourish life. This is an incredibly perceptive and astute sign, due in great part to its profound ability to see the invisible and act on it. And this astuteness has to do with both perceiving and inciting emotion, one of the most under-nourished facets of modern life — but gaining steadily in public awareness.
Take for example, the broad popularity of Danielle LaPorte’s body of work, which is wholly based on structuring life around a set of core feelings.
For another example, take the term “emotional labor”, which refers to the raising awareness around the work of emotional succor, taking care of bodies, and general healthy relationship with one’s emotions which in turn strengthens personal relationships. This is as opposed to expecting a partner or other person, particularly female bodied, to be the one who tends to these parts of life.
As another example, something to ponder: that emotional labor is activated every time you have a visceral reaction to something disseminated in the media. This becomes more concerning and telling when we remember that the digital world makes up a large part of how we are connected, to say nothing of televised forms of media, the 24/7 news cycle, and the agendas of people who control media outlets.
In her book Anatomy of the Spirit, Medical Intuitive Caroline Myss relates that all emotional experiences become biology, which means emotions are stored as data in the physical body, which medical intuitives and other kinds of trained intuitives can read with a great measure of accuracy.
This puts the emotional experience over and above any other, especially where we are prone or trained to think reasoning matters more. Reasoning is an undeniably important part of civilization, but not to the extent that dwarfs facets of life that are important to us in practice but that we might not engage with as consciously or as often.
Finally, consider that in many spiritual traditions, emotions matter either implicitly or explicitly at the moment of death. A priest is present at the moment of death in the Catholic tradition in case you want to confess or convert. In a number of Eastern traditions, there are beliefs that either what you are thinking strongly at the moment you die informs where you go or what you become after death, or that the accumulated emotional experience over the course of the life is what remains after the death of the body.
This point about emotional labor also has to do with the Virgo-Pisces axis, which is activated in our skies through April 2017.
We will have plenty of time to work skillfully with our emotional life once Mars enters water-sign Scorpio, where Mars functions very well, and where he will remain for the bulk of 2016.
Wishing you a wonderful holiday season and a lovely Full Mooooon.
With love,
Ichrak
