Sun in Cancer: A Rising Tide

Image based on a photo of Okinawa's Kondoi Beach taken by Yasunon Koide in 2003

Every year, the Sun’s shift into Cancer heralds the onset of a new season: winter in the southern hemisphere and summer in the northern hemisphere. As someone who lives in California, the Sun in Cancer rings to me of hot days to come and hotter days to follow after that. With them will come all those balmy evenings which lure people outside to sit and chat by candlelight.

Sometimes I say that come June I disappear underground, ne’er to reappear until late October. But the truth is, summer has its charms – even to an astrologer with a greater passion for rain than shine.

Besides, with the dawning of Cancer comes a shift of zodiacal hemisphere. Cancer is where the Sun moves from the proactive side of the chart which is all about exploration and independent learning into the zodiac’s six signs which in their unique and variable ways are about responding to input and building on – or from – that which is ‘already known.’

Which of course includes personal experience.

 
Cancer being the first of the water signs, this is is a time of basics and basic responses to life and life’s necessities. When you think of Cancer in that light, it’s easy to understand why it’s the sign of family, home, culture, nationality and land. Less evident but no less basic are other Cancer ‘necessities,’ including sleep. Cancer is the sign of the dream we dream at night just as Scorpio is the dream we hope life will allow us to have and Pisces the dream beyond hope…the faith and the fantasy.

This year’s solar Cancer ingress has the Sun joining a Venus transit of the sign which is not just already in progress, but moving towards its end. This combination of Venus (that which creates results) plus the many basic drives, moves and instincts the Sun in early Cancer is sure to prompt is our seeing and going for that which needs doing. Our Venus eye is on the world around us, seeing where and how we can best fulfill our needs even as the Sun represents the laying out of plans.

For a week or so we go about filling our schedule with the aiming at checking off boxes and some very important lists. Or are they really important?

The Sun enters Cancer on June 21st at 5:05 in the morning, UT/+0 time. Mercury is heading for a retrograde which will begin in under a week, and as we all know from experience, the days just before Mercury hits its retrograde station tend to be filled with a sense of focused urgency.

Did I mention Mercury is also in Cancer?

The Mercury in Cancer part raises the emotional pitch of our thoughts. And maybe even the stakes. But maybe not. Maybe things just feel urgent because as we move towards Mercury’s station our mind wants to be rid of the increased awareness of our own thoughts. Humans tend to think best when they’re not thinking about thinking, and yet this year…

…Let’s just say that a lot of folks will be highly aware of their thoughts. And that will make many of them self-conscious in that singularly on-the-edge-of-frustration and susceptible to levels of angst which inhabits the realm of being half-past self-aware.

All this is courtesy of a highly unusual combination: Mercury heading for its retrograde station in the same sign Jupiter is about to ingress.

In fact, as the Sun enters Cancer, Jupiter is moving into 29 mentally impassioned degrees of Gemini.

So it’s the combination of Mercury and Jupiter which amps up the experience of early Sun in Cancerian.

Is that good or is that bad? It could be both, it could be neither. Whatever life is for the first week or so of this passage however, it’s the sort of period which for reasons probably inexplicable makes some kind of imprint on us. Whether it’s the silence of destitution, a strained but muffled period of boredom or the experiencing of your own frenzied pace as a dance ridiculous or precious, Jupiter’s pressing through the last of the zodiac’s originating sign of mentality is sure to enlarge some impression during these days.

Jupiter in Gemini is mentality blown open, blown apart or overblown, you know. But with Mercury – Gemini’s ruler – rolling towards stationing in emotionally impressionistic Cancer, the effect is all about making an effect on ourselves.

What you do with that…? That’s your (Gemini) choice!

All the normal things we would like to say about the Sun in Cancer of course apply: Cancer is a time for experiencing our place in the human race. In our world. In our family. In our home. In our mind. It’s a time for plans short and large…a day outing with the kids, getting those errands done, taking another few steps along your greater path of becoming You.

And this year, Jupiter will join the Sun in the expanding of our world, the expanded understanding of what it means to be part of this world. Some of us will ignore the realization, and life will in some way foist it upon us.

None of this has to be enormous.

But it could be enormous indeed.

Our feelings will stir us. Life will urge us. Jupiter’s entering Cancer is ‘empowered’ by the Sun’s presence. And thus we move through our days ‘enlightened’ by events and situations and people and possibilities, correlations and new understandings which wash over us like an ocean wave.

One of those quintessential photographs of an incoming wave breaking

as it heads for the beach

(photo credit: 'The Tube' by Misty, Dec 2007)

 
Because Cancer is the lower hemisphere (and thus personal and private) experience of the polarity sign of Capricorn, from Cancer we see the Capricorn goal. We feel what our lives would be like if we put ourselves to the task of attaining that thing, that goal, that state of mind or life.

And in Capricorn sits Pluto. One of the Neptunian minions, Pluto represents that which temps, that which daunts, that which we know we’re capable of for good and ill. If this was another year and Jupiter wasn’t entering Cancer we would know that the Sun’s opposition by would – taking 5 degree orbs to either side – give us about ten days of personal Sun-Pluto tectonics. With Pluto at 10 Capricorn, that would begin when the Sun hits 5 Cancer (on June 26, UT/+0 time) and end when the Sun clears 15 Cancer on July 7th (UT/+0 time).

Which is just what’s going to happen. But considering that June 26th is also the date that Jupiter enters Cancer and the date of Mercury’s station, the heart of this segment of Jupiter’s impending transit of Cancer (i.e., the earliest degrees) will be when the Sun ‘triggers’ the ‘by sign’ opposition of Pluto by Jupiter.

And what will that mean? For some it will be a time when you’re doing too much, or when there’s too much to do. This will be a classing time for ‘overdoing,’ too – however you apply the term!

For some, this Jupiter in Cancer / Pluto in Capricorn dynamic will involve some hefty outlays of money. Or maybe some hefty income!

But maybe most of all, this is an opportunity which at it’s core is about utilizing and feeling ourselves utilizing our very best attributes. Jupiter doesn’t oppose Pluto all that often. But when it does, it’s an opportunity to change. Hopefully that change will be for our betterment, though for some (let’s be honest) this won’t be a time of jumping for joy. Life has a knack of getting us to recognize who we are particularly in reference to our world…and sometimes that works.

And yet, sometimes it doesn’t. So even though the actual Jupiter-Pluto opposition (by degree) doesn’t begin until mid-July, the Sun’s ability to tell us when events will ‘trigger’ the essence of that transformative Jupiter-Pluto energetic suggests we are moving into a fateful time.

You may have already felt…or gotten involved with issues, actions or ideas which point to what will evolve from here. Mercury passed through this opposition-to-Pluto zone in early June, between the 3rd and the 11th. Venus has also passed through this zone – roughly between June 7th and June 15th.

Why not mention it then? That would be for two reasons. First and most universal is the idea that Mercury and Venus don’t tend to act as transit triggers. ‘Triggering’ takes energy, the kind of energy we associate with the Sun or Mars or the Moon. And second – which would include why the Moon’s presence in Cancer between June 9th and 12th (UT/+0) isn’t on the list – is because to act as a trigger, the major aspect being triggered needs to be actively (globally and independently) in aspect within a couple of weeks. Seeing that Jupiter and Pluto won’t come into orb of their opposition until July 16th, we’re even ‘pushing’ the limits of the Sun’s triggering abilities to say this starts at the beginning of its Cancer ingress.

But once Jupiter enters Cancer…? Seeing as that ingress happens at the moment (June 26th) when the Sun enters orb of opposition to Pluto, it seems worthy of our attention.

And attentiveness.

At some very basic level, this solar ingress into Cancer is the herald of a rising tide. Two of the five personal planets (Mercury and Venus) are already in Cancer, and Mars will dive into the zodiacal surf zone as of July 13th. Not known for grace in the Cancerian tide pool realm where water meets land, what we do now as the Sun enters Cancer is likely to set currents in motion such that Mars in Cancer becomes either smooth sailing or bucking against agitated life currents.

After all, by the time Mars reaches Cancer, the Sun will be in Cancer’s last ten degrees, providing energy and impetus to all which we don’t control but need to respond to and deal with.

The Sun entering Cancer marks the rising of an incoming tide. Even once the Sun reaches Leo come July 22nd that which is stirred up now will hardly cease. This is not necessarily life rising up to engulf us in froth and pounding waves. Those of us who are willing to utilize the enormous power of emotional water now have an opportunity to steer a course across rocky shoals, creating a path and passage which come the days of Leo will carry us far beyond our current life shores.

We are all swimmers and sailors in this unpredictable life and the ebbs and flows of emotionality which arise at this time are not about others – they’re about us. Our feelings are ours. They neither belong to nor are ‘caused’ by anyone else. The Cancer urge to snip or hide in our shells are sometimes manifestations of prudence.

A hermit crab emerging from its shell...tentatively, which we can all well understand

(photo credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service, Feb 2013)

But more often our effort to hide and be shielded is a defense against our own feelings. Or the possibility of having to feel and be vulnerable to the fullness of possible experience.

Yet in the end, that’s what we have to build with.

And on.
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Jupiter square Pluto: Overcoming Odds, Underwhelming Aspects

 

 Nature et Architecture15 by Clo Baril

The frequency with which planets meet up in zodiacal manner is referred to as their ‘Synodic Cycle.’ Jupiter and Pluto meet up once every thirteen years (plus a few days) – their last synodic conjunction was in late Sagittarius on December 11, 2007 and the one before that was in late Scorpio back on December 2, 1994.

Why care about such a thing? Well, synodic cycles are a bit like the layers on an onion. Or tree rings. Maybe a better way of thinking about it is the building up of courses of bricks in the building of a wall. They’re ‘steps in a process’ – and when we think about Jupiter and Pluto, the process being represented is building effectively and understanding how we get in our own way…otherwise known as ‘how do we let ourselves down’ – which may ring as the opposite of the ‘building’ concept a bit more clearly.

Considering it takes Jupiter 11.86 years to go once around the Sun and it takes Pluto 248.09 years to do the same thing, it’s obvious that once these two meet up in the same degree, Jupiter zooms on ahead while Pluto wends its sauntering Plutonic way along its (Neptune governed) Plutino track.

Okay…so now what’s up?

What’s up is that Jupiter squares Pluto on February 25, 2011 at 7:56pm (UT/+0) with Pluto at 7 Capricorn and Jupiter at 7 Aries.

 Jupiter's aurora's in UV

photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

To understand this concept, let's start with the 'square' part. The astrological square generally refers to a 'challenge.' Sometimes a puzzle, sometimes a choice of which of two things you want/should do or think...but whatever the situation, choice or concept, there's generally some feeling of being 'challenged.' What to think? Which one to do? How to make this work?

In this case we have have two planets with each in cardinal signs – ‘cardinal’ meaning do it first, learn from results. But sort of like two cars proceeding along two different roads which meet at a (square) intersection, this doesn’t always mean our abilities are up to par with our desires. Or maybe it’s that we’re at some sort of ‘crossroads’ with some process. Or some relationship. Or some effort (like say, getting a job) where our effort meets up with someone’s opinion of us.

Streets which intersect at right angles posing the question of who goes first (and the need to acknowledge each other, lest we go ‘kaboom!’ in an accident which benefits neither) is one way of thinking of a square.

Another – which is just as valid – is to think of the 90 degree (right angle) square in terms of its validity in engineering.

If you’re inside – look up. It’s likely that the ceiling above you meets the wall at a 90 degree, square right angle. It’s a ‘structural’ angle…and if the world’s cities are any kind of decent testimony, it would seem that the square angle is basic to our ability to build anything!

So this is the question: will you get in your own way or let someone else discourage you? Or will you deal with your challenges not as being about the ‘other’ person/part of the question and work to build towards your aims?

With Pluto in Capricorn, part of the issue is all about long-standing ‘norms.’ The question is what can be done away with without creating such a lack of structure that nothing works. We don’t want to make a difficult situation even more complicated, right?

Against this, we have Jupiter in Aries – a signal that this is the time to develop ourselves, to move ahead with plans, when by expanding our use of our talents is highly apt.

But here’s the catch: Aries, though always the sign of ‘I Am’ does not really work that well when we try to turn “I Am” into ‘all about me.’ Aries is the sign of the warrior who saves the kingdom, not who aims to have a big parade held in their honor. In opposition to Libra, the question is what you have to give and the quality of what you have to give….that being the “cause” in the phrase “cause/effect.”

This is a karmic universe which obeys the scientific laws which are so well defined in certain quarters. ‘Cause/Effect’ is otherwise known by various names…from what you put out comes back to you to the popular karma’s a bitch! version.

It all amounts to the same thing: polarities count. For who we are through what we do (or ‘offer’ of ourselves), so we become known….and that determines how others treat us or respond to us.

Pluto stands in opposition to fixed star Sirius and Polyhymnia, reminding us to think before we choose and to reflect on efforts passed (Polyhymnia) for at many a juncture, it’s not only the smallest of small things which counts (Sirius) but the need to put our own aims aside in the service of others which ultimately really does get us what we want in the end (Sirius/Pluto).

That this is an opposition means we can face this/these ideas….or maybe just be annoyed as all get-out at anyone/anything reminding us of things we really, really didn’t want to be reminded of!

In other words, we can observe these limitations and lessons learned (or maybe not yet learned) or try to blow them off and in doing so, run the risk of running into….

….into what? Answer: ourselves!

(you know, our own headstrong stubborn nature?)

Dwarf planet Pluto

photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Yes, there’s plenty of energy around now suggesting that those who don’t do well with guidance or limits may just totally run into a self-constructed (or ignored) wall.

Like, ouch!

On the Jupiter side, though this is all about moving ahead and continuing to build, it’s not all peaches and peanuts. Jupiter standing at 7 Aries is about to meet up with  Pelion (the big mountain) and Lust (fixation) at 8 Aries. So ask yourself…how well focused are you on the task ahead?

This combination favors those willing to take on a task. It really doesn’t favor those looking for a gambol in the park or the easy time, the being catered to and all that stuff.

In fact, by the time Jupiter reaches 8 Aries on March 2nd, the Pelion/Lust of February 25th will have  turned into Pelion/Orpheus – Lust having moved on to 9 Aries.

And what is Orpheus? Orpheus is great talent marred by insecurity – which is actually a pretty common human problem!

No matter who you are, like as not March is going to evoke a few twinges. And maybe that’s all it is – a twinge or two that you roust yourself out of saying ‘oh, just let it go!’

But whenever and wherever we see Orpheus, we are also asked to consider the whole of the Orpheus story – namely that with Orpheus is the unspoken image of Eurydike. And since Eurydike always (always!) tells us that we must be prepared to foot the bill and pay the cost before we volunteer for something lest we be forever lost in doing so, it may just really pay to not overstep our bounds as the Jupiter/Pluto square rolls in, lest we buy into something in haste and live to repent having done so at most disappointed leisure.

Bottom line, this is really a check point on proportion. Going into this moment, you may feel overwhelmed with what's going on...or maybe overwhelmed by some conviction. There's an intensity, a 'push' which would astrologically be expected when Jupiter squares Pluto and with this aspect being pictured in pro-active (cardinal) signs, there well be a great sense of urgency or need to act for a day - even a day and a half before this actual aspect...as energies begin to build.

Can you do what you need/want to do without chickening out OR overstepping your own limits?

Once the moment of aspect happens, there's likely to be a sorting out, a realizing what has come of what has happened - or even through what you've felt. This can be just as productive a period as the time 'going in' to the aspect as this is when we learn, when we realize, when we come more to grips with what is, what has been, what yet can be (Pluto in Capricorn) against what we can and cannot to (Jupiter in Aries)...which really leaves us to understand our limits - and our capacities.

There are many things we can't do. But many things we can do as well! And though you may not be able to choose the moment or the times you live in, or how things come to be that you have to cope with - there is a choice whether to play your hand to the positive or to the negative. That choice belongs to you.

So if you can, use Jupiter square Pluto to get a grasp on something important to you - and do something with or about it. This can actually be a moment of victory long planned for and labored towards.

And if you do have problems? Don’t give up! Learn from the moment, regroup and move on. The basic notion of what you started back in 2007 has a good ways to go still…so keep on being and learning about who you are and how to Be you most happily and effectively!