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Welcome to one of the most gorgeous new moons of the year! This is an excellent time for setting intentions and planting seeds for the next month, and the next six months of this lunar cycle. There’s so much yummy, juicy energy to work with this new moon, and hardly any difficult energies—and there haven’t been a ton of moons we can say that with this year—so please, manifest away!
This new moon sits with sun at 4º of Virgo. Virgo, mutable earth, marks the time of harvest, the point of the year where summer bends toward fall, and we gather and sort the wheat from the chaff. Virgo carries these energies of discernment and discrimination, determining what is worth saving and what needs to be discarded.
New Moon in Cancer, Cancer, Cardinal Water, the primal waters where life begins and grows, the amniotic womb, the primordial ocean from whence life crawled onto the earth. Cancer is Mother, the principle of mothering, nurturing, bringing into being. Mother regardless of gender or genitals. We all contain the ability and sense to mother, to birth, to bring into being and, further, more importantly, perhaps, to nurture into life.
This is a very powerful new moon and a very powerful time for setting intentions and planting the seeds we wish to grow and harvest this year. This moon is conjunct the sun (as new moons always are) in Aries—sign of the ram, which begins on the vernal equinox (in the northern hemisphere) each year and kicks off spring, season of birth, growth, fertility and virility. Aries season is always a time of action—and, if utilized wisely, of planning and setting goals and intentions to channel its wild energies within. This particular moon, however, is also conjunct Chiron, the wounded healer, and Mercury, planet of our minds, thoughts, language and communications—giving it a slightly more nuanced, complex and somber flavor.
Now is a season of conserving, reserving and storing, a time of sending the energy to our roots to coil and preserve for the spring—a time of pinpointed focus and release of everything extraneous. So that when we come to the time of growing, producing and extroverting, we have that energy repleted and ready to send out into the world, and into our creative goals and projects.
Virgo is the Virgin, the devotee to the Goddess, cleaning and purifying the temple, ritualizing their devotion, offering themselves in service to something larger than themselves. And while I’ve certainly been feeling the back-to-school, prepare-for-winter vibes to clean out the closets and stock the pantry, I am also feeling, deeply, the call to recommit to my practices of writing, meditating, sitting with the sun each morning, making my bed, sweeping space and time for my own connection with something greater, my own devotion and service to the gifts and talents I must hone and create in offering to the world. My payment in exchange for this one wild world, this one short and exquisite life.
The moon conjuncts the sun at 18º of Cancer on July 9, initiating a new moon cycle and a moment of pattern-setting for the next two week period—as well as the next six months (until we return for the full moon in Cancer, January 17 2022, closing the cycle). The constellation of the crab spans the portion of the sky assigned to Cancer—the word cancer itself is Latin for crab—and this crustacean spirit animal has much to teach us about the lessons and journeys of Cancer season, and this Cancer new moon in particular.
Stop spinning, stop running and rushing and getting it all done. Plant your feet on the soil, the grass, the concrete if that’s what you have. Look up at the dark sky of the new moon. See those extra stars. Take a deep breath. And another. Root. Feel the mother earth beneath you. Her soils dark and dank and fecund, her dirt the womb wrapping all the birthing seeds of spring, ready to break, ready to unravel. Yes, this is a powerful moon to manifest… But before you do. Breathe. Stand on the earth. Look at the sky.
The centaur, Sagittarius is the adventurer of the zodiac. Aspects of our lives that may be intensified include goals and plans that expand our horizons and lead to deeper understanding of ourselves and our place in the grander scheme—our beliefs, our visions, our FAITH. Do the work here to examine your belief systems and spiritual values, and root out anything toxic, bypassing, or that just no longer resonates for where you are now—so that you don’t carry it forward in your future patterns, and in the annual intention-setting energy that arrives with the winter solstice.
All other aspects aside, the new moon in Libra is an excellent time to set intentions, not just for the next month, but also for the next six months (until the full moon in Libra in March 2021). And in spite of all of this crazy tension and energy from all the squares and oppositions, I really want us to hold this focus and seed our visions for the future. For ourselves, for our relationships both interpersonal and as a collective society.
This new moon in Cancer is a black moon—the second new moon in a solar month (like a blue moon is the second full moon in a month). The last new moon in Cancer was June 21, 2020.
A black moon is like a super-charged new moon, a time of cycle formation and intention setting that will play out not only for the next month, for the next three years (until the next black moon in March 2023 in Aries).
This is powerful energy to use consciously and wisely.
