Sun Enters Cancer (June 20, 2020)

In Aries you ask, “Who am I?”; in Taurus you ask, “What am I?”; in Gemini you ask, “How do I Know?” And now in the time of Cancer, you ask yourself, “Where do I come from?”

The “four corners” of the year, and of your life, are held by the Cardinal Signs of Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn. These are the signs of beginnings, and they are especially sacred as they are the portals and pathways to your enlightenment or Initiation.

In your own chart, the four cardinal signs point the way, much like a compass, revealing through their polarities the four directions of life as you establish and secure your sense of Identity. As posited by these equinoxes and solstices, you will experience the subject/object and inner/outer ways of being through Aries to Libra as in “Who am I, who are you”; and, by Cancer to Capricorn, as in “Where did I come from, where am I going”?

Today we enter one of these four sacred portals again, today we enter the realm of Feeling, as we seek to find our way to our true center by the Way of Cancer. For there is only so much you know and can understand by your intellect; there is only so much that will be encompassed by your present knowledge, by your concepts and categories of thought. Beyond these defined, determined data points and categories of reality there lies what is always beyond; out there beyond the known, there you meet “the mystery”. Yes, out there, and equally within your very own self too, you encounter the wonders of the unknown, what is beyond “knowing”; both in here and out there, you will experience the beauty and majesty of the All.

Somewhere in your chart, there you will find this special realm that is the Sign of Cancer. This is the space you enter now, the realm of feelings, of intuitions and intimations of what is beyond your conscious knowing. We cannot, yet, fully understand what we sense within and around us; these impressions, sensibilities and messages are part of what remains beyond our thoughts and reason. We experience this ability as our “sixth sense”, where we apprehend by our intuitional sense what is beyond the finite realm of conscious understanding.

Yes, now in Cancer we will move into our feelings, through sensations that take us beyond definite borders and boundaries. We have entered into a realm where reality is felt as more encompassing, as it connects us deeply within and then outwardly with everyone and everything, from the smallest of particles to the greatest of stellar bodies of unimaginable size. In the end, when we feel the fullness of our connections with all that is, we will feel our true kinship with the entirety of Creation.

But first, before we reach upwards and outward, to the One and to the many, something we will most certainly consider in the time of Pisces, we feel the pull, and we must turn and consider the principle matter of Cancer, which is our first mystery, where do we come from? Before we can imagine or experience what is “out there”, we need to feel what is at the root of us; we need to understand what lies at the foundation and center of our journey.

Though we experience ourselves as body, mind and spirit, (and so many subdivisions within those realms), we also feel the truth, we all feel the need to have all these “parts” of us somehow yoked together, to hold all these parts as one. We are formed by a beautiful hierarchy, made of fields of energy-forms; we are somehow also held together as just a one. What is this sense of one, where does it come from, where do we come from?

It seems, at first, so clear and present to us. We come from Mother/Father, that is where we are from. But then the sense of yourself begins to grow outwardly and inwardly too. We are shaped and formed by a hierarchy of relations, both near at hand and far away in space and time as well. Yes, it starts with Mother/Father, Grandmother/Grandfather, Aunts and Uncles, Sisters and Brothers. You first feel your roots by your most intimate family members, by your family heritage, and your first circle of life-meanings.

But then your circle widens and deepens, the meanings become more nuanced yet more striking too, as you experience some of these as even more significant than some in the first circle of kinship. You see that your source of feeling whole, of being centered within yourself, is forged by ever more encompassing and affirming intimacies and shared affections with friends, colleagues and most surprisingly but wonderfully in the magical sharing with so-called total strangers too. Yes, you will throughout your journey prune or alter some of the first or “given” roots of you, as you choose to align with other meanings and sensibilities that feel more centered and truer to your journey of becoming.

But it is not merely in the here and now that you will find the true center of you, for your roots continue to grow both in space and through time. You will feel how your sense of center arches back before this life, to your ancestors, to many cultures and art forms and teachings that frame your feelings of meaning in the present today.

Truly, your work of centering, of finding yourself at your center will never end. For it is very much part of the incessant force that binds the universe together as one, as it is true for all Life and Spirit:

You are here to grow; you are here to change.

So, it equally follows, that as much as you alter yourself and your world outwardly, so will you renew, extend, and deepen the roots of you too. And, as you go deeper, you will also rise.

As you lift yourself up, as your roots go deeper, you will come to even greater intuitions as to the nature of you and your world. You will feel the connections to your fellow humans, to all creatures great and small, and you will feel the truth that all of it, the planets, stars and galaxies too, that all Life is held as one by the One. You will understand that your root is the same, that all roots come together in the One whose “Center is Everywhere, and whose Circumference is Nowhere”.

Yes, you will feel and know the truth of the Ancients, which is that we are one family, “We are all Related”. We are all ones of the One, and we are here quite simply to feel this truth and to love one another. This is what you will find at the core of you; there you will feel the truth, that what is at the center of you is the source of one and all:

Unconditional Love.

The time of Cancer is here; let us celebrate the Family of Spirit. Let us bow to our Mother/Father who is in heaven, and who is equally in our own very hearts too.

But this is a most special entrance of the Sun moving into Cancer, (June 20 at 5:44 pm EDT). That is because only a few hours later, there will be a New Moon Eclipse of the Sun (June 21 at 2:41 am EDT).

According to the Ancient Wisdom, the most important ceremonies for Initiation take place at the Spring and Fall Equinoxes, and the Summer and Winter Solstices. They each hold their own special significance, all are holy. An Initiation ceremony is timed with the New Moon, so that the Initiate is carried through the planes and spheres for the 14 days of the waxing Moon.

When the New Moon is also a Solar Eclipse, as is this one, those Initiations are said to be highly significant. The greatest Initiations of all are set at a Total Solar Eclipse, with the ceremony held directly beneath the path of Eclipse on Earth.

This is no ordinary turning of the seasons. We are in a very special time.

May the light of truth, love and understanding guide our steps.

Originally published at https://astrologerbillattride.typepad.com.