There is a light. Not at the end of a long, dark tunnel (though recent events may make it seem as though we are in one). Rather, there a light on the horizon. Some have already seen it. It is a light in the western sky after sunset and it’s just in time.

Venus is wrapping up a tenure of just over three weeks in Cancer (since June 17), and it enters Leo on Monday. It is also re-appearing as a light after dark. Reports have been received. Photos have been taken. Venus is back.

As is so often the case with astrology, there is an astounding serendipity in the re-appearance of Venus. After more than three long months of being out of sight as it traveled on the other side of the Sun, Venus has timed its return to visibility just as it is moving across the cusp separating the sign ruled by the Moon (Cancer) and the sign ruled by the Sun (Leo).

With each passing twilight, the sight will become more clear. That’s because Venus is moving relatively fast right now, gradually widening its separation from the Sun. You will see it as Venus showing up a little higher in the sky as one evening follows another into our still-new season.

Astrologically, you might say that Venus is currently functioning as both a leader and as an inspiration. Like a pioneer, Venus led the Sun and Mercury into Cancer as if to show the way into a new season of life on Earth. Now, like a torch bearer, it is pushing back against the night. This is not meaningless symbolism, either. Other than the Sun and Moon, Venus is the only celestial object bright enough to both cast and dispel shadows.

Like all things in astrology, the impending traversal of Leo by Venus has two complementary potentials. There is a shadow side, so to speak.

If you are careless in how you carry Venus into the world, it can express as an inappropriate sense of entitlement. It is also very possible for ‘bling’ to become a cause, when other, more selfless causes need you to lean in — together with others — to further a common good.

Rather than deny it, put the shadow side of Venus to work. There is no reason to go without makeup. There is no need to hide your jewelry. Instead, allow adornment to become something more than an end in itself. Let artful enhancements be just one of many means by which you further the cause of love.

For in the words of Robert Hand, “In its highest manifestation, Venus is love.” That, as usual, is where you come in.

While you may not have consciously chosen to live in such trying times, it is for you to choose how to live in them. It is thus for you to lead Venus, just as Venus is leading the planets around the zodiac and into what will be a great gathering of planetary lights in the western half sky later this year.

It is nothing new to say that love is the answer. Even so, the message continuously needs renewing.

Let Venus, the goddess of love, inspire you. Let it lead you into leadership. Rise up, so as to be better seen. Give love a chance to win, and it will.

Offered In Service

Attention anyone with a Cancer Sun, Moon or rising: Eric has recorded the audio portions of your birthday reading for the next 12 months — nicknamed The Cancer Illumination Kit. You can access them by ordering now; the video will be released after July 4. Not familiar with Eric’s audio or video readings? You can listen to last year’s reading here, as a gift.

By Amanda Painter

One way to read the planets right now is that they are all about relating and relationships. But what if you’re not in a capital-R ‘Relationship’ currently? That’s okay: as a human being, a great part of your existence is concerned with relating to others in a wide variety of roles — work colleague, friend, sibling, parent, child, etc. — in addition to lover/partner/spouse.

Sparklewater, a few days before the solstice as Venus entered Cancer. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Plus, there’s always your relationship to yourself in all your various facets. That is, how you think and feel about your dreams, fears, desires, self-esteem, your history, your plans for the future.

It’s the ways you navigate challenges and opportunities, the stories you tell yourself about them, and how those stories make you feel. I’m not talking about self-absorption or narcissism. More like, the more clearly you can relate to yourself, the more clearly you can relate to others.

Currently, the Sun, Mercury and Venus are clustered in Cancer. On one level, this suggests domestic, family-oriented, mother-child and caring/caretaking themes and energy. You might be noticing this in your inner experience as well as in your conversations and impulses (such as to bake, clean the house or have a heart-to-heart; yes it’s cliché, but clichés exist for a reason).

Yet those three objects in Cancer are making some very interesting and potentially provocative or compelling aspects to other planets around the zodiac wheel.

Continue reading →

By Amanda Moreno

There are a few simple facts in astrology that I’ve never really understood, or that just don’t make sense to me in light of my experience. Maybe I just get tripped up through over-thinking, but the correspondence of the sign Cancer with the summer (northern) solstice is one of them. The sign that represents internal processes, latent emotions, subtlety and home seems so awkwardly positioned to initiate the season of light.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

Up here in the Pacific Northwest, the season of light definitely corresponds with a major increase in social activity as well. Not to say Cancerian energy isn’t outgoing, but so much social activity can be taxing to the Cancer-type.

As a Cancer Moon-type myself (by virtue of my natal Moon residing in the 4th house), I tend to get a bit cranky when the autumn storms are late in coming, as I’m more than ready by mid-September to retreat back into my cave for a spell — a six-to-nine month spell at that.

Cancer is a sign of psychic sensitivity, probably underscoring a need for retreat from others. Isabel Hickey says:

…Cancer responds to life through his feelings… As they are extremely psychic they find it difficult to separate what they feel from what they think. They are at the mercy of their moods, up one day and down the next. They are psychic sponges, absorbing any atmosphere around them without realizing it. If they are in the company of happy people they bloom; if depressed people are in their vicinity they droop and wilt and do not know why.

Now, my personal bias about the meaning — or shall I say feeling — of the sign and the season is probably colored by the fact that during Cancer season, the Sun is falling through the 12th house of my own chart. A planet moving through the 12th house often indicates some kind of dying-off process. My energy ebbs more than it flows; my longing for quiet time, alone or with kindreds with whom I share strong bonds, increases greatly.

This past weekend, I realized it was the first time in seven or eight years I was not on vacation or at least ‘staycation’ for the July Fourth holiday. In fact, I’ve taken extended time off over this period consistently — and have almost always left to go camping or to a cabin. Through some fault in planning, I missed the boat this year, and I’ve been feeling that call towards silence in some very loud ways.

Luckily, a friend and I were able to take a little last-minute camping trip to the Olympic Mountains, which offered a small dose of retreat that felt incredible.

Here’s the thing about this mountain range / national park. It’s one of those places that is very much untouched — due largely, I would imagine, to the fact that it is home to several rainforests which ensure that wintertime rain levels are in the hundreds of inches.

The silence in places like this is so complete, even with the sounds of water, wind and birds. Sitting on the banks of a river in the sun, I was able to let that stillness wash over me and bring my attention to my senses and let myself drop in — and away from screens and phones and everything else my busy, busy brain wants me to fixate on.

And then there are the trees. I am, in fact, a tree-hugging individual and have a very cherished relationship with trees. I love them. I love that you can lean against them and they won’t go anywhere. I love talking to them and listening to them and watching them and learning about them. I love looking up and being stunned by how tall they are. I love seeing how one fallen tree plays nurse to five others.

Trees in this forest can range up to 1,000 years old. Standing amidst them, tuning in, you can start to feel the strength of that slowness and sense the wisdom of beings that have existed, holding space, sticking it out, for such lengthy swaths of time. It brings a sense of awe and much-needed perspective.

There among the trees and the water and the slowness, I was able to unwind and decompress a bit. We wandered around. We built a fire. We attempted to fend off hordes of mosquitoes. And we ate freshly caught crab.

Coming back the next day, we drove through many miles of forest, the only car around. I couldn’t bear to listen to music, still needing more immersion in the silence. I let my mind wander to fantasylands where elves were watching us and mossy trees became creatures. We extended the road-trip portion a bit by driving to the coast to get a glimpse of the ocean.

Life in the city, in this world, is so busy. So cranked up. So constantly, consistently loud in so very many ways. Retreating — by myself, or with a few select others — is something I’m lucky to be able to do from time to time, although I’m aware that I need to do it far more. Slowing it down, shutting off the screens, giving myself permission to stop thinking about the little things and just be present, sitting on the side of a river listening to the water or observing the way the afternoon’s golden light plays with moss and fern as it trickles through the branches…

To me, Cancer in essence represents home and identity. Having written so much in the past months about identity crisis, I’m aware that although connecting with home and family are good medicines for my soul, reminding me of who I am and who I want to be, my constant identity questioning often needs a rest. I need the white noise of water and wind to run through my mind and soothe all the rigid places.

I need to go to places where I can just sink into the deepest parts of myself and exist for a while, just another creature living among the trees.

Attention anyone with a Cancer Sun, Moon or rising: Eric has recorded the audio portions of your birthday reading for the next 12 months — nicknamed The Cancer Illumination Kit. You can access them by ordering now; the video will be released after July 4. Not familiar with Eric’s audio or video readings? You can listen to last year’s reading here, as a gift.

If the course of human events had any lessons for us over the last several days, they would have to do with cooperation and conflict. Cooperation brought elation and success. Conflict brought sorrow and setbacks. It might be wise to keep both sets of lessons in mind so as to better see what you should do.

Perhaps the most outstanding example of cooperation came hours after yesterday’s New Moon in the sign Cancer. Yesterday night (or very early this morning, depending on where you live) a long collaborative effort culminated in the insertion of a spacecraft called Juno into orbit around Jupiter.

It was encouraging to witness the celebration of those working on the Juno project, as telemetry indicated the successful completion of their mission’s first phase. It was no small thing to overcome unprecedented difficulties and uncounted unknowns to reach that point.

Here on Earth, however, the days leading up to yesterday’s New Moon provided ample reason for sobriety. First in Bangladesh, then in Iraq, and finally in Saudi Arabia violence intruded where people very much like you and me were preparing to observe some celebration of their own.

Adherents of Islamic religions have been fasting from sunrise to sundown since their holy month of Ramadan started back on June 7. It is no small thing either. It is a test of faith that will finally end on July 7 with the celebratory feasts of Eid al-Fitir.

Ideally, the days leading up to the festival of breaking the fast are marked by an anticipation of joy, reward, relief and return to a less physically demanding daily routine. It seems especially senseless to intrude with indiscriminate violence at such a time. Even those of us who do not participate in Ramadan are compelled to recognize that no good can come from such conflict, and feel compassion for those who will now be impelled to mourn rather than rejoice.

Today, as the Moon moves on to Leo, we are all obliged to move on as well. The Independence Day weekend in the U.S. is over. In America, as in much of the world, another working day is upon us. Neither will the occasion of Eid al-Fitir wait. Yet all of us, regardless of nationality or belief, might well find reason in the skies to do something besides simply go on with life as it has been. If there is anything to what anybody can see by simply looking up, there is reason for each of us to do something to increase the peace.

With its ingress to Leo, the Moon will return to visibility as a thin crescent in the West just after sundown. That’s a very auspicious sign for those of Islamic belief. For astrologers, at least, a fire trine from the Leo Moon to Saturn in Sagittarius will suggest sobriety at least, and sympathy at best. In addition, the promise implied by a waxing Moon will be reinforced by the three prominent sign rulers it is leaving behind.

The Sun, Mercury and Venus remain in Cancer, even as the Moon moves on. Over the next few days, those three objects will, in emblematic effect, be reaching out to the rest of the solar system.

Indeed, the process has already started. With thoughtful Mercury’s brief but auspicious water trine to imaginative Neptune in Pisces earlier today, you might have noticed how even a little good news (from the Juno spacecraft or otherwise) can function to encourage you even if there is no immediate or tangible effect on your life.

Tomorrow, affectionate Venus will follow the lead of both Mercury and the Moon. With a water trine of its own to Mars in Scorpio, Venus will be reminding us that cooperation is easier than conflict. In addition, with its own return to visibility in the twilight, Venus will shine with a palpable indication that things can and do get better. All it takes is just a little help from (and for) your friends.

Finally, through the remainder of the week it is as if the entire crew in Cancer will be pulling their oars together. Venus will move on and reach out to Eris and Uranus in Aries, as well as Chiron in Pisces. The Sun and Mercury will conjoin and extend in union to Pluto in Capricorn and Jupiter in Virgo. Of course, the most important oar will be yours to pull.

It will be in your everyday life this week that a difference will be made, and it will not be rocket science to get it done. It will be as easy as cooperating whenever possible. It will be as simple as refraining from unnecessary conflict. While you will almost certainly be required to challenge yourself upon occasion, there should be nothing about your part in increasing the peace that you cannot bring yourself to do.

There has been enough of sorrow and setbacks. There is a great need for elation, however muted. We could all use some success, however small. Look to be like the Moon. Move on and show up. Try to be like the Sun, Mercury and Venus. Reach out. None of us are without injury, but to be healed we must finally come around and realize that we are all we’ve got.

Offered In Service

Attention anyone with a Cancer Sun, Moon or rising: Eric has recorded the audio portions of your birthday reading for the next 12 months — nicknamed The Cancer Illumination Kit. You can access them by ordering now; the video will be released after July 4. Not familiar with Eric’s audio or video readings? You can listen to last year’s reading here, as a gift.

It’s a new month. The Mars retrograde of 2016 is over, although Mars remains in the same degree of Scorpio where it turned around on Wednesday. On Monday, we will have a New Moon in the sign Cancer on the anniversary on the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Any fireworks displays you see Monday night will thus take place in a moonless sky.

Also on Monday, a robotic spacecraft called Juno will, if all goes as planned, begin a long orbital errand around Jupiter (which has about two and a half months left in Virgo). The purpose of Juno’s mission will be to give the people of Earth a greater understanding of the largest planet in our solar system.

The fact that a new page on the calendar, a new lunar cycle, a new space mission and a new year beginning for the U.S. are all basically taking place as Mars resumes direct motion gives you reason to think about a fresh start. There is meaning in that. After all, before anything can be achieved, it must first be conceived.

Of course, a reason to conceive does not stand much chance of manifestation without belief. That’s where you come in. What’s perceived in the skies above has at least one thing in common with what is experienced on Earth below. That common thread goes through you. Whether one is addressing deities, planetary correlations or the course of human events, your belief (or lack thereof) has a big influence. Perhaps even more important is whether and how you act.

Action makes things real. Unless you act, everything inside your head stays there. In your hands is the power to transform conceptions into achievements. Of course one person alone does not usually amount to much in a big world, but that’s where things must begin.

What has been proven to amount to something in the world is human beings acting together. To cooperation we owe our very existence. Through communal action the world has been changed, and will continue to be changed, for better or worse. That’s how you come in again.

The single greatest factor determining whether group action makes the world better or worse is the conscience of the individuals who make up the group. It may be true that you are born with a intuitive sense of right and wrong, and even a concern for the greater good. Even so, it is also self-evident that teaching and learning play a role in determining whether and how people participate in society.

It is not only individual and collective actions taken, but also the examples you and the rest of us set that contribute to turn the wheels of history and determine what will happen next. If the civil calendar, celestial cycles, history and ongoing group achievements are any indication, a whole heaping handful of wheels are now going around to come around at once.

That’s how you might want to consider the next several days to be a special time. There is meaning implied in what is happening now. More to the point, however, there is meaning to be conferred. By you. By us. Upon the Earth, even as it is in the heavens.

May your holiday weekend be safe and fulfilling.

Offered In Service    

Attention anyone with a Cancer Sun, Moon or rising: Eric has recorded the audio portions of your birthday reading for the next 12 months — nicknamed The Cancer Illumination Kit. You can access them by ordering now; the video will be released after July 4. Not familiar with Eric’s audio or video readings? You can listen to last year’s reading here, as a gift.

By Amanda Moreno

Mars Retrograde, what have you meant to me? You’re stationing direct right in my most tender parts, the parts that feel infinite aloneness, always on the verge of shattering. I’ve the presence of mind to be with that now after so much pressure and tumult in that space over the past several years, but oh how you are making my desires crystal clear, and oh how much longing and doubt reign there.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

You began ten lifetimes ago (or, more accurately, a few months ago), moments before I left home to hold space for and learn from so many souls daring to plumb their own depths and heal their own karma. And of course I was therefore brought face to face with my own.

Resistance to becoming a “healer” was brought full-force to the frontlines of my being, along with the knowing that this work is my love, my heart, my joy and my path — and that it is not enough to sustain me.

You helped me question my priorities. You tested every boundary; you forced me in on myself; and you helped me to get a better understanding of who I am in that work and in the world, and of all the fears I have to face to make it work.

Mars Retrograde, the force of your passion was dispersed somewhat through Neptune’s wily gaze, which dissolved so much of who I am along with any tendency to dive in or dig deep. You took me through death anniversaries, gave me little time to pause and reclaim; or maybe you just showed me that if I’m to obtain what I desire I have to understand more astutely how my energy systems ebb and flow.

You brought me gifts of Sophia, of Raven, of Maitreya and of song. The desire to sing — as joy, as sorrow, and as absolutely imperative medicine for my soul — rang clear.

You brought the potential for big love to me again, forced some space, made me commit to investing in what I long for, and in that process helped me to realize once again my acute, deep, intensely vulnerable desire for family and home and all the doubts and sorrow that come with it. You continued to bring in others who are attempting to navigate that territory — new models of family, home and love — giving the potential of reprieve from that sense of isolation.

Saturn’s squaring with your home in my own chart has made me push, helped me struggle, and at its best times just helped me to understand how you function through me naturally, so inward and so constructive — and destructive. Bringing up self-doubt, self-loathing, self-criticism in ways I’ve never experienced before.

Mars Retrograde, in the past few weeks you’ve accompanied me through shock and grief as I’ve watched one of my beloved families attacked and shattered. Out of the grip of Neptune’s narcotic haze in the region you now incinerate with Your molten ways, you’ve forced presence and forced the issues, prompting me again to commit and to claim my queerness, my community and my desire to do more.

You’ve brought out the mama bear in me as I witnessed protesters spitting religious venom at our celebrations of pride. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t stand outside the ring and pass by, I had to stop, feel the anger flood amidst the fear and impulse to evacuate. You brought intense protectiveness to the surface, which spiraled together with my healer’s ability to hold space, for the first time plunging me into an updated knowledge of what my whole being is capable of in that role — and what my boundaries are. How at home I am there — and with what fear does to my body.

Today you gave me the courage to sit on my bed and have a heart-to-heart with my inner child, who is still prone to fits of anxiety over the fear that they will leave, that he will leave, that she will flee, that everyone will go, and that we must cling, cling, cling and wrap tight cords all the way around our solar plexus.

You gave me the courage to move into that space with her, to console, but also to be more candid: they might leave, and so might he or she. Anyone might go away, be it by choice or force. And that’s OK. The world won’t end. We’ll get through it. There is still unconditional love, and she no longer needs to worry about all that; instead she can just be the innocent little burst of love she was always meant to be — and let me figure out the rest.

Mars Retrograde, there have been so many joys and delights, as well. Those have all been focused on and brought to the surface, however. It’s the darker points that needed airing today, even as I bask in the truth of a wise astrologer’s advice to just exist in the wells of untranslatable emotion so many of us currently find ourselves in, giving space and refusing to label.

But this is what flows, and so this is what there is. And I’m grateful for the gifts you’ve given. And I look forward to looking back soon and learning more.

Attention anyone with a Cancer Sun, Moon or rising: Eric has recorded the audio portions of your birthday reading for the next 12 months — nicknamed The Cancer Illumination Kit. You can access them by ordering now; the video will be released after July 4. Not familiar with Eric’s audio or video readings? You can listen to last year’s reading here, as a gift.

There’s an old saying that goes something like this: “One swallow does not a summer make.” That aphorism might be said to apply to the astrology right now. That’s because Mercury will enter the sign Cancer tomorrow, less than 15 minutes before retrograde Mars resumes direct motion in Scorpio.

At its fastest, Mercury moves around the zodiac at a rate of more than two degrees per day. Hence, Mercury changing signs is neither rare nor unusual. Even so, tomorrow’s Mercury ingress is part of a recent trend to populate a core part of the zodiac which has long been fallow.

The adjoining signs Cancer and Leo might arguably be considered a core of the zodiac because of the objects they correlate with. Cancer is the only sign ruled by the Moon. Similarly, Leo is the Sun’s singular dominion.

When you get right down to it, the motions of and relationships between the luminaries (Sun and Moon) form the core of astrology. Both are very bright and familiar to anybody blessed with eyesight. When the Sun and Moon oppose for a Full Moon, they form the template for all astrological aspects, called an opposition. The same is true for how a New Moon (which takes place when the luminaries conjoin to share the same degree of the same sign, roughly once a month) defines all conjunctions. The examples go on and on.

It is thus undeniable that the Sun and Moon combine to constitute the framework upon which astrology is built. Whether one is speaking of aspects, ingresses or nearly any other form of celestial phenomena as perceived from Earth, it is fair to say that the so-called “lesser lights” (planets) are interpreted to be in emulation of the two greater lights (Sun and Moon). In a way, the same goes for the two signs ruled by luminaries.

On either side of Cancer and Leo on the zodiac wheel are Gemini and Virgo — both ruled by Mercury. Keep on going around in both directions and you come to Taurus and Libra — the two dominions of Venus. After that, you reach Aries and Scorpio, both originally ruled by Mars. Following come Sagittarius and Pisces, which correspond to Jupiter. Finally (on the other side of the zodiac from Cancer and Leo) you arrive at Capricorn and Aquarius, the classical domains of Saturn.

Continuing the theme of how the Sun and Moon are the essence of astrology, it is almost as if the layout of the zodiac itself blossoms like a flower from the emblematic bud formed by the two signs ruled by the luminaries. Interestingly, for the last nine months or so (until Venus led the way into Cancer 11 days ago), there were no sign-ruling planets other than the Moon traversing Cancer and Leo.

So, for an unusually long time there were no major aspects (other than lunar) from or within the most definitive section in the circle of signs. Recently that started to change, and rapidly. Following the Venusian ingress to Cancer on June 17, the Sun entered Cancer to precipitate a season-changing solstice on June 20. Tomorrow, Mercury will follow suit, making its own contribution to begin what might fairly be called a precipitous sequence re-populating the core of the zodiac.

Given the often-proven dictum “as above, so below,” it would thus not be surprising if we were to see some apparently precipitous events here on Earth during the current season. As Venus, the Sun and Mercury make their rapid way through Cancer and Leo during the weeks to come, you might note or experience some things which, by themselves, give the impression of being unprecedented or game-changing — long after Mars has left its retrograde period behind. If so, you would be well advised to take those things with the proverbial grain of salt.

Just as there is nothing new under the Sun, it is not advisable to take any earthly or astrological event by itself. It’s important to see the whole, and how all of its parts relate to one another. While the Sun and Moon (both in and of themselves, and also represented through activity in the signs Cancer and Leo) do count for a lot, nothing is everything.

In all probability, as our current season plays out over the next several months, what you will experience and observe will not represent anything truly new. It is more likely that any seemingly precipitous events coming up will only emulate a significant rainstorm after a long drought, functioning as part of a bigger picture and a longer cycle now moving towards balance once again.

Offered In Service

Attention anyone with a Cancer Sun, Moon or rising: Eric has recorded the audio portions of your birthday reading for the next 12 months — nicknamed The Cancer Illumination Kit. You can access them by ordering now; the video will be released after July 4. Not familiar with Eric’s audio or video readings? You can listen to last year’s reading here, as a gift.