Astrology Highlights
July 2000

Welcome to our first web version of MoonCircles!  We’re thrilled to launch our site during this moon-ruled Cancer cycle.  New projects can be especially fragile at the Cancer New Moon.  As a crustacean upon shedding its old shell, lies soft, exposed and vulnerable, so new projects may need a safe place to lie low and grow their coverings.  Among our growing circle of moon friends, however, we feel secure bringing out Mooncircles.com at this new moon.  And we hope you’ll join us in sending Cancer’s nurturing energy to the site.

You may have noticed we’re also launching during a Mercury retrograde (Mercury turned retrograde on June 23 and will go direct July 17).  Traditionally this can be a difficult time for beginnings --  especially communication enterprises.  But a deeper understanding of the retrograde reveals it brings special opportunities.  It signifies a time for "dropping anchor" -- moving away from the surface distractions of life, toward the still center.  Distinguishing what seems important at the moment, from what really matters over time. Taking time off from fixing things and finding solutions to rest, retreat, and reflect.

Like an alchemical process that sifts false gold from real, Mercury retrograde furthers purification and refinement. Any activity performed on a retrograde may have to be done again.  Activities auspicious for the retrograde are revisions or repairs. At Mercury’s last retrograde, we launched our first version of MoonCircles as a work-in-progress newsletter, knowing we would redesign it as our partnership evolved.  And at the very next retrograde, here we are - reimagined in new colors, shapes and images.   Cancer’s cycle loves such
flowing creativity.  We look forward to hearing from you in our Talking Circle -- about your creative experiences with Mercury retrograde or any of the Cancer themes.  And we also hope you’ll join us for our New and Full Moon rituals.

BELLY WISDOM

Cancer draws us into the feminine creative process.  It evokes the goddess, mothers, children, breasts, the womb.  As the wonderful Jungian analyst and writer Marion Woodman pointed out, “We children of the patriarchy have to learn to love the body – the goddess in her mother aspect.” (Marion Woodman, The Ravaged Bridegroom, Inner City Books, 1990.)  The soul finds itself through the body, creates through the body; nurtures through the body.  And yet, too often we reject our bodies as imperfect -- too fat, too short; too thin, too tall.  When we measure our bodies against some impossible standard of perfection, we lose something precious: our physical connection to the earth itself. This message was encoded in ancient images of the goddess -- wide-hipped and belly-full with life and fertility.  Look – all around you -- what beauty she brings from the belly of earth during this season.  The radiance of the goddess lives in your body too.  Sink into your belly this Cancer moontime.  Sense the presence of the goddess within, the earth without.

THE DARK MOTHER

The words "mother" and "matter" share a common linguistic root.  Both ground us in ways that make our own fertility and abundance possible.  Without the heaviness of matter, and perhaps the heaviness of all those things our mothers told us, our lives would be flimsy as dream.  Too much heaviness, however, signals an encounter with the Dark Mother, who resists our growth.

Quoting from Woodman again, "The old petrifying mother is like a great lizard lounging in the depths of the unconscious.  She wants nothing to change.  If the feisty ego attempts to accomplish anything, one flash of her tongue disposes of the childish rebel."  She is often imaged in dreams "as a crocodile not quite asleep in mud, a huge energy mired in inertia, self-absorbed, rigid, aspiring to nothing."

Encountering the Dark Mother means being stuck.  If an agent of the Dark Mother has appeared in your life, it's time to break free and renew your creativity.  Though she may appear as an outer enemy who needs slaying, know that any feelings of powerlessness, or of being held back or down, actually originate from within.  If you can't move forward or take advantage of the creativity in this Cancer cycle, ask, how did this resistance take shape within you?  In the old days, knights would vanquish dark-mother dragons hiding in their caves.  We no longer live by a technology of the sword. Now, with courageous awareness, we might coax our inner dragon into the light, and discovering how fearful it is, stroke it like a child.  Out of the cave, out of the mud, our dragon can transform into something magical.

ECLIPSE SEASON

Three eclipses mark this season, a solar eclipse at the July 1 Cancer New Moon, a lunar eclipse at the July 16 Full Moon, another solar eclipse at Leo's July 30 new moon. Eclipses carry unpredictable energies; very Uranian.  Though strange events may suddenly occur, they've usually been brewing for awhile, and like the visible shadow of Earth on the moon during a lunar eclipse, they show us what had hitherto been hidden.  Few astrologers like to hazard a guess about what eclipses will bring.  Yet it's a cyclical celestial event.  This means we each experienced an eclipse at the same degree approximately 18 years ago (July 1981, December 1982). Our web designer, astrologer April Elliott Kent promotes an eclipse practice of examining the events in your life during the last eclipse and reviewing the themes.  You may find that this eclipse adds another layer of learning in the same part of your life.