Cancer New Moon Meditation for 2004:

The Divine Mother and the Grace of Saturn
By Jean Hinson Lall

As the Sun and Moon revolve through the zodiac in their rhythmic lunation dance, they guide us through the phases of life and the seasons of the spirit. Each sign of the zodiac is a portal to an essential divine principle. At the Cancer New Moon, when Earth is at her greenest and growth most abundant, it is the divine Mother who shines forth.

This month the Sun and Moon meet late in Cancer after each has passed through the difficult conjunction with Saturn. As we saw at the Capricorn Full Moon, Saturn and the Moon (and their respective signs, Capricorn and Cancer) represent opposite but complementary principles. Cancer gestates, gives birth, cherishes and fosters, overflowing with mother’s milk, while Saturn limits and structures, bringing things to their proper shape and their natural end. These archetypal principles work at a subtle philosophical level and can also be observed in the concrete activities and events of our lives: weaning a child, setting up a household budget, signing a mortgage contract, hiring a nanny, closing up a home, sending the last child off to college.

The force of astrological symbolism was brought home to us last week as one of our beloved cats, Gus, had to be euthanized at the exact hour of the Sun-Saturn conjunction in Cancer. A handsome black-and-white tuxedo cat, Gus was one of the kittens at whose birth I had served as "midwife" nearly fourteen years ago, and I had mothered and nursed and indulged him through a lifetime of escapades, injuries and chronic illnesses. The Moon-mother in me had postponed the inevitable as long as possible and went on trotting out new treatment plans and morsels of tempting food right to the last moment, tearfully resisting the end. My Saturnian father side, however, dispassionately assessed the evidence that Gus simply couldn’t carry on any longer and calmly telephoned the vet to come and help him make an easy transition to the other world.

Since he’s been gone there is a quietness in our home, a space for reflection and memory. We can feel Gus’s image being engraved in our hearts, layered in with recollections of people and events that flowed through our lives during the years he lived with us. And now that he no longer needs our vigilant and laborious care, we have time to reflect on the meaning of care itself and to wonder at the nurturing energy that has poured through our home over the years in support of cats, dogs, people, plants, and whatever else happened by. While we were rushing about tending to children, animals, neighbors, gardens, and home-improvement projects, the activity itself absorbed all our attention. We were immersed in the flow of "mother’s milk" which is both a natural and a spiritual force. It’s at times like this, when the activity of caregiving is interrupted, that we suddenly turn and recognize the divine Mother herself, the source and substance of all nurturance who holds our beginning and our ending in her ample lap. She seems palpably near and comfortingly at home with us these days.

This is the grace of Saturn, who by saying "no" or "no more" opens the way to a deeper "yes." He reduces all things to their correct scale and proportions, reveals their true outlines, and finally pulls aside the curtain to reveal the essence behind the manifest appearance. As Sun and Moon both pass through Saturn’s gate in the sign of home, family and motherhood, we are carried behind the visible family and beyond our own plans and expectations, into the presence of the divine source of life. We realize what has been holding and sustaining us all our lives and what will carry us safely home.

Saturn’s transit through Cancer can make us aware that the burdens and limitations of family life are simply too great for us to bear – yet impossible to avoid. The gift of Saturn in Cancer is the wisdom that we are not carrying the burdens or bearing the limitations alone. A compassionate, infinitely loving and sustaining maternal presence permeates the cosmos. Everything is packed with mothering. Knowing this, we can live humanly, doing our bit to care for the world and our children and leaving the rest to Her.