This month’s New Moon chart has 4 planets in the “Mom and apple pie” sign of Cancer (and, yes, Cancer is the Sun sign of the USA). The questions we’ll be looking at closely this month include ones of hearth and home, family and tribe, our land resources, and how we feed ourselves. The challenges include major power struggles and a whole bunch of reality checks.
Cancer is ruled by Moon, so the Cancer New Moon is always a powerfully emotional and somewhat secretive one. This year, the New Moon (Sun-Moon conjunction) is trine Saturn, the authority figure of the Zodiac, who is particularly taciturn right now in cloak-and-dagger Scorpio. This aspect immediately made me think of the highway signs that say, “If you see something, say something” with a phone number. While one would certainly hope that anyone who saw truly suspicious behavior — like dropping a backpack on the street and walking away from it — would report it immediately, there are chilling comparisons that can be made to the propaganda and control techniques of the Third Reich. This kind of paranoid vigilance is much more likely to result in people being kicked off a plane for chanting prayers than it is to halt a terrorist attack, but it does a very good job of encouraging a climate of suspicion and fear.
A trine aspect makes for an easy flow of energy, but not necessarily a desirable outcome. You might want to look at the secrets you are keeping in your own life, and consider what the ultimate outcome of that secrecy might be. Some secrets need to be kept — others must be exposed, especially when authority runs amok.
Mars and Mercury are also in Cancer, dancing cheek to cheek, with Pluto doing its best to stop the music. There will be emotional power struggles, communications blowups, and probably more cyber-security problems in the air. In our own lives, we are likely to come face-to-face with our personal insecurities and emotional vulnerabilities, and we’ll feel the need to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Hopefully, we can protect without resorting to violence, either verbal or physical, but I gotta say — this is not a peaceful chart. Think before you speak or act in anger — and remember Humpty Dumpty.
The productive manifestation of this aspect would include impassioned and inspiring speech, taking a strong, protective stand against abuses of authority, acknowledging the importance of emotional realities in the conducting of business and government, as well as in our own lives. It’s important that we make an effort to live from a heart-centered and emotionally honest perspective if we want to avoid attracting manipulative behavior and explosive, emotional drama.
Venus and Jupiter are still dancing together in the heart-centered sign of lovers and leaders, Leo. This optimistic, expansive, and sociable aspect overlit President Obama’s “best week ever” and presaged the SCOTUS decisions on gay marriage and health care. The aspect will continue in orb for a while — because Venus is turning retrograde soon (more on that in my next post), the two planets will conjunct again in August, go off on their own for a while, then come back together briefly in October. But in this chart, they are in a difficult square aspect to Saturn (and to the MC when the chart is cast for the USA). This suggests, among other things, restriction on artistic expression, “coming down to earth with a thud” (Noel Tyl), dogmatism, and underhanded tactics that undermine creative endeavors and chosen leaders.
Before I look at some ramifications of this chart that are specific to the USA in the upcoming month, here is a paragraph for astrology students. Find the chart here. In addition to the aspects mentioned above, note the sixth house emphasis, Aquarius rising (giving Saturn and Uranus rulership of the chart), Saturn right on the 29 degree Scorpio MC, and Uranus in a separating, but still close square to Sun and Moon, and approaching square with Mercury and Mars. Mercury and Mars are conjunct the USA Sun, and Pluto is in opposition to it. (This opposition will be in orb for the rest of the year. We’ll see some massive transformations happening in the country — and not all of them will be immediately obvious). For those of you who work with midpoints, especially note Uranus is at the midpoint of the two Cancer conjunctions.
I titled this post “Protect and Serve” because the area of the chart that rules service, including civil service, police, and the military is emphasized in this chart, and I expect that we’ll see events that lead to strongly emotional reactions around those areas of our society. Corruption and power grabs are major themes here, and so are patriotism, taking care of our own, and corporate control of government. There will be explosive, possibly quite violent events that reflect this theme of control and freedom, the citizenry and civil servants. We may well find the country in a heated discussion about which of our public servants actually serve, and which sought their jobs in order to fill their own pockets or satisfy their need for power. Sudden financial ups and downs are likely, and we’ll probably see some major, sudden, and probably extreme news in agricultural sectors.
How these aspects will affect you depend, to a great extent, on where they fall in your chart. If you’re interested in learning more about astrology so you can make more informed decisions and take advantage of opportunities and challenges by learning more about your own chart, I’ll be offering a class called Chart and Soul: Astrology for Yourself starting October 12th. Sign up for my mailing list and I’ll let you know as soon as I open registration.
What dreams and great ideas do you have you hidden away in various corners of your mind — the ones you drag out occasionally like a child’s comfort blanket to sooth your soul? Then you fold them up in the morning and put them away, because you’re too afraid, or too busy, or too full of doubt to actually translate those dreams into accomplishments. You know the dreams I’m talking about — we all have them. This is a good month to pick one of them — one that feeds your soul — and make it happen. 
"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them." ~ Thomas Merton
“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” ~ Walt Whitman
"Our truth is an ancient one: that love endures and overcomes; that hatred destroys; that what is obtained by love is retained, but what is obtained by hatred proves a burden. This truth, fundamental to the position which rejects reliance on the method of war, is ultimately a religious perception, a belief that stands outside of history.” 
