Season and Spirit: Magickal Adventures Around the Wheel of the Year

The Wheel of the Year is the engine that drives NeoPagan practice. Explore thw magick of the season beyond the Eight Great Sabbats.

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New Moon in Cancer: Sweet Honey in the Rock

In this uncontainable night,

be the mystery in the crossroads of your being,

the meaning discovered there.

-Rilke

When Summer begins, and the Sun transits into the Cardinal water Sign of Cancer, we begin a new astrological and seasonal cycle.

During Gemini, the airy, analytical influence of the sign of Twins goes to work on the knowledge and experience gained during Aries (identity, I Am) and Taurus (resources, I Have). Mutable signs, those that help us transition from season to season, are those times when we shake out the sum total of what we have experienced and can begin to look for patterns, distill trends and integrate what we've learned. Gemini's mantra, I Think, allows us to pull together disparate elements, to see beyond conventional thinking, and to synthesize a deeper understanding of our patterns, habits and desires. The work of the Spring, our projects and plans, get laid out and we set to work.

At the Summer Solstice, we kick off a new seasonal cycle, and the Cardinal sign leading us does so through the powers and qualities of elemental Water. Cancer, ruled by the Moon, is the quintessential Water sign, embodying all of water's qualities of depth, flow, imagination, nurturance and mystery. It is a cliche to say that Cancer is moody or sensitive, that Cancers are concerned foremost with family, tradition, the comforts of home, and the pleasures of the flesh. All of this is true. Cancer's mantra of I Feel prioritizes human relationships and connection, and makes the heart the compass by which we steer.

During Cancer, the Sun, at the height of his powers and intensity, does not rule his own mansion, but bows to the Moon and allows her to lead the way into the most intense season of growth and embodiment. “Everything under the Sun is in tune, but the Sun is eclipsed by the Moon,” Pink Floyd cautions us, reminding us that even the life giving powers of the Sun and its solar qualities of light and reason, can be overthrown by the irrational, the imaginative, the chaotic. The gentle heart of Cancer's domesticity is rooted, like a lotus, in the mysteries of the deep and the shadowiest corners of the soul. This New Moon, with the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus in Cancer, supported by lush aspects to Jupiter in Virgo and Neptune in Pisces, opens the way for our creativity to blossom, and for our imagination to feed our dreams more deeply.

Because our emotional body is the means through which transformation happens during Cancer, our transit thru the first weeks of Summer can be soothing or painful. By engaging our emotions as a locus of awareness and change, Cancer is not merely a time for family or repose. We are brought to account, in the most personal way, for how we live. Cancer's focus on our emotional reality compels us to ask difficult questions about how we live in our authenticity. What is it that we absolutely need, what is it that we cannot live without? What for us is nourishment, what is support and comfort? What we do hold in the center of our heart? What is it that constitutes safe haven, pleasure, and love? How do we approach and how sustain these things, for ourselves and for the people we love?

 

The Sun in Cancer always brings us home to ourselves, although sometimes to road is winding and painful. But we arrive back at the center of our lives, our beautiful messy lives, with a renewed sense of how precious and holy that beautiful mess can be. It is the sweet honey in the rock, that sustains us in the wilderness.

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Leni Hester is a Witch and writer from Denver, Colorado. Her work appears in the Immanion anthologies "Pop Culture Grimoire," "Women's Voices in Magick" and "Manifesting Prosperity". She is a frequent contributor to Witches and Pagans and Sagewoman Magazines.

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