CANCER SOLSTICE 2017

(Be sure to check out Kathy Rose’s New Moon in Cancer in the Sidebar)

June 20-21st marks the entrance of the Sun into Cancer depending on East/West USA time frames.  I’ve run the exact entrance for Washington DC at 12:25 AM EDT on June 21st.  

The turn of the wheel shows us in the Northern Hemisphere enjoying the longest day of the year, while in the Southern Hemisphere it is the longest night.  Let’s not forget this as we attempt to extract meaning from this year’s astrology.

 I like to start with the Sun itself and study the relationships it has with the other planets.  This year we see it pulling away from every single aspect as it enters a very watery element.  When the Sun was still in Gemini we saw it conjoin Mercury, for example, and experienced all the buzz of news saturating our airwaves.  With the marked square to Chiron and the separating opposition with Saturn we’ve witnessed quite a few troubling manifestations, but we’ve also experienced nice connections with Uranus/Athena in Aries keeping things lively, energized and full of surprises.  I”m going to come back to the main event signified by that T-square in a bit.

The Moon in Taurus is waning yet still conjoining Venus in Taurus in a nice trine to Pluto.  The President’s wife, Melania—a strong Taurus Sun & Stellium/Moon in Capricorn has now moved into the Whitehouse with all the questions of ‘who is she really?’ being broadcast.

Katy Perry Transformed

 Katy Perry has gained the 100 million twitter user mark as the prima donna of pop queens as she ‘transforms’ herself boldly.  Another lovely super-star, Beyonce, has given birth to twins just before the Sun left the twin sign of Gemini.  I’m sure there are other examples of these Taurus/Gemini-to-Cancer modifications.

Jupiter in Libra is very much direct now and at a fulcrum point with Neptune (now Retrograde rising), Chiron , Uranus, and Venus.  The Neptune-Venus-Jupiter yod sets forth a difficult balancing act amidst glamour and illusion, doubly so with those 165 degrees to both Chiron and Uranus where woundings and transcendence are both possibilities.  The square to Mars strengthens the exaggeration of some Cancerian defensive themes in bold statements such as the recent collision of a US Destroyer with a cargo ship, and the most recent downing of a Syrian fighter jet by a US Navy pilot.  

Let’s now look at these current events and other underlying themes playing out in this Solstice chart because it’s really that configuration between Saturn-Chiron-and the Sun that grabs my attention.  We have a ways to go with the Saturn/Chiron square which I have written about in other articles.  This square defines a struggle of beliefs about the very nature of reality I feel. Now with the Sun intertwined I see an age-old pattern emerge which speaks to both the Piscean Age that is dissolving away and a Patriarchal system which is decaying from within.  This archetypal father/authority theme can be personal, ancestral, collective and now global in its implications.  I can best illustrate this configuration by sharing some of my own personal history.  Cancer, after all, is a good place to review history.

I was born with a T-square involving the Sun, Chiron, and Saturn.  This T-square also includes some other planets and asteroids in my chart, so it is highly significant.  I was born into a very religious home.  My father, in fact, was a minister in an extremely orthodox, fundamentalist Christian religion. He was also a Sun sign Cancer, born on the 4th of July, just like America. From a very wee age I felt awestruck that my father was ‘god-like’ and I feared his wrath after several incidences such as witnessing my brother being whipped with his leather belt because he had evidently sassed our mother. I would do anything to avoid such punishments including getting on my knees in rapid ‘confessing of my sins’ before the ‘hand of God’ descended. I was also privy to my father’s fiery sermons as well as the adulation heaped upon him especially by the female members of the congregation.  He was most decidedly charismatic.  

The religion I was raised in was highly ethnocentric and viewed other belief systems as false.  We were the ‘chosen ones’ and were taught that we could certainly be part of the 144,000 referred to in the book of Revelation as able to meet Christ upon his return and go to heaven to judge the wicked from our lofty, and celestial perch.  This religion even stated where ‘the Mark of the Beast’ was held:  right in the center of the Catholic Church.  The Pope was the ultimate holder of this mark and all would be revealed at the end of times.  So from birth through graduation from High School I was fully indoctrinated  participating in evangelical crusades, prayer meetings, great convocations of gatherings from all over the United States and even other countries where zealous missionary work was fully engaged to convert as many sinners as quickly as possible before the Second Coming due to arrive at any moment in this wicked world.  At seventeen I even traveled with 700 chosen youths across the country in a special train to attend a Youth Congress in Atlantic City where there were thousands gathered full of heart-felt and righteous enthusiasm.

Every night before bed-time I prayed on my knees most fervently to be good, as perfect as my parents were, especially my Father who preached the truth.  Yet under the surface I was plagued with nightmares that woke me up in a cold sweat all the time.  I also suffered from ‘hysterical’ symptoms such as constant vomiting, appendicitis attacks, high tension/migraine headaches, and terrible eczema which covered my hands, my feet, and later my eyelids.  I would scratch the affected places on my little body until I was bloody raw because the pain was better than the violent itching.  This went on year after year with no doctor ever able to help me.  At one point I was given penicillan injections in my butt very week and would kneel like an obedient penitent for the painful stab delivered no less than from a Nun in a Catholic hospital.  (What was THAT all about???)   I would daily also have to soak my hands and feet in a magenta solution that looked suspiciously like the ‘blood of Christ’ to me, a very young child.

Finally, the year I was officially baptized at the age of twelve (the official year when Christ entered the temple), my Mother divorced my Father.  This was a shocking earthquake in our family.  To cut to the chase, she had discovered torn pieces of stationery in his wastebasket in his office where he was newly instated as a professor in a college.  Words like ‘darling, kisses, and love’ caught her eye and she spent several weeks locked in our back room piecing the letters together until she had proof of his infidelities.  I was in total disbelief because my beloved Father was my hero.  I remember writing him a letter and taking it to his office and slipping it under his door.  When he came out I ran like a rabbit so frightened I didn’t know what to do.  My mother then had to ‘prove’ to me and my older brother by showing us some of her evidence.  This also terrified me because my world was shattered even though all sorts of things started to fall into place and make sense.  For example, my Mother had suffered a terrible miscarriage at 4-5 months.  She was burning with fever and we were afraid she was going to die. I was 8 years old at that time. My Dad actually showed my brother and I the fetus in a jar!  It was horrifying.  There was a big purple spot on the wee things head!

You see my Mother was always suffering from VD.  She was constantly coming down with Gonorrhea, and a host of other venereal problems.  Father traveled a great deal and told her he must have contacted these things from the toilet seats of the motels where he stayed, and she believed him astonishing as it seems to us today.  Furthermore, we were constantly moving.  I had moved fourteen times by the time I was twelve years of age; from parish to parish.  In retrospect it all made sense; the good church fathers, when getting wind of a scandal simply moved him on to another church or churches.  

The truth of the matter was that he had hundreds of conquests.  He kept score on 3″ by 5″ cards which I later found by sleuthing in his stuff.  He rated the women on various attributes.  He kept track of the little gifts he doled out to them too. He was a bonafide sex addict.   And sadly he never changed.  In fact, he got worse with age.  But I’ve said enough.

My wound from the ‘father and the church’ ( Sun/Saturn archetypes) is obvious enough.  I have spent many, many years healing those wounds both for myself and for my ancestors who never did the arduous healing work it takes to right the imbalances.  Today I no longer see things as black and white.  I actually understand what created my Father’s wound, and his Mother and Father’s wounds and the ancestral wounds before that.  I also see the church in a context that makes more sense historically as part of the path Monotheism has taken since the time of Abraham and his beloved son Isaac, and the first-born forsaken son Ishmael; the roots of Judaism and Islam. Then came Moses, Mohammad, and later Christ…. Today I realize that this particular protestant religious organization has many good qualities which I give them credit for.  I also acknowledge the qualities in my Father which I loved such as his deep appreciation for nature, and his artistic talents as both an artist and photographer. I can accept the deep ambivalence of all these experiences which pervaded my psyche.  But I don’t have to condone the behavior of a patriarchal system or the perpetuation of such beliefs in a world that is fast shrinking due to air travel, ever new scientific studies which inform us of Earth’s history and the Universe in which we live, and now the inter-net revolution which unites peoples all over the world even as a growing consciousness bypasses the role of intercessors who needlessly stand as representatives of god.  This is Chiron at work for it represents the bridge from Saturn (authority) to Uranus (cosmic consciousness).

Stepping back now and giving this Sun-Chiron-Saturn a larger context I look at the present mirror of events and am able to connect the dots more readily in my own consciousness.  That doesn’t condone the destruction wrought by what Melanie Reinhart calls the wound to the Solar Principle, “the wound of narcissistic isolation….the dark side of the Sun…..egomania, narcissism, and a belief that one’s purpose is god-ordained.”  (from pp 187-188 in her great book Chiron and the Healing Journey).  

We have a very obvious collective wound gravely manifest now.  The image of the US Navy Destroyer graphically depicts our wound.  I’ve also run the chart for this event where we see both Mercury and the Moon joining the T-square.  A miscalculation was in effect, many were ‘asleep’ and not just the men who drowned in their berths tragically (Neptune/Moon/Chiron all in Pisces).  These antiquated beliefs that “I have the only truth, and you are wrong” need to go.  The official American stance, like that of the church I was raised in, is ethnocentric.  There are many great nations on this Earth.  And, besides, what is so special about being ‘great’?  One explanation comes from Aljazeera’s Faultline programming in an excellent investigative report on ‘The Rise of Trump”  It’s certainly worth a view towards a greater understanding of those in the United States who have lost their livelihoods and been forgotten due to the complexities of corporate America and a government who seems not to care.

Is there an actual collective wound of narcissism at work here?  According to the Mayo Clinic’s definition “Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others.  But behind this mask of ultra confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism…………If you have narcissistic personality disorder, you may come across as conceited, boastful or pretentious.  You often monopolize conversations.  You may belittle or look down on people you perceive as inferior.  You may feel a sense of entitlement—-and when you don’t receive special treatment, you may become impatient or angry.  You may insist on having ‘the best’ of everything—for instance, the best car, athletic club or medical care……..At the same time, you have trouble handling anything that may be perceived as criticism.  You may have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation.  To feel better, you may react with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make yourself appear superior.  Or you may feel depressed and moody because you fall short of perfection.”

We can point fingers at ‘certain people’ who are now prominent in the news, but I will now quote Allen Frances, the renowned psychiatrist, who wrote the criteria that defines this disorder, “Most amateur diagnosticians have mislabeled President Trump with the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder….he doesn’t meet them.  He may be a world-class narcissist, but this doesn’t make him mentally ill because he does not suffer from the stress and impairment required to diagnose mental disorder.  He can and should be appropriately denounced for his ignorance, incompetence, impulsivity and pursuit of dictatorial powers.  The antidote to a despotic Trumpean dark age is political, not psychological.”

Is this a ‘wound’ or a ‘disorder’.  I am no expert here, but the referral to a ‘dark age’ is particularly disturbing.  We know that a distorted Christianity created much bloodshed during the 600 years after Christ marked as ‘the Dark Ages’.  Could an equally distorted image of America take us down that road again?

Peruvian Charnal House

Chiron in Pisces represents both the charnel house of all collective woundings, of all the atrocities inflicted by humans upon other humans and other living entities now reaping a history of narcissistic beliefs that create isolation and separateness, but Chiron in Pisces is also the deep longing to return to unity and healing modalities that knit together again the fabric of life.  The Tibetans know this well.  I would submit that Chiron in Pisces can be like the ritual destruction employed by Tibetan monks in their careful creation of a sand mandala only to quietly and carefully remove it all, including the deity syllables, the geometry of the entire configuration, until nothing remains but the sand from which it originated, which is transported back into the moving water of nature herself.  To them this symbolizes the ephemerality of life and the world.  

Is this what Chiron is trying to teach us now?