Cancer solstice and Capricorn Full Moon: Precipitating life

Even the newly installed blackboard wall outside the waterfront pizza place is in on it, asking passers-by to finish the statement, “Before I die I want to ________.” That is, the blackboard seems to be articulating the sensation of things building to something that many people are feeling here on the verge of the solstice and the Capricorn Full Moon. That question (and that ‘something’) is not about death — it’s about actively living your life in a ‘get real’ moment. So is this Full Moon, which is exact at 7:32 am EDT Sunday.

Waxing Moon caught in a crane on the Portland, Maine waterfront. Photo by Amanda Painter

On Friday, the Sun enters Cancer moments before 1:04 am EDT. That puts it on the first degree of a cardinal sign, beginning a new season and making a square to the Aries Point — that first degree of Aries where our personal lives and the patterns of global events tend to intersect, invert and mirror each other in striking ways. The early degrees of all the cardinal signs (Libra and Capricorn are the other two) share this sensitivity.

The lead-up to this solstice and Full Moon has seen one of the most far-reaching instances of whistle-blowing ever, in terms of the number of regular citizens it directly affects. Responses to this huge example of boundary crossing appear to range from outrage to acceptance, or feeling too overwhelmed, too numbed out or too cool to care. And the revelations just keep coming and coming.

All the while, there has been this gradual migration of planets from Gemini to Cancer. On Friday, the Sun joins the pool and four days later, Jupiter does, too. In between, we have the Capricorn Full Moon. All of these movements are contributing to this sensation of ‘something building’ that the nightly news is reflecting. It’s like all the ideas and duality held in mid-air by Gemini finally burst open like a thunderstorm.

From here, the Capricorn Full Moon looks like a precipitating event. It’s where we shift into ‘action mode’. The question is, what are we acting on? What are you acting for? What do you want? Can you call on a sense of adventure when you’re in the midst of so much uncertainty, when so much is unknown to you?

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