New Moon in Cancer - July 14, 2007

Family is where our lives begin, and many of us derive joy from starting our own. Yet families are also severely screwed-up. I just finished watching the last season of Alias on DVD. This show, starring Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow, was about a CIA operative whose parents were also spies. However, her mother was a "bad guy," and Sydney was constantly deceived (or had information hidden from her) by both her parents. The theme of this show is appropriate for this Cancer New Moon, because the Moon and Sun are exactly inconjunct (150-degree angle) Neptune in Aquarius. The misinformation and lies (Neptune) perpetrated along various networks (Aquarius) was intimately tied to Sydney Bristow's sense of family -- her very past (Cancer), in fact, as she was the progeny of a Russian spy who pretended she was someone else, to get close to Sydney's father, a CIA operative. (I know, it's complicated!)

What forms of deception were part of your family? Many of us grew up with a gut sense -- way below conscious awareness -- that our parents were hiding something from us. Family secrets -- a gay uncle, an alcoholic father, a sexually abused step-sister, a pedophilic great-grandfather, take your pick! -- were hidden supposedly to "protect" us, but the withdrawal of this vital information ("intelligence") left us feeling incomplete, that there was something missing, if we could only identify what that was. Once we learn about our family's past, the missing pieces come together, and we finally understand why we felt off-center.

Even though the secret was about something that didn't directly impact you, it affected you anyway. You are a part of your family, and a family is an organism, a unit by itself, of which you are a part. You cannot separate yourself from what your great-grandfather did to your grand-aunt, because these patterns are inherited. Mistakes are often passed along the generations, and it takes both consciousness and will to not repeat the "sins of the fathers." Thus, it is imperative that the veils of our family's past are pulled aside, so that, with awareness, we can choose to stop the dysfunction.

The Fine Print: This New Moon occurs at 21 degrees Cancer. This lunation will mostly impact those natives with personal planets or angles around 21 degrees of the cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn).

Taurus New Moon Square Neptune in Aquarius - May 16, 2007

This New Moon, your security needs conflict with the needs of the collective.

Nearly all of us are attached to our possessions and our preferences. But there is a whole world out there, one in which millions of people have less (materially) than you. And not to romanticize poverty, but those anecdotes -- about the poor in India who are more in touch with the divine in daily life than we are -- can challenge your value system.

Comfort is important. But we blog-readers take many of our affordable Western luxuries for granted. The price of a laptop and high speed internet access is beyond the reach of most.

This New Moon, you may have to sacrifice some of your money or possessions for humanitarian causes. The pull of compassion may result in an awakening to how good you've got it, and how easy it would be for you to do with less, if it means giving someone else more.

Or, your material stability may feel like it is being pulled out from under your feet. Financial transactions over the internet may be sabotaged by deception or confusion. Groups that encourage fuzzy boundaries may attempt to change your personal preferences for the benefit of the whole.

This New Moon occurs at 25 Taurus. Neptune is at 22 Aquarius, about to go retrograde later this month. If you have any personal planets or angles around degree 25 in fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius), you are undergoing the beginnings of a Neptune transit, in which you are likely to be feeling confused, mystically-inclined, lost in fantasy, martyred, escapist, and so on. This New Moon will serve as a trigger to this longer process of dissolution of whatever area of your life is being affected.

Fear of an eclipse

I wrote How to prepare for an eclipse last week because readers have been sharing their fears about how these eclipses will affect them and their loved ones. Now I, too, have fallen prey to rumination. After all, every member of my immediate family has a planet at 14 or 15 degrees Pisces. What will happen? Should we all stay behind closed doors on Saturday?

Fear is natural, and I supposed it is to be expected. After all, people do go loony on a Full Moon, so think how much crazier they'll get on a Lunar Eclipse! However, there are other cosmic forces at work that increase our worry.

Saturn opposite Neptune

Yes, today is the second exact "hit" of this aspect, with Saturn in Leo transiting retrograde opposite slower-moving Neptune in Aquarius. Saturn rules fear and negativity. Neptune relates to the imagination, and adds a cloudy, confused, delusional flavor to any planet it touches, especially in hard aspect. Add these two planets together, and you get unfounded fears, free floating anxiety, dark fantasies. Many dystopian movies play out Saturn-Neptune themes. So of course, we expect the worst of this Lunar Eclipse, because we are in the thick of paranoia.

How do you combat fear?

There are two kinds of fear -- the first kind occurs when a mountain lion is chasing you; the second occurs when you think about the future. The former response is a great survival mechanism -- surely our species would have become extinct had we not learned to run from wild animals and avoid poisonous berries. However, the latter is an unfortunate side-effect of having overactive brains.

Yes, most fear is all in the mind. We don't want to lose what we have, for one. Relationships, jobs, friends -- that which gives us a sense of stability (Saturn) can dissolve (Neptune) before our very eyes. Few people want to die, or have their families ripped asunder. And yes, bad things do happen. But we just don't have control over most of these things.

Knowing that all things are temporary makes you appreciate their beauty all the more in the present. A flower has a short life span, yet its very ephemerality is half of what makes it so special. The source of our suffering is our attachment to people and objects that, by their very nature, must die or decay.

All we can do is appreciate the moment. The Cosmos has stuff in store for us -- astrology can give us an idea of what's to come, but there's a whole lot of diversity allowed within the expression of these planetary archetypes. We don't really know what's going to happen. Some change is necessary, and happens in the interest of our psychospiritual development. And other times, really terrible stuff happens, and it feels like there's no rhyme or reason to it, no meaning. Existentalism is a Saturn-Neptune philosophy.

Is it A Course in Miracles that says the only antidote to fear is love? Regardless of the source of this nugget of wisdom, it's true. You just love what you have right now with all your might, because at any moment it might be gone. If you are all love, can there be room for fear? If you are totally in the present moment, with your heart wide open, is your mind capable of obsessing about an imagined future?

Saturn opposite Neptune

I've written an accessible article for AOL Horoscopes on the Saturn-Neptune opposition, including my first stab at Sun sign horoscopes!