Working with the Cancer New Moon
Every month when the Moon catches up to the Sun, we have a new moon. (And every 33 months, we get a second new Moon in one cycle, which is rare enough to have its own name, a black Moon). This dark lunar phase is associated with rest, renewal, turning inward and planting seeds intended to sprout over the next six months.
New Moons are in the same sign the Sun is in, and this month, the luminaries align at 14º Cancer 23—and they make a lot of aspects. Venus is just eight and a half degrees away in Cancer. The Sun-Moon sextile Mars in Taurus and trine Saturn, newly retrograde in Pisces. They also form a significant square to the lunar nodes. And the tightest aspect of all is a near-exact opposition to the dwarf planet Ceres, frequently associated with Cancer.
While the expressive Sun isn’t necessarily at its most comfortable in Cancer, Luna is literally at home here (“domicile”). As the ruler of Cancer, the Moon is what bestows many of the sign’s familiar qualities, both the positive “light” ones and the denser, shadowy ones.
The Moon represents our emotions, the underlying quality of our personal lives and relationships and the passing “clouds” of our daily lives. The Moon is the fastest-moving planet, changing signs every two and a half days, and it has great sway over water here on Earth. Its gravitational pull’s interaction with Earth’s gravity creates something called tidal force, and that causes tides to rise and fall.
That’s why we think of Cancer not merely as emotional but “moody”: with feelings changing like the tides. Cancer energy is deeply sensitive, empathic, compassionate, nurturing and nourishing. The shadow traits to watch for include emotional manipulation, co-dependence and possessiveness.
The more emotional intelligence you’ve developed and the more self-awareness (and self-mastery) you’ve gained, the more you can utilize all planetary influences. Think of the Magician card in Tarot, with all the resources at its disposal to conjure or create at will.
New Moons specifically offer a chance to reflect, release, envision, instigate a dream, a relationship, a way of being in the world… This one, with its profound emotional depths and myriad of connections to other planets and the nodes, offers a chance for a major internal reset.
This highly sensitized new Moon comes at such an interesting time: at practically the halfway point of 2024 and smack in the middle of two back-to-back full Moons in Capricorn. I get the image of a swinging seesaw. The middle of a seesaw is called the fulcrum, and one definition of fulcrum is the precise point in between effort and resistance.
In and of itself, fulcrum is a neutral concept. It's our intentions that make the difference. If balance or equilibrium is desired, then equal effort and resistance is ideal. But if one seeks growth and change, one must get to a tipping point, which comes as the result of a series of small changes that, cumulatively, are significant enough to bring about a larger, more important change.
This lunar activation along the Cancer-Capricorn polarity speaks to what the two opposite signs actually share: traditional values around home, family and fiscal responsibility, striking a balance between one’s personal and public lives, and finding the right degree of softness and toughness to support our choices.
Because the Sun/Moon are “at the bend” of the lunar nodes (squaring them), there’s tension with the Sun/Moon energies. You might have a sense that something within you is ready for resolution or release. The south node represents the karma we’ve come in with. It’s not inherently “negative,” but it carries the warning of getting snagged by the shadow side of its sign/house and disposition.
Like very familiar old habits, the south node reminds us we’ve “been there, done that” and that in this lifetime, our north node is the goal or vision to evolve into. I jokingly ask people, What’s the toughest north node position one can have? Don’t overanalyze it. The answer is, Yours.
For so many of us, the north node's sign and house placement can feel like a cosmic joke: We’re being asked to do or become the absolute hardest, most challenging or simply most unfamiliar thing we can imagine.
Until January 2025, the nodes are in Aries (north) and Libra (south), and a wildly oversimplified way to think about the evolutionary opportunity this cycle presents is of balancing personal needs and self-expression with being harmoniously in partnership. How do we assert ourselves and be true to ourselves at all costs while also compromising and sacrificing and serving with love and not resentment?
Underscoring this uneasy balancing act is the Sun/Moon's opposition to Ceres, which forms a cardinal grand cross with the nodes. Ceres, among other things, reflects the quality of nurturance we received in our childhood and how we learned to nurture others as adults. This challenging cross ratchets up tension around the emotional underpinnings of relationship dynamics and illuminates how you relate to your own feelings and deep connections to others.
While we do need to understand how our early lives created imprints and how we continue to act out of those old patterns (especially wounds), there’s a danger in over-psychologizing the past. Often as discoveries are made, the first response is anger, blame and other negative emotions. It’s important to allow ourselves to feel those, but instead of evolving through them, we frequently get stuck there. There’s power in anger, and it can be heady for someone whose power was stolen from them a long time ago.
It’s not an easy journey, from anger to love, from blame to forgiveness. But ultimately we embark on it for ourselves, to cut these emotional cords that keep us bound. Forgiving someone doesn’t condone the behavior or absolve the person. It’s simply dropping that weight you’ve been lugging around, which is a prerequisite for being free.
All planetary motion is an invitation to be more honest…with ourselves. As the Moon reaches its precise point of newness (Friday, 6:57pm EDT) and slowly begins to wax as a burgeoning crescent over the weekend, make time for stillness. Go to your safe happy place. Bring your journal, music, a recording app, something to capture the awarenesses, inspiration or guidance you receive.
With Saturn lending supportive scaffolding, don’t push too hard. Set an intention, write out 10 “wishes” for the next lunar cycle, noting what action steps would support that. Then honor Saturn by scheduling few right into your calendar.
