On June 21 at 6:08 p.m. on the Pacific coast, the Moon at 1 Capricorn will reach its full phase with the Cancer Sun. This comes just one day after the June 20 solstice, when the Sun will have reached its highest declination in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere and the lowest declination in the south, marking the onset of summer and winter, respectively. While the solstices occur at the same time each year, the Moon’s phases operate on a different schedule. That makes this year’s solstice/Full Moon proximity a somewhat rare, and momentous, event.
And because this Full Moon occurs at just 1 degree of Capricorn, there will be a second Capricorn Full Moon about a month from now, on July 21, the last day of the Sun’s passage through the sign of Cancer. This means that Cancer season 2024 (June 20-July 21) is framed at each end by a Capricorn Full Moon. While summer’s just beginning here in the north, a Full Moon symbolizes something coming to completion.
The Cancer/Capricorn polarity is like a balancing act each of us performs between our interior or home life (Cancer) and what we do out in the world at large (Capricorn). Cancer’s totem animal is a crab or a turtle, moving sideways or slowly and ready to retreat into its shell if necessary, but moving nevertheless. Capricorn’s symbolic creatures are the mythological sea-goat, dexterous on land or sea, and also the mountain goat, headed upward, undaunted. Both watery Cancer and earthy Capricorn are cardinal, initiatory signs. They have an agenda.
In traditional astrology, Cancer and Capricorn are mother-father signs. Cancer wants to nurture something growing. Capricorn wants to build something that lasts. Mix up the gender ideas any which-way, and they are both parental ways of being, and that includes being parental toward oneself. Cancer’s agenda is primarily about safety: finding it and keeping it for oneself and others. Capricorn is goal-oriented, applying hard work, and reaping rewards.
Cultivating safety and responsible effort are some watchwords for the Sun in Cancer with the full Capricorn Moon. Taking care of oneself is necessary to taking care of business, and vice-versa.
Key aspects at this lunation include an inspiring conjunction between the Cancer Sun and Venus and Mercury in Cancer as well. A conjunction between Venus and Mercury suggests aesthetic beauty in thought and speech. Cancer is a sign of emotional remembering and family longings. At this Full Moon, we might feel a strong pull toward thinking and talking about the past.
Cooking and eating beautiful food, a la a family picnic, would be a thoroughly Cancerian way to spend the Full Moon weekend. The Moon, on June 21, is moving in the direction of making an earth-element trine with Mars, now in Taurus, another sign much enamored with eating well and abundantly!
At this lunation, the Sun and Moon at the first degree of Capricorn form a t-square with Neptune, now residing at the very last few minutes of 29 Pisces. A t-square, and especially one involving the Sun and Moon at maximum light, presses on Neptunian and Piscean themes. Often astrologers – and I’m one of them – emphasize the gloomier characteristics of Neptune in Pisces: confusion, gullibility, loose boundaries, to put it nicely. I was recently talking to my astrologer friend Gray Crawford who reminded me of the highest of Neptunian archetypes: the sheer beauty of altruistic idealism. Surely at this solstice/ Full Moon time, Neptune at the end of its long sojourn through Pisces is a call to remember one’s highest aspirations for the wellness of all beings.
The “dispositor,” or most influential, planet for the Moon in Capricorn is Saturn, the furthest of the visible planets from the Sun. In astrology, Saturn represents hard work and even hardship, growing within one’s own limits, endings, and the myriad forms of death. Following after the June 21 lunation, on June 29, Saturn will station before entering one of its regular periods of retrograde motion. While stationing, a planet’s significations are more, not less, potent, suggesting that the period of late June is a time to contemplate where exactly one wants to apply maximum effort – and take care of business.
One nickname for the Moon when it’s at full phase each year in June is the Strawberry Moon. I don’t know about you, but to me, there’s nothing more complete and perfect than a big, ripe strawberry in June.
Blessings for the first of two Capricorn Full Moons and with prayers for peace!
~ Sara
Sara R. Diamond, an astrologer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a life-long student and practitioner in several esoteric paths. Her style of astrology combines modern-psychological astrology with insights from traditional astrology. Sara is also an estate planning attorney. In addition, she has published four books on right-wing movements in the United States and earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. You are invited to contact Sara via her website at www.SaraDiamondAstrology.com.
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