Hi Everyone

Can you believe it’s June already and that the Summer Solstice is this month?  In addition to the Solstice, aka the longest day of the year, two planets turn retrograde in June, including everyone’s favorite – Mercury.

Mercury stops on June 7^th at 8 a.m. EDT at 3⁰ Cancer.  Most of his retrograde motion will be in his own sign, Gemini, and he’ll go direct on July 1 at 9 a.m. at 24⁰ Gemini.  Gemini is concerned with how we process information, endlessly curious about just about everything and is accused of be a “jack of all trades, master of none.”  Gemini’s real job is to reconcile opposites, but in order to do that he has to experience both sides of the teeter-totter, right?

Instead of viewing this retrograde with our usual dread about communication, travel and computers, I invite us all to turn our thoughts inward (key word for all retrogrades), to discern how our mind runs away with us, to deepen our understanding of how we take in information, and to be more attentive and focused.  Retrogrades invite revisiting old thought patterns and ways of viewing our world.  This retrograde will be particularly powerful since Mercury, the trickster, is in his own sign.

Neptune, planet of redemption, compassion, fog, illusion, the film industry, and all things numinous, is making her way slowly through her own sign, Pisces.  She’ll stop on June 9^th at 4 p.m. at 7⁰ Pisces.  Attention all water signs (Cancer and Scorpio) and other mutable (aka, multi-talented, changeable) signs (Virgo, Sagittarius, and Gemini).  She’ll be retrograde until November. This is a time to turn Neptune’s redemptive and compassionate energy inward, to forgive ourselves as well as others and to invite the numinous into our everyday lives.  This could mean increasing our meditation practice, tuning into Mother Earth with appreciation and healing, and/or flow through change using our intuition.  Spending time retreating from the chaos of our world will be favored during this retrograde.  I believe global issues of water (or lack thereof) will continue to be in the news, as we begin to understand that we have to be better stewards of this precious resource.

The full moon occurs on June 13 at 11⁰ Sagittarius.  If Gemini is about gathering information, its opposing sign, Sagittarius is about how we process and interpret it, which includes our judgments about things as well as our perceptions.  This full moon offers an opportunity for us to illuminate what we consider to be communication, which often as not includes judging, criticizing, labeling and blaming.  Sagittarius used negatively can lead to an “us versus them, they’re not in our group” attitude.

The new moon occurs on June 27 at 5⁰ Cancer, right on top of the sun in the US chart.  This is a very powerful new moon, since closes the Cardinal t-square of Pluto, Uranus and Mars.  (Bet you though I wasn’t going to talk about this potent square this month! Nope, it’s still very, very active at mid-degrees of the cardinal signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn.) Cancer is the first of the water signs and is most associated with feminine energy, which as a society we have denigrated and dismissed.  We are reaping the consequences of our disregard for the power of nurturing, sustaining energy.  A new moon represents a new beginning of our relationship to the energy of the sign the moon is in.  So let’s make a shift in how we view ourselves and our world and bring our energies back into balance.

The Summer Solstice, when the Sun enters Cancer, occurs on June 21^st at 7 a.m, also on top of the sun in the US chart.  We have multiple opportunities for new beginnings in the way we use our Cancerian energy collectively.

Have a great June!

Peace and abundant blessings,

Margaret