Patriots of the Moon

AH, THE FOURTH OF JULY, the picnicy domain of clannish Cancer. What’s that, you say? You’re not into the egoic land mine of family gatherings, the robotic patriotism toward the Corpratocracy? Fine. But be careful: this is the furthest the northern hemisphere ever gets from shivery January. Behind the buzz, the booze, the “bombs bursting in air,” something downright supernatural is happening:  the great diamond of creation is turning one of her glistening archetypal facets our direction.

From an astrological perspective, time is tutelage – a relentless round of energetic prods designed to nudge our ego into deeper and deeper inner bows, not just to some transcendent God but to all the bravely incarnating souls who are, at this particular time of year, being infused with the watery values of Cancer: loyalty to family, land, child and tribe. Ask yourself: What would the world do without the womb-worshipers – the ones who enclose, protect and nurture our feelings and needs and listen us into being?

Consider this: within the period of June 21st to July 22nd, approximately 10 million incarnating souls will choose the “tough-enough-to-mother” style of awakening. By paying homage to these moon-children at this time of year, we also pay tribute to the One who strives to wake up inside  their heartfelt devotion and cop-like protectiveness. We shore up our faith in the soul-sculpting artistry of the entire wheel of incarnation. Ah, at last: a government we can respectfully salute.

Cancer-born author Oliver Sacks once said, “To be ourselves we must have ourselves – possess, if need be re-possess, our life-stories. We must ‘recollect’ ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the narrative, of ourselves. A man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self.”  Astrology would wholeheartedly agree, so long as the narratives we “re-collect” are understood as expressions of an ever-evolving, cosmos-sized psyche who generically distributes these archetypal me-stories, in different proportions, to the entire human family. We can’t claim ownership of our life-story, but we can, as its humble custodian, vigorously embody and improvise on its divinely-ordained themes.

Ah, but what does shy, shell-enclosed Cancer have to do with this bawdy display of pyrotechnics? Not much, until you consider this: what’s being ballyhooed is the supreme luck of incarnating into (or, by even greater grace, adopting) a pod of souls so fatefully familial that they hang from us like psychic appendages. Ditching them on account of their stinky egos? Self-mutilation.

What’s that you say? You feel rootless, estranged, disconnected? Too busy with lone-wolf Capricorn survival to cultivate those gooshy, Cancer connections? It’s no wonder. These are not exactly Cancer-friendly times. But be careful. Minus the blemish-magnifying mirror of day-to-day clan, the underground aspects of ego go undetected. Sure, we all have our solitary seasons, but remember, even monks go crazy without sangha.

Patriots of the Moon know what this time of year is good for: un-barricading ourselves from our Capricorn cubicles – prying off the boards from our foreclosed hearts.

Why did we in the West make such a god out of work? Fantasies of iron-clad security, comfort, status? A yearning to have some sort of world-saving impact? Nope. Less noble than that. Busyness – and the bracketed, episodic intimacy it affords – smears Vaseline on the lens between us and the ravages of old age, sickness and death. Easier to watch skin falling off the bones of beloveds in blurry fits and starts (when we can carve out some time for a visit) than to suffer the graphic, blow-by-blow footage of living close to a dying tribe of egos. But wait. Why did we come here? To forgive the dream? To be mad enough to be mortal, sane enough to disappear? Well then, doesn’t that make the incestuous, mood-triggering family gathering the ultimate mystery school?

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