There’s just something about the New Moon in Cancer… you know, with the Moon in her own sign, feelings are everything, and everywhere. We relish them. We want to share them with others and give and receive nurture. We want to focus on home and family and feel safe in that sweet bubble of love…

Or do we?

Well yes, AND more… Cancer is famous for its protective qualities. It doesn’t rest until everyone is safe. So before we can cuddle up with cookies and milk and bask in the glow of familial love, we have to shore up the holes in the castle walls.

And the feeling of this particular New Moon in Cancer is extremely qualified by restrictive Saturn in a super tight opposition to both the Sun and Moon in Cancer. The operative word here being “opposition” and everything that you would normally think of when you read that word. And from a political perspective (yeah, I’m going there) when we focus on where the New Moon in Cancer is active by transit in the birth chart of our country (July 4, 1776, 5:10 PM, Philadelphia, PA), the warm and fuzzy slips right off.

For those familiar with the language of astrology, the New Moon at 28 degrees of Cancer conjoined our country’s Mercury at 24 degrees of Cancer and opposed our country’s Pluto at 27 Capricorn. Transiting Saturn at 28 degrees of Capricorn was exactly opposed to the New Moon and conjoined the country’s Pluto. (There’s a pic of the chart at the end of this article.)

This is powerful energy about power – and how the voice of the people can counter and impact, via opposition, the force of authority and government. It’s not your typical New Moon in Cancer. This one is tapping directly into the intensity, fear, and necessary transformation of the times we find ourselves living in.

As with every New Moon, this one is about a new start, and this new start has something to do with our ideal, as the people of this country, of how home should be and our responsibility to that ideal.

Something I find particularly interesting that illustrates this, is the debacle going on in Portland, Oregon, where the voice of the people (symbolized by the country’s Mercury in Cancer) is being triggered by Saturn into an oppositional stance with the force of authority. Federal troops are grabbing protesters from unmarked cars and arresting them, without identifying themselves or giving reasons for the arrests. The new “voice of the people” rising up at the New Moon is a massive wall of marching, chanting moms – that’s right. Moms. This New Moon ushered in a new group of mothers (Cancer) out en masse protecting protesters from the big bad wolf that the federal government (Saturn) has become. They are protecting home and family – their kids, other people’s kids, their homes, their businesses, their way of life – but they’re doing it in a way that directly opposes an authority that by the day is becoming more and more frightening and violent. They are a wall (Saturn) of protective, concerned motherhood (Cancer.)

This is what Heather Cox Richardson, from Letters from an American, reported last night, July 19:

“There was a new force on the Portland streets this weekend: moms. Dressed in yellow shirts, wearing helmets and masks, several hundred women are forming chains between the officers and the protesters. They call themselves the Wall of Moms, and are chanting: “I don’t see no riot here; take off your riot gear,” and “Feds stay clear, moms are here!” Officers tear gassed them last night, but they came back tonight in bigger numbers. Tonight’s protest was one of the largest this month.”

Sometimes I’m still dumbfounded at how literally the planetary energies play out in our lives… this is one of those occasions.

On a more personal perspective, this New Moon in Cancer opposite Saturn is very much about protecting our own, and the responsibilities that come with that territory. It’s about creating a new familial structure that echos the imperatives of the times we live in. It’s about balancing family and necessity, and learning to understand when to be hard and diligent, and when to be soft and gentle, and recognizing that both are required in equal measure.

So yes. This New Moon in Cancer IS about home and family and feeling safe in that sweet bubble of love… and everything we have to do make that possibility a reality.