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The Summer Solstice is upon us, unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case its the Winter Solstice, so lets use a geography-neutral term and call it the Cancer Solstice!  For those of us in the US, this is an especially important event, as the US is Cancer born.  This solstice marks the entrance of the Sun into the sign of Cancer, which happens at 7:30a EST on Monday June 21st.  Every time the Sun enters a cardinal sign, we have a change of seasons:  Aries is the Spring Equinox, Cancer is the Summer Solstice, Libra is the Autumn Equinox, and Capricorn is the Winter Solstice.  Cardinal signs require action.  Cardinal signs initiate new beginnings. Cardinal signs often mark a need for change.  Figuring out how to integrate this energy in our lives brings us a step closer to manifesting our full potential for happiness and love.

I have a vision in my head of a baseball pitcher releasing his first pitch at the World Series for this Solstice. It is the beginning of what will become a very important game.  How we respond to or work with this pitch will determine which choices we keep open for ourselves and which avenues we close for ourselves.  The entire summer will be seem to be one fateful event after another as we move from the Cancer Solstice to the Lunar Eclipse of June 26th (Cardinal), to the Solar Eclipse of July 11 (Cardinal) and the apex of the waxing Cardinal T-square between Uranus, Jupiter, Pluto, and Saturn on July 26th.  There will be very little time to sit back and see how things unfold.  Events will alter our lives and we will need to respond quickly with assurance and bravery.  This is the demand of Cardinal energy.

As the Sun moves into the sign of Cancer, he is immediately challenged by Uranus and Jupiter in Aries. Cancer is the sign of self-preservation and nurturing.  Cancer doesn’t like surprises or sudden changes. Well, we can hardly call the changes our world is facing “sudden.”  These issues have been building for a while now, but there is usually one straw that breaks the camel’s back, and I guess a lot of camels are going to have broken backs soon.  A good example of this is the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  How many oil spills have occurred before this one: hundreds?  thousands?  I don’t know, but despite all of the oil spills that have ever occurred anywhere on this planet, it has taken a disaster of this magnitude to attract and to hold our attention.  Shame on us.  Perhaps now everyone of us in the US can admit that we have a problem: an addiction to oil that is causing us to defile our own waters and soil, to destroy our own lives in the pursuit of the oil.  It is an addiction that will destroy countless lives: human, animal, and plant, an addiction that will also radically change our children’s ability to enjoy the bounty of nature.  I am ashamed of myself for contributing to this situation.  The only possible benefit of this situation is that perhaps now we can all agree that we need to end our dependence on oil and that we need to be much better stewards of the Earth. Admitting to the problem is the first step, and only the first step.  There is wind and solar enough to keep us all plugged in and air-conditioned.  Yes, it will be expensive to build the infrastructure, but what would you call the price of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster?

The Sun square to Uranus means that we must all make some very deep and lasting changes in the ways we sustain and protect ourselves.  Either we can do this voluntarily or we can wait until the Universe creates a situation like the Deepwater Horizon Disaster and we can respond.  In my book, sitting around and waiting for a disaster to spur me into action is not a good or safe feeling.  Cancer is concerned with safety and security.  I cannot say, as I wait for the oil to work its way through the loop current and onto the beaches less than 3 miles from my home where I sit writing this, that I feel safe.  I feel threatened, I feel scared, I feel angry.  Change is certainly necessary.  I prefer to be more proactive, to clean up before the housekeeper comes, as my dear mentor Brenda Brush says.  Why wait for the crisis to hit before we begin to prepare.  The crisis is now, and if you haven’t felt it yet, then my heart goes out to you, because that only means that your personal wake up call is going to be that much more difficult and harder to manage.

We have a challenge to overcome, a crisis to face:  How do we maintain our feelings of safety while at the same time allowing deep and lasting changes to occur?  Looking at the Solstice chart, we should consult the Moon, as it rules the sign of Cancer.  At the time of the Solstice, the Moon is at 29 Libra!  29 degrees of any sign is the sign of expiation, and the sign Libra is the sign of balance, harmony, and relationship.  The message is clear to me: we must all talk about the issues we are facing in an open, honest, and non-partisan manner.  Libra is an air sign, after all, which means that information must be exchanged in order for the process to work.  Finding the middle ground, practicing moderation and restraint, and making sure our neighbors are as safe and as happy as we want to be will ensure our own safety and happiness.

At the Solstice, The Sun is also Square to Saturn at 28 Virgo.  I have been writing for 2.5 years about the meaning of Saturn in Virgo.  Health, routines, and attention to detail are Virgo ruled issues, along with the ability to adapt to the demands of the day.  The message is once again very clear:  change and adaptation are the only way we can ensure our safety and security.  For even more clarification, we can look to Mercury, the ruler of Virgo.  Mercury is in his own sign of Gemini, the planet that rules communication and information, as well as local neighborhoods, transit and commerce, youth, and siblings.  Once again, communicating and relationships are highlighted.  We must protect and rely upon our neighbors, our brothers, and our sisters to make it through these difficult times.  New ideas, learning to talk about and to share these ideas, and injecting youth figuratively into our discourse will result in a greater sense of community, as well as the generation of new ideas which will ultimately be the source of our new security.  New ways of transacting commerce and of moving ourselves form point A to point B will be part of the solution.  Collective reasoning will bring better results than competition.  It is no secret that the banking, insurance, and energy industries (commerce) all need a makeover, nor is it breaking news that we need to develop less damaging ways of moving ourselves around this beautiful planet which we are destroying every minute of every day.  The question is:  when will we, each and every one of us, make the commitment to start this much needed revolution?