New moons are times of nourishing the seeds of the new cycle by sloughing off the old. We release what is no longer serving us into the compost bin of our souls, for our past difficulties, lessons and challenges break down into nourishment for our future selves. I believe the continuous cycle of our soul’s birth, death and renewal is what Friedrich Nietzsche was referring to when he wrote the famous statement, “Out of life’s school of war—what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”
Today, July 5, the moon cycle encourages us to begin again as the moon and sun meet up at 14° Cancer at 3:57 pm Pacific. This New Moon comes in the middle of Cancer season and right after a major US holiday that brings families together. Families, whether functional or dysfunctional, provide us our roots, a reminder of where we have come from. Families often highlight how much we have grown, especially when we identify the dysfunction and move past it. Honestly, is there any family that isn’t somewhat dysfunctional? The human condition is one of imperfection.
The beauty of imperfection and dysfunction in that human condition is that it shows us the path of unconditional love. Love is the gift of Cancer season. As the fourth sign of the zodiac, Cancer is the first water sign and brings us into our feelings and emotions, the greatest of which is love. As a newborn, this love is embedded into our small beings from our mothers as we go from within them to the shockingly cold outside world. We are in a sack of water within the womb, our natural state being one of emotions and feelings before we realize we have a body and slowly grow our intellect.
It’s interesting how our formative years become focused on lessening our reliance on our feelings and encouraging us to put more emphasis on our physical and intellectual pursuits. We are encouraged to come into our body as an infant through sitting up, crawling and eventually walking and running. Once we have mastered that, we are put into school to build up our intellect. Not always, but often, we are told as children to discount our emotions and instead look to our intellect and reasoning as our guiding light. Intellect and physicality are indeed important but many of us get the message at a young age that our emotions are not to be trusted. Our emotional bodies are sacrificed or demoted instead of being given equal billing to our moving and thinking centers.
This new moon is all about getting back in touch with your emotional center and looking at how you have been nurtured as well as how you nurture others and yourself. The new moon is in direct opposition to the dwarf planet Ceres associated with the great mother goddess Demeter. We are being given a mirror to look at mothering; what it means to us and how it serves us.
To me, nurturing is an expression of love. We build up and give emotional security to ourselves and others. We validate our emotions as well as our loved ones. Other than yourself, who nurtures you? Perhaps the family you were born into is toxic and one that you no longer can be involved with, who have you chosen as your family? That chosen family gives you security and most importantly, the gift of unconditional love to be authentically you.
Journal and meditation prompts for today’s new moon
Sit for a moment and identify what you are feeling. Turn off your intellect for a moment and identify a feeling. Write out what you are feeling and then tune into your body, where is that emotion housed currently in your physical being? Honor and validate the feeling and nurture it. Your emotional center is every bit as important as your thinking and physical centers.
Who is your chosen family? Your chosen mother? Where do you feel secure and loved unconditionally?
Who do you love unconditionally? Tune into your love. Feel how big your love is, how it wants to grow and expand. Write from your love, what does it have to say? What does it want you to place into your soul’s compost bin to regenerate new seeds of growth?