The first New Moon of the summer is upon us. For my friends ‘down under’ it’s your Winter. We in the Northern climes are reveling in flowers blossoming like mad as those elsewhere are enjoying the fruits of Nature’s loving cornucopia of wonders, appropriate to your environs. I feel it to be critical these days to search out beauty in all its forms, to feed your heart with wonder, to inundate your senses with deliciousness. All that is happening outside your personal reality is occurring and will be there for you to experience and integrate if and when you choose to engage. I find it best to get tidbits of news here and there but predominantly I am focused on envisioning and living as much in peace as I possibly can.

Who is to create the new reality if not us?

Focusing on the drama details of the massive consciousness shift we are surfing prevents you from living in the creative, delicately nuanced NOW you are manifesting with each intention, with each inhale and each exhale. Never for a moment forget the powerful creator being that you are. Your clear intentions for what you wish to experience is vital right now to keep us all moving in the right direction of personal and collective liberation – the freedom for each sentient being to live in safety and abundance.

I was thinking of some friends that went on a river rafting trip last week and the unmistakably simple truths the river teaches:

you cannot fight the flow of movement and change

it’s useless to paddle against the current

you have to all work harmoniously together to reach your common goal

the views are better from the hidden, hard-to-reach places

and, most importantly, the more joy the better!

The New Moon at 7 degrees Cancer on June 28th is conjoined by the asteroid Black Lilith. Black Lilith represents our shadow, the part of you that is unknown even, or especially, to yourself. When Black Lilith gets triggered in your birth chart you usually will have a pretty significant ah-ha and revelation about yourself. It can seem somewhat counter-intuitive to have a shadow influence be illuminated at the dark of the lunar cycle. One might imagine that the Full Moon would shed more light, but with the intense inner focus of the New Moon you might be very surprised at what gets revealed through your own intuitive impulses. You might be drawn to have experiences out of the norm or just outside your usual comfort zone, all with the purpose of revealing to you things about yourself that you didn’t know or maybe didn’t want to know, and especially the parts of you that refuse to accommodate other people’s truths.

As the Moon in Cancer is actually ruled by the Moon herself (each sign has a ruling planet or luminary) you can expect heightened sensitivity and highly activated intuition particularly around the topics of self-care and self-nurturing. Perhaps a spa treatment is in order, something that honors and nurtures your emotional nature, the part of you that deeply desires to be properly and abundantly cared for. And guess what? Being cared for begins with you caring for you. As you deeply nurture yourself and tend to your emotional needs you could learn some deep truths about yourself. And isn’t that what this whole school of life is about? Learning to know yourself more and more deeply so that you can be the essential YOU all the time, not just in bits and bobs of passing illumination and random fancy. Set your INTENTION for what you wish to experience next with a particular focus on answering deeply honestly:

“What do I need for myself right here, right now?”

Jupiter at 7 degrees Aries makes an exact square to the New Moon. Squares usually create some sort of friction or urge to shift and adjust energies and circumstances. A square from Jupiter asks you to look to where you are giving and doing too much and where energy needs to be pulled back in and re-directed. This square specifically asks you to evaluate where you are over-giving and where that energy needs to be reined in for your own self-care.

Venus and Mercury are both transiting the conversational sign of Gemini. This is an excellent time to tell your truth, say what’s real for you, with the loving embrace of Venus to sweeten your words. And listen to your favorite music to uplift your thoughts.

Of interesting astrological note: I happened to catch just a smidge of the Johnny Depp case and easily slipped in to why astrologers love to track events in celebrity’s lives – because we have access to their charts (they’re all online), their well-publicized trials and tribulations, successes and crashes. As Johnny Depp was navigating his personal nightmare, which seriously de-railed his career, Saturn was at the exact degree of Saturn at his birth (23 degrees Aquarius) and so for his 2nd Saturn return he is having a profound death- rebirth experience His next movie will probably be his most successful to date. Personally my favorite was Benny and Joon in which he never spoke a word but sold that role like no one else could.