The New Year will begin with a wistful glance behind. Whether you are reflecting upon many joys or many sorrows, let your feelings become an exquisite apostrophe for another year gone by.
This first day of 2018 will be quite beautiful, blessed by its concurrence with the Full Moon in Cancer. To ring in the New Year with the Moon in her sign of rulership will offer you an opportunity to cherish those you love with a renewed warmth and openness.
Cancer is associated with the archetype of the Great Mother, known by many names in mythology. To honor her universal presence, take a moment to remember all the loving maternal spirits who have held you, warmed your heart and made you feel safe.
Take me out tonight
Where there’s music and there’s people
And they’re young and alive
With this maternal spirit in mind, let yourself be encircled by all the very best people you know, even if it is only one very special person who feels like home to you.
Driving in your car
Oh, please don’t drop me home
Cancer’s watery realms offer a sanctuary where feelings and sensations flow freely upon gentle rivers. Though these environs are an oasis for many fleeting moments, this sanctuary is built to protect your most precious asset: your memory. By the light of memory, the garden of the mind blossoms, flourishing in rich sensorial reveries. The last thing he said to you only means anything because of the first thing he said….long ago.
Take me out tonight
Because I want to see people and I
Want to see life
Though it is a vulnerable and tender place, a well-tended memory is the foundation of consciousness. Without memory, life would lose all its meaning. There would be no learning. No inspiration. In memory your imagination is freed from linear perceptions. memories ripple in and out of time, like the circular rhythms of the Moon.
When the Moon is Full in Cancer, the past can come alive in a resplendent array of colors and sounds. In conversation, the sparkle of bygone days will be rekindled, inviting such a warmth and appreciation between friends that the words sentiment and nostalgia will remain wholly inadequate to describe.
This Moon in Cancer will also be forming a Grand Water Trine with Mars in Scorpio and Neptune in Pisces. A Grand Water Trine such as this will stir up so many feelings you may become momentarily overwhelmed. With Mars heightening your passion for living and Neptune urging you to rise upon great tides of compassion, you may find yourself moved to make grand gestures, odes, and promises to those you love.
Everyone knows that the natural phenomenon of the Moon’s silvery light is a reflection of the Sun. Knowing that the Moon is filled with the light of the Sun, imagine the Sun (Sol) and the Moon (Luna) as being lovers, whose intimate exchanges catalyze the undulating cycles of generation upon Earth.
Full Moons are the culmination of this undulating cycle, where great contentment and bliss can be realized. This Full Moon in Cancer is a reflection of the Sun’s light in Capricorn, made all the more potent by the Sun’s conjunction with Venus. The polarity between these Cancer (nurturing) and Capricorn (struggling) certainly creates tension, but as any guitar player can attest, it is tension that allows for beautiful music to be played.
Marsilio Ficino once said that
“The soul exists partly in eternity and partly in time.”
The soul’s existence in time is what the Saturn ruled sign of Capricorn demonstrates. The burden of time and space is heavy and insurmountable, but the soul is shaped and refined by these pressures. The soul’s existence in eternity is what Cancer demonstrates, where deep wells of feeling and clear pools of memory reflect something essential that is beyond time.
Thus, at the Full Moon in Cancer, the presence of your soul both in eternity and in time will be revealed. The bare struggle of the Sun’s ascent will find a tender response from the Moon in Cancer. You will be guided to rest from your struggle long enough to remember your eternity. Whatever wintry fever may be threatening your spirits, this Full Moon in Cancer will offer all the nourishment that you need to become fully restored.
For more information on the rhythms and cycles of the Moon, check out my mini-course HARVEST: The Magic of the Moon
To become most gracefully acquainted with the interplay between the Sun and Venus in Capricorn and the Moon in Cancer, music is the best teacher. To celebrate the New Year and the Full Moon, only a song as exquisite as There is a Light and It Never Goes Out by The Smiths can be offered.
And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
Though it is a majestic song to listen to any day of the year, this Full Moon in Cancer truly embodies the smart balancing act between great heights of Cancer’s sentimentality and Capricorn’s sobering reality. There is a Light and it Never Goes Out sweeps the listener into the romantic reverie, made all the more glorious by the strange juxtaposition with mundanity and morbidity.
And if a ten-ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well, the pleasure – the privilege is mine
To describe what makes this song so lush and resplendent…beautiful strings, low key guitar work and a nuanced vocal performance the delicately preserves both humor and aching sincerity.
There is a special melancholy truth that this song expresses about longing and life and death. Just as in real life, the lightness of idyllic love must confront many leaden images, ten-ton trucks and otherwise.
When you listen to this song, there is something so seductive about its hopeless romanticism, something all too familiar in the absurdity of this kind of longing. As the lyrics lure you into a beautiful dream, the double-decker bus and the ten-ton truck act as the grim reminders of reality: the obstacles, dirt and death.
To die by your side
Well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine
All great music moves you, by the power of inexplicable symbols, from ordinary consciousness to a spiritual perception. As Marsilio Ficino described it:
“the soul receives the sweetest harmonies and numbers through the ears, and by these echoes is reminded and aroused to the divine music which may be heard by the more penetrating sense of mind.”
The purpose of music is to make you aware of the divine perceptions of your soul, that which responds to a song with feeling, movement, and bliss. Thus, in this remarkable love song, the awareness of your soul comes into full bloom at the end when Morrissey firsts sings:
Oh, there is a light, never goes out
The response to the glory and pain of love and to the sorrow of death, to the chaos of modern life and the confusion and struggle is an incantation of the soul’s eternity…
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
This acknowledgment of the soul, the divine light within, is exactly what the axis of Cancer and Capricorn are urging you towards. Cancer blesses you with the memory of your soul’s eternal nature and Capricorn offers the instinct and the tenacity to push your soul upward on its ascent back into realization of its divinity.
At the dawn of 2018, if you find yourself perfectly content and overjoyed, then you must be well aware that there is a light and it never goes out.
If you are tormented by elusive fantasies, remember that there is a light and it never goes out.
And if you are entering into an oblivion where forgetfulness is billowing into despair, remember that there is a light and it never goes out.
For the Full Moon in Cancer and for the upcoming New Year, let this enduring wisdom guide you to always remember…
Much Love,
artwork by William Adolphe Bouguereau
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For more information on the rhythms and cycles of the Moon, check out my mini-course HARVEST: The Magic of the Moon
