CANCER
It is time to reframe some of your beliefs
about who you are and who you
believe others are or should be.
Your sensitivity is both a gift and weakness.
Notice when it blocks you from listening or
obscures the messages
you’re trying to convey.
Sensitize yourself instead to the truths
you haven’t yet let yourself see.

0:05  

Hello, Cancer! Welcome to your Libra season month ahead horoscope. Libra season begins on the equinox, September 22, 2021. In offering these horoscopes this month, I keep beginning a couple of days before Libra season starts, on the full moon, which happened on September 20. So if you're a person, and you might be Cancer identified people are often people who pay attention to the moon, it is your ruling body, ruling luminary of your sign. So if you're a person who pays attention to the moon, you might just think back to that full moon or check your diary, journal, text messages, however you keep track of time, and try and recall the vibrations of that day and time. 

0:59  

So the [full] moon was in Pisces, also a water sign. And on the day of the full moon, there were a couple of planetary aspects that were the beginning, kind of the initiation, for the themes of Libra season. And these planetary aspects will continue throughout the month of Libra season as we move into Mercury Retrograde, which is coming up. Mercury is retrograde in Libra. And a lot of the themes of the season continue throughout the season. And it feels like there's a concentration of focus and energy on these themes. So to go back to the full moon on September 20, it feels like that was an important full moon that opened up a significant kind of portal of energy for you. And this energy, in some ways, may have felt very overwhelming. For some folks, it could have felt overwhelmingly positive, bringing a lot of inspiration, kind of deeper sense of guidance in terms of intuition, or recognition of the ways you have been following your intuition. You may have come into some kind of encounter that could have opened something that is really significant. I do want to say that it is also entirely possible that what the full moon opened was a lot of emotion. And that emotion may or may not have felt pleasant at the time. A lot of times, a lot of emotion just feels really emotional. So I'm not sure, obviously, how it landed for you. But as you think back to that full moon, consider kind of what was swirling around you and your emotional body, in your intuition and kind of your spiritual sense. And throughout the course of Libra season, I think you're going to kind of expand on the energy that came through with that full moon. 

3:00  

So Libra season pulls a lot of focus into some very personal, deep, private spaces in your chart, especially into your home space and into the space of family and foundation, which is also the space of your personal power. And so if we think of home and family as origin, then we can also expand that symbol to include a whole lot of things. So this could include the earth as an origin for your body. This could include the entirety of all life forms on earth as part of your extended family. This could also include certain cultural experiences that may feel like home or family or groups of people where you have a sense of belonging, or something like that. So some key words to consider include: home, family, personal power, foundation, and belonging. 

4:03  

I was reading Lama Rod Owens' book, Love and Rage, recently, and I really liked how he articulated love as acceptance. In one part of that book, he talks about like trying to ask the question of: what is love? And one of the answers that he gives is that it's acceptance. And where there is acceptance there is the feeling of loving and being loved. The feeling that you know, hey, you're okay, you know, like I see you human being over there and sometimes you're annoying and sometimes we don't get along, and sometimes we don't understand each other, but there is basic acceptance here. And I accept all of you, I accept all of your being. And this is such a fundamental desire, I think for any human, is to feel accepted and to feel a sense of belonging and it is also so fraught for so many of us. And this Libra season is asking you to feel into the complexity and the density of those experiences, these emotions, the felt sense of acceptance and belonging, and what it means to be part of something that claims you. And that could be your family. Again, it could be a particular group of people or a particular place. And then it can also be something that is bigger and deeper and maybe more numinous. That would be maybe like a sense of spiritual home or a sense of continuity or family within a kind of like earthly or cosmic constellation. 

5:45  

Alright, so, after the full moon, we get into Libra season. The first couple of days of Libra season feel kind of provocative. It feels like stuff is shifting around and there's definitely energy that's moving and things that are starting to—I don't know—there's friction. And this friction brings us into Mercury Retrograde and Mercury stations retrograde on September 26. It began its shadow phase on September 7, and the shadow is the period when Mercury is moving direct, either before or after the retrograde over the same degree range that it will retrograde on. So all through September, and then starting around September 26, you are pulled into some kind of reflection period. And the re- prefix is super helpful to think about during any retrograde but especially a Mercury Retrograde, because what mercury symbolizes is the process of cognition and perception and then what happens with cognition and perception. How do we receive information through all of our sense organs, all of our information gathering capacities? How do we make sense out of the information that we receive? And then how do we translate information to others, and this is such an important function as human beings to give and receive information, this is literally a survival function, we have to be able to do this. So when Mercury is retrograde, it is time to reflect. It is really time to look at what is happening in cognition and perception. How am I making sense out of these experiences and the information that I'm gathering? 

7:29  

You know, because you have had these experiences, that people do not metabolize information in the same way. And you and your neighbor can watch the same TV show at the same time, and you can come away with completely different storylines that you're going to talk about. Because you've picked up different things, you've noticed different nuances, etc. And this is how we work as human beings, we are entrained with certain kinds of sensitivities. Part of our programming that we receive throughout our embodied existence, which begins in the womb, right, like as our bodies are forming, they're receiving information from our first environments in the mother's body. After that, in our early environments, wherever we happen to be. Little babies' nervous systems are developing so rapidly. And your nervous system developments continue to occur rapidly throughout childhood and adolescence. And as you get into adulthood, you get more slow, you know, patterns have come in, they've layered in, you're not learning things at the same speed that you used to. But also what happens is that you get set in your patterns. And so I'm saying, we get set—everybody, this happens to all of us—we get set in our patterns. And so over our lives, we've learned to make meaning out of certain kinds of information. This is the science behind implicit bias: that people can grow up in environments that teach bias towards one particular group of people that will then continue throughout their lives implicitly, subtly, as a kind of baseline assumption that is before and beyond the conscious brain. And all of us have been programmed, all of us have been entrained. And, of course, you know, there are billions of people on the planet, we're having wildly different experiences. The meaning that you make out of the information that you receive in your life is going to correspond with all of the previous experiences that you've had. And to a certain extent, the previous experiences that your parents and caregivers and cultures of origin have had because that's all been part of your training. And this is really important when we consider Mercury's retrograde through Libra, which in your chart is bringing you into the root, into the foundation, into the home, the family, the place of belonging. 

10:07  

There is something that needs to get reflected upon here, you are reworking something, you have to remember something, you may need to return to something. Now, because Mercury is dealing with communication in large part, there may be really important conversations that are occurring at this time, that are helping you go back and review. And, you know, repair if necessary, or, I don't know, you know, that whatever the re- prefixes are that you want to use. There's some kind of process that you might be talking about, thinking about and re-wiring with. Alright, so Mercury stations retrograde on September 26. And the following couple of days bring more friction into the chart. And for you, for Cancer identified folks, this friction is really coming in, in relationships. And it could be coming in with friendships, it could be coming in with lovers, with partners. It could be coming in the parts of you that are kind of oriented around what I'll call your 'inner child', or your 'inner children', like your younger selves, and how those younger selves have learned to be in adult relationships—I'm making the assumption that people listening are not young children. And if you are, then, your relationships, you know, how are you in relationship? 

11:40  

So this friction that is coming in around the end of September, the first couple of days of October, feels like a lot could be kind of getting stirred up and surfacing. And you might be having feelings that feel like decisions, or like some kind of decisive thought where you're like, this is what such and such a thing means. Or maybe you've already had that kind of thought. And then you're like, confirming that you were right, or something like that. And I really want to encourage you to ride these couple of days out. And especially if you're feeling convinced about something, be a little skeptical in your conviction, just like add an inch of skepticism and take a little bit of distance. And try and draw a circle around whatever the situation is. Breathe, get into your body. Remember that your life is bigger than this situation. And really try and be objective, and also be research oriented. How did you get here? And what communications or miscommunications got you here? Because it seems like there is something that's happening in the communication realms with people who are close to you. And it feels like what you're dealing with is the need to repattern around some communication. But the repatterning is very, very deep. And so we have to go into the mechanism of your communication, which is preverbal, and it's preconceptual. And it has to do with something that I could call a pre-motor focus. And pre-motor focus is what happens in the nervous system because of history. Our nervous system records information—every single impulse, every single experience that you have had, has been layered into your nervous system. And over time, your nervous system adapts to expect things to happen again. And so if in your life, there were repetitive circumstances where let's say you needed something and you didn't get it, then your nervous system will adapt to assume that you will not get the thing that you need, so that you can figure out how to get it elsewhere. If you've experienced any kind of trauma, that is a major nervous system layer and your nervous system is going to orient around that trauma in order to protect you from happening again. But a lot of times how the nervous system is oriented towards protection is coming from a very primal part of our brain that is really focused on survival, which is literally life and death. And it doesn't meet the nuance the subtlety and the complexity of our kind of like current relationships in day to day life. And so what happens, is that we can often experience triggers in relationship and they bring up really intense feelings or they bring up really intense conclusions about something we might make a meaning out of something or make sense of something in some way that we needed to at an earlier part in our life in order to survive, in order to adapt, in order to be resilient. But now, in this moment, that response might be inappropriate or overblown, or like miscalculated. And so it feels like something is happening for you in this regard, like you are recognizing that how you're making sense of things needs an update, needs an upgrade. And part of this upgrade necessitates new kinds of conversations. Different lines of questions, different lines of answers. 

15:43  

On October 6, there's a new moon. And this is a powerful new moon. This is a new moon that comes with a conjunction to Mercury and to Mars. Both of these conjunctions are very significant within astrological timing and astrological cycles. And around this new moon, there are several other things that are happening, including some of the outer planets, stationing direct that have been retrograde, that feel to me like they are opening up a lot of new consciousness for you. And the potential here is that you get to anchor into a deeper space of belonging and self empowerment, and acceptance—acceptance of yourself, acceptance of other people, and also the experience of acceptance in your relationships, because something is going to get revealed. And you need to get honest, right now. And I don't know what that means for you. It may mean that it's honesty with yourself, it may mean that it's honesty with another and that means transparency, it means not hedging and betting not hiding, but being direct and being straightforward with what's happening for you. So on this new moon, it feels like a bunch of new space gets opened up. 

16:59  

And then, over the course of the next several weeks, new neural pathways are forming and you are learning. And I spoke in your horoscope last month about this place of active learning that you're in, which is this realm of like mild to medium discomfort, where things are strange, and you don't know how to do all this stuff, and you might not be good at it. And it could be really uncomfortable and frustrating sometimes, but you're learning new skills. And these new skills are going to open up into a new realm of experience that will ultimately be better, in some way, shape, or form. It will be better if you stay the course. Okay, so this is in contrast to another possibility that I definitely see on your chart right now, which I'm going to call classic Cancer behavior. Sorry about this Cancers, but this is like classic cliche Cancer, in its detriment in its, not so awesome expressions. And don't worry, every single sign has its like wretched moments, you know, and cancer has a particular kind of, you know, smacking my head like, Why, why is this the thing that you're doing right now? So classic Cancer is when you go into your shell. It's when you feel triggered, it's when you feel sensitive, and then you retreat and you put up a big wall, and you might be really crabby about it—it's your Totem animal, right? You get crabby, your claws come out. You get snappy, you might get judgmental. Cancer, when it's triggered, and when it's activated, can get really personal. And you know, the way that you can be personal is part of your gift when you're in a more like healthy, loving place. But if you're pissed and you're feeling triggered, you can get really mean. Maybe I'm not talking about you, whoever you are listening, but I am talking about Cancer energy in general, and I've got a lot of Cancers in my life. And I've seen this over and over again, Cancers can get really mean. I have Mars in Cancer, I can get really mean if I'm feeling triggered, if I'm feeling emotionally unsafe and vulnerable. And if we think about the soft body of the crap, right, the soft, tender, vulnerable body, this is you this is your inner body. This is your inner child. These are the parts of you that learned to survive in the environments with the people who you learn to survive with your entire life and you had to figure it out. And not everything was perfect all the time. And I know that you have pain, and I know that you have trauma, and when that trauma gets triggered, one of the things I think you can do with it is create a really hard barrier and then get kind of defensive and sometimes attacking with your sharpness. So I would highly encourage you to not do that. And when you feel yourself getting crabby. call yourself out. And this is that honesty piece like you need to look at where are you participating in communication dynamics or relational dynamics that aren't feeling great to you, where you're not getting the thing that you want, maybe because you're not being emotionally generous, you know, maybe because you're jumping to conclusions or assumptions. Or you're getting hurt in the way that you've been hurt a million times before and so you're going into some patterning, that isn't actually moving in the evolutionary direction of the relationships that you want to be moving towards. 

20:31  

So in these kind of weeks of October, as we finish Libra season, and then as we move into Scorpio season, because this theme doesn't end, when we finish Libra season, you are being asked to readjust, to learn some new behaviors. And in these learning of new behaviors, it feels to me like you are really getting called to task. And your task is to stay very present in your nervous system. And to notice, when are you starting to get crabby? When are you starting to feel triggered? When are you shutting down? When are you going away? Is that the response that is going to be the most useful for you right now? I'm not arguing that sometimes that response isn't entirely appropriate, I think sometimes it is. But not always. And so as your astrologer, and friend, friend from the cosmos, or something, this voice in your ear, I would just encourage you to check in. And notice is this nervous system pattern the one that you want to keep deepening? Because patterns are like that, when they're normal, when they're habituated, they are easy. And when they are not normal, when they're new, when they're moving in the direction of something that we're trying to grow into, they're often really hard. And just like last month, when I was talking about that active repatterning that you're doing, this month, I think you really might need to hold yourself in some places of dynamic tension, where you suspend your judgment, where you don't jump to a conclusion, where you take a lot of deep breaths and where you let information in, in new ways. And that would be before you communicate any kind of assumptions, right? Like, listen. Ask questions, get curious. Do not make judgments. Listen. Let information come in to you. And when you get information, notice what you do with it. Notice the very familiar themes, because you're working with deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep patterns right now. And plenty of you might literally be working your patterns with family, whether that's family of origin, or partners or kids or something like that. Where this movement is happening in your chart is very personal. It's very close. And it's hard to change close patterns with people who we're familiar with. And it's possible and I think that this is what you want to do.

23:16  

October 18th, Mercury stations Direct. Two days later, there's a full moon in Aries on October 20th. Aries lights up the heaven of your chart, it's the opposite sign of Libra, the opposite of your foundation. This is the sky above you, this is a growth direction. And this is a full moon, I think that is revealing a lot to you about how you want to be growing right now and how you need to take initiative for your own growth. And as much as we rely on others to help us grow and as much as we need each other, we all have to have our own stakes in the game. And it feels like this is a full moon where you're really feeling your—potentially, your strength—and your need to be strong. And in the strength is also a need to really know yourself and know yourself very deeply, so that you can know how you want to grow and what you want to grow into so that you can know what's familiar. And you can know what's deeper than familiar and maybe kind of more of what your spirit is is longing to experience beyond what's familiar. 

24:28  

Alright, so I'm going to leave it there. I hope any or all of that is helpful. If you want more astrology from me, check out your Year Ahead Report. That's an hour and a half long reading special for your sign where I go over the major themes and influences of 2021 and give suggestions for working with them through creative somatic embodied awareness. You can find those readings on my website EmbodiedAstrology.com and since we are getting close to the end of the year those readings are now discounted at 50%. Also on my website, you can find information on my extended content subscription. When you become a subscriber you'll get access to my month ahead calendars, to worksheets and tools for learning astrology, as well as my twice a month subscriber only meetups. In these meetups, we work with astrology through creative, embodied, experiential play. I give you a lot of prompts for working with your own chart and you get to hang out with rad people who are also interested in Astrology and we'd love to have you there. Follow me on Instagram @EmbodiedAstrology for regular Astro updates in musing. If you enjoy this work, please support and sustain it. The number one way to do that is sharing it with your friends and networks. Subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite listening platforms. And of course, your financial donations are always so appreciated and so helpful. I'm wishing you all the best in Libra season and beyond. Bye for now.