You may well have found the last month an emotional time, being between two New Moons in Cancer, the sign of primal need for love and nurture. The first of these two New Moons was at the very beginning of Cancer on 22 June - this second one is at the very end. Caring for friends and family members would have to be balanced with caring for ourselves, all with greater compassion than usual.

Giving and receiving nurtures both people. In our efforts to survive, we can get into ‘forcing’ and ‘taking’ instead, which doesn’t nurture either side. In the same way, the gifts that nurture are our time, energy and love, rather than things. It’s important to recognise how much better we feel when allowing ourselves the comfort of friendly companionship - it is the basis for communities that work, providing a strong fundamental bond. It is this bond that enables us to deal with the differences arising in any group, without splitting the group apart.

An eclipse of the Sun in Cancer

On the 22 July, the Moon will pass between us and the Sun, creating a total eclipse of the Sun in a path across north India, China and southern Japan. The eclipse will be seen partially across most of Asia and the Pacific. (The Full Moons of 7 July and 6 August are also eclipses when the Earth’s shadow crosses the Moon.)

Astrologically there are different ideas as to the effects of an eclipse, some feeling that it is more about world events than personal day to day experience. If we think of the Sun as the source of our independent life, and the Moon as the repository of past experiences, it is the past that could blot out up-to-date understanding. This tendency is always true in human behaviour, and it could be emphasised during a total eclipse of the Sun.

Karma – the accrued results of our personal expression

While the Sun has been in Cancer, we may have been reacting to people and events from a deeply held belief that the old emotional prejudices of culture and family were truths. Many deep issues may have come to light over the last few weeks, and now we cannot pretend to be blind to them any more. Our unconscious expectation blinds us to what is real now. This next month promises to be focussed on dealing with these internal emotional discoveries, and with the results of such assumptions and behaviour.

How we experience our life is basically dependent on our emotional attitudes to it – if you have a determination to see life as interesting, offering opportunities to develop creative responses, your life will be interesting and you will live more and more in the creative flow. If you feel that you deserve more than you are getting, you will live in the awareness of unfair lack. So this month gives us a chance to clear our negative attitudes through re-viewing those experiences which feel negative to us. A question to trigger new attitudes would be: ‘I wonder what would be a more positive way of seeing this?’ The brain is a wonderful tool for finding answers to whatever we ask ourselves!

Getting up to date – with love

The eclipse being on the Moon’s South Node emphasises the past-life component of our feelings, memories and fears. Old feelings of dependency, which may have been appropriate historically, can become possessiveness and resentment when inappropriate, upsetting our present relationships. This last is very likely to show itself this month in verbal criticism, either person being critical of the other, and self-criticism a given! (Venus in Gemini squaring Saturn in Virgo.)

With Mercury in Leo, our thoughts and words will be promoting our right to express ourselves. We will want everyone else to express themselves, too, but there may be a lack of empathy for what results (Sun/Moon trine Uranus). Cancer knows what kind of nurturing it needs, and although sometimes it may be wrong about the needs of others, its intentions are those of a loving parent.

As long as we keep talking, we can sort it all out. It’s the refusal to communicate that would drive wedges into the gaps in understanding, resulting in rifts that could last for months, or longer. Warmth and humour can make light of these potential difficulties, and continued communication will allow the underlying human love to get through.

It’s that time again . . .

One more thing: we are in that time of the year when Jupiter retrogrades for four months. (This year he is travelling back from 27 Aquarius on 15 June to 17 Aquarius on 13 October.) From the middle of June, it may have seemed that humanitarian projects were slowed down, some even put on hold. The projects were not necessarily wrongly conceived, but could do with adjustment, or perhaps just waiting until circumstances change.

It may be that this four months is about sorting out our own old baggage, so that we can go forward with more integrity in October. By then the world will be more ready for what was proposed but not incorporated. And the deeper hidden aspects of our nature will have had time to assimilate the need for the changes that every new growth brings.