🌕♑︎: on sanctuary and shelter
Chart of the full moon in Capricorn, showing Jupiter at 29º 56’ of Cancer and Mercury retrograde at 26º of Cancer.
This moon cycle, as the sun traverses the early degrees of Cancer, peaks with the full moon in the sign of Capricorn.
The Cancer ♋︎ – Capricorn ♑︎ polarity in astrology invites us to consider the relationship between protection and ambition, survival and care.
Cancer is the sign of the crab, the protective shell that nurtures the soft, vulnerable creature within it. At the height of this full moon, Jupiter was whiling away its last hours in the sign of Cancer, at the final minutes of its 29th degree. Mercury, also in late degrees of Cancer, just stationed retrograde, inviting us to reflect upon all that has occurred in these wellspring waters as it backstrokes through them over the next couple of weeks, even as Jupiter moves into Leo in the early hours of June 30th.
The sign of Capricorn – Cancer’s polar opposite – is concerned with the structures and systems needed for endurance. The soft belly of the crab is countered by the goat who can eke out an existence upon the hardscrabble mountainside.
In Capricorn, the emotional needs of Cancer take a backseat to the practicalities of survival. The wisdom of this polarity is in its holding of both.
Our need for nurture needn’t stand in the way of our ambition, in a healthy life and a whole society, we can acknowledge that this full spectrum is necessary to thrive, and find a way to hold it all.
This month’s slow tarot spread: the Seven of Pentacles crossed by the Six of Cups in the center, Three of Pentacles (below), King of Swords (left), King of Pentacles (above), 9 of Pentacles Rx (right).
Returning to this Slow Tarot spread, I am struck by how the Seven of Pentacles crossed by the Six of Cups mirrors this Capricorn – Cancer polarity. Capricorn is a sign that takes responsibility seriously, which appears to be role of the Seven’s gardener, too. The responsibility of tending earth, of growing sustenance, of feeding a family from the land. And just above him, the reversed Six of Cups, sweet, vulnerable children in a protected courtyard, given space to play. It’s interesting that this is the only card in which the cups are pictured with earth – flowers growing – inside them. The surrounding earth (Pentacles) cards, with the King on top of the spread, appear to acknowledge our culture’s emphasis on the Capricorn side of life, often times at the expense of Cancer’s wisdom.
Jupiter brings emphasis and expansion to whatever sign it transits. For the collective, Jupiter in Cancer has coincided with heightened periods of white nationalism in the US, from the Japanese “internment camps” in WWII, to the rampant Islamophobia of 2001, to our current period of ICE concentration camps and the federal government’s attempts to ethnically cleanse America. All of these movements seek to protect a core in-group through targeting the “fearsome other.” This in-group / out-group belief system is the root of genocide, structural violence, and marginalization of all kinds. And yet we humans fall for it again and again, seduced by the belief that a smaller, more fortified, more homogenous shell will finally protect us. And so we inflict harm, we build systems that exclude and oppress, and our sense that this world is not safe remains.
9 of Pentacles reversed
This reversed 9 of Pentacles is intriguing me in consideration of this moon. In this card we see a well-dressed woman in a secluded garden of her own, in conversation with her hooded bird of prey on her gloved hand. So much of this card’s imagery – the trellised grape vines containing the field, the snail creeping by at her feet, the bird’s blinder helmet matching the woman’s hat – again speaks to this idea of shelter and containment.
When do boundaries protect and when do they exclude or dominate?
My first reading of this spread considered this card through a more animist and partnership model of relating to nature, as opposed to the modes of dominance and control that are so culturally ubiquitous. In the light of this full moon, with the ongoing sociopolitical emphasis on “protection” through violence, exclusion, and borders,
I am also thinking of this 9 of Discs as an invitation to reconsider our own relationship to safety and security and how this relates to inclusion and exclusion.
This moon cycle coincided with the “achievement” of the world’s first trillionaire, an evocative image for Capricorn culture unchecked and unbalanced by Cancer wisdom. Bottomless greed and wealth-hoarding ambitions are misguided pursuits to soothe unmet needs, at the expense of the survival of vast numbers of people with the misfortune of being on the vulnerable and marginalized end of the spectrum.
Only a society so imbalanced would praise such pursuits instead of pathologizing them as harmful to both the pursuer and the whole.
Many of the wealthiest individuals have bought into ideologies that deem it better for individuals to accrue wealth so that they may “do good” with it than it is for the public to have control of such wealth. Where this ideology falls apart, however, is in the analysis of extreme wealth and the meager charitable efforts that tend to accompany it. While the billionaires claim responsibility for the future by charting it with their technofascist investments, what they’re really doing is allowing their greed to let them betray their responsibility to the present, and our wealth-worshipping society not only allows this, it pedestals them, just as our King of Pentacles is positioned at the top of this spread.
Three of Pentacles
And what is our spread’s wisdom to counterbalance the unchecked wealth of the King? It’s that Three of Pentacles at the root. A card of connection and collaboration, continuing the themes of the Six of Cups, only this scene is three individuals inside a church they also appear to be building. And here we are back again with themes of shelter and ambition, the growth of a sanctuary.
The notion of sanctuary as a site of protection extends back to ancient times. Here in the US, the sanctuary movement arose in 1980 in response to an influx of refugees fleeing unrest and persecution in Central America. Church leaders in the south and west took responsibility by claiming a moral imperative to protect vulnerable, marginalized refugees.
Instead of excluding the outsider to “protect” the in-group, the notion of sanctuary acknowledges that a society is only as safe as it treats its most vulnerable members.
The act of sanctuary, as evidenced by the growth and flourishing of the 1980s movement, extends and broadens community through the honoring of our interconnection across perceived difference.
Sanctuary is an example of a thriving Capricorn - Cancer polarity: social responsibility rooted in protection and care. The brave actions of pastors and congregants who took a stand against oppression strengthened community bonds and created a sense of purpose that transcended divisions of race, nationality, and class, and this is happening again, despite recent state efforts to suppress and punish it. The structures supporting white nationalism and in-group protection through out-group persecution are strong, but ultimately imbalanced and bound to fail.
To counteract the unchecked nationalism and wealth accrual of this moment, with all their harms, this spread invites us to grow down into our sense of shared responsibility for the protection of the vulnerable against these social ills.
This could look like actual provision of sanctuary, a deeper critical analysis of your investments to ensure your wealth isn’t tied up in concentration camps, or gentle work to know and heal the in-group / out-group tendencies that exist inside yourself (a beautiful intention for this Cancerian Mercury retrograde!).
This moon cycle began with the draconian sentences forced upon the Prairieland protestors for engaging in community care efforts to protect vulnerable neighbors against the threat of ICE. The full moon ruling by the US Supreme Court that thinly protected birthright citizenship has resulted in a full-throated endorsement of ethnic cleansing and eugenics from many leading voices on the right. This slim victory is not settled, if anything, it is galvanizing racist opposition which, if the anti-abortion movement has taught us anything, could last decades or longer until they achieve their hateful ends.
The tension between social responsibility and safety are acutely real in this moment, and something we each need to negotiate within ourselves.
We cannot know where any of this will lead, but what can be known is that in a climate where neighbors are housed in concentration camps and resistors are handed sentences of thirty years for moving boxes, none of us are truly safe, and supporting efforts of violence and exclusion are will not make us moreso. As Jupiter enters the fire sign of Leo, we will be further invited to step into courage and lead from the vulnerable heart.
