A Second New Moon in Cancer
Yesterday’s New Moon was a rare occurrence. Called a Black Moon, it was the second one to fall in Cancer, where the Sun currently sits. This happens every few years, and is a kind of recalibration, a shift in axis, one astrologer called it. It means that the next New Moon will also be at the end of a zodiacal sign. So we had a second New Moon at the very end of Cancer season, as we are about to roll into hot Leo, where we will feel more energized and extroverted. Cancer season was about turning inside. We wanted to stay home and tend to the home, we wanted to be intimate with ourselves and others. We wanted to nurture. We also may have wanted to put up a strong barrier, the armor of the crab.
Sitting With Paradox
So right now we sit on several paradoxes: a Cancer New Moon on the cusp of Leo, a tender new start at the end of a season, an inward looking soft gaze ready to defend itself at the slightest disturbance. We get a second chance to observe these oppositions and consider where we find ourselves on the Cancer - Capricorn spectrum. How soft or hard do we need to be? How can we be a bit of both?
At Home
The Moon is at home in Cancer, and I think we know where we need to go, but there is more work to be done. Yesterday when I meditated with the Moon, I received quite a strong message about the necessary changes that are being asked of us now, as humans, and what it means to become “green”. Certainly we know what actions we should take. There are life style changes we need to make, and the Corona Virus pandemic has spurred us along in making these changes. We have traveled less, recycled more, consumed less and reduced the need to produce all kinds of things (masks not included). We have driven less and the Earth, I think, has breathed a sigh of relief at quieter seas and gentler human activity. Our economy has taken a toll, but we always knew that this was necessary in some way I think, and we are learning to be resilient. We are helping each other more, and simultaneously tending more to our green Earth.
Being Green
So in many ways I see the drastic events of the last few months as having precipitated us into being more aligned with the Earth. What else can we do to be green? We can follow the advice of organizations like Green America as to which companies to buy from. We can take it one step further, live off grid, go solar, eat local. Some people think it is green to stop eating meat and we can do that. Some people say it is better to return to traditional ways of farming, and we can do that. We can choose not to have kids. I’m a proponent of these last two choices. We can support legislators that make environmentally friendly laws. We can use our power as voting citizens and consumers. But how much power do we have?
The Way of the Machine
I think in general we still want to believe that we can keep living the way we live and be green. We can use electric cars or live in ecologically safe houses and not change our lives too much, but I’m not sure this is true. It seems that we are still going the Way of the Machine, not the Way of Life, and that we are still looking for ways that technology can save us, but I don’t think it will.
Plant Lessons
Since the beginning of my plant journey, becoming green has been a big theme. In one of my first meditations with a plant ally, I literally was gifted the experience of being a plant. This changed my perspective on a lot of things, as you can imagine. I started to see plants as having something to teach us about how to simply be on the Earth. So what do they have to say about going green?
The Way of Life
In Vermont, it becomes green all at once, in a rush. The growing season is short, and so the green season is quite remarkable, dense and a bit overwhelming. The bugs are frantic at my bright window at night and there can be a feeling of overgrowth, of too much. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about society’s current relationship to the green realm as something that is “too much”. We want to grow mono-crops. We want yards free of weeds. We seem to want to pave over large areas of living Earth. We seem to want exactly the opposite of what nature wants. Nature wants abundance, and fulfills this desire abundantly, while we seem to want the opposite of diversity. We think abundance resides in reducing that which survives, in making it so that only we can thrive. But this logic is antithetical to life.
Systemic Change
What these thoughts tell me is that the current planetary situation isn’t asking of us small, incremental changes that will preserve the status quo but wide, systemic changes that will mean we will step on the world differently. We will walk more slowly. We will walk more, we will rely less on a dying system that is bleeding the natural world. We need to change quickly.
Going Green
So my New Moon intentions this month have to do with taking concrete action for creating a new world order which is based on Green Abundance not Mechanical Lack.
Going green isn’t NOT doing something, it is positively doing new things, taking new actions that actively create another kind of world.
Going green is living from the heart.
Green is the color of the heart chakra and reminds me of the way everything in the green world hums together, breaths together, lives and dies together.
Be more green.
If plants don’t speak to you, think of Kermit and be more like an amphibian. Consider the harm your actions cause, from a heart perspective.
From the perspective of your heart, consider what kinds of actions would create a different kind of world, one that is heart-centered.
Think with your heart.
This might mean we each have to do our share of healing, but we already knew this and now is not the time to shy away from whatever mess you find within and without.
We need to crawl out of our old armor and meet the world bare and pink so that the powers that be don’t know what to do any more, like the woman in Portland who faced down the militarized police naked. Make them laugh, make them crumble.
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-07-19/portland-protest-naked-athena
While I was making a flower essence yesterday, one expressly for the Saturn/Sun opposition we were experiencing with this New Moon, I saw a pink beetle crawling away from its dark armor, left on a dying leaf. The beetle-like police will look silly eventually next to the heart-centered warriors besides them, whether at Standing Rock or in cities around the world. Green can’t lose, green wins, and though we must embrace deep inner and outer change, the plants can help us. And we can help each other.
Let me know if you are interested in talking with me about strategies to help yourself “go green”! You can make a free appointment here. I love this work and for me there is no stronger call than to help people become more heart-centered and Earth connected so that we can change the world we live in.
Lots of green love,
Amy
