As we flow through the expansive energies of the rare Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in Pisces (active early April to mid-May; see my previous blog A Rising Tide) two more watery placements begin to draw our attention. On 14 April Dark Feminine Black Moon Lilith moves from light and bright Gemini into sign of the mother and child, Cancer. On 20 April asteroid of relationship commitment, Juno, moves into Pisces. As Lilith is in Cancer until January, and Juno goes retrograde in Pisces, staying there well into January next year, this a long-term awakening. Whether you have planetary placements in these two water signs is immaterial, for they will be opening gateways somewhere in you and your life. These Sacred Feminine placements are subtle yet powerful if we bring our conscious attention into their potentials.
Black Moon Lilith in Cancer
Black Moon Lilith is perhaps the most intriguing of all the Dark Feminine archetypes. She is mysterious both in her astronomy and astrology yet when she plays in our lives, we recognise her.
There are four Lilith in astronomy/astrology. That’s her first mystery. The one I’m writing about here is not a planetary body but a space. We could call it an etheric frequency. This primary Lilith is an abstract point, like the Ascendant or Midheaven in an astrological chart. It is the second centre of the Moon¹s elliptical orbit around the Earth. Black Moon Lilith and Earth are the double centre, around which the Moon orbits. The Earth as one centre is physical, shining like a blue jewel. Black Moon Lilith is the other, invisible yet emitting a tangible oscillating frequency. Lilith can therefore be seen as an etheric twin to the core energy of the Earth, the fire at its centre. She certainly expresses as the fire at the centre of being a woman too! In watery Cancer her energy is more tender though.
As magnetic energy, Lilith entices us towards her mystery; a mystery that expresses through an sometimes terrible, often magical, dance of darkness and light. As with all the dark goddesses her calling lies in the unacknowledged unclaimed aspects of self; she holds both the dilemma and gift of our inner darkness, particularly regarding equality and sexuality. Those aspects of our self are essential to our fullest embodiment as Feminine. Lilith especially plays through the experience of rejection: how we are rejected by others and then turn that wounding in on ourselves. She represents a place of core wounding about being female, and how our female gifts of intuitive knowing, wisdom and creative sexual potency have been suppressed, denied, and vilified through patriarchal control. We know this individually and feel it very personally when Lilith is in Cancer, yet it’s a collective wounding.
In Cancer, mother and mothering are key connections to the Lilith experience and therefore vital for our most intimate and primal transformation. Her shadows relate to themes of support, expressing as dependency, neediness, and/or protection of our vulnerability. Think of the Cancerian symbol, the crab with its armoured shell. It’s the ultimate protection, especially with its huge claw dancing in warning, as if to say, “Stay away from my soft centre’. Lilith in Cancer highlights family karma through the mother-line, plus our primal needs for care and how we engage them consciously or reject them, including food dependencies, and co-dependent relationships. Think of the mother-child relationship. At its core it’s about being held, so Lilith in this tender sign calls us to a deeper conscious holding of our vulnerabilities.
Although Lilith is a Dark Feminine archetype, as with many of the more shadowy female energy imprints, her darkness holds within it, a very tender and magical gift. In Cancer, this is the unconditional love of the Great Mother in all her expressions, who is both light and dark, nurturing and devouring.
She is evident in the mother bird that pushes the fledging out of the nest, ready or not, and the loving arms that hold all experience with unconditional acceptance. Lilith in Cancer delivers us the potential of a new high-frequency connection to our vulnerability, giving and receiving nurture, tenderness, emotional connection and belonging. It’s about healthy connection to our own needs, honouring our intuitive knowing and our fully expressive Feminine nature. Because of her intimate connection to the Earth-Moon cycle, Lilith teaches us about moving from deeply personal issues to impersonal love for our self and others. When we engage her shadows willingly, her alchemical way of being naturally weaves new energy into the most intimate places in our lives. This takes place without effort or work, simply by opening wide into the alchemy of feeling feelings rather than disengaging from them.
As Black Moon Lilith begins to move through Cancer, Earth Mother Ceres joins her in this watery sign of caring and nurturing. Between 15 May & 2 June they edge closer to one another (and are aspected by other planets), highlighting the good mother/bad mother themes of this transit. In Greek mythology Ceres journey catapulted her from a relationship based on dependency with her daughter Persephone (note I am using the planetary names here. These two are also known variably as Demeter and Proserpina), through the gateways of grief into a more mature woman to woman relationship with her daughter. Persephone was likewise thrust from being a maiden virgin archetype, through her relating with Pluto, Lord of the Underworld, eventually becoming queen of that realm. The exact alignment of these two Sacred Feminine archetypes (active 25 May through 2 June) highlights the obvious themes of dependency and maturity within a parent/child relationship, along with the need to loosen or let go the reins of control held through fear. It also points towards our inner mother/child relationship: emotional and security needs, how we nurture ourself or not, food issues, the needs for tenderness, kindness and caring, and the more subtle realms of our being such as intuition. There is a deep need to understand our humanness with greater compassion, to realise the natural cycles of relating, letting go and growing maturity in all relationships. Cancer calls us to discover a profound sense of belonging here on Earth and for that to be first rooted deeply within our self. The potential of these encounters is the rooting of a higher frequency synergy of self caring and love. In the process what feels insecure and unloved within our self will be highlighted.
Juno in Pisces
In the asteroid archetypes Juno is Queen of Heaven, embodying the ancient triple goddess Maiden-Mother-Crone. Her role is sovereign, protector of women, guardian of women’s sexuality and fertility, protector of brides and childbirth. Juno is both sister and wife to head-honcho god Jupiter. In Greek mythology, she is known as Hera, the wife of Zeus.
Juno’s calling was to sacred union; her consort’s drive was to freedom. Jupiter exercised this calling to freedom through love affairs with goddesses and mortal women. This gives us clues to the themes of the arising energy. Juno stands for commitment in partnerships: intimate, business, or student/mentor, revealing the rhythms of relating, how the honeymoon period inevitably gives way to challenge or conflict. In her feelings of humiliation and rejection, Juno was renowned for jealousy and bitterness at her consort’s infidelities. Yet she was truly committed to sacred union, so she also stands for a passage through the underworld of relating, and its renewal.
As Juno moves through Pisces for the next nine months, we are called to face shadows of disillusionment and withdrawal, self-deception, and fantasy in our closest relationships. Yet there is also a gift: to discover deep compassion for our self and those we love, forgiveness and a soulful reconnective capacity through both dark and bright experiences. This placement reflects karmic relationships, that seem to arrive or be inspired by fate or destiny. It’s also motivated by sharing dreams and vision yet requires strong commitment to manifest them. It’s the ‘can’t live with, can’t live without’ play in partnership that with awareness, and the willingness from both parties to transform, moves into a new frequency of connectedness, or dissolves. Such numinous energy calls us to utter faith and commitment in partnership as a sacred expression. The gift is a truly soulful desire that merges two as one, that reflects divine immersion and ecstatic union.
With both these Sacred Feminine placements in water signs until January 2023; with the rare Neptune-Jupiter conjunction in Pisces, also activated by the Moon, Goddess of Venus, and Warrior Mars through to mid-May; and personal planets in Cancer running through June to August this year, there’s a strong calling to new ways of being with our feelings and emotions, and the ways we relate.
Our relationships are inextricably linked to how we feel about ourselves, our family karma, how we express, and our ways of connection or avoidance of the sensitive watery aspects of our nature. This is where we are most vulnerable, yet it’s also where the greatest jewels of intimacy lie. We are called to deep waters; our intuition, our feeling nature, vulnerability, and tenderness are the guides. We are being reprogrammed in the most intimate ways, opening our sensitivity to bloom and express the wonder of soulful self-expression and the potential of sacred union.
Discover more about these Sacred Feminine energies in my book ‘Sacred Pathways-Discovering Divine Feminine Archetypes in You’ and my new book ‘Her Sacred Fire’ due to be published in the summer 2022.
There is an introductory event coming up on 7 June, ‘Good Mother Bad Mother’, exploring Black Moon Lilith in Cancer’s energies. Info.
