Rituals and Remedies for New Moon in Cancer - abundance
Cancer is often referred to as the great mother, but I find myself more drawn to the archetype of the great grandmother. Embedded in the nourishment that is offered by Cancer, is the wise and sacred knowings of the earth, of something much larger and older than any of us, of something ancient and ancestral. A knowing about nurturing and tending that goes beyond perceptions of this lifetime - knowings of the soul that have been weathered and wrinkled with time, growing softer and more tender as they age. If how we nourish ourselves and others can grow wise, then the grandmother offers us the gift of abundance that is born from years of learning about self and, specifically, the intricacies of being someone who feels, who cares, and who receives care.
Yet the lines of time are blurry - much wisdom and tenderness from the grandmother also arises from the closeness of what is to come after this lifetime, what we posit as the future, but the wisdom of the soul knows is a continuation.
The blurriness of it all - the union of feelings with matter, this lifetime and all others, my soul and yours, the gifts of the earth manifest in our bodies - are the abundance we seek and experience during the New Moon in Cancer. It is this abundance that soothes us, wraps us in a warm cloak and reminds us that nourishment takes many forms, but can always be found.
Perhaps it is my individual view, perhaps is it is something others can relate to as well, but for me, the grandmother is an archetype that is slightly liberated from the confines of the mother archetype - an archetype that has been withered by the expectation that giving does not include receiving and that nurturing is something some of us do for others, but not for ourselves, nor is it appropriate or expected for us to receive it from another.
But New Moon in Cancer begs us to ask the question, can we give without receiving? If we try to, or think we can - who can genuinely receive from us and what of value will they receive? Without reciprocity, our gifts, our offerings, and our abundance become hollow. Without reciprocity, relationships do not flourish to bloom and fruit.
We all have archetypes inside us - they are universal - so you do not have to identify as a specific gender or as a mother in any way to identify with the mother archetype. The mother archetype is embedded in the patriarchy in our culture - wounded by, amongst other things, the expectation that one should only give and not receive. This is an identity and expectation in need of healing and all of us can heal this archetype within ourselves - it is the place inside us that believes that nourishment is something we offer to others and not to ourselves. It is the place inside us that squirms when someone offers to help us or when we need help and don’t know how to ask for it, or when we finally do ask for it or consent to it and then experience extreme discomfort in receiving it or extreme disappointment and pain if we don’t. It is the place inside us that has feelings and needs. And when it comes to Cancer, those feelings and needs never end. They babble like a brook, spread out like a flood plane and marinate like a swamp, they meander like a stream and rage like ocean waves in a storm, they trickle like rain drops and pound like hail. They manifest in many forms, but they never end, even when they evaporate, they will be waiting patiently to form the next precipitation.
It is important that we don’t judge the manifestation of these water sources that form and express our emotional experience of the world. We are prone to judge and try to control all emotional expression and experience in this culture, just as we have harassed and mechanized the natural flow of many things. Any type of storm, gentle or pounding or flooding is seen as disruptive or destructive, which both generally have negative associations. But distruction and disruption are forces of change which have a powerful order in the flow of things - these energies help us carve out new spaces and new pathways, they help us release and transform and appreciate the calm that follows, they help us share, be seen in our truth, and appreciate ourselves and others, what has been and where we are now.
Water, the container-less beauty, teaches us the most about nurturing ourselves. And Cancer as the cardinal water sign, centers us in those teachings. Here is where we jump off from the safety of the edge - which represents the wounded narrative of the Lunar archetype of Cancer in these times - into a crystal clear pool of water and open our eyes. It is just clear enough to see through, but not so clear that we loose sight of any of the richness that makes us human, bonds us in interconnection, and reminds us that we are wise.
New moon in Cancer wants us to remember that we have feelings and that our feelings are mysterious and changeable and that they take time. New moon in Cancer is a time to be devoted to the feelings realm - curiosity and commitment to this inner experience become the power of excavation that we so need to stew in to be whole - to enter the cauldron of right action, that most holy of body sites just below the naval. In union with the Gemini knowing about our needs, Cancer’s capacity to feel launches the most powerful, mission driven movement of our lives - a belief in our own worthiness, a state that embraces the reciprocity that is inseparable from the verb “to nourish,” and that transforms its very life by a new belief in abundance.
I call water the container-less beauty becuase it does not hold it’s own container. But it is far from container-less, becuase it is held by the earth and all its interconnected elements, including, at times, by human made structures (which sometimes prove lovingly containing and other times restrictive). Water shows us how it nourishes - by flowing generously, expanding, contracting, raging, pattering - and in each action providing a site, a habitat for growth and renewal. Water also shows us how it wants to be nourished - by being held, by having a container made and kept for it. A container that can transform around it, a container that is alive, a container where life grows and changes and evolves - a container that is flexible and emergent and willing to see the whole order of things when water, with or without warning, changes the shape of that container.
We hold space for our and other’s feelings by creating an open, nourishing space to receive them, to acknowledge them and to validate them and then to say after listening, “I’m still here and I love you.” The grandmother has been there so many times before - for themselves, for others, for the earth, for the ancestors. New Moon in Cancer wants us to hold this space for ourselves. Our inner grandmother gracefully contains the wisdom acquired through a lifetime of experiencing and holding space for our feelings - it shelters us, nourishes us, provides a container for the babbling brook, meandering stream, rushing river, calm lake, or gigantic waves, by offering ourselves back to ourselves and by saying, “here you are, as beautiful as you ever were and as beautiful as you always will be.”
It’s not easy to hold space for ourselves in this way and it's rarely easy to allow others to hold space for us in this way - most notably because we often have little, if any, data to show us that anyone is capable of such a gesture. So often, others show us nourishment and care by getting upset with us or on our behalf, projecting it out onto others, trying to excuse it or otherwise shove it away, or by trying to fix it, which could look like doing it for us, or moving into the logical brain and trying to rationalize or problem solve. So many of these things are like building dams that stifle the flow of water. The container has to be able to evolve around the feelings, in a way that is organic and non-linear. Therefore self-care, starts with the loving and graceful allowing of our feelings and the grandmotherly love that accepts them all as the abundance of the earth - the true nourishment we seek - while also learning from them, while gently asserting the wisdom we have and remaining clear-eyed about the wisdom we have to gain.
United with Gemini knowing, allowing ourselves to experience the feelings of New Moon in Cancer plants the seeds for compassionate self-care - decisions, actions, and manifestations that reflect how we nourish ourselves and how we want to be nourished by others that honor our true needs, our true feelings, our true capacity as a human being and as a soul who experiences the abundance of itself through its messy and complex union with the whole of the world. These actions, taken slowly, sometimes painfully, over time, flower in the interconnected space of reciprocity where we make meaning and evolve in our lives not just through giving, but also by receiving from ourselves, from others, from the earth. A place where we remember that this great container we live in can generously hold us and in doing so, we can both receive and give back.
Remedies and Rituals
The following remedies and rituals are aimed to support us as we explore this New Moon in Cancer territory - embracing and exploring abundance, self-connection, self-nourishment, and self-care, and being in relationship with the balance between caring for others and caretaking.