Exact time of full moon: Friday, July 5, 2024 at 5:57pm Central
Sun conjunct Moon conjunct Venus in Cancer trine Saturn in Pisces and Pallas in Scorpio. Lunation squares the Moon’s Nodes.
While I was reflecting on what to write about this annual yet unique New Cancer Moon, I went to turn the compost. A farmer prides themselves on their abilities to compost. Wise Farmer knows that it is the refuse used thoughtfully and sustainably which produces the best fertilizer.
All last year I threw my garden clippings into it. It piled up. I started putting my kitchen scraps and even some pulled weeds into the heap. I tossed old willow cuttings and weekly armfuls of rotting flower arrangements. But I just piled it up. I never turned it in. Things just happened, Life kept going, and the pile became quite large. I tossed some frozen patio plants and raked leaves upon it in the autumn. But I just piled it all up. Winter came and went, and the compost formed a nice little slime on it in concert with a pungent rotting smell, brought to my attention in the Spring when I began to add to it again.
Knowing who I am as an agriculturalist and acknowledging my laziness, I motivated myself to turn the compost. As I turned it, I saw the slow inevitable transformation of those things that I had piled on it last year. The broccoli stalks had mostly been eaten away, and much of the leaves were now brown and mushy, or starting to look like soil. Still, I journeyed through each of the seasons of my last year, seeing what had piled on weekly.
Completing the task of shoveling a couple cubic yards of heavy material, I helped myself to a quart of delicious lemonade! Satisfied with a job well done, and the pile well turned, I let the compost rest. I came back to it a month later and gave it a little stir. Nothing fancy, I moved it from one side of the bid to the other. I gave it some air to allow the moisture to be more evenly distributed throughout the heap and to feed the aerobic bacteria I knew were proliferating.
And then I came back to it today. There was a thick layer of “protectorate” plants growing on top. Lamb’s quarters, amaranth, some squash… I extricated some of the red amaranth I’d like to see flower as well as a dahlia that I thought I had lost – and two sprouting avocado pits!
I turned the compost and saw all the old junk from last year and how, through my engagement with it, much of it had become, and the rest of it is becoming, the most nutrient dense fertilizer available! One more lunar cycle and it will be perfect, for now, I made some compost tea!
All of this is a metaphor, of course, as well as a true story, like all of Nature, like all of life. If I want to care for the things that are growing and see them flourish, then it is imperative that I do the work necessary to assist in the process. The bacteria and worms do the real work. All I must do is show up and engage it, turn it over once in a while. In the meantime, we understand that it is a process. Healing is a process. It’s important to do the work. It’s important to have a look at what’s piled up. It’s important to digest it and allow it to transform into something which can feed us.
With this New Cancer Moon, now is the time to set an intention of allowing ourselves the space in which to do this work. We can’t move forward into a rich, fertile future until we have processed what we’ve piled on our past. Processing our past feeds our future. This New Lunar Cycle invites us all to do that over the next month in healthy preparation for whatever is yet to come.
– Courtesy of Evolutionary Astrology with Ryan Evans
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