A New Moon in Cancer Setting the Stage for the Biggest Transits of 2026

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today we're going to take a look at the new moon happening in the sign of Cancer. This is one of the biggest lunar cycles of the year, because of all of the transits that are taking place within it, including a massive full moon that's coming. I'm going to outline some of the details of this moon cycle.

We're going to talk about what the role of Cancer might be, a new moon in Cancer, given some of the most powerful transits that are coming in the weeks ahead, and hopefully this will provide some meaningful context, not only for the new moon today, but for the cycle. So that's our agenda. Before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe, it takes two seconds, it's free to do so. It really helps us grow and sustain what we do.

You can find transcripts always of any of these daily talks on our website, that's nightlightastrology.com. When you are over on the website, couple of brief promotions for the day. First one is go to Community Quiet, and you will see that we have daily meditation at Nightlight, seven days a week. You can come and sit with us, it's free.

The Zoom link is there, the schedule is there. It's a really nice way to take care of yourself internally, take care of your body, your mind, your spirit. In addition to taking an astrology content, it's a really nice community of people. I've been really enjoying sitting with everyone each morning. If you go to the events page and click on monthly webinars, you'll see that I'm giving a talk coming up on July 23 called The Dark Side of Astrology: Malefics, Eclipses, and Retrogrades.

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Anyway, there's a 20% off discount code in the comment section or the description of the video if you want to check it out yourself. It's a great program. All right, well, let's take a look at this new moon. So, the new moon is forming here Tuesday, July 14. I'm going to actually back this up a little bit to show you the exact time. I go backward in time just a little bit.

You'll see that the new moon forms between three and about five in the morning, that central time, Tuesday, July 14, so you're listening to this probably on the day of the morning of the new moon. It's just past us, but we're going to talk about it today, specifically because of some of the things that are happening during this cycle. One of the biggest things that's happening is the upcoming Jupiter Pluto opposition.

Now, there's also connections through sextile between all of the outer planets, including Jupiter. So, we've got Jupiter moving into an opposition with Pluto, and we'll have Jupiter sextile Uranus, sextile Neptune, sextile Pluto, and then the opposition. You know, different modern astrologers work with newly named or kind of imagined aspect patterns, so this one's sometimes called a basket, Barbos basket, as it were.

But regardless of whether or not we take those aspect patterns literally or not, the connection is there. I don't think the name we give it matters, I think that the connections matter, and we can just see right now that there's a powerful configuration. This Jupiter-Pluto dynamic is leading the way, and there's a lot of support from outer planets at the same time. Now, what's particularly fascinating is that if we take this forward a little bit in time, I'm going to change this to days at a time, and we're going to advance this and take us to the full moon.

Now, between now and the full moon, we're going to see that Jupiter and Pluto oppose one another right around July 20, and after that opposition has passed, we go to a full moon, and this full moon you can see right here is conjoining Pluto in Aquarius, very powerful, and it's opposing, obviously, every full moon is an opposition between the sun and the moon, but it's opposing the sun, who is also conjoining Jupiter, which means we have a Jupiter Cazimi taking place with an opposition to a full moon conjoined Pluto.

That's a very potent full moon, not to speak of the fact that at the exact same time we have this connection between Uranus, Neptune, and that little outer planetary configuration. So very, very potent moon cycle. Clearly, what I want to do today is talk about what Cancer might have to do with all of this. I've got five things to watch for, and I'm going to elaborate upon it, because the roots of lunar cycles, especially their seeding points, will carry through the remaining expression of the cycle.

We have a very powerful moon cycle starting now, and so here's five things to watch for, given this Cancerian starting point. These are things that I would keep in mind for everybody. The archetypal themes you may see, although I think it would help to look specifically at the whole sign house of Cancer in your chart, maybe even the Leo Aquarius axis alongside of it, especially since we're moving into eclipse season, and those houses are going to be highlighted next month as well.

But yeah, start with the whole sign house of Cancer if you want some hints as to the seeding point of the cycle. Well, the first one on my list is home in the heart when there are very significant changes happening, and we have Cancer as a seeding point, new moon cycle. It makes me wonder about how we're defining home.

Home is an emotional state. Home is a sense of physical at-homeness. It's a sense of emotional bondedness and attachment to things, people, places that give us a feeling of safety and security. Talk about secure attachments in attachment theory. What does that secure attachment look like, and how does it need to change or evolve right now, so that the attachment and the bondedness provide us more of that sense of peace, ease, health, nourishment, safety?

That's perhaps a very important question for this lunar cycle ahead. When everything else is changing, what do we call home? Where do we find the nest? The nest can be a heart space or a literal home space, but it's often both. Finding inner sanctuary during times when significant transitions are happening could be a theme in the cycle ahead, and I would also say that sometimes the distinction between emotional or psychological at-homeness or security versus external changes can be highlighted.

Sometimes we try to rearrange the living room when we need to rearrange our heart, so watch for maybe there's some distinctions to be made between external changes that are not addressing internal changes and vice versa. Now, second on my list, given this new moon in Cancer, would be themes from the past, so there might be echoes of old stories, old patterns.

Some of these may be ancestral, there may be echoes of things that happened in your family, or decisions that your parents made, or similar crossroads or situations that you're facing that other people who've come before you have faced. If you think about it a little bit, you may suddenly notice it. Oh, wow, yeah, my aunt dealt with this, or someone close to me went through a life situation remarkably similar to this.

There's a reason for this, because Cancer, the sign of obviously being the sign of the moon, is a sign of memory. The moon is the keeper of memories, you might say, and so family stories and ancestral patterns can come up during this cycle and be a very important backdrop to some of the larger catalyzing changes happening in air and fire signs, which tend to be very action-oriented, but the action may stem from the past.

I think it always does, in a way. How could it not? Everything in the present is shaped by everything in the past, and this is the way karma works. But when the past is echoing loudly and demanding to be addressed somehow in the changes that are currently manifesting, we all know what that feels like when bigger life changes, like job changes, relationship changes, going back to school, becoming committed to something that feels really important to us.

When those types of changes come along, it's not surprising to sometimes feel like this is the skeleton key to a door that has been locked for a long time, and it feels like something is opening, and in that sense the past is resolving itself somehow. There can be old feelings that resurface, childhood themes or patterns that resurface, and I feel like Cancer often brings that up.

As a card-carrying member with a sun and Mercury there myself, I think that we have inherited emotional responses almost embedded into our DNA. It's like emotional inherited responses, outlooks, ways of thinking, feeling moods. There comes a time when you feel like you've graduated from something that your ancestors, before they left, weren't able to graduate from.

Maybe that sounds a little grandiose, but I know that in my life there are times where I go, my dad's been here before and I'm not doing the same thing, I'm leveling up, or my mom, and frankly, I know that my kids will have to do the same thing someday. This is where dad couldn't get past that kind of thing. So the echoes of the past, I think, is also important because the Jupiter Pluto dynamic can be so much about courageous, big-hearted changes that have to be made.

But sometimes, especially with the opposition to Pluto, with no pride or egotistical theatricality, it's just do this from the heart, for the heart, for the right reasons, and you will resolve the past, something like that. All right. Well, number three on my list is about protecting what really matters to us. I think that Cancer has a mother bear quality.

In fact, one of the stories in my book that I just wrote involves a mother bear encounter that I had with a mother bear one time that was just really powerful. When I was born, my parents lovingly gave each of me and my sister an animal totem, just they were imaginative hippies, I guess. So anyway, they gave me the bear and my sister the wolf, and so the bear felt to me, perhaps just my own projection, but it's always felt very Cancerian.

The mother bear in particular has a protective quality to Cancer that can be quite fierce, like think of Mars in Cancer, it can be quite a fierce protector. The reason that I'm talking about this is that this is a transit where the big changes that are happening can feel like mobilizing forces, gathering strength, taking action, facing things that are hard to face, and being brave. But at the roots I suspect is something very vulnerable to us.

I think the feeling of belonging, the feeling of attachment, the feeling of safety, of vulnerability. These are things that are usually at the heart of what we're fighting for, or what we're standing for, or what we're trying to protect, guard, steward, what we feel called to serve somehow, that's bigger than ourselves, usually relates back to things that we believe create a sense of belonging and connection and safety.

I was listening recently, my wife and I were listening to someone talking about how belonging alone isn't enough, because even white supremacists that belong to white supremacy groups get a sense of belonging. He was saying, and I really agreed with his point. It's easy to feel kind of clan-ish, you know, and I'm obviously not referencing the Klan in that sense, I'm just tagging the human instinct to be like, just get me as a part of a group, a tribe, a clan, a clique, a community.

Once I belong to that thing, then I feel safe, and then I protect that, but often if that group, that sense of belonging, or family, or even your clique in high school, is rooted in protection and fear of the outsider, I think the term for that is xenophobia, fear of strangers or fear of others, fear of people from foreign places. So it's like, if your sense of protection is rooted in fear of anything outside, suspicion, distrust, it's one thing to be safe, it's one thing to safeguard.

We have mastiffs, Hilda's not in here during the summer usually, because it's too hot. She lays on the kitchen floor because it's cool. Anyhow, their natural instinct is like, whatever, the mailman, you're dead. I think there's something very natural about us being a little protective and suspicious. I don't think that's necessarily wrong, but you can see what I'm getting at, which is that when our sense of connection and belonging is rooted in fear and exclusivity, then belonging alone is not enough.

This is the kind of transit that can also teach us in some ways to open our hearts, so that what we belong to and where we find that sense of at-homeness is not exclusive, is not rooted in fear, is not rooted purely in fortification and defensiveness. I think that's a really hard thing to do. I know that when I go to astrology conferences, for example, I often feel like, ah, these are my people, these are the people that share the language that I love.

Then I notice when I come back, usually this is NORWAC, I come back and there's a family event for us usually right away. So I go from a feeling of people who I feel more seen and understood by to people who maybe don't really know the astrological part of me, but I do notice that it can enhance my sense of judgment toward people who don't know my language. I can go from feeling judged to being the judger, because I was just with my group.

So it's not just be careful of people who judge you, it's also be careful of seeking protection from people who judge you in a way that will simply reverse the judgment toward others. There was a book I read a long time ago called The Undefended Self. It was one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. I really loved it, The Undefended Self, I believe it was called.

It was talking about how to remain open hearted, how to develop your sense of belonging and safety without it being rooted in exclusivity and protection and defensiveness of identity, even though we have to carry identity categories in life. We all do, I'm an astrologer, I'm a dad, or whatever the case might be, whatever your identity categories are that mean a lot to you. How do we carry them in a way that does not secretly cultivate distrust, cynicism, self-righteousness, judgment, fear of others?

That's a tricky thing to do, especially when not all people are themselves understanding, safe, or accepting. The reason that I'm bringing this up is that I think this is a cycle where the potential for groups who have vested interest, underneath the surface whatever the ideology might be, behind it is really a very basic Cancerian sense of this is where I feel safe, this is how reality ends up feeling good to me, and therefore I have to protect it. From protection goes offense or defense, and power plays.

Because Jupiter's opposite Pluto, Leo and Aquarius, I really do think that those things could ramp up a bit. I think on the personal level that makes our work to protect the safe, sweet, vulnerable part of our heart, but to protect it in a way that does not engender cycles of violence mentally, verbally, emotionally. I don't think that's easy to do, I know it's not for me, and I suspect it's not for most of us.

That sounds easy, because it's the right thing, but embodying the right thing and knowing the right thing are often very different. So anyway, just some thoughts there. The next one is nourishment and destiny. If Jupiter in Leo wants to become what is most bold and noble and big-hearted about us, and if Pluto in Aquarius wants that transformation within us to occur, so that it connects us meaningfully to the collective in a way that's honest and authentic to the soul, we think about it like that.

Then a lot of what facilitates that is not one wardrobe change or costume change or public theatrical declaration of who we are, where we're going, or what we're doing. Instead, it's about recognizing that if I want to become someone, if I want to serve something, if I want to be a part of a legacy that really matters to me, with values and people that really strike me as good-hearted, these are the things I care about, these are the things I want to be involved in.

Then it comes down to doing what nourishes that, not just making a declaration. What we cultivate every single day becomes our destiny. I know it just sounds like some kind of astrological David Goggins or something, like just do push-ups until you bleed. No, what I mean is, it's easy for Jupiter in Leo to make big declarations, along with Pluto in Aquarius, big powerful intentions and ambitions. Shifts of purpose or destiny can be very big, grand, and theatrical.

They can be good-hearted and push us in the right direction, but if we aren't thinking about how to become those new directions because of what we nourish and cultivate in small everyday ways, it will just be hot air, just bluster and bravado. I think that Cancer underneath at the roots of this big cycle with all these significant transits says, what are you cultivating every day, so that the big grand direction, the noble heroic ambitions, the larger spiritual collective agenda, how does that become an everyday thing?

Remember, in the backdrop of this year is Saturn, Neptune, and I'm thinking in my own life about this in terms of the Buddhist monks that were walking, that inspired me to open my daily meditation practice to sharing in community. One of the things that I think I've recognized is that behind my intention to create community was not an actual action or activity that was cultivating it every day in a spiritual way, and that felt like a significant realization.

So now what I'm noticing is that rather than having this idea of community being important to me astrologically, it's always been, and astrologically it's always been there, but of course in my head I was thinking this is spiritual in nature, but the spiritual practice in community is now really bringing that into the Nightlight space. I've really been noticing, when you're meditating with hundreds of people and they're coming in and out of the classrooms and you're sharing sitting quietly with these folks, for me anyway, I'm starting to feel this is not just an idea, it's not just a good value to want spiritual community, but to try to bridge astrology and spiritual, but astrology is often about learning and practice and technique, and craft, and performing readings, and professional direction.

To bring this in every single day, very, very slowly, I'm starting to see the results, and that's how most of these things work for all of us, is my point. It seems so basic when you think about it, if your big heroic intention is to become an astrologer or become a musician, you have to practice every day to nourish that destiny, becoming real. But when it comes to things that we believe in, faith statements, beliefs, convictions, philosophies, spiritual perspectives, intellectual dispositions, it's a lot easier with this kind of transit, Jupiter and Pluto, to make big declarations, but to forget that that starts with daily watering the plant, whatever the plant is.

So we should get a shirt that says We're Astrological Goggins, so stupid. Anyway, okay. All right. Number five is, you know, as a side note, it's funny every time I think of David Goggins, I think of that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the knight is slowly getting every limb chopped off, and he's like, Where are you going? Come back here. He's like, We gotta keep fighting. He's like, You don't have any arms, you don't have any legs. Anyway, it's just so absurd.

So I am not advising this is not David Goggins advice, but it is make the daily nourishment of destiny the thing where the destiny becomes real. All right. Finally, I think we're in a moon cycle where going back to something that is source, going to the well, going back to the source, getting back to the roots, returning to core values that maybe we've drifted from a little bit, or family, or spiritual roots, or authentic feeling, that's a Cancerian trait.

Sometimes evolution happens because we get back to something. I think of how many times clients that I've sat with go back to nature, they move maybe to the country a little bit, or they get off grid or something. That's an image to me that resonates right now. In order to move forward, I have to get back to something, back to something basic and nourishing. So well. How'd we do? I think we did all right.

Oh, anyway, I hope you're all having a good day today, and I hope that this channel and anything we talk about is nourishing and helpful. I know that half of what I create in this content, at least, is the thing that I need to hear for myself. So always I hope that you're able to take something good from what we've said today, and that it's some kind of blessing in your life.

Please note that we have daily meditation now, so if you are someone who likes this channel, and you just want to connect with other human beings, every Sunday we have Silent Sundays. We get together, we sit in silence, and then we open up for group sharing, and people just share insights and reflections from the road of life. It is so beautiful, it's so nourishing, and it's cool to see that dimension of Nightlight growing because of all of you who have been watering it with your presence.

So yeah, thanks for that, and hope to see some new people there too. Okay, have a great day. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye bye.