Healing Advice for the Cancer Moon Cycle Ahead

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today we are going to talk a little bit more about this upcoming moon cycle which started yesterday. We had a new moon in the sign of Cancer, and we're going to talk about this moon cycle ahead, given the strong Plutonian signature at the outset accompanied by a Venus retrograde.

So today, my wife Ashley, who is an herbalist, is coming on the show to talk with us about a plant ally that we are currently using and the Roots and Spheres program that could pair well with the moon cycle ahead and the Venus retrograde ahead. This is a good plant that you could work with for the sake of healing, remediation, working kind of alongside some of the more turbulent energies in the next, say, month, month and a half, and so really glad to have her here today.

That is what we're going to talk about. We're also going to use it as an opportunity to promote our Roots and Spheres program for the upcoming New Year in 2024. We're going to be having a sale in August; I'll tell you about it in a minute.

So anyway, before we get into it, don't forget to like and subscribe. Share your comments with us in the comment section, especially if you end up using the herbs that we are going to be recommending. Come back and tell us about your experience. We'd love to hear from you.

You can find a transcript of today's talk on nightlightastrology.com. When you are there, check out the courses we have courses starting in the fall again that you might be ready to sign up for. You can also check out the readings that I offer, and if you have any questions about what you find on the website, email us at info@nightlightastrology.com.

Adam
Okay, well, on that note, I am very happy to welcome Ashley back to the show. Hey, good to see you.

Ashley
Hey, good to see you even though you're right there in the other room.

Adam
Yeah, it's good to be back talking planets and plants. I'm going to pull up the real-time clock and just go over the signature of this new moon so that we can kind of refresh on it. We talked about it a little bit yesterday on my channel, and I think that this will be useful for the listeners on both of our channels. You're often covering the plants and their energy in ways in which we can work with the plants and their unique doctrine of signatures, and we'll pair that together with some of the features of the astrology over the next month, and hopefully, people on both of our channels will really enjoy this.

All right, let's go with the real-time clock here. One of the reasons that we are doing this is this will be a little bit of a brief video; I am on vacation right now. So the content that I'm making prior to leaving is just a little shorter than my normal content. Hopefully no less impactful or helpful.

Here is the signature of the new moon which we visited yesterday; you'll see that the new moon starts in an opening opposition to Pluto; that signature is going to be part of the unfolding of the entire cycle, which, when placed alongside of Venus's retrograde in the sign of Leo, which is coming up within one week of the new moon alongside of Pluto opposite the sun within the first week of the new moon, you have a very potent signature. For some of the themes that we are watching for in the month ahead, you could visit yesterday's video on the new Moon in Cancer and get maybe even more information that we're going to provide today. But some highlights.

First of all, when you have the Cancerian energy opposite Pluto, the potential for turmoil and transformation within close emotional bonds, especially families, or like sort of domestic situations, living environments, marriages, families, close-knit communities, or groups of people.

The potential for the dark stuff to come up for us to look at within those kinds of spheres or places is of strong likelihood with this cycle ahead. When you pair that with Venus retrograde, we're talking about the heart.

The Venus in Leo is so much about transformations of the heart, in relationships, but also individually, and when you juxtapose that next to a strong Cancerian moon cycle with an opposition to Pluto, you're talking about transformation around the heart, around relationships, especially where there's a lot of history, or there are close emotional bonds and especially within groups that act like families are living environments that are sort of nuclear and provide us with a sense of emotional security, family karma in general. So kind of this is like a cycle of family karma, heart karma, relationship karma.

Now that could happen in friendships, again, groups of people, the workplace of marriage, I think it's likely that you're going to see tighter, more interpersonal relationships feature during the cycle, especially those that revolve around home family or that have a long history behind them.

So when that kind of transformation is at hand, it's a vulnerable space for us to be in the heart is tender, even though the heart is strong, and I think we'll find that juxtaposition really useful this month. How do we keep strong hearted well being vulnerable, and tender to the kinds of transformative energies that are coming through so that

That's the astrological piece, which I think we covered yesterday a little bit. I wanted to have Ashley on today to talk about the plant that we're using in our Roots and Spheres monthly Moon circle. Because in that circle, we try to address the astrological energies through working with specific plant teachers and looking at those plant teachers as a diet of some sort throughout the entire lunation cycle.

I'm going to tell you right now that next month in August, we will be running a one-week sale on some of our courses, and one of the sales that will run will be for people who want an early bird signup for the Roots and Spheres 2024 program. So if you like this kind of stuff, the pairing with planets and plants throughout the moon cycles ahead, if you'd like the wisdom Ashley's about to drop on you, just remember that next month we'll be running a sale, I'm not sure exactly which we could probably come later in August. We will run a one-week sale where you'll get a pretty good deal if you want to sign up for the Roots and Spheres program next year. So that being said, what kind of plant teacher do you have cooked up for routes and spheres for everybody? This month? Ashley, given these astrological energies?

Ashley
Yeah, this is going to be a great month for heart nourishment, you know, like thinking about what are the things, what are the activities, what is the music that really feeds, nourishes and stabilizes the heart, and so the plant teacher is Hawthorn and you know, Hawthorn is one that I often reach to for people who are dealing with grief.

It's for when your heart is tender, you know, when you feel like a protective barrier has been sort of torn away either through circumstance, through a health crisis, or through an actual loss of a loved one. Hawthorn is it's a plant that you can think of it as a plant when you really need a hug, but not just like physical hugs. I know some people are like no touch, but like a soul hug.

When you're like, I just need to be held and hugged and to be reassured, Hawthorn is really an amazing medicine for that, and it's a really old medicine. This is a tree that's been used medicinally for 1000s of years, and there are different species that grow in Asia and throughout Europe, and in North America. So it's a very widespread plant that's been used medicinally by many different cultures, and all for the heart and different heart ailments.

So, I can talk more about the medicine, but I think that's kind of a general, you know, Hawthorn is a cardio-protective herb, which I can talk about, and it's also a cardio restorative, actually works on restoring the tissues of the heart and then it has that energetic work as well emotionally on restoring grief, and those more subtle energies that affect the heart so strongly.

Adam
Put a picture of it up on the screen so that we can see it because, to me, one of the striking features of the hawthorn tree is that it looks like a big heart when it, when its berries, are up, I guess.

Ashley
So it first comes into bloom around May, it's often called Maybloom or Mayflower, and there are actually stories that say that the Mayflower ship was named after Hawthorn because it was a tree of protection. So it has these beautiful white blossoms in the spring that sometimes are a little pinkish, and then it starts to form these berries as you move into summer and early autumn.

The plant is in the rosacea family, so it's in the rose family, and it has thorns, you know, it's one of why it gets the name Hawthorn is it has these thorns, and it's been used as a hedge plant. So to protect and create barriers, and I think this month, you know, as family dramas are coming up as tenderness of the heart is coming up. This is also a good plant for creating protective hedges, you know, like who do you want to not only stay out of your yard but who do you want to keep in your yard? So Hawthorn is a plant that can help us with boundaries and help us really think about, you know, what is a healthy gate so that we can have fluid entry and exit while still maintaining borders?

Adam
Yeah, it's like, stay off my lawn, but stay in my heart. It can be both.

Ashley
It can be both. Yeah, and this plant is a nervine too. So it's really wonderful at keeping us calm through hard times and specifically keeping the heart calm. It helps with heart palpitations and anxiety, especially when it feels like tightness around the heart. So it has that very specific activity of creating a more relaxing internal environment as we're moving through the day.

Adam
Can you eat the berries? Is that like a thing?

Ashely
Oh, totally. Yeah, we actually have them in our fridge downstairs. Actually, we moved it to this fridge over here. But yeah,

Adam
How did I not know that? I guess I, yeah, you have so many cool, like you have a huge apothecary so

Ashely
Well, they sometimes feed you things, and I don't tell you what it is. So during that, I actually fed you Hawthorn jam, and I put it on your toast, and I did it for the girls because it is such a strong heart protector. So yeah, it's called a sauce. Isn't that funny that you didn't know? I love it.

So it can be made into a solid extract, which is basically a jam, or it can be made into an actual jelly, which is much sweeter and, yeah, eaten. It's delicious. It's really, really nutritive.

Adam
So okay, let's just say I'm an herbal client, and I'm coming in to see you; what are some of the stories that you might hear from people that your ears perk up when you hear these stories, and you say Hawthorn might be an ally for this person right now.

Ashley
when someone's been heartbroken, let's say they've been in a long-term relationship or marriage, and something's happened where the relationship had to end, and so there's grief and heartbreak. I often, and they're feeling just really low, they're depleted, maybe their appetite, they just aren't really eating or taking care of themselves, and they just need some extra nutritional support and also just uplifting support, I think of Hawthorn, when there's actual death.

You know, if someone's lost a pet, a family member, a loved one, a friend, Hawthorn often comes to mind for kind of rebuilding, rebuilding the heart, and then also, when someone comes to me with cardiovascular issues, maybe it's not emotionally related, obviously, but it's maybe more ancestral, like high blood pressure, or they have some sort of ischemic heart disease. What's really interesting about Hawthorn is that it has the ability to there a lot of different cardiac glycosides, which are these compounds that affect the contractility of the heart muscle, and so we think of like foxglove, and some, some drugs or herbs that are very, very strong, which actually pump the heart really hard and make it start again.

So that's helpful when you have a heart attack where you need to, like, really activate the muscle of the heart, but what Hawthorn does is it actually tones, it creates a stronger contraction of the heart, and then a bigger and deeper relaxation of the heart muscle, so that the heart can actually pump more effectively, and I was thinking of this earlier, and just how like, as a metaphor, it helps our heart work more efficiently. It helps us love more efficiently and maybe love with a greater awareness of limits, you know, of another person's limits, like, you know, what is their capacity to love and to love efficiently, not that we should hold ourselves back from experiencing the fullness of the heart, but sometimes we do.

Sometimes we have to say, well, this person can only love me this much. Or this is their limit; this is their capacity. So how do I then temper my own response and my own expectations of this particular kind of familial love?

Adam
Yeah. So you can use it in a sense preventatively or proactively as something that's helping you almost like, regulate the giving and receiving features of the heart, and you could also take it as a kind of healing agent for a wounded or traumatized or like broken heart. So you can kind of work in either direction. It's not that you would only take this if you were suffering some kind of grief.

Ashley
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it definitely can work preventatively; the berries, especially, are so high in antioxidants and vitamin C; I mean, it is such an arterial and heart strength, and so if we think of it physically, it is just like food for the heart, and then metaphorically, it's like nourishment.

Adam
Nice. I think a lot in this cycle. I think that we're the, the thing you said about how the capacity of the heart and how much capacity do I have to give or receive or how much does someone else have that is so relevant when it comes to looking at, you know, family karma, family trauma, because one of the ways that we can learn to forgive and work with what we've been given, you know, in our families is to sort of learn okay, well, this is what my family environment or one particular person in the family or whatever had at their disposal and if I can accept that, that's what they had to work with. You know, then my heart can forgive, and maybe even it amplifies what I'm able to receive if I have a healthy sense of, you know, someone's capacity.

For example, if you have a really sick family member, you know, they're whether it's physical or mental or emotional, their capacity to give or love or receive may be quite limited with a heart can empathize and understand that it makes it easier to receive deeply what's there. It's like the scale changes somehow, and that feels to me like a really nice pairing between Hawthorn and this Venus retrograde.

Ashley
Beautiful. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's like a rebalancing of the scales to what's in reality, you know, of course, we have these ideals of what people can give, and what we can even receive, but to actually look and say, Well, what, what is the actual capacity that I have, and the actual capacity of the other person and to make a more realistic assessment of what's happening?

Adam
It is a heart assessment, which is interesting because if you think about it, as this is taking place, all of these energies, the south node of the moon, has just moved into Libra. I think about that a little bit because the South Node in Libra brings up a sort of internalized karma around Venusian things, including love. One of the images that comes to mind in the sign of Libra is from the Egyptian Hall of Ma'at, I believe it was called, and it's where the heart was weighed against the feather, of maybe it was an ostrich or something like that. It's like, well, there's no way, you know, I always say this, there's no way ever that a heart can weigh less than a feather. You know, it's just like, physically impossible.

Well, so what are they getting at? Well, they're what they're getting at is a transformation of the metaphorical or spiritual heart so that it becomes lighter, that there's a lightness of heart; I think this Venus retrograde can provide us with an opportunity for lightness of heart, which doesn't take away any of the gravity or seriousness of life, or the depth or the power of our emotions or connections, but it can make us love lighter.

Ashley
I love that, and I just was imagining as Venus goes back over where she's been that there's also a great opportunity for forgiveness, you know, as a gateway, and, and, you know, I remember there's this great Episcopalian podcast, or she has, I forget what the name, her name is, Nadia, some of you might listen to her out there, I'll try to find a link.

She talks about forgiveness is not for the other person; it's for yourself. You know, forgiveness is you cutting the ball and chain that's connecting you to the hurt, the pain to the trauma, to the grief, of whatever that incident was, and when you can cut that and free yourself from that and forgive the person.

Forgiveness is not the same as, you know, giving them permission to hurt you, but forgiveness is cutting yourself from what's holding you back and what's holding you down, and Hawthorn is a great plant for assisting that process of forgiving and kind of reclaiming your heart and your hearts right place and reclaiming its natural lightness.

Adam
Yeah. You know, it's incredible that, you know, there are other plants, a similar plant, for example, that I know you've talked about, we've talked about together in the past that is related to the heart would be rose, which also has thorns. So it's just so interesting to me that nature provides us with these heart teachers in plants or trees, like Hawthorn, that are that have these amazing sort of red heart juicy, bloody berries, and there's so much heart and medicine in them, and yet, they are hedge plants with thorns, you know that they have that element to them as well.

That juxtaposition is important for the heart. It's like the heart processes things through what pricks it, and in order for the heart to love more deeply, we have to disentangle it from thorns, which means touching thorns, which means picking, you know, so there's some way in which you can't touch the heart without going through the thorns and some exploration of why they're there and what they mean and, and that's why I think the subject like forgiveness is so interesting and there's so many more things that can be said, but I was just that's where my head was going. Well, you were talking about Hawthorn's unforgiveness, and I was thinking of the thorns.

Ashley
Beautiful. Yeah, that that is part of, you know, it's the pinprick that is the teacher, you know, in some ways, and it is so close to the medicine.

Adam
Yeah, nicely said; well, we're keeping it short today because I'm trying to do shorter videos while we are. While this is airing, we are on vacation. So we're doing this in advance so we have a little space in which to enjoy hearing Ashley teach at the medicine confluence that you're a part of; you want to just mention that just briefly so that people know where we are and what we're doing. I think people would find it interesting.

Ashley
Yeah, yeah. So we are going to be at the good medicine Confluence in Colorado. It's near Lake George, which is a few hours south of Denver, and this is a huge medicine confluence that brings together healers, medicine makers, crafters, hedge folk, and really, this particular one is, you know, there's a lot of different types of herbalism, and this is really like the folk, woodsy you know, they're having a masquerade ball.

It is like a renaissance festival for herbalists where, you know, you get into the deep, magical, mystical elements of the herbal world, and it's going to be amazing. I know, I don't know, people can still probably buy tickets. Planthealer.org is the website.

They also have an Oracle deck that I just did a video on. That's an amazing tarot deck that brings together herbalism plants and then a lot of the folk kind of figures that exist in the herbal hedge world. So that, yeah, there Jesse Wolf and Kiva Rose are incredibly talented herbalists and thinkers.

So yeah, I would definitely check out their work and if, and, yeah, we'll be there. We'll be there next week, too. I'll teach some classes on spirit journeying with plants and doing art, and tapping into your intuition through plant mysticism. I'll be doing a class on customizing herbal formulations for clients or family members, and then my last class is on Bee Balm, a plant that's native to Minnesota. That's a really great medicine.

Adam
Well, check you out.

Ashley
It's what I like to do.

Adam
You can find Ashley's work at skyhouseherbs.com. You can find all of her herbal musings and content on skyhouseherbs Instagram account. So it's skyhouseherbs.com. It's skyhouseherbs on Instagram, and Ashley has weekly videos on her YouTube channel, which is also Skyhouseherbs.

So if you like listening to her talk, and I do, which is why I linked my life to this woman. We both love to talk, and so I love to listen to Ashley speak about the plants in particular, and if you enjoy that, too, I think you'll really enjoy her YouTube channel.

So check that out, and yeah, good to have you here to learn about Hawthorn. Good luck from our hearts to yours. We hope that you will have a really good moon cycle ahead, and we look forward to hearing if you decide to work at all with Hawthorn on any level, whether it's berries, you slide into your family's toast or tinctures, or whatever else. So, at any rate, have a great one, everyone. We'll see you again next time. Thanks, everyone. Bye.