Today, we're going to take a look at Mercury in Cancer, making a trine to Saturn in Pisces. This is a really important trine, given the backstory of this moon cycle, making it more significant than your average trine. Once we explore the context and delineations of this planetary combination, you'll see why it carries more weight than usual.
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Transcript
Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Today, we're going to take a look at Mercury in the sign of Cancer, making a trine to Saturn in the sign of Pisces. This is a really important trine between these two planets, given the backstory of this moon cycle. And so it is not just your average trine. It's a little, and I called it sneaky important. I feel like once I show you the backstory of this trine and we talk about the delineations of this archetypal combination of planets; I think you're gonna find that it is it; it carries a little bit more weight than a normal, fast-moving trine or sextile might between these two planets. So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
Before we get into it, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share your comments and reflections. You can find transcripts of any of my daily talks on the website nightlight astrology.com. I'm going to take you over there right now to promote a couple of events that we have coming up. If you go over to the events page and click on the speaker series, you will see that our summer Speaker Series is coming up. These are all events that are free to the public. When you sign up, you register you get a link to join the webinars. And if you cannot attend live, you get the recordings afterward. So check those out.
If you go to the events page and click on live talks, you'll see my monthly webinar series, and you will see that the previous talks in my webinar series are for sale if you missed them. July 18. I'm doing a talk on Uranus, which is coming next year, and this entrance into Gemini. We did Neptune in Aries, the other major transit of next year already, so covering some of the major outer planetary shifts that are happening in 2025. This will be a really fun exploration of Uranus as meaning in the sign of Gemini. That's July 18.
I will post more talks soon for August, September, and October. So wait for those; they should be up shortly. Anyhow, so those are our promotions for the day. Now, we should turn our attention to the real-time clock so we can see the trine between Mercury and Saturn forming. So here we are on Wednesday, June 26. And what I want to point out to you is here there's Mercury in the sign of Cancer, forming a trine with Saturn in the sign of Pisces.
This will form today. If we go forward one day, you'll see that Mercury is already 21 degrees by tomorrow morning, so it moves pretty quickly. It's a fast-moving trine, but you may notice that this trine is a little extra because of a couple of things: one, the moon is also zipping through the sign of Pisces, sort of emphasizing the trine between Cancer, the sign of the moon and Pisces so we get the moon in on the action but here's where this trine is sort of sneaky powerful. I want to go back to our new moon in the sign of Gemini.
This New Moon in Gemini happened in applying square with Venus, the Sun Moon, and Saturn. So the moon cycle we're in began June 6 and started off with a heavy dose of Mercury-ruled planets squaring Saturn in Pisces. We talked a lot about this moon cycle as something that could have a lot to do with mental and emotional health, mental and emotional health getting on the same page often means that we are going through a maturing process with respect to mental, verbal, intellectual, and emotional intelligence that there are those themes are very strong in this moon cycle.
Then we saw, very importantly, that we keep taking this forward just a little bit. We saw Mercury moving through the square to Saturn right here. This was about June 12. And we saw this happening right as Mercury was also going through its reset with the Sun in the synoptic cycle. So it hits the square of Saturn. Shortly after its cazimi, it moves into the sign of Cancer, which is slowly emerging from under the beams of the Sun. So let's take this forward just a little bit further to where we now have the trine. What's really interesting about this is that this trine is happening as Mercury emerges from under the beams of the Sun.
So we have Mercury starting to appear as the Evening Star. And it's doing so now, connecting in a trine with Saturn, who it squared just before it went through that synaptic rebirth moment of the cazimi. And we have the same squares from all planets in a Mercury-ruled sign of Gemini at the outset of the last moon cycle. So this is, in other words, a very brief but very flashy moment of integration synthesis. And I think you could say, kind of, it has the feeling of development and progress because you start off with all of these planets squaring Saturn. And now, as Mercury is moving from out of the beams of the Sun, it is the ruler of that last New Moon, and we're still in the moon cycle.
The moon is now in Pisces, accenting the connection through a trine between Mercury and Saturn. To me, this feels, therefore, like a very important moment, like a little test or a trial asking us how much we have learned since the start of this moon cycle with respect to things like mental and emotional intelligence, and mental and emotional health. I think that this is a kind of testing moment, integration or synthesis moment, a moment of healing and insight because the trines tend to bring things together cohesively. Meanwhile, the squares tend to present tensions that move from tension to synthesis with respect to the significations of Mercury and Saturn that were so present at the beginning of the moon cycle.
So, there are three things to watch for, in my humble opinion, right now today, or you could have felt a little bit yesterday, maybe a little bit tomorrow; the first one would be here; we now have Mercury and Saturn training each other very constructive connection between the two of them, of course, Saturn still in the superior position. And so what I wonder is, have we developed emotional, mental, and verbal boundaries if we needed to, if there has been a theme of oversharing, or an inability to control or contain emotions, thoughts, feelings, and ideas in ways that are more mature or responsible or grounded, have we develop that container have we developed a little bit more discernment or, you know, a little bit more discrimination or careful judgment as to who and what we share or open ourselves to?
So the development of healthier boundaries, verbally, mentally, and emotionally, I think, has sort of been in the air since the beginning of the moon cycle. And I could very easily see this being a time where we're, you know, being tested. Have you matured? Have you developed the container? Here's a moment where there's integration or synthesis around some of these themes.
The other thing that I would say is, generally speaking, this can go in two different directions: one, the combination of these planets both at the outset of the cycle, and then now in the trine connection between Mercury and Saturn could reflect the need to share less and hold more, to worry less and trust more, to need less, and to find more within ourselves to sort of sort of develop a better emotional, mental container in terms of restraint, in terms of holding more and being less porous, having healthier, stronger, firmer boundaries. That's kind of like you could almost see the image of the outside of the cycle of someone who says whatever's on their mind without any kind of filter. Or you could see someone who processes or shares too much with a lover. And they don't give that lover enough space. And they don't process enough on their own so that the lover feels overburdened by the inner process, or anxieties or fears.
And like, I'm not your therapist, I'm your partner kind of thing. I mean, we're all here to hold space for each other, right, but you could almost see the outset of the cycle. And then coming to this moment, we say, I've recognized that I now have a little bit better sense of, you know, when and how much to share and vent and how my relationship can hold space for an inner process and how it shouldn't or can't, or it's not, I don't want to overburden a friend, or my partner or a co-worker, or whatever the case may be. I feel like this is an ongoing process for many of us throughout an entire lifetime, that we're figuring out the nuances in each relationship of how much and when and where and how to, you know, bear our souls with other people and how to carry things on our own. On the other hand, this transition in this whole process could be about the exact opposite. I tend to withhold contained within, not say what's on my mind, but rather be stoic. And, you know, like that kind of classic image of a husband who won't share his feelings, or you know, and obviously, that's just a stereotype.
But could there be, on the other hand, some call to be more open, to be more reflective, to be less inhibited, and to allow one's feelings to flow forth and be seen? So, some of us, during this exact same transit cycle of the new moon to this moment, maybe have been working on restraint, and some of us have been working to share and open. But either way, we're talking about mental and emotional boundaries.
All right, number two is mental and emotional health and self-care. Another just basic feature of the moon cycle is the connection between Mercury and Saturn present in this moon cycle. All the way up to this nice integration point are questions about what my needs are. And how do I get them met? And fundamentally, for most of us, although I will say that I abhor this sort of new age idea that everything that you need is within you alone, you're an automaton filled with, you know, some kind of enlightened self-sufficiency, and you're not a social being. That's all BS to me. I feel like there's always an element of self-sufficiency that we need to draw on. But by and large, we're social beings; we're social creatures who need love and connection with other beings to feel okay.
And so says the Cancer, Sun with Mercury and Cancer, right? Mental and emotional health and self-care, though, it boils down to knowing how we get what we need from the environment, from people, from the place we live, from the culture or an environment that we live in, but also from within ourselves, and the combination of those factors gives rise to, you know, like an ecosystem that's flowing. How do we get and how do we create an ecological environment of well-being?
That doesn't mean it's perfect; it means that we have tools that are there for us and people, and we do things to regulate. We know how to regulate ourselves, but we also know where to draw on to help nourishment and sustainment from the environment around us. These are Cancerian concerns. What kind of sacrifices do we need to make on behalf of the greater ecological harmony around us when other people's needs are stepping up? And we might have to set some of our own aside. And also, how do we ask for what we need in a way that allows for other people to make some of those sacrifices for us?
Well, it's a delicate balance. But there's a nice point of synthesis right now where we can be clear about our needs, our boundaries, our health, our well-being, what we need to do for ourselves, and what is fair and okay to ask for from the people and environment around us. I wonder if that was so easy at the beginning of the cycle. There are so many squares between, you know, airy; Mercury rules Gemini and Saturn and Neptune in Pisces; there could be there can be like, feedback in a cycle like this that says, This is what you need to do to stay regulated in your nervous system and your mind and your body and your emotions so that you're not flooding the environment around you and making it hard for others. And so that you're also receiving the best you can from the environment around you. And then the same kinds of issues within yourself.
How do you regulate yourself? So anyway, okay, let's move on to three: family history and patterns of attachment. See, whenever you have such a lineup in Cancer, we have a new moon in Cancer coming up. You get the Capricorn Full Moon; we have these watery trines between Cancer and Pisces. So one of the things we might look at is our family histories; how has family history gone into your mental and emotional health? That's a big, huge question. Right? For many of us, that is therapy bills, like years of therapy, maybe psychedelics, somatic work; I mean, my God, at the same time, this is really important.
I think James Hillman wrote about this, and I always appreciated it; we can always tap into different therapeutic like, almost like paradigms, and one of the paradigms is that there are elements of my trauma, trauma, my patterns, my disease, my lack of regulation, my my, my pathology, that that I can see traced.
Tracing back, I can see the roots in the family of origin in the way I was raised, completely legitimate and invalid. There also comes a time when we need to re-situate the story of our problems and our problematic patterns and trends. Ma, we need to re-situate less in the past and less in terms of the family of origin, how it created all of our problems, and how we have to heal our ancestors. And we need to; we need to tell a different story, we need to have different options available to us, sometimes we need to set down the whole ancestral lineage storyline, not saying it's not real, but saying, I don't want to get stuck there.
I don't want to constantly be working and reworking the stories of my ancestral past and my family upbringing. Because then there's, it's, there's, I'm always looking at it from the standpoint of trying to fix a problem that exists in the past or that started in the past. And a different way of approaching the story of our past is to see it from a space of karmic or cosmic appreciation, which is different.
The karmic or cosmic appreciation of our ancestral or family past origins doesn't mean that we whitewash all of the problems; it means that we choose to see it; some people say, for example, this is the family I chose, you know, that I get, I get why that would be a really big turn off for people, maybe it's not so much. This is what I chose as it is. I couldn't be. There's something about my dharma that couldn't be what it is without the specific matrix of blessings and curses that I was born into.
So it's a kind of like a, you know, like, blues music is nothing but a good man feeling bad. You know, it's like, we're all some, to some extent, like looking at the past in terms of the problems, we have to be able to switch from, you know, sort of healing the past to appreciating the complex, like the matrix of blessings and curses, and seeing it as a somehow a necessary condition for the evolution of the soul. I think that if you look at it that way, and and you use that to sort of, I mean, there's like somatic physical healing work for many of us that has to be done because of the traumas of how we were raised, or how abuse happened in the family or whatever. And that's, it's very real.
So we need to be able to tap into a multiplicity of worlds, though, right? So how can you hold both worlds at once where you're doing this deeper ancestral healing work while also learning to hold it in a bigger kind of cosmic container? In my experience, one of the great benefits of psychedelic therapy, any form of psychedelic therapy that's got a strong, intentional container that is sacred, is that it allows for both things to be true at once in psychedelic experiences, and it's same in meditation and different kinds of somatic work.
You hold space for two things to be true; yes, this traumatized me. And trauma has a larger cosmic role to play. And it's sort of confounding, but that's it, right? The reason that I'm talking about this right now is that when it comes to the excavation of mental and emotional health patterns in the family, the trine from Saturn and Pisces allows us to sort of reach the limits of old stories. Pisces is a place that really invites this huge cosmic mystical perspective.
So if the trine between Mercury and Cancer and Saturn and Pisces can do anything really magical right now, it may help us kind of place the family drama or the family history that's coming up around mental and emotional health in a bigger container. And we can also have that container of the problems in my past that I'm working to fix.
We can also place it in this larger cosmic container that Saturn in Pisces offers. I somehow can stand in cosmic awe and wonder and appreciation of this unique ecology of blessings and curses that my soul was born into. It's like It's like finding the blues song of your life; you know where you can appreciate the aesthetics of your story. This is why poets and musicians have to have a space for appreciation.
So I think we could find some deeper appreciation, which is the kind of grittiness that Saturn likes in relation to something as delicate and fragile as the sign of Cancer and Mercury in Cancer. There's also just something to be said when looking at patterns of attachment. A healthy sense of self-containment emotionally. Versus the very real needs that we have to attach and bond with one another. And, you know, there are all these attachment theories of attachment: you're anxiously attached, or you're anxious, avoidant, and all these things.
Some of those things could be coming up right now, especially in relation to, you know, explorations of our attachment patterns in relationships and where they come from in terms of our family background. Alright, that's it for today. I hope that this has been a useful exploration of Mercury's trine with Saturn, given the background that it's coming from, and yeah, pay attention. Tell us your stories, too. We'd love to hear from you. And we will see you again tomorrow. Bye, everyone.
Karen Wilson
Wow! What timing for the conference I just attended on teacher mental health support and implementation of health standards to include mental health and suicide prevention in education. It brought up a lot of ancestral trauma as I sat in the presentations. My own Saturn is in Pisces in the 11th house. I’ve struggled with boundaries in all relationships. Often over sharing with friends and not saying No to family and friends. I hve been of late looking at my past growing up with abusive alcoholic parents as a privilege for my current career in education. I am able to support students with emotional trauma. And I can help them learn healthy coping skills. I also noticed that I didn’t need to over share my experiences/trauma from childhood with my peers. I shared some but I didn’t go into the drama. Appreciate your insights 🙏