Summer Solstice and the Temple of the Moon

Transcript:

0:01
Hi everyone, this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology. Happy Solstice to everybody out there we're looking at the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere right now. And today we're going to talk about the meaning of the sun in the sign of cancer as well as that pivotal Solstice point that's built into the archetypal language of the zodiac. I get a tonne of questions about it every time that it comes around, whether it's actually whether it's the summer solstice, or the end of the equinoxes, or sources in general. So I always like to do a video refreshing on it. Those of you who have watched my channel for a while will probably recognise, you know, some of these teachings because I've done videos on some of this in the past.

0:39
But before I dive in, I want to bring up the real time clock and talk a little bit about what kind of astrology is coming through this week, and what we'll be taking a look at in advance, and then we'll talk in particular about the summer solstice. So here you can see that the sun has just ingressed about half a degree into the sign of cancer. So that zero degree marker of cancer marks the solstice summer solstice, we call it here in the Northern Hemisphere. This week there's another video that Cat and I recorded, a q&a episode called, should do you need to flip the Zodiac for the southern hemisphere? And the answer to that in the video that I made is you certainly can, but you also don't have to. And so for those people who are watching this immediately going like hey, wait, you know, I'm in Australia, and it's not the summer solstice down here. Hopefully this week, we will actually address that question about whether or not to flip the Zodiac in general. So stay tuned for more on that.

1:41
In the meantime, we're just going to talk about the archetypal and sort of mythological dimensions of this summer solstice point, the sign of cancer, the moon, that the sign of cancer is also the exaltation of Jupiter. So we're going to talk about those things today give you a little deeper understanding of what this temple of the zodiac is all about and why this turning point is so pivotal within the underlying metaphysics of astrology. Now at the same time this week, a couple of other things coming up. Today, Venus is in a trine with Neptune and Venus is also moving into the opposition with Pluto. Now I did a video on this last Friday, I believe it was on Venus, this trine to Neptune in opposition to Pluto. So go back and check that out. But I will be following up probably tomorrow with a video on Venus's opposition with Pluto, which is coming through by Thursday of this week. That's going to be the 24th. So those those are some big astrological pieces that are shifting Mercury is also turning direct this week. Yeah, that was a long Mercury Retrograde it felt like and then we also very slowly have Mars coming into opposition with Saturn, and a square with Uranus. So we're getting like a T square between Mars, Saturn and Uranus. That's a really big transit that we will be taking a look at this week as well, and probably into next week. And then there's a couple of q&a episodes that I have lined up for this week, including one on the whole controversy over you know whether or not you should flip the Zodiac for the different hemispheres.

3:18
Okay, so all that being said, What I really want to talk about today in particular is the meaning of the sun in cancer or the summer solstice point. Why is it an important point within the philosophical language of astrology. So I'm actually going to use an astronomy programme to show you guys what makes this unique. And remember, this is northern hemisphere centric, but the answer you will hear me give again and again, is that this language is not causal, it is orracular, which means that it's symbolic and divinatory, you'll hear me say this, again, and again, the the whole system of astrology is a symbolic geocentric, divinatory language that Spirit speaks through. And it's not meant to be taken as something too literal as in all of the planets are literally causing everything to happen for me in the way that I practice. And the underlying philosophy that I adhere to, that would be like saying that pulling a tarot card causes something to happen. So the movements in the sky can be a little bit more can be tempting for us to believe that they have specific causal power. And in a sense, all omens and symbols do have a kind of causal power, though it's sort of a causal or synchronistic. People have, you know, different ways of talking about that. But you could watch a video that I did last week about, you know, what would astrology be hypothetically, if we moved to Mars, would there be a different astrology and I sort of talked about the epistemology of divination in general? All that being said, again, this language that we're about to unpack, yes, it's rooted in the view of the sky from the northern hemisphere. But to me, that's just fine. There's no actual problem with that. So you can take this as a metaphor, a symbolic or archetypal language, the experience the underlying experience that these symbols point to that we're going to unpack today are universal. They're applicable all throughout the year in every day, actually, these kinds of symbols and themes come up. So they're not just rooted in like a time of year where the sun is causing something to happen. That's not how this works, in my humble opinion.

5:14
So okay, here is my astronomy programme. This is called Starry Night Pro. And I've artificially made the daytime sky dark so that you can see the constellations here in Minneapolis, Minnesota as I'm filming this, but I want to point out is this green path that you're seeing here, that's the ecliptic or what we call the Zodiac. You're looking at a side aerial view, not a tropical view, and that there's a whole video that we could do on the difference between sidereal and tropical zodiacs as well. Again, my simple opinion about that is both zodiacs work, because this is divination. So at any rate, and that might sound flippant, there's a lot to unpack there. But something that's a little too hard to get into in just one video. Okay, so anyway, what I want to point out is that as we are at the summer solstice, basically, what you're seeing is, you're looking at the sun at the position of high noon, on the longest day of the year, solar year, from the northern hemisphere, when it gets to that meridian line, when it gets there on this day of the year, essentially, the arc of that green line that you're seeing, the ecliptic is highest in the sky, which means that the arc is going to take the longest for the sun to travel creating the longest day. As that's happening, the sun is also closest that it will get in terms of moving up and down to the pole star. So that's that North Star.

6:50
So at this point in time, the sun has literally in the in the solar year, gone up as far away from the southern horizon as it can as far north as it can get. And then from that point, from this pivotal moment of the longest day of the year, the sun starts to come back down toward the southern horizon, and the arc starts to come back down, and the days will get shorter again. So you can see this if I'm going to advance this, for example, let's say one day. Okay, so watch what happens, you're going to see the sun every day and the arc, that green arc coming down in the sky, see how the sun is descending toward the southern horizon? So that also means that the green arc is essentially getting shorter in the sky, you could say that it's it takes less time for the sun to travel that arc, to move through from east to west. So at any rate that creates shorter days, and then eventually, you get all the way down to the very end of the year, which is going to be our winter solstice, that's zero Capricorn, the opposite sign to Cancer. And by the time we get there, it's look at how low that arc is in the sky that kind of illustrates my point right there. So it just zips across the sky a lot faster, and it's a lot closer down to the southern horizon. It's closer to the earth from our perspective. So all of this has super important symbolic meaning. And that's what I want to take just a minute to unpack right now.

8:52
So first of all, one of the things to know about Cancer is that it was called the gateway of man in the in the ancient world. This sign of this portal of the summer solstice area of the year, from again from the northern hemisphere, was an indicator of the beginning of the descent of spirit into matter. And interestingly, of course, in horoscopic astrology in the Hellenistic world, this sign is ruled by the Moon and is also called the exaltation of Jupiter. And there's some very interesting reasons for that. This world that we live in was often referred to as the sublunary sphere, or the sphere below the Moon, the Moon being the planet that was thought of as closest to us.

9:37
Surprisingly, that's actually true. So if you consider the moon a planet as we do in astrology, so this celestial object is the closest to us. It's the fastest moving and anything below the Moon was said to take part in was a part of the realm of, you know, regeneration and decay and death. So, coming into being and passing out of being, this material energy, this kind of material soup is a very particular kind of substance within the cosmos, or within the picture of reality that the ancients had. And the descent of spirit into matter, you can think of it as that the soul descends into a body, in the sublunary sphere where it will live a life it will be born, it will just state inside of its mother, it will be born, it will come into the world and will live a life that will eventually experience you know, old age, disease and death. And then the cycle repeats many ancient traditions said that, if the soul had not sort of evolved and grown spiritually, that it would not be able to go past the Moon, after its death, and would then regenerate and essentially, transmigrate, start a new start a new body and a new lifetime. So, it's interesting that the sign on the summer solstice, where the light is starting to descend down towards the earth, again, that that sign was that sign of descent from the peak down into the valley, that that was associated with the Moon, the planet that was at the threshold between the celestial spheres and the sublunary, earthy domain of coming to be in passing away of generation and death.

11:25
So just kind of taking all of that into account, you have to remember that the ancient philosophy of astrology is built on this idea of there being a dichotomy between spirit and matter. And they're both, certainly in the Bhakti tradition, we talk about them both as divine energies, not like one is bad and one is good. But the potential of the sublunary sphere of the lunar dimension is to forget your divine nature, to forget your source. And so the impetus of all, you know, spiritual practices is to remember, and the Moon not surprisingly, is the planet of both sleep, forgetting, kind of like an intoxicated slumber, as well as a planet of memory and remembering and nurturing or fostering and devoting oneself to something because of a constant remembrance like the mother foster's the life and health of a child by constantly remembering and nurturing it. Similarly, in all spiritual practices, most spiritual practices will have some dimension of it that is talked about as devotional, meaning that there's a tending to your spiritual life, there's a care for your spiritual life. And there's a constant need to remember, in the practice of Krishna consciousness, bhakti yoga, we often say there's two rules. Always remember Krishna and never forget Krishna. That's a lunar practice. Not surprisingly, it's Krishna and Avatar, avatar, meaning the one who descends, is also ruled by the moon. So the sublunary sphere, we descend here and we have to remember who we are, while we're here. It's a special kind of realm where it's very easy to fall asleep in the, in the shadows, in the temporary illusion of materiality, we get caught up thinking everything here will last forever. It doesn't. It doesn't mean it's not divine, special, beautiful, but it doesn't last. So if we forget that, then we fall asleep in the shadows and reflections, the Moon is a planet of reflected light, not original light that reflected light.

13:33
Similarly, we live in this world with a memory of where we come from. The alchemists said that that was a silvering of consciousness that was a necessary part of the eventual alchemical gold, of you might say, in enlightenment. So we have to be able to look around the world and understand this world, in terms of generation and decay in terms of changing and impermanence and flux, in terms of the reflection and the potential for illusion. And we have to stay in constant remembrance of who we are and what is real. All of these things are implied by the Temple of the Moon, and the sign that starts with the descent of the light down toward the sublunary sphere, the gateway of man the birth of the spirit into body. So the alchemical union between spirit and matter is also talked about in all traditions. Not surprisingly, the very next sign Zodiac order is Leo the sign of the Sun. So the Sun's and Moon's signs are placed together, they're also placed together in the springtime when the light first appears in in zodiacal speak. Aries, the exaltation of the Sun. Taurus, the next sign, the exaltation of the Moon. So the Sun and Moon are paired together. And there's a promise that if you remember if you silver, your consciousness if you use astrology, to see the forms, to see the eternal, eternal form, like the like a platonic in a platonic sense, if you're looking at the world and you're seeing it shimmering with these unchanging, eternal symbols.

15:10
Okay, so for Father's Day. What do you want to do for Father's Day? And I was really thinking about it. And I was like, What would I really want to do, but that, you know, the kids might like too. I was like, I want to watch The Karate Kid. And I want to have root beer floats. That was my big day. You know? It's like, okay, root beer floats in karate kid. We watched The Karate Kid that has Will Smith's son in it. I forget his name. I think it's Jaden, maybe. Anyway, it was a while ago, and Jackie Chan is the Mr. Miyagi character. And this one takes place in China. And it was so funny, because it was like, almost a cookie cutter recurrence of the karate kid that I knew with Ralph Macchio, you know, and apparently, there's a new TV show that I heard. So I might actually be excited to see the TV show. If you guys have seen it, you have to tell me if it's worth if it holds up. Not that I really have any time for TV these days. But at any rate, I was just sitting there going, why does everyone want the new Star Wars movies to look and feel like the old ones? Why does this movie feel like it's new, but it feels so much storyline? Similar arc similar, you know, twists and turns, similar scenes? Why does it feel so much like the old Karate Kid? Because some things never change. And some some things that and that's archetypes. It's the same story rearranged in a lot of ways. Now I did my master's degree, and my an and an MFA in creative writing, and in English literature and literary theory and stuff like that. And, you know, I was into Joseph Campbell at the time, too. And, you know, I remember, you know, partially in some of my graduate classes, trying to bring in this, like, the mystical dimension of these literary archetypes, like, these are these eternal forms, and, like, you know, and people were not not having it. Like, that's not where we're going with this literary criticism that we're doing. We're talking about Derrida or, you know, whatever the case might have been. So I was like, really, my studies of like English literature, what was so interesting about it for me was that it was dovetailing with the beginning of my interest in astrology, and it was really kind of my initiation into archetypes.

17:38
At any rate, these archetypes recur over and over again, they recur. And the point is that, you know, just like the Moon is always cycling, the Moon is changing its faces, but the cycle itself has all of these familiar turning points. And that was what the Moon ruled the realm of fortune, this world of coming to be in passing away. And the soul experiencing those things can take joy in them, if it understands the eternal nature of the dance that it's a part of, if it doesn't, get seized by them. And it's like the gods become like puppeteers, and we're not even we lose our agency, we lose agency entirely, which is why the planets are sometimes called grahas/grabbers, or it can also point to grasping something as into comprehend something, the wandering stars, they can point to a kind of aimlessness and sometimes the wandering stars can even refer to someone who is like exploiting aimless stupid people, like a false prophet or something like that. So if we're not consciously participating, we're just in a body and all of these forces of material nature just being pulled along in this grand Shakespearean merry go round. And it's just like, well, if you're not conscious for it, you're, you know, you'll go mad, because you're not really in control. This play is being conducted by laws of nature that are just as tight as a musical scale, and they're just as cyclical as a clock. So, you know, if you don't have awareness within that, it's really kind of a description of torture. So the Moon also throughout astrological history has been defined in that way, my favourite of the Narnia Chronicles, I'm just finishing finally getting back on track, reading Narnia Chronicles to my daughters, maybe I'll get a new Narnia sign for my back door. At some point, I got to ask the girls for one. But we're reading the Silver Chair. It's the Moon's book. The hero of the book, heroine, I should say, Jill, she stands in as lands country, which is like a celestial realm. it's higher than the sublunary sphere. And he gives her instructions and he says, Don't forget the signs, there's going to be signs down there in Narnia once you descend, but the air is thicker and denser, and you'll be prone to forgetting things. So don't forget the signs because they'll lead you through your adventure and, you know, kind of guide you home. What happens when she gets into Narnia, she keeps forgetting the signs. And she ends up having to save a prince who's forgotten his identity. So, these lunar mystical metaphors have been around a long time, the moon remembrance, nurturing care, or the potential to be exploited by these energies that capture us in temporary illusions.

20:41
Similarly, Maya can mean either, you know, illusion or mercy. So, you know, when we see the world as the play of the Divine, it leads us home and it's very merciful and amazing and beautiful, and it it captures our mind and spirit in a way that nothing else can. If we forget the very same energy, tangles up in the machinery of fate, and it feels very cruel and unfortunate. So consciousness is paramount. This is why every day on my channel, I always pound on the same thing, we have to have daily remembrance. What is your daily remembrance? How are you remembering today? What are you doing?

21:21
At any rate, Cancer also the exaltation of Jupiter. Why would Jupiter be exalted in the sign? Well, this is the one Jupiter The one who brings order out of chaos in the eaching there is a hexagram that I really love. Number three, and I've been getting it a lot since moving, because we've been moving in, and, gosh, moving in makes me feel like what a house of cards I've been living in, you know, like, what a sham. Like what an illusion that I thought my life was together and organised. And had some some semblance of sanity, because once you see all of your stuff and boxes, it's not organised, it's cluttered. You know, you see all the stuff I was like, keeping, what did I think I was gonna, what was gonna happen with this, or whatever. And then you realise how long it takes to build this little nest, and how quickly you know, this nest could be completely swept away. You know, for example, as Venus in Cancer is opposing Pluto and Capricorn, there was also a bird nest, outside of our home that got torn apart. And there was a tree that fell down, right, almost on the neighbor's house in a storm that happened yesterday. I just kept thinking, like it could all fall apart at any moment. And so you I don't know, as I've been moving in, although like, I'm not superstitious, and I don't sit around living in fear. It's just been this awareness of how you know, they say that moving is one of the more stressful experiences that like every and not talking about, like major traumatic experiences, but like kind of like your everyday traumatic stuff that people often go through. And one of them at the top of the list is apparently moving. And I get it because it makes you feel for a long time. Like you're you're uprooted psychically, emotionally, psychologically, and then you have to deal with stuff. And there's so much that we attached to objects. Cancer is an interesting sign because it often, you know, is like, like, how do we create a temporary feeling of homeostasis in this world? And let me tell you Cancer as the sign of remembrance, devotional spiritual remembrance is one thing, but sentimental attachments that try to create some kind of temporary nest to live in. Boy, that is a very uncertain place to try to live is very, it's a very vulnerable place. And I find that, you know, from what myself as someone with Cancer Sun, and mercury in cancer, that it's really important that there be a psychic sense of home, and not just one that's, you know, patched together out of stuff, and out of emotional sentiments and so forth, even though I'm certainly not saying that isn't important as well.

24:36
But at any rate, transitional space, the third hexagram of the I Ching is called difficulty at the beginning. And one of the images of the hexagram is that of you know, in the beginning, there was you know, floods and rain and, you know, like the earth was being flooded with water, and then gradually out of the tumultuous cesspool, storming cesspool of water started to emerge like this, this incredible range of species and life and microbes. And, and there was this intense struggle to, for things to come into being out of chaos. And what I love about Jupiter being exalted in this water sign is that obviously Jupiter is a planet of abundance that is very much about growth life, you'll often see, you know, things like money growing, or babies growing, or marriages and promotions and things like that when Jupiter comes around, because it makes things grow. But also the great challenge, it's kind of like that phrase, more money, more problems? You know, I think was, was that like an album at some point? I don't know. But in any rate, the the idea that when there's a lot of growth, there's also a lot of chaos that comes in the beginning. As you know, case, in point, having two kids, like, I would say that the first month or two after each child came home, was filled with brimming with joy, but also brimming with chaos and finding a new rhythm and exhaustion and struggle.

26:18
And that kind of tempest of life and growth and looking for stability and unity in order at those initial stages. That's really what hexagram three of the I Ching is capturing in many ways. So it's this archetypal stage as well, that Cancer inherently has something to do with the chaos of things coming to be and gestating and the vulnerability of that stage and the chaos and the need for unity and order to grow in and through it. And I'm not talking about some kind of, you know, law giving, alright, like, let's get this soupy, chaotic, you know, chaotic mess out of the way, you know, like some kind of frustration, anger toward the feminine or, you know, frustration with, you know, feminine chaos or something like that. I'm not going in that direction with this. But I am saying that, you know, archetypally, there's the stage where, you know, as life is appearing and emerging, and gestating and changing, there's a need for protection around it. Just like the womb, you know, kind of binds together the space in which the gestation can occur, we have to look for spaces in order to create that unity. So not surprisingly, Jupiter is exalted in the sign, this very fertile water sign, and a place of growth and also a place that always is looking for that underlying sense of unity, order safety. So really interesting planetary symbolism involved with the sign as well.

27:53
So at any rate, I hope that these musings were interesting and helpful for you today, as you're considering this change in zodiacal movement. Again, it does not matter where you are, these archetypes that we're pointing to, as the sun ingresses into Cancer could come into your life as the sun moves into cancer in any area of your chart in any part of the world. Because they're archetypal, and they're timeless. And they these these things, although they're linked to the seasonal metaphors, and the change of light and stuff like that, they can take place at any time whatsoever in any situation whatsoever. And they tend to be constants in our experiences every single day. So I think it'll probably be on Wednesday, that of this week that I have a video on, should we flip the zodiacs or not and I'll sort of follow up with more on on this particular question of the you know, the hemispheres and flipping the Zodiac and whatnot. But for today, I just wanted to talk about the solstice and the meaning of sun and cancer and the sign of cancer in general. So I hope you enjoyed it, get some good thoughts, you know, stirring upstairs and let me know your thoughts. If you're a cancer, you have cancer energy in your chart. How do you experience this sign and energy? I'd love to hear your deeper insights, please feel free to leave it in the comment section below. And I look forward to more this week soon. Alright, take care everyone. Bye