By Angel Lopez:
July opens up right in the center of Cancer season, a time when you’re given the support to go more deeply into your emotional core and do what you can to feel more at home there.
It is in that most intimate space where you can allow yourself to emotionally connect with what has already transpired in your life—to make amends or to have revelations, and for you to gather up the emotional fortitude to carry on. These have been some majorly tiring and intensely transformative times for us all. As they continue, do what you can to love yourself even more.
You may still be feeling the remnants of June’s eclipse and new moon, which ushered each of us into a new beginning for the heart. On some level, it asked you to go back to the beginning, to approach your sensitivity like an infant. To engage with your past and to truly recognize the lies you’ve been allowing yourself to be defined by up until this point. The lies that were introduced by your ancestors, your parents, your abusers, but that truly have no real power over you anymore. You may have just let them perpetuate out of habit. Conversely, you may just be allowing yourself to feel into the truths of who you’ve always known yourself to be in a new and deeply profound way, paving the way for the greater version of you to emerge.
The world needs your specific brilliance right now. It’s time to get comfortable with bringing it out into the light.
This month has a lot of push and pull to it. Like the tides that are governed by the Moon (Cancer’s ruler), it’ll be much easier to feel the rush of excitement and the fall of defeat all in one day. And you should allow yourself to feel all of it without letting yourself get swept away by it. That is when intuition, Cancer’s greatest ally, will come into play. Do your best to lean into silence and to gain perspective from that quiet space where your heart and spirit meet. This will allow you to settle more firmly into the seat of your spiritual identity and to move through the world as the person your soul came here to be.
At the top of the month, Saturn re-enters Capricorn. This retrograde will take us back through the themes and experiences we last encountered from the start of February until the middle of March. This brings some questions up for review:
How did you take responsibility for yourself during that time?
Did you make any steps toward pursuing your life’s work?
Saturn can also represent karma to burn. So, the choices you made during that time may have some karmic retribution during this time. But consider all you’ve learned since then. I mean, who hasn’t become a greater student of life these days? Think about what it is you have learned about yourself in these last few months and how you can use that knowledge to reengage with some of these similar issues again. This Saturn work will take you all the way through the end of the year; but in the end, it will allow you to officially move forward in a major way come 2021.
July 4th promises to be an explosive one. It brings with it the Capricorn Full Moon, which also coincides with the last eclipse of the season.
These always bring a heightened intensity, and this one has its focus on structures and authority. The advice here is to ground, relax, and take it as easy as you can. You’re honestly encouraged to stay home and let this one be more of an internal process. Full moons are releasing energies, and this one offers you a chance to release any personal structures you may be holding on to that originated from society. You can use this time to continue any of the work you’ve been doing on letting go of internalized messaging from the patriarchal, racist, misogynistic culture we still exist in. You can do your part to take responsibility for how you’ve contributed to any of these greater structures and make amends with your own heart and mind. You can also use your voice in creative ways with this one.
Know that you deserve to be heard; so tap into your authenticity and release any fears around others seeing your uniqueness.
Really take this moment to meditate on the personal transformation you’ve been going through all year and to see where you need to make any adjustments to refocus on the bigger picture for your life. But also, don’t forget to pat yourself on the back for any of the good work you’ve done thus far. You are resilient and should be your greatest champion.
Mercury ends its latest retrograde on July 12th.
The greatest message of this retrograde is that
you must know the past to fully understand the present.
So, with this shift forward, it’s time to get your mind back on track. It’s best to consider the lessons that Mercury wanted for you during its time in Cancer. Remember that Cancer is all about nurturing. It’s about connecting to your emotional body. So, when Mercury goes through there, it’s a meeting of the heart and the mind. Your thoughts can be easily clouded by your emotions. Hopefully the rest of this month will offer you a little more clarity, where the heart and the mind can work together instead of being at odds with each other.
On July 20th, we experience the second Cancer new moon of the year. It’s relatively rare that we get two new moons in one year, especially in the sign of its ruler, Cancer. This only amplifies the energy around a need for an emotional reset, as well as this being a time to reconnect with intuition. Note that the specific nature of this new moon could feel slightly oppressive to your internal state. But ultimately, it wants you to take full responsibility for how you take care of yourself and to make sure that external forces aren’t pushing you toward making choices but rather that you’re listening to your deepest self for guidance. This is not only tied to the greater personal transformation we’ve all been moving through this year, but also on the collective level. So, we should all see more light given to the problems within the old patriarchal structures that have been standing in the way of important change. And it is change that can come in the form of loving, emotionally charged ideals. This new moon is the time, more than ever, for us all to allow the Divine Feminine to take the reins! It’s a good one for meditation and spell work too.
Leo Season then charges in on July 22nd. This is the time for creativity and play to take hold. But with that can come a roar for attention. Be careful of who or what you decide to give your attention to. Try to gear your mind and heart toward the lighter side of life, as best you can. Your strength will also come into greater demand during this season. But you will feel more capable of calling it forth as needed. Again, just remember to find more moments of levity at this time.
The number one thing to avoid during this season is ego, and not just the negative side of your own. Everyone will be feeling really important, so let them.
Just don’t let it get in the way of doing what you need to do to be your most joyful, hopeful self. You should let yourself get excited for what is possible.
Angel Lopez is a film producer, writer, astrologer, and co-host of the podcast, THE SPIRITUAL GAYZ alongside his husband, our Spiritual Guru Brandon Alter. Angel has been studying and working with both tarot and astrology for twenty years. He hosted the astrology web-series, ASTRO TALK WITH ANGEL, and writes the blog ASTROLOGY REALNESS. He has also had pieces published on Upworthy.com and The Huffington Post.
On the film side, Angel produced the Sundance Film Festival award winning film DEAR WHITE PEOPLE, as well as the features THE DINNER and STATE LIKE SLEEP. He also wrote and directed his own short film, I CAN’T WITH YOU, which had its premiere at the 2016 HollyShorts Film Festival, and he recently finished producing filmmaker Justin Simien’s second feature, BAD HAIR.