There’s a new moon in Cancer —  come together or fall apart

This week, the rising of the new moon in Cancer — on Friday, July 5, at 6:58 p.m. ET — will bring a king tide of cardinal, emotional crab energy.

The new moon is the darkest of the moon’s eight-phase cycle, and in that dimness lies the point of pure potential, an empty field, an open road, and a house taken down to the studs, where the vastness of all possibilities hums.

We can make the most of the new moon by being firm and clear as lucite about what we want —and the measures we are willing to take. The best time to attune to our own crystal visions? Two days before and after the new moon.

The new moon always aligns with the zodiac sign the sun is moving through. In this case, that would be Cancer, with its waxing and waning, intuition and tumult, pinchers and poignancy.

As the moon is not visible during this phase of the lunar cycle, it stands as a metaphor for our shadow parts we keep hidden from others — and fail to see, heal, or integrate into ourselves.

Cancer is ruled by the moon, which makes this the moon-iest new moon of the year. Cancer also reigns over the fourth house of roots and ancestry. Aptly, the lessons of this lunation are relative to where we come from and what we come home to; how we define nourishment, gratitude, and connectedness.

In real-deal physical terms, loneliness and isolation result in serious cognitive and cardiovascular decline. In short, without connection, there is no memory. Without belonging, hearts break, and folks stroke out.

Cancer understands that survival depends on the strength of our relationships, our willingness to need and be needed, and our ability to honor our urge to belong.

It’s no accident that a group of crabs whose biological imperative is to protect and provide for the collective whole is called a “cast.”

In-kind and in claw, the archetype of Cancer reminds us that we are meant to heal ourselves within our communities, to cast our pain to the collective so it can be witnessed, reflected, and gathered into a wider net, connected but not confined.

The “cast” of crabs shows us that we each play different roles at different points in the saga of our shared human experience and that we are ultimately, and always, better together.

English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic George ‘Big Brother’ Orwell was born on a Cancer new moon.

Fittingly, Orwell’s oeuvre is marked by lucid prose and a fierce, almost maternal instinct to illuminate and lighten the plight of the exploited and oppressed.

While there’s a tinge of biting bitterness in much of his work, you don’t write dystopian classics unless you harbor the pearl of hope for something better in your crab heart.

As this double water baby mused, “It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same–everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same–people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.”

Here’s to storing up what can tear down all that holds us back.

Astrology 101: Your guide to the star

Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports back on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture and personal experience.