This journal shares the transcript of the seventh installment of the Lunar Series. From nurturing our inner landscapes to forging practical pathways to success, July 2024 offers a free flowing energy for release and transformation.

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Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Designed Life Podcast. Today, I want us to explore the balance between emotions and rationality. The reason I bring this up is because I think we live in a society where we perceive emotions as irrational. We view them as things that hold us back, get in the way, or trip us up from what we actually need to do. In general, emotions are perceived as counterproductive to our purpose, direction, and drive. As a very emotionally feeling person, this is something that I've really had to struggle with and navigate my entire life, and I don't think that I'm alone in that experience. And because of that, I think that it's worth exploring the balance between feeling your emotions really deeply and honoring your emotions as guideposts, as important resources, as tools to be able to continue to move forward in a productive, efficient, and really structured realistic way.

So, just talking about this right up front, I want you to think about what emotions have represented for you. What does feeling something deeply in your body, in your heart, and in your spirit feel like for you? And do you often consider your emotions helpful, or do you consider them hindrances? And let's get into why I'm saying all of this. My name is Hollis Maloney. This is the Designed Life Podcast, and today we're talking about the lunations of July 2024.

So, we start off the month on July 5th with a New Moon in Cancer at 14°, and Cancer is the home sign of the Moon. So whenever this New Moon comes around, it's easy for us to receive. There's no harshness to a New Moon in Cancer or a Full Moon in Cancer for that matter because the Moon is so happy in Cancer. The Moon is very much about our emotional body, our somatic experience, and Cancer as a sign reflects that energy. It's very much about our body, our emotions. It's also about our habits, our daily habits, our memory, our sensory experiences. And it's about our receptivity and sensitivity. If you think about the Moon, the Moon is only luminous because it reflects the light of the Sun. So Cancer as a sign is a very reflective kind of energy; it reflects back to the people or the things that it's interacting with. And so, Cancer as a sign has a really good ability to help other people and other things feel seen, and therefore, it's considered a very nurturing sign as well and a very sensitive sign. The Moon is also representative of the mother or the mother figure or the maternal figure, and so Cancer is also affiliated with that kind of mothering, nurturing, supportive energy. It's also very much about the home, how we feel safe, nurtured, and cared for in the home.

So when we're talking about a New Moon in Cancer, we're talking about a kind of rebirth in the form of energy in the part of ourselves that is really asking for nurturance and sensitivity and vulnerability. And so, around this time of the month, you might be really thinking about or feeling really deeply in your body all the ways in which you are sensitive and open to the people and the things and the experiences around you. You may be thinking about how those things affect you and how you want to care for yourself as you're interacting with these things around you, and as you're inviting energy into the body and experiencing different energies, and also as you're tending to your own energy and expressing your own energy. It's a New Moon that is asking for us to tap into our sensitivity, tap into our hearts and our heart space, and ask what is it that I most need to feel nurtured and nourished and satiated and cared for and tended to? It's a really, really good time to do inner child work or to do reparenting work. It's also a really good time to just think about all the things that perhaps you needed or wanted as a child that you weren't given and the ways in which you can give yourself those things now and how you can do that reparenting for yourself. But it's also a really fantastic time to just pay attention to how you are open to other people and what energy you take on from other people. What do you do to care for yourself, to feel at home once again in your own body? Again, it's a receptive kind of energy and we take on other people's stuff all the time. We're human beings, we're porous, like, we just take on other people's stuff, whether we realize it or not. So what are the practices that you have, or that you can establish for yourself to help bring you back to a sense of equilibrium and bring you back to a sense of stability and security and home within your own body?  

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Cancer is represented by the crab or the symbol of the crab, whose home is carried on their back. They literally have their home and they carry it with them all the time, and when they're afraid of things, you know, they scuttle around from side to side and they retreat back into their shell. So it's also very much about the home and the home life and domesticity, and how we can feel at home, not just in our physical spaces, but also in our own bodies and our own energy and how we can tend to that space. If you think about your body as your home and your temple, what is it that you can do to help, you know, sweep out the old stuff and clear space so that it feels fresh and light and bright? You know, the energy that you want to embody. What are the physical things that you can do, whether it be meditation or breathwork practices or eating certain foods or drinking more water? I mean, absolutely, drink more water around this time of the month. Drink water all the time but especially, you know, Cancer, water sign, drink lots of water. Cleanse your system. You know, flush old stuff out. But also what are the practices that are metaphorically like drinking lots of water and cleansing the system? Highly recommend doing those things around this time.

And the other thing about this New Moon, there's two other astrological configurations going on. Venus is square Chiron and Mars's sextile Saturn, and essentially what that means is that there's a bit of friction that's inviting us to lovingly tend to the wounds that we might be carrying in ourselves and helping us to become aware of those wounds or those spaces of neglect or abandonment and really supporting ourselves in a really nurturing, loving way to heal those spaces. So, how can we do that in a way that makes a commitment to ourselves? How can we commit to our own tending to and our own healing and our own support? How can we commit to taking action to support our bodies and our emotions and our emotional bodies and our energetic bodies on a regular basis? So if you have any planets at 14° of the other water signs, Pisces, Scorpio, obviously Cancer, you might be feeling this in a really supportive way. You might be really feeling this natural flow of letting go of old stuff and really tending to your emotional body and your emotional needs and your physical body as well. And then if you have any planets at 14° of the other Cardinal signs, Aries, Libra, and Capricorn, you might also be really feeling this New Moon in a way that is more full of friction or agitation, but that is to, again, help release and cleanse and move you into the next cycle.

Last thing I want to say about this New Moon, I'd like you to think about what was happening about six months ago in January approximately with regards to this part of your life with regards to your emotional body, your physical body where Cancer is in your chart and what was happening that was kind of coming to fruition and what is new that's being established in this part of your chart as well. What seeds do you want to plant now for the next Full Moon in Cancer that will happen in December, January time that you really want to see established? What commitments do you want to make in how you tend to your emotions, how you tend to your physical body, how you tend to your sensitivity and vulnerability and home life, internal and external? So, that's the Cancer New Moon. It's a pretty one. It's a really, really nice, easy one. If there are tears, let them flow. If there's deep emotions, let yourself feel them. And let yourself rest. You know it's a New Moon. It's the time of the month to rest, rest, rest. Everything will be processed in sleep and in rest with breath and with water.  

The next lunation of the month is on July 21st. It's a Capricorn Full Moon and it's at 29° of Capricorn. So, the thing about this time of the year is that there's always going to be a New Moon in Cancer followed by a Capricorn Full Moon. They always go together because they're at the opposite end of the axis, and they're always kind of challenging each other. I have lots of planets in both, so it's an energy line that I'm very familiar with. What's great about this axis is that Cancer is all about the emotional body. It's all about feeling deeply. It's all about the sensory experience and it's all about nurturing. It's ruled by the Moon. Capricorn, on the other hand, is very much about practicality and being constructive and being ambitious and being realistic. It's a sign that's ruled by Saturn, and Saturn is all about boundaries. It's all about limitations. It's all about time, and using time wisely. It is very much about structure and gravity and these kinds of very real, very material things. Capricorn is also an Earth sign, so it's very focused on what can be made real and what is actually real in my hands that I can hold.

Emotions are not things that you can hold in your hands. So there's this really interesting play between how can I allow myself to embrace the part of myself that is emotional and deeply feeling, because emotions are very physical and they've been developed over centuries of humanity to help inform us of what is important, what is not important, when we need to set boundaries, when we need to advocate for ourselves, when we love somebody, when we want to express that affection. Emotions are very, very real, but they're soft. How can we tend to that part of ourselves and honor that part of ourselves, while also making sure that we are staying realistic and we are staying grounded in the environment in which we're in? How can we stay connected to the world around us? Emotions can kind of sweep us off our feet and sweep us out of reality. You know, we can get caught in story lines and narratives and be very carried away by what's happening when there's a whole other world of real-life stuff that's happening all around us, that's actually creating the story in real time, and you have to be able to marry those two things in order to fully experience your lived experience, fully experience your life.

So, Cancer is the part of us that is asking us to tap into our intuition and our instinct. It's using the signs and signals around us to digest the information and turn it into, you know, how do we react? How do we respond on a physical and physiological level? Then Capricorn is saying, pay attention to the real world and make sure that whatever you're feeling is very grounded in the here and now and that you're not getting swept away by those emotions. That you are putting them to use in a real practical, constructive way, and that you're also using your practicality to check in with your emotions and check that you're not misinterpreting what's actually physically happening.

So, I personally consider it to be a very kind of creative axis because there is something about the interplay of the environment in which we're in affecting our internal environments and vice versa. But the challenge is, when we have a Full Moon in Capricorn, it's saying, be practical, be organized, be constructive, be disciplined, be realistic. You don't have to be warm and feeling all the time. That's going to get in the way. So the Moon is activating that part of us and the Sun is over in Cancer saying, ‘but I'm also a deeply feeling and emotional person. I need to honor my emotions. This part of me is being illuminated right now as well.’  

So there's this really interesting push and pull and line of tension of where we have to make sense of both things happening at the same time. This line of tension, I've heard it described as like a seesaw, where we're kind of going back and forth between one part of ourselves and one type of energy to the other side. When we have that kind of back and forth, there is naturally going to be some sort of resolution that we come to because there is so much emphasis on both sides needing to balance each other out, so we have to come to some sort of resolution. We have to be able to marry the two things and figure out, how do I honor both versions of me, both pieces of me and work in a way that I can tap into and understand and honor my emotions? And also, how do I honor the side of me that is really ambitious and wants to make things really happen in a real constructive way in the world and be productive and use my time wisely and make things happen and make things happen in a way that I love and that is also long-lasting?

So it might be, again, an emotional time of the month. Check-in with where you might be feeling like your emotions are getting in the way. Or your practical mind, your reasoning mind is not letting you feel as much as you need to be feeling. And you know, there's that experience of, I know I'm feeling a lot of stuff, but my life is so busy or I have all these things to do, I can't let myself cry or take a break or just lay down and let myself feel. Check in with when you are having those types of thoughts and where you're holding yourself back from allowing yourself to feel what you need to feel, and maybe even just scheduling in some time to be like this is everything that I'm feeling and journaling or having a constructive venting session with a friend or, you know, whatever it is.  

The ruler of this moon, Saturn, is in Pisces right now, which is another water sign. It's been here for a while. It's going to be here for at least another year because Saturn is also in Pisces. There is an emphasis on letting the practicality, the constructiveness be a little more fluid. So there is support in this entire lunation to allow ourselves to feel more through the structure and to release more of the kind of capitalist thinking and be more of a human being and a feeling person. There's an emphasis more on how to create fluid boundaries for ourselves and, depending on where Capricorn is in your chart, you know Capricorn is related to the ambitious part of us. It's usually related to the part of us that is the workhorse or is the part of the part of us that is ambitious.  

So the part of your chart that contains Capricorn might say something about your career or your work. And so you might naturally be feeling, how do I mix in emotions with work? How do I find the balance between my work life and my emotional life, and how do they tie together, and how are they separate? And how can I create a balance and a harmony between those two things? When do I need to go cry in the bathroom and when can I actually bring my worries and needs to my boss or my peers to help make change happen in the workplace? What does that balance look like? And then also metaphorically speaking, what does that look like in terms of your own personal work life? What is the balance between emotions and work? That's really what this Full Moon is all about. But Saturn in Pisces is really emphasizing this. And there's a larger story kind of being played out about this in general because Saturn has been in Pisces for a couple of years or about a year and a half. It'll be there for another year. So check also the part of your chart, not just that contains Capricorn but also Pisces, so that you can assess where the same kind of energy, the balance of emotions and work, work and emotions, emotional body versus practical body are also getting kind of an uplift and a renewal.

The last thing I'll say about this Full Moon energy is that the Moon is very, very close to Pluto in Aquarius, and Aquarius is another sign that's ruled by Saturn. So they're kind of like sister or brother sibling signs. And because the Moon is very close to Pluto, just a couple of degrees away, there is something about this energy that is also very empowering. The Full Moon is an activation, and it's a release. It's a culminating energy, and so whatever is being expressed right now, whatever is being realized is something that is likely going to charge all of us with a sense of aha, this is it. This is the medicine I need. This is the power that I've been looking for. This is the embodiment of this energy that I've been looking for. And that can come to us in like a simple little action or a thought or a realization while journaling or talking or conversing. But there is something about whatever is happening now that feels very, very foundationally empowering. When I think about Pluto, it's like the core of us, the very center of the earth. That kind of seismic energy. And so, because it's so close to the Moon, whatever is being released has the influence of that kind of seismic power. Not to say there's going to be some big culminating release, but that there might be some really strong like, Oh yes, that is the missing puzzle piece, and now I feel really strong in my ability to express myself in this way or to take action towards this thing.

I recommend looking back to the New Moon in Capricorn in January, again, about six months ago to see what was initiated around that time and what has culminated around this time, particularly in the part of your chart that contains Capricorn in that area of life. And then also think about what happened about a year ago this time. And what has changed in this area of life as well? Again, this Full Moon is at 29° of Capricorn, so if you have planets at 29° of Capricorn or the other Earth signs, Virgo and Taurus, you might be really feeling this in a very supportive way. Same if you have other planets at 29° of the other Cardinal signs Aries, Libra, and Cancer. You might be feeling this again in a sort of friction type way, but in a way that helps you release what it is that really needs to be released to make room for this kind of letting go and shedding to come into the next cycle.

So the heavy hitters of the month are definitely going to be the Cardinal signs, Aries, Libra, Capricorn, and Cancer. You guys are really going to be feeling this because both lunations are in Cardinal signs, but again it's an activating energy that's helping us tap into the internal environment and the external environment and how we can find a symbiotic relationship with it. No matter what, this month is a very fluid kind of month. There's a lot of free-flowing energy. So again, if you need to cry, if you need to immerse yourself in water, find a beach, find a pool, find a shower, drink lots of water. This will help move the energy in the body and it'll help move the emotions. It'll help move the energy in motion. And it'll help channel whatever it is that you're experiencing into something that is constructive and helpful. I mean, Capricorn is all about being constructive, so it's about how we take what we're feeling and put it into something that we can hold and say like, oh, this is the external expression of that thing that I was feeling. And now I can let it go and I can keep moving forward. So yeah, it's a good month, you guys. Easy peasy. Nothing crazy this month. Very productive energy to use.  

I highly recommend doing the New Moon workshop and just letting yourself really tap into that emotional side of yourself. And the other thing with the Capricorn Full Moon, last thing I'll say is, you know, Capricorn is very ambitious and is very focused on making things happen for the future and not really good at acknowledging what it has done and what it's accomplished. Take a moment to acknowledge what you've accomplished. Take a moment to acknowledge all the things that you have done, everything that you've created, everything that you've made, all of the mountains you've climbed. And pat yourself on the back, find a little bit of gratitude for all your hard work and appreciate everything that you've done for yourself, for the people around you, your communities, your loved ones, your pets. It is those contributions that contribute to the greater good of all of us, and we are nothing collectively, if we're not all creating and self-expressing together. We are co-creating this world that we live in, so take a moment to reflect on the things that you have created and you've manifested and you've made real in the world and you know, appreciate and acknowledge the things that you're really proud. That will just make it that much easier to move forward with confidence, with pride and with a lot of stability and security in yourself. So, that’s another good practice on July 21st for that Full Moon.  

OK friends, thank you so much for tuning in. If you have comments, questions, or concerns, obviously reach out. Otherwise, I'll see you next month in August for those lunations. All right. Until then.