On June 21 at 6:50 am (Melbourne time) the winter solstice occurred in the southern hemisphere of the planet.
In Australia, to make things easier as they like to do in this country, they established June 1st as the day when winter begins, as well as December 1st as the day when summer begins.
I think this is a virtue of this country, it helps people to live less worried, the Aussie “no stress”.
But scientifically it’s different: every year the solstices occur between the 20th and 22nd of these months. Other countries set the 21st as the average date.
Winter begins at the instant when the sun is at the greatest negative angular distance from the celestial equator. This means that due to the tilt of its axis of rotation, the earth will be positioned to receive less solar energy in a hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, this coincides with the Aphelion, the time of the year when the sun is farthest from our planet. So this June 21 was the day when, in this half of the world, the earth was farthest from the sun, and also tilted to the opposite side. That is far away.
This has easily perceptible consequences, such as being the shortest day of the year, with fewer daylight hours, or that temperatures drop around this date.
But there are also other more subtle effects, which we can approach from astrology.
The sun enters the sign of Cancer along with the winter solstice. Western astrology was born in the northern hemisphere, and so the sign of the crab has many characteristics in common with summer, but also others that go perfectly with winter, oddly enough. Draw your own conclusions.
Cancer’s the sign of cells, of reproduction, of the nuclear. It’s moving water, not frozen. Water that flows and transports, a mighty river. It’s returning home because there’s enough sunlight to travel for long hours. It’s to return to recover, to rest while the body perspires. In fact, I notice that people with a lot of Cancer or Moon in this sign tend to love sauna-like climates: they crank the heat up to a thousand, lots of blankets on the bed, they’re in the kitchen cooking stews with a hoodie for better snitching.
Cancer it’s being in your hometown. The nutrition, the potluck, the shared table, the dishes that are changing position moved by mothers, brothers, sisters-in-law, close friends. That feeling of fluidity but also suffocation that can cause being too much time around family, too much time in the nucleus. It’s that time to give place to vulnerability, the need to give importance to what still has no name, the gestation. The summer doldrums. A good example of the Cancerian climate is the fascinating film “La Ciénaga” (2001) by the Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel*.
Thinking about the Australian territory, kangaroos, in my view, are a very Cancerian animal. After growing up at the uterus, their offspring move into a pocket in the mother’s belly. Both the uterus and the marsupium are warm, moist, perfectly Cancerian areas. They are nourishing by nature. And they have a very deep relationship with the community, living in groups called mobs, and rely on mutual protection and support among their members. They belong to a small jumping mafia.
Simplifying things very much, because the natal maps are a very broad complex, a combination of factors, and on top of that, in constant transformation, we could say that a Sun in Cancer fulfils many of these characteristics. They make you feel at home, they know how to care for and read what the other person needs beyond words. They radiate tenderness and the courage that comes from knowing how vulnerable they are.
On the other hand, a Moon in Cancer (I repeat, simplifying the astrological knowledge), usually has all these things affectivised; feels this uterine warm climate, like a safe place, and if someone do not love them in this way, they may feel unloved.
Therefore, during the Cancerian season, the first half of winter in our hemisphere, we are far from the sun, but close to our family. Physically or spiritually.
*La Ciénaga. Lucrecia Martel (2001) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spXKUSu5Kg4
