Greetings friends,
Whether you are in the northern hemisphere with me, celebrating the arrival of summer, or are in the southern hemisphere embracing the shift into winter, I wish you a happy solstice. The shifts into the cardinal seasons are always exciting to me, as they carry with them a different breath, step, perspective, and motive. The Cardinal signs are the initiators, reminding us of the value that resides in either starting anew or doubling down, which is why I think these seasons can feel so activating and inspiring.
I wanted to share a few things about Cancer with you that may support your navigation of this season, as we are going to see our second Mercury retrograde of the year kicking off with the Capricorn full moon on June 29th (that retrograde will be happening exclusively in Cancer). With Mercury staying in Cancer through August 9th, and Mars moving into Cancer on August 11th, you may find the things described below will be supportive in your communication habits and actions as we move through this next season, even after Cancer season concludes.
Solstice Sale — Select Readings Discounted 20% Off through June 29th, 2026 (11:59 pm PST)
There’s a buzz in the air; I think it’s partially the change of the season and partially the fact that we have life-changing energies coming together. The second half of this year is the more exciting half, by a long shot. I’ve been watching and waiting for these transits since 2023 (LOL)! I would love to connect with you to help you prepare for this next chapter! Below are the readings I have discounted for the next week. Feel free to message me if you have any questions!
TABOO (18+): 30-minutes, $99 $80
Lean into your inner darkness to access untapped potential. Awaken the wild woman within. Hear the answer to the question you’ve been too afraid to ask. Meet with me to examine the taboo, evil, or dark elements of your chart and learn how to leverage them to your advantage. Any question is welcome, (except those about death).
STANDARD 1:1 SESSION: 90-minutes, $225 $180
Understand the energetic mechanics, primary themes, and planetary weight of your natal chart. Learn about your personal dharma to bring clarity to your sense of purpose and direction. See yourself from the perspective of the cosmos to learn how to get out of your own way and start living in alignment with your soul’s truth.
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Learn about the themes, teachings, and energies of the next three months. Strategize how to favorably navigate the transits and activations to your natal chart. Receive three customized new and full moon notes on the lunations of the discussed period, including predictions, suggested practices, and supportive actions. The perfect session for making a plan to change your life!
The Origin Place of Emotion
Aside from Cancer season, generally speaking, being a favorable time to begin new projects, reorganize the home, do an audit of your life foundations, and check in on the child within each of us, I find this to be a helpful season for us to embrace stillness and presence more so that we can recalibrate the intuitive compass. When I refer to Cancer being the origin place of emotion, I aim to invite you to consider two different things.
What can you learn by examining your first encounter with different themes, emotions, or experiences?
Can you consider the emotions you experience now as the starting place of a new behavior, response, or pattern?
Both of those things may be especially helpful to consider during the Mercury retrograde. If you’d like some support for your reflective process, I created a journaling challenge for Mercury retrogrades (it’s reusable!), which you can get here.
This is a beautiful season for us to not only begin again in the external world through the implementation of new practices, habits, and traditions but also to begin again in the emotional body. To hit reset. I think with Jupiter’s passage through Cancer coming to a close, we are all perhaps a bit more aware of the body’s signals and the nervous system’s sensitivity. Sitting with your emotions with nonjudgmental awareness is bound to lead to more sustainable ways of navigating the emotional and material landscape in the seasons that follow.
The Crab’s Shell Hardens Over Time
Cancer is symbolized by the crab, which I think may have many picturing a hermit crab—one who is not attached to their shell but has the freedom to come and go and replace it once it’s outgrown. While this may serve other interpretive conversations, my perception of Cancer has always been better represented by the species of crabs whose shells are a part of them.
I think we all begin life like a crab who has just molted. We are soft and vulnerable. We need protection. We cannot defend ourselves well. But over time, a shell forms, and this is what protects us from the predators and dangers that we will inevitably encounter. That shell is the nervous system—it’s composed of our repeated behaviors for emotional regulation, the environment we immerse ourselves in, and the relationships we interface with most intimately and frequently. Our first “shell” is not one of our own choosing—in childhood, we have very little control over the examples of emotional regulation we are witness to, the environments we occupy, the conversations we overhear, and the archetypes of people we are surrounded by. But as we grow up and gain independence, we have much more of a say in what type of shell calcifies around us.
Each encounter we have with emotion is a new opportunity to reinforce a different narrative around what that emotion means and how we should respond to it. And we must remember that, just as our initial nervous system programming took years to solidify into a probably dysfunctional, but operational, structure, a new structure being erected in its place is bound to take time as well. I could use the image of building a house or growing a child to illustrate the same idea, but you get the point. A new nervous system is not built from a singular experience but rather a catalog of many experiences revolving around the same principles, all of which are evidence that the new way of being is a way that can be trusted and is safe to find sanctuary in. The rewards of your devotion to this practice often can’t be predicted, because in the water signs, progress is not quantified; it’s felt.
Perhaps you will notice in this season how you don’t react to a feeling in the same way you once did. Or maybe you’ll find that you have a higher capacity for something that was previously destabilizing (that “something” could be visibility, misinterpretation, contrast, discomfort, etc.). Embrace the subtle changes you notice—don’t try to measure them.
Many Beginnings are Often Invisible
With the water signs governing emotion, intuition, ancestry, and spiritual oneness, many of their conversations pertain to things that can’t easily fit into a physical form. They pertain to invisible experiences, places, and moments. This is why they naturally govern “the dark houses,” the 4th, 8th, and 12th.
We might think that the beginning of a behavior or pattern started with one thing, but upon further examination, we may discover that it started long before that. The visible expression or representation of the behavior or pattern is not necessarily the true origin place of it. And the same goes for achievements, milestones, and the vague destinations we often find ourselves striving to reach.
You may not realize it—or if you begrudgingly do, you may not be very content with it—but you’re actually already on the path to achieve that goal, meet that person, or reach that dream you’ve been holding in your imagination. You were on the path from the moment you took your first breath. Jupiter in Cancer has particularly reminded us of the fact that “growth” does not produce exclusively visible representations of it—perhaps much of the growing you’ve been doing over this past year has only yielded rewards that you can feel or sense. But Jupiter in Cancer has aimed to remind us that a tree can only grow as high as its roots run deep, which is why this transit has aimed to pull our attention away from the branches and has directed it into the ground over this past year. We’ve probably confronted the dysfunctions present in the emotional patterns and internal systems of our lives, which have secretly sabotaged our material success and physical wellness, and perhaps with more awareness of this, we are now starting to see the benefits of changes made to the crucial invisible systems that support our emotional function and physical vitality.
That said, this Cancer season, I suggest we all find an appreciation for the growth that happens in the dark, the progress that happens behind closed doors, and the invisible beginnings that we get to initiate. We can recognize that we simultaneously have already started and are beginning again and again with the ever-renewing present moment. And perhaps we can take some time to appreciate the beginnings that we initiated previously, which have led us to where we are now.
I hope you have a reflective and insightful Cancer season and that this solstice, whether it is for your winter or summer, offers you the space to both celebrate a new chapter and honor the journey you’ve already been on.
Love you.
xx, Aspen
Thank you for your insight. Gemini season felt noticeably heavy this year, but I'm grateful for a new season and an opportunity to start again.