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This week initiates slowness, reflection, healing, clarity and being with our emotions. With the Sun and Mercury in Cancer and Neptune moving into retrograde, there is a vivid aspect to the days that brings a vivid awareness of truth and reality.

Mercury in Cancer

Mercury represents the mind, communication, intelligence and learning. Being a fast-moving planet, it usually doesn’t spend much time in any particular sign, seemingly mimicking the speed and movement of our minds from one thought to another.

Having spent the past few weeks in its home sign of Gemini, Mercury has breathed new life into our minds and thought patterns, engaging us in our curiosity and intellectual excitement. It was a very intellectual time, a rich chapter for our thoughts and ideas.

However, when Mercury enters Cancer, it welcomes a depth of awareness that requires us to slowly settle into presence. A water sign, Cancer represents our emotional experience. It nourishes and heals, intuitive and sensitive. As Mercury wanders through the waters of Cancer from June 26th to July 11th, we are invited to go back within ourselves, consider our personal and emotional experiences, connect and communicate with loved ones, and express what is ready to be expressed. This is a section of healing music, talking, writing, sharing and listening. This is a time of emotional journeys and healing of family and ancestral patterns. It is the presence in conversations that unites and nourishes. It is hearing the voice that lives deep within and starting a dialogue to nurture it and let it nurture you.

Neptune retrograde

The movement of planets and stars cannot be separated from the worlds that live within us. Planets exist as archetypes, as invitations, colors, shades, tones, and ways of being. Their movements in space change something within us, subtly or overtly, quietly or loudly. As these heavenly bodies take a moment to pause, exhale, and begin their seemingly backward motion, we are also invited to pause, exhale, and travel inward.

Neptune is an outer planet that sits on the edge of what we already know and what we have yet to discover. Ruling the uncertain, this is the planet that takes us into the unseen, into the realm of the imagination. Neptune is abstract, subtle, compassionate and intuitive. This is the erasure of boundaries between oneself and everything that exists. Neptune is the flow we experience in creative expression. It is the loss of self, our identity and orientation through song. It’s the oneness we feel in meditation, and how one yoga pose somehow flows seamlessly into the next, no matter where one begins and the other ends.

Being in retrograde from June 30th to December 6th, Neptune brings a clearing of the fog. It provides clarity so that we can review the reality of the path we have walked and the relationship we have built with ourselves, our creativity, our purpose, and our perception of spirit and truth. As the Neptune dream state retraces its steps, there is a lifting of the veil where what we once could not see is now visible, where what we took as truth is revealed as something else.

Your invitation

Cancer invites you deep into its emotional waters. It pulls you down, inward, and back, back to your youth, family dynamics, and ancestral patterns embedded deep within your being. As we allow this Cancer downstream to guide us, Neptune holds the mirrors of clarity. It shows the illusions we’ve held onto that have shaped our views and changed our perception of reality. This explains the patterns we follow.

Neptune represents the sphere of existence where everything is one. However, in the retrograde state, it invites you into the full awareness of the human experience, where there is a healthy and empowering separation and sense of self. This is a time to gain clarity, develop a sense of individuality, and reflect on truth, spiritual convictions, and deep insight. Neptune retrograde initiates deep inner shifts, while Cancer acts as a caring and loving shield that holds us throughout.

Neptune is retrograde for the next six months, although Mercury in Cancer lasts only two beautiful weeks. Allow the gifts of the overlapping time to seep deep within. Within you can find wonderful healing, intuition, connection and contentment.

Learn more about how astrology affects your life, including astrological events, moon cycles, your Sun and Moon and rising signs, how journaling can help you connect with current influences, and more with Jordan Marie at Girl and her Moon .

About our contributor

Jordan Marie is the founder of Girl and Her Moon, a platform and community that explores the soul through the lens of astrology, tarot, and energy healing. She is an author, intuitive astrologer, energy and soul guide, and host of Girl and Her Moon, The Podcast. She inspires herself every day to be a mirror for you to see all that you really are, you in all your infinite capacity, in full expansion, in infinite possibility and love.