Cancer Season 2026: Solstice, Transits and Self-Care

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This weekend we crossed through the gateway into Summer.

The Cancer Ingress began the new seasonal story. Summer Solstice is one of the four cardinal points of the year, an ancient sacred solar touchstone, symbolically and archetypically such a beautiful moment, the emergence of the sacred spring, as the pure groundwater of life/psyche emerges from the underland. 

It's a time of stillness (sol/stice = sun/standing still) and potent fertility (cardinal water, cancerian womb & breasts) and at the same time, the moment when the year turns towards darkness. It feels like a moment of awe and stillness before a kind of amniotic gush of new life. How did you celebrate and honour this sacred moment?

The night before solstice I gathered roses, St. John’s Wort, and pink yarrow under the light of the Moon and Venus. I put them out in a little ceramic dish of pure water, left it all under the apple tree until dawn, to gather the Midsummer dew. This blessed water will go into magical inks and other secret things. Midsummer dew confers clear sight and solar vitality.

Later in the day we hiked up to the nearby falls to hear the rush of the water, feel the charged air, and see the solstice sun glinting on the turquoise mountain run-off. The woods smelled of drying resin, warm cedar, and wet stone as we approached the river. It was a beautiful Solstice.

Cancer Season offers a balm to our inflamed minds. This is a hard year. It’s fiery and confusing, fast paced and abrasive. The coming month will be inflammatory and challenging, the beginning of July will bring big disruptions and scary news. Of course this doesn’t mean your life will be disrupted or scary, but the ambient energy is hot and uncomfortable and full of conflict. We need the cool balm of pure running water, we need the nourishment of loving community, we need to provide and receive compassion, we need to exercise emotional intelligence, calm care, and good critical thinking.

Cancer energy teaches us expanded empathy. As the Sun lights up this part of our charts for the next month, allow empathy, intuition, and compassion to be illuminated in your own heart and mind. The next couple of weeks will likely bring some abrasions, frustrations, delays, disruptions, and anxieties into your life. Cancer energy is the energy of emotional resilience, flow, sentiment, nurturance, and compassion.These Cancerian waters can cool and quench the uncomfortable fire of the current season, if used consciously.

Over the coming days, the Sun in Cancer will square Neptune and Saturn in Pisces, the Moon will wax to full, and Mercury will slow to station retrograde. These energies of heightened emotional response, increasing intensity, and frustrations in emotional expression form the energetic background to the biggest transit of the Summer, Mars meeting Uranus in Gemini, which is coming on July 4th.

Maybe your dreams are intense right now, maybe you’ve been experiencing emotional tension or a diffuse feeling of dread. Maybe you’ve been crying more easily, or feeling easily cracked open by events in the world or other people’s stories. I think these are all really normal responses to the current energy. Please remember that most fears don’t actually manifest, all tensions dissipate with time, and, most importantly, your heart is meant to crack open in empathy. You can lean into this and be a source of calm and comfort for the people around you and for your own self in your moments of anxiety.

To bring it home to your own chart, look forward to change and creative disruption in your Gemini House; when you feel intimations of these, remember you are resilient, and change can be good, even when it happens fast! 

Keep working with the ongoing intensity in your Aries House, Your job here is to create bright, inspired structures for your new dreams; build quickly, keep moving, trust yourself, and know that pain is a sign to stop, but discomfort is often a sign of growth.

Look for healing and emotional resilience in your Cancer House, Use the  resources and gifts of your Cancer placements to create oases of care, refreshment, and cooling comfort even when things heat up. 

Here are some small, practical things you can do to access Cancer energy now:

• Drink nourishing, cooling herbal infusions over ice (peppermint, nettle, and oat straw with some rose petals would be lovely).
• Visit a waterfall, river, or natural spring and bask in the cool and the ionized air.
• Diffuse peppermint oil at home (not around your pets, though.)
• Connect with friends. Remind your loved ones you are there for them in little ways.
• Read or watch something heartwarming and sentimental.
• Keep your home calm and cool.
• Snack on Cancerian foods: melons, cucumbers, crisp lettuces, mild fresh herbs, fresh cheeses and yogurt.
• Talk to your mom, if she’s a positive loving force in your life. Remember you can talk to your mom even if she’s not in this world anymore.
• Journal your feelings.

All will be well. 

If you'd like to learn more Solstice lore, learn about Cancer as the Sacred Wellspring and where she lives in your chart, dive into more Midsummer journaling, explore the Wheel of the Year, and try some solstice magic (gathering dew! incubating prophetic dreams!) You'll want to explore my Summer Solstice Guidebook Zine, instantly downloadable!

[Get your Solstice Guidebook Zine →] 

If you want to go deeper with what this ingress means specifically for your chart: which house it is activating, what it is healing or being restored for you, and how to work with the Wheel of the Year in your chart, I  would love to sit with you in a reading. A one-on-one session is where we can trace the exact path of these transits through your life and find the holy well in your own chart.

[Book a Reading →]

And if you want ongoing companionship through the transits as the year unfolds, including monthly calls, a teaching community, and a place to bring your questions, The Astrology Salon is open for new members now. We are going to navigate this year together, with depth, creativity, community, and as much joy as we can.

[Learn more about The Salon →]

Want early access to all my blog posts, as well as a free PDF New Moon Journal? Join my list HERE.