Hey y’all,
How’s everyone doing out there?
What a big weekend we just had, with a Uranus/Mars square and a Jupiter/Saturn square whose influences will continue to affect us throughout the week. We’re in the midst of feeling both the lightning bolts of explosive unrest and also the wisdom that in order to expand beyond our current situation, we must take responsibility for where we currently are in this present moment.
Are you feeling any different now that our benevolent friend Jupiter has entered the watery realm of the crab last week?
I am, somehow. I spent Father’s day yesterday with my daughter, my current partner (her stepdad), my ex (her dad), and his new partner… and it was really such a beautiful day spent together. The sign of Cancer centers on our sense of home, family, lineage, care, and nurturance, and it seems that Jupiter in Cancer really has expanded my idea of what home and family and care can feel like. How sweet! Also, despite the fact that there are still so many truly awful things happening in the world, I’m taking this moment to acknowledge how proud I am of all the Americans who showed up for the No Kings protests. There is still so so very much that needs to be enacted and changed, but seeing videos of so many cities truly turning up lit up that Jupiter in Cancer homeland pride in me.
Planetary dances that illuminate Jupiter and/or Sagittarius always make me feel a bit larger than life, and I notice my breath deepen as I allow myself to consider possibilities that lie beyond my normal horizons. Last week was big-time Jupiter/Sag energy expanding just about everything, and it felt like a prelude to the main event of this week: The Summer Solstice, known as Litha in the Pagan Wheel, corresponding with the emergence of Cancer season in the Zodiac.
The Chaos Continues into the Solstice
The transit astrology of last weekend was intense: Mars, in it’s last degrees of Leo on Sunday also made a square to Uranus in the last degrees of Taurus, at the same time that Saturn in Aries squared off with Jupiter in Cancer. This volatile mix ignited sudden disruptions, emotional confrontations, and a clash between impulsive action and the need for safety—forcing deep recalibrations in how we move, react, and relate.
This week begins with us still majorly feeling the effects of those catalytic squares. The sun is continuing it’s trip through the Gate of Caution, the final full gate of Gemini season. On Friday, the sun will travel into the Gate of Extremes, the heart-centered energy that rings in the Solstice each year, changing the vibe up a bit as we enter the nurturing fierceness of Cancer Season.
I find it so fitting and serendipitous that the longest day/shortest night is known in the I’Ching & Human Design wheel as Extremes. It’s a time of finding rhythm in the ups and downs, the darks and lights of mid summer. The gate of Extremes mirrors the current astro’s tension between bold action and emotional retreat—highlighting the growing edge where radiant outward expression meets the need for internal balance.
Before diving into the deeper forecast, I’ll begin today with some invitations:
Next week!: Wednesday, June 25: Cancer Season Astro-Breathwork Journey
These monthly sessions are a great way to learn about the upcoming transits, integrate the themes of Cancer season in your body, and release emotions that are no longer serving you.
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Without further ado, let’s get into the forecast:
This week in the Wheel of the Year:
MEDICINE WHEEL Direction: SOUTH
WUXING Element: FIRE
PAGAN Season: LITHA (Midsummer)
ZODIAC Season: CANCER (June 20-July 20)
I’CHING Hexagram/HUMAN DESIGN Gate:
Saturday the 14th -Thursday the 19th: Gate 12 = Heaven over Earth: “Standstill (Retreat)”, aka the Gate of CAUTION
Friday thru next Wednesday: Gate 15 = Earth over Mountain: “Modesty (Humility)”, aka the Gate of EXTREMES
(First of 8 gates where the lower trigram is Mountain)
MOON Phase: Waning
PLANETARY dances:
Mars enters Virgo (Tuesday, June 17)
Jupiter in Cancer square Neptune in Aries (Wednesday, June 18)
A Cautious Beginning to the Week:
Mars enters Virgo Tuesday and Jupiter squares Neptune on Wednesday
Carrying on from last weekend, this week starts with a note of precision and caution. The Sun continues moving through Gate 12, the Gate of Caution, in the Human Design mandala. This gate speaks to emotionally aligned expression: knowing when to speak, when to act, and when to wait. It’s the stillness before the offering, urging us not to waste our voice, energy, or emotion unless they are clear and true. It teaches that pause is not weakness, it’s discernment.
On Tuesday, Mars enters Virgo, swapping the fiery impulse of Leo for grounded strategy. This is Mars with a clipboard and checklist! The planet of action wants to fix, refine, and purify, and it won’t tolerate mess or half-baked plans. You might feel a sudden urge to clean everything up, edit the details, or finally take action on something you’ve been meaning to improve.
By Wednesday, Jupiter in Cancer squares Neptune in Aries, intensifying the energy of last Sunday’s lingering square between Jupiter and Saturn. The Neptune influence could stir the emotional waters and blur the edges of clarity. This is a transit that can be deeply inspiring or deeply misleading, depending on whether you’re acting from intuition or illusion. Jupiter wants growth, Neptune wants transcendence, and neither is great at boundaries (that’s the realm of Saturn, who’s also in the picture).
So it could make us think, be very philosophical, I suppose. Jupiter is the great philosopher. so I feel like Jupiter squaring both Saturn and Neptune could bring a lot of philosophical discourse on how to dream and also be realistic and how to not get lost in illusion, but to use that Saturnian influence for putting some guidelines surrounding how we're going to achieve those dreams.
Combined with Mars in Virgo early this week, the key here is my favorite Virgo word: discernment. Take action and wax poetic on your wildest Jupiterian dreams, but also check your motives, check your facts, and don’t believe every lofty vision unless it also holds water.
This week before the summer solstice arrives is a good time to slow down and feel things through before committing. This is a good week to get clear on what’s real, what’s wishful thinking, and what’s just in need of a little structure to bloom. Then, get ready for some radiant solstice celebrations to give praise to the flowers that are already blossoming.
Thursday: The Longest Day & The Shortest Night: Solstice happens in the Gate of Extremes (15)
This Thursday marks the Solstice, a sacred hinge in the wheel of the year when the Sun pauses at its furthest point before beginning its return. In the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the longest day and the shortest night, a moment suspended in light. Each year, the Sun transits through Gate 15 in Human Design at the time of the Solstice: the Gate of Extremes.
Like all Solstice and Equinox Gates, Gate 15 lives in the G-Center, the seat of identity, direction, and love. This gate is part of the Channel of Rhythm and is concerned with biorhythms, the flow of life, and the wisdom of living in natural cycles. It holds the energy of magnetism through rhythm, and expresses as a deep connection to the chaotic, undomesticated rhythms of life. It is not the gate of predictability or polite consistency. It’s the gate of wild time. and of people who rise and fall with the moon, eat breakfast at midnight, or feel most alive when the rest of the world is asleep. It invites us to love the irregular, the nonlinear, and the truly human.
In the I Ching, this gate is known as Hexagram 15: Modesty or Humility, a paradoxical pairing that reminds us that true power isn’t about dominance, but alignment with the greater flow. To be in rhythm with life is not to control it, but to surrender into the dance of movement and stillness, light and dark, action and rest.
In the Gene Keys, Richard Rudd describes the Shadow of this key as Extremism - where irregularity turns into instability or rejection of order. At the Gift level, Gate 15 becomes Magnetism, drawing others in not through force, but through natural, embodied attunement to life's pulse. At the Siddhi, it becomes Florescence: the flowering of life itself through total acceptance of every strange, perfect rhythm.
On this longest day, with the Sun shining in the Gate of Extremes, we are reminded: Nature thrives through diversity. Wholeness comes from inclusion, not uniformity. You don’t need to fit into a normal rhythm, you just need to find your rhythm and honor it. Whether you’re a morning person or a midnight owl, a deep diver or a sky gazer, this Solstice invites you to stop trying to make sense in linear time and instead listen to the music of your own becoming.
Richard Rudd describes this as a key of deep harmony with Gaia herself, saying that those who embody this Gene Key “bring a kind of timeless beauty into the world” through their ability to move with the Earth’s natural rhythms rather than against them.
It’s a powerful moment to ask: What part of you is ready to bloom wildly, without apology? And what needs to be surrendered back into the soil, composted for another cycle?
Let the longest light illuminate your extremes—not to smooth them out, but to help you love the whole, strange, beautiful pattern you are.
Note: Extremes is the first of eight gates in the Human Design system where the lower trigram is Mountain, a powerful symbol of stillness, endurance, and containment in the I’Ching. The Mountain below suggests an inner foundation that holds firm, even when the upper trigram (Earth, in the case of Gate 15) stretches wide to accommodate vast diversity and contrast.
This pairing gives Gate 15 its unique flavor as the summer solstice begins a new elemental season: it expresses extreme variation in rhythm, emotion, and behavior, but all of it is anchored in a deep internal steadiness. The Mountain doesn’t resist movement, it simply holds space for it. This gate teaches us that true magnetism and humility come from honoring both stillness and flux, from knowing when to bend and when to remain rooted. It’s a threshold gate that initiates us into living as part of a larger ecological rhythm, without losing our core.
Celebrating Litha & Cancer Season: The Fertile Womb of the Year
Litha, also known as Midsummer, is the ancient festival that marks the Summer Solstice. Celebrated across Europe and many parts of the world, Litha is a solar festival, honoring the zenith of the Sun’s power. In the old Celtic and Germanic calendars, this moment was revered as a time of fullness, abundance, and protection. Bonfires were lit on hilltops to strengthen the Sun for the second half of the year, and herbs gathered on this day were believed to be at the height of their potency.
In Norse mythology, this solstice marked a sacred marriage between the divine masculine and feminine. In Slavic traditions, the holiday of Kupala Night—aligned with the solstice—featured ritual bathing, flower wreaths, and jumping over fire, all symbols of purification and fertility. In Druidic and pagan circles, stone circles like Stonehenge were constructed to align with the rising sun on Litha morning, suggesting reverence for this cosmic turning point that goes back thousands of years.
At its core, Litha is a celebration of life at full bloom. It’s when the crops are growing, the animals are fat with summer grazing, and the Earth herself feels pregnant with potential. But even as the light reaches its peak, the Solstice also marks a subtle but profound shift: from now on, the days will slowly shorten. This is a threshold moment, where abundance coexists with impermanence, and maturity begins to lean toward harvest.
In the tropical Zodiac each year, the Sun enters Cancer simultaneously with Litha/the Solstice, anchoring the seasonal shift with a deeply maternal, emotional, and watery signature. Cancer is the womb of the zodiac, the sacred shell where life is gestated, memory is held, and safety is created. It governs the waters of emotion, the ancestral line, the instinct to protect and nurture.
Where Gemini season was outward, buzzing with curiosity and movement, Cancer invites us inward, into the temple of feeling, family, and embodiment. Cancer doesn’t rush. It ripens. It teaches that growth begins with holding, and that nothing meaningful blooms without emotional nourishment.
Jupiter this year joins the Sun in Cancer, beginning a year-long transit that amplifies Cancer’s intuitive, protective, and creative powers. Jupiter here blesses not just what we do, but how deeply we care. It’s a cosmic permission slip to slow down, to root in place, to tend to the inner world—because our capacity to expand begins with how safely we can dwell in our own bodies and hearts.
Jupiter, who just entered Cancer a week ago, is also currently transiting through the Gate of Extremes, expanding our collective desire to shake things up and embrace extremities until June 26. Jupiter takes a year to move through the sign of Cancer, so it will spend a longer time in each gate than the sun does- about 25-30 days in each gate.
I say this to highlight the fact that as we progress through Cancer season this year, we should pay special attention to the the micro-seasons of the gates as foreshadowing of things that may be expanded upon over the coming year.
Solstice Somatic Practice: Womb Bowl Breathing
Even if you don’t have a physical womb, you can connect with the energetic womb space—a symbolic center of intuition, regeneration, and creativity.
Find a quiet place to sit or lie down comfortably. Place one hand just below your navel (over your womb space) and the other on your heart.
Close your eyes. Begin to breathe deeply, imagining your lower belly as a warm, fluid bowl.
As you inhale, let your breath gently pour down into this bowl. Imagine it filling with golden light or moonlit water—whatever image nourishes you.
As you exhale, let any tension, fear, or excess heat melt into the Earth. Feel the bowl settle, cool, and ground.
Stay with this for several minutes, noticing what emotions or sensations arise. This is a space of ancient memory and future potential. Let yourself receive.
When you’re ready, take a moment to offer gratitude to your body for holding so much, and to the Earth for mirroring your cycles.
May this Solstice bless your soil. May Cancer season fill your vessel. May you feel held, nourished, and in rhythm with all that grows.
Thanks so much for reading, y’all.
Stay with the courage of your heart as we move through these extremes,
Alison
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