Happy Solstice 2024!

Happy Solstice! The Sun enters Cancer today at 20:51 UT/GMT, the high point of midsummer and longest day in the northern hemisphere. It has been celebrated since the Neolithic, with many stone circles built around the solstice Sun and midsummer traditions of lighting bonfires and celebrating the pivotal moment of maximum light. As a time of change, the solstice has gathered around it connotations of magic, a time when ordinary and non-ordinary worlds flow together.

Right now though we also have three planets ‘out of bounds’ – the Moon has just gone out of bounds, and Mercury and Venus have been so since 11th June. A planet is OOB when its declination is greater than the Sun’s maximum declination of 23 degs 27. So they are outside the jurisdiction of the Sun and therefore not ‘under control’ of the central, and centring, authority – they have broken away from the centre, creating a more volatile atmosphere. OOB planets are prone to challenging norms and breaking rules. Coinciding with the solstice, it suggests an image of the king reaching to assert authority but not quite managing it. So there is perhaps something to be learnt here about finding appropriate balance between control that ensures stability and continuity, and the questioning spirit of the renegade.

Talking of Neolithic locations involving the summer solstice, yesterday in the UK two protestors from Just Stop Oil sprayed orange powder paint all over the stones at Stonehenge – an interesting manifestation of the OOB energy of the moment.

The Moon is OOB until the 24th, Mercury the 28th and Venus the 29th June. Mercury and Venus will be interesting for anyone with planets in Cancer as they transit OOB over them in the coming days. It’s perhaps a time when we feel ourselves challenged by radical new ideas or feel a desire not to ‘play the game’ any longer – perhaps conscious of where something in our lives may have become overly conventional and in need of change.

- Carole Taylor