Summer in the Cloister

Image - Castlelass / Starfish going with the flow...

Cancer season is traditionally a time for reunions, spinning yarns, and nesting.  It's a good time to grow stronger in your own blood and soil -- the power of your ancestry, and if you're lucky, a sense of place where you were raised.  This is an antidote to the throwaway culture that bops from one drama to the next.  

Dig deep!  I plan to get back to my story, one that I've been working on since mid-April, but that is in danger of dying from neglect.  This is a month for nurturing those creative babies, and real ones.  I've got lots of babies in my aviary -- 3 mockingbirds, a grackle and a mourning dove.  

And just in time, I have a family vacation to St. Augustine planned to meet up with family.   It's the oldest city in America and has had five flags (five nations), almost as many as Texas, which has had six flags.  

This makes me think of that word nation, and its etymology, from nasci, to 'be born."  

​nation (n.) 
c. 1300, from Old French nacion "birth, rank; descendants, relatives; country, homeland" (12c.) and directly from Latin nationem (nominative natio) "birth, origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe," literally "that which has been born," from natus, past participle of nasci "be born" (Old Latin gnasci), from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups.

We're heading toward America's birthday, July 4th, which is also my birthday (!), and I reflect on this question, "what is a nation?"  What kinds of societies come from globalism, and what kind come from preserving those unique regional cultures or nations?  

Astro-wise, Mars in Cancer (June 4th to July 20th), and this means the motivation is toward the very personal, and what naturally flows out of your emotional and ancestral history.  

The Sun goes into the sign of the Crab on the 20th, then Mercury on the 21st.