Pleasure in a Time of Perplexity
On the Summer Solstice, the Full Moon in Capricorn, and letting myself be vulnerable about my new book
As we find ourselves again at one of the hinges of the year, the Summer Solstice, (or Litha, as the witches call it) the liminal space around us blurs into a new shape. We enter this season via the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Drenched in the Sun until deep into the evening, we move into a lunar season through a solar doorway.
The Sun and Moon, the bodies astrologers call “the lights,” guide us through the next few months, first turning us deeply inward during Cancer season, when our tuning fork is the Moon. The Sun enters Cancer at 4:51 pm ET on Thursday, June 20th. This can be a time of vulnerability and longing, but also magic: a time for spells and rituals and the kind of antics that sprites and spirits get into during Shakespearean comedies. After our month-long lunar tuning, Leo season beckons us to feel our heat, to create and magnetize and glow. This is when we can sense into our vitality and let it photosynthesize our souls. It is precisely this preliminary inward gaze that helps us to exit our shells come late July and August.
Leo season is when my new book will meet the world (on July 30th, to be precise). I’m hyper-aware of what it means to release a book about pleasure into a world in deep pain; I’ve been thinking about this non-stop since last October. I hope that Sex and Your Stars: A Sexologist’s Guide to the Erotic Energy of the Zodiac will meet you at a moment when you’re ready to release shame and grief and surrender into the pleasure of living in a body, and all the wonder that miracle can bestow. Sensuality, ecstasy, connection, simple somatic awareness, partnership, shame-shedding, sexual sovereignty, novelty, desire, true love, new erotic self-discoveries — when you get my book in your hot little hands you can begin to experience some or all of this: solo or with a partner or partners.
If you haven’t already preordered the book, I’m humbly asking that you do so now, as it makes a WORLD of difference for authors like me. To entice you, I’m offering a 10 percent discount off all sessions, including my signature Erotic Energy Mapping session when you preorder and submit your receipt. As an awesome bonus, you’ll be automatically entered to win a FREE reading with me after you preorder, even if you’re not ready to book a discounted reading. But note: that 10 percent off option will remain for a year from the date of purchase, so any time you’re ready to book, you can redeem it with your preorder receipt.
And a DOUBLE BONUS (like a double rainbow, but better): when you preorder the book, you’ll get a juicy excerpt of Sex and Your Stars ahead of publication, so you don’t have to wait until July 30th to envelop yourself in its pleasurable pages. Use this link to connect to your favorite retailer and to be entered in the draw for a free reading.
This is all to say that I’m allowing myself to lean into the vulnerability of Cancer season, with Venus and Mercury having already entered this cardinal water sign a few days ago. When we unpack the archetypes of Cancer, we imagine mothers and wombs and the umbilicals that attach us to our past. This is a time of gestation that offers a meditation on the meaning of safety and security. Asking you, my dear readers and subscribers, to preorder this baby that I have gestated and grown — it’s vulnerable as fuck, especially because of the state of the world.
The day after the Summer Solstice there is a Full Moon at 1 degree of Capricorn square Neptune — the Strawberry Moon. This lunation arrives at 9:08 pm ET, the first of two Full Capricorn Moons — this is both uncommon and uncommonly potent. The second Full Moon in Capricorn takes place on July 21st at 29 degrees, taking us on an entire journey through the Capricorn-ruled house of our chart. This feels like a complete release, a chance to let go of the heaviest of burdens we’ve carried for the last six months. With Saturn stationing retrograde between these two lunations, we may be acutely aware of being weighed down with old responsibilities. Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn, often makes us unnecessarily Sisyphean. Sometimes a trauma response keeps us locked in our old bones, until we realize that the burden we’re carrying is just a story we tell ourselves about how we HAVE to carry it.
As the Summer Solstice unfurls into the Full Moon on Friday — what might feel like one long, languorous event, imagine what it would feel like to simply roll that boulder off your back, place it down on the floor next to you, and walk out of the room (or down the mountain, as it were).
In the Cancer chapter of Sex and Your Stars, I offer a ritual called “The Erotic Moon Gaze” that I shared in a recent podcast. It involves going outside on the night of a full or nearly Full Moon, allowing yourself to be vulnerable before it, and seeing where this takes your body and your desire. You may want to practice this during the next few days — if you do, please share how it felt (email me if it feels too personal or share in the comments here.)
Happy Solstice, lovers!