Planetary Overview:

Happy Summer Solstice and welcome to Cancer season! As the Sun sidesteps through the crab’s domain, it moves with caution and care. Cancer season offers a moment to pause, reflect, and take inventory of our internal landscapes—bonus points if this is done with a furrowed brow at water’s edge. We all know the common trope of Cancers being crybabies, but crying is literally just saltwater healing us. What could be more Cancerian than that? The Sun’s entrance into Leo on July 22nd sets the stage for a loving “honey roast” of Cancer season’s water works. Happy jesting!

Though much planetary activity is inherently temporal, this season is shaped by slower, more lasting shifts. On June 9th, Jupiter started its one year tour in the sign of its exaltation. Jupiter in Cancer brings the breath of life to whatever it touches, offering a milky balm for the wounds left earlier this year by Mars. Saturn entered Aries, the sign of its fall, in late May. Saturn, slow and cool, embodies discipline and restraint. Aries is hot, impulsive, and a little irreverent. This creates an incubator for frustration and necessitates rule-breaking to move forward. On July 7th, Uranus enters Gemini, breaking new ground. Uranus is the lightning bolt of insight, surprise, and rebellion. In Gemini, it supports innovative thinking, and can sometimes feel busy or frenetic. Both Saturn and Uranus will retrograde out of these signs later this year, but their brief stay offers valuable insight about multiple year cycles they’ll both begin in 2026.

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Aries Rising

Aries, does it feel as if your pilot light has gone out? With Saturn and Neptune transiting your first house, it can leave you feeling slowed down, frustrated, or disoriented. Look toward your root systems for relief and solace during this time. Jupiter’s presence in Cancer facilitates nourishment through home, family, and quiet respite. This month also offers a glimpse of longer-term relational changes affecting familiar spaces, communication, or your extended family.

Taurus Rising

The Sun is currently shining on immediate spatial community, siblings, and communication. Jupiter in Cancer breathes life into your local world offering opportunities for healing and comfort to be found in familiar surroundings. Find the literal or metaphorical watering hole in your neighborhood and fill your cup. Prepare for longer-term changes regarding life-sustaining resources. Patience is tested as you work through hidden, unprocessed feelings—a new cycle invites reckoning with old patterns of self-sabotage.

Gemini Rising

July is major for you, Gemini. From the 7th onward, opportunities for reinvention will present themselves. Allow fresh air to circulate as you invite curiosity and experimentation into your exploration of selfhood and identity. This year will also support healing your relationships with life-giving resources. Tension around communal aspirations may inspire one to ask, “Is the dream shared, or is that a glass ceiling above us?”

Cancer Rising

The Sun is illuminating the part of the chart that’s solely yours, and its currency is attention. Gentle care and presence toward Self are called for now. Jupiter supports this tender act bringing a year of hope and blessings to body, vitality, and overall outlook. After a rocky start to the year, allow yourself to float instead of grind. Draw on these glimmers of hope as you navigate existential questions addressing career and life direction, as well as insight into patterns of self-sabotage. 

Leo Rising

Cancer season casts light on parts of the Self that often remain elusive. Facing old, unprocessed feelings can feel isolating. An exalted Jupiter transiting your twelfth house can make this process less daunting. Taking inventory of this liminal terrain offers relief, even if you don’t sort everything out all at once. If you’re unpacking tension or disorientation around belief systems—fire divination offers support. As July unfolds, expect an influx of activity in your wider community and networks. 

Virgo Rising

This month offers an opportunity to take inventory of life behind-the-scenes. Introspection here brings clarity regarding ways you’re holding yourself back. Jupiter brings fertile ground to your social sphere—tend to those seeds and nurture wild dreams with your friends! Tensions arise around shared resources, requiring either surrender or new structure. After July 7th, pay attention to emerging clues about long-term changes taking shape in public life and careers.

Libra Rising

This time signals a yearlong period of growth as it relates to public image, legacy, and reputation. Earlier this year, adversity may have negatively colored this part of your chart. Now you have the chance not only to recover, but to step into greater visibility and positively reshape how you’ll be known and remembered. In interpersonal relationships, tension surfaces between union and boundaries. Revelations and departures from long-standing beliefs are revealed by mid-July. Old dogs can learn new tricks.

Scorpio Rising

An opportunity for world building and expansion is unfolding over the next 12 months—travel, higher learning, or a spiritually nourishing practice are just a few examples of how this growth can take shape. Nourishing this part of your life supports a rosier disposition when looking at the energy of the world right now. This is a period when sacrifices need to be made in support of sustainable, long-term health. Previews of deeper changes developing around shared resources, trust, and intimacy deserve attention. 

Sagittarius Rising

A year to focus on the hidden and heavy themes of life is upon you, Sagittarius. This includes situations involving shared resources, emotional intimacy, and material/energetic inheritance. Though intense, there’s potential for relief via financial or emotional support. This requires an openness toward vulnerability, and receiving help. Simultaneous creative blockage and inspiration are cycles to be aware of; can making something help ease that tension? Beginning July 7th, note surprising shifts in relationship dynamics. 

Capricorn Rising

Have home, ancestry, or private life been beckoning you, Capricorn? This signals a slow rebuilding of your foundation. Disillusionment around family structures or upbringing points toward a need to break ancestral cycles and deviate from long-standing norms in your lineage. Jupiter offers myriad blessings to interpersonal connections over the next year. Note restlessness in day-to-day work as deeper changes are beginning to unfold in this part of your life.

Aquarius Rising

In the last month, have you experienced disillusionment or distance regarding siblings, immediate community, or communication? Patience and clear dialogue are key as you work to recalibrate. Jupiter begins a yearlong stay in the part of your chart governing unseen labor—this bodes well for overall health and burnout relief. Beginning July 7th, become curious about new desires and modes of experiencing joy. 

Pisces Rising

A one-year period of creative fertility has begun. During this time, focus on nurturing and healing your sense of self expression. Get realistic about whether your financial and energetic resources are being allocated sustainably, and create structure if things feel vague. A gentle shaking of the foundation begins in your private life and home signaling a longer story beginning to unfurl.

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Kenzie Ballew is a consulting astrologer and Portland School of Astrology alum. Utilizing her nearly two-decades of astrological study, she offers one-on-one astrological services through her practice, heavy water astrology. She’s currently pursuing her masters in counseling with plans to integrate astrology into her therapeutic practices.

Kath Spilker is an artist and tattooer living and working on Duwamish land in Seattle, WA. Find more of their work on Instagram.