Over the past month, we have witnessed an awakening: not just an awakening to the realities of racial violence that Black people have been experiencing for hundreds of years, but also an awakening to the power of mass mobilization for social change. Cities and school districts are defunding the police. Voters are supporting progressive Black and brown candidates in key congressional races. And, perhaps most exciting of all, communities are creating new forms of autonomous mutual aid, demonstrating that another world IS possible.

Of course, rebellion is not the same thing as revolution, as Cornel West has pointed out. The question remains: will this moment lead to lasting social change?

Astrologically speaking, it’s a definitive MAYBE. We are definitely at an important turning point. Saturn (planet of social structures and rules), which moved into the unpredictable, freedom-loving sign of Aquarius in March, is about to retrograde back into Capricorn on July 1 until December 17. This means that over the next six months we will be reflecting on our current social structures and policies. For some, it will certainly mean an opportunity to attempt to reassert traditional forms of power and authority. But this period could also provide the chance to reject those power structures in order to build something new, especially with Saturn moving into Aquarius in December of 2020 where it will spend the next two and a half years. The question is: which path will we choose?

Meanwhile, the sun has moved from the outgoing air sign of Gemini into the nurturing waters of Cancer, signaling an energetic shift inward. The invitation of Cancer, which rules the 4th house of home, is to turn our attention toward getting our own house in order. This means doing the deeply difficult work of investigating our own investments in the institutions and culture of white supremacy.

For white folks, this means actually reckoning with the wounding we have caused to others (even if inadvertently). My partner and I recently found a dead bird on our porch, who had evidently flew into one of our windows. It was upsetting, as is the preventable death of an innocent creature, especially when witnessed up close. Was it our fault the bird died? Not exactly. We didn’t build the house, after all. We didn’t choose to put the windows there. We could blame the architect of the house — or the people who built it. Or even the entire building industry. We could rationalize, and say "oh well, it was one bird." But that doesn’t change the fact that we have a dead creature on our porch. And we have the choice to push it away and numb ourselves, or to truly grieve it, take responsibility for our part in its death, and take action to prevent it from happening again. And yes, we did dig a grave in our yard to honor the bird, and we are now going to install screens on all our windows which turns out to be a super easy solution that prevents bird collisions. By the way, in doing the work to figure out how to take action, I learned that up to ONE BILLION birds die every year by hitting windows. And this isn’t just giant skyscrapers: 44% of those deaths are buildings that are 3 stories or less. These are for the most part preventable — the problem, of course, is that no one is aware, and/or they don’t care enough.

Sound familiar?

Unlike people of color, white people have a choice. We have the choice to look away, to numb ourselves, to rationalize, to ignore. But it’s also important to realize that from a spiritual perspective, it is not healthy to numb yourself against the spectacle of violence and oppression, nor is it healthy to remain silent and therefore allow that violence and oppression to continue.

Here’s a secret: racism hurts white people too. This is absolutely not to diminish the vast and horrific material and psychic suffering of people of color who of course bear the brunt of racial oppression. But in return for a share in what George Lipsitz terms the "possessive investment in whiteness," European immigrants didn’t just have to give up their native cultures, their languages, and their ways of dress. They also had to acquiesce to the injustice and violence being perpetrated in the name of whiteness. And in so doing, they denigrated their own humanity. We are born into a culture that teaches us that our innate love of our fellow humans (and nonhuman animals!) is somehow wrong, undesirable, even shameful. When we try to speak out, we are shushed, and we learn quickly that the path of least resistance involves staying silent about the injustice we encounter in our lives. We numb ourselves, we come up with narratives to excuse the very real evidence of material inequality that we see in front of us. And we, in turn, impose this silence on our children — not out of malice, but because we replicate the patterns we are taught.

Racial oppression is a horcrux. And we have all participated in creating it (yes #allwhitepeople), even if we didn’t realize we were doing it. And that means we all have a responsibility to destroy it, not only because it is harming so many others, but because it is harming us too.

So, how do we destroy it? First off: commit actual hours of your life to doing the work. The card for this month is the Eight of Pentacles. Aka JUST. DO. THE. WORK. In the Wild Unknown tarot by Kim Krans, this card is depicted as a spider weaving its web. This work is not necessarily glamorous. It is often rather mundane. But it is one hundred percent critical for our survival. It can’t be put off for another, more convenient time. The time is now. So take a few minutes to think about what it would look like to make a daily, weekly, and/or monthly commitment to doing this work. Could you dedicate 10 minutes a day? Could you dedicate an hour on the weekends? Be realistic, and be ready to adapt. In the coaching biz, we recommend setting goals that are a stretch, but ultimately achievable. Overestimating the amount of time you can spend on something is the perfect recipe for getting discouraged after you fail to meet your goal the first few times, and abandoning the task altogether.

So, you have a concrete number of minutes/hours. Now it’s time to come up with a list of what types of things you might do during this time as part of your work to dismantle white supremacy, and then PUT THAT SHIT IN YOUR CALENDAR. I find it helpful to distinguish between three types of work:

Education: dedicate specific hours per week to actually reading those books you ordered, watching those documentaries you’ve bookmarked, and listening to those podcasts you’ve saved. You’re not going to be able to absorb it all at once, but if you set aside a specific time (Thursday evening for documentary viewing! Sunday afternoon for book club!) that will help you incorporate educational activities into your weekly schedule in a sustainable way.
Action: Not to be confused with education! Action means actually doing something concrete to fight white supremacy and uplift movements for racial justice. Examples: going to protests, volunteering your time with an organization, writing/calling your reps, participating in campaigns to defund the police, creating an anti-racism working group at your workplace, Redistributing resources is important here, but it’s also about more than simply donating money. Consider: do you believe in reparations? Are you practicing reparations? How could you work toward meaningful redistribution of wealth on a large scale?
Personal growth: The thing we usually completely ignore, which not coincidentally is the key to actual transformation. As adrienne marie brown writes, “it is deeply personal work to relinquish white supremacy.” Please watch Sonya Renee Taylor break down the task for "unmelanated peoples of European descent" (which, by the way, I hope becomes an official Census designation) to disinvest from whiteness.

A lot of us are good at #1 and even #2 but we stop short of practicing #3. Because it sucks. I’m not going to lie, it is 100% easier and more comfortable to avoid confronting your own role in the horrific injustices that happen every day to people of color under white supremacy. But it’s Cancer season, friends. It’s time to care enough. It’s time to care a LOT. Even though it’s painful. Even though it’s difficult. And because it will inevitably be painful AND difficult, it is equally important to be compassionate with ourselves in this process. Meditation teacher Tara Brach has a lovely 40-minute talk on this topic that I highly recommend. And this leads me to my final recommendation: after you complete one of the antiracist tasks in your calendar, find a way to show yourself some gratitude and appreciation. Because ultimately, we need to transform the painful difficult work of unlearning white supremacy into a meaningful experience that we feel grateful for. That is, unless you want to give up after the first bird hits the window.

Neuroscience tells us that we are hardwired to go into "fight or flight" mode when we encounter a threat. And the thing is, our limbic systems aren’t terribly nuanced. They were designed to keep us alive, but not necessarily to help us evolve. This means that they can’t easily distinguish the feeling of discomfort and identity threat that arises when we are examining our own complicity in racial oppression from say, the feeling of discomfort and identity threat that arises when we meet a bear in the woods. The trick is to learn how to differentiate productive feelings of discomfort that are linked to our own evolution (including, but not limited to: grief over the ongoing violation of the humanity of Black people, grief over the historical violence our ancestors participated in, remorse about our own actions or lack thereof, etc) from unproductive feelings of discomfort (e.g. never-ending shame spirals, anxieties about what other people think about us, fear of coming across as racist or ignorant). And one of the best ways to condition our minds to embrace productive discomfort is to associate it with something positive. I’m not talking about giving yourself a cookie every time you do something antiracist (although, you know what, if that’s what it takes, sure, go for it). I mean taking some time to offer yourself compassion and gratitude for this work. This might be as simple as sitting for a few minutes with your hand over your heart and allowing whatever emotions come up to be there, without judging yourself. Maybe it involves taking a walk or taking a bath or listening to your favorite album with a glass of wine. If you want a little more guidance, try doing a loving kindness (metta) guided meditation (here’s one by the aforementioned Tara Brach).

Practicing self care is even more important given that the challenge for this month is The Devil. Of course it is. We are in desperate need of a collective exorcism right about now. And while this is often an unwelcome card, it holds important medicine for this moment. Because the Devil is only too willing to sabotage our best efforts, either by ensnaring us in shame spirals that keep us from taking meaningful action, or by inviting us into our old patterns of numbing. The Devil says "ugh, do you really want to watch another depressing documentary about racism? Maybe you should binge the new season of Queer Eye instead." And, if you’re like me, this is a seductive path. (By the way, as soon as we finish bingeing Queer Eye, we head straight into the shame spiral. You guessed it: not productive!)

And just to be clear, I’m not here to police anyone’s bingeing habits. But I do recommend creating some awareness around those habits, and being extra aware of the pull toward numbing/shame spirals. (And by the way, if you are already on track with your antiracist calendar items for the week, you get to binge whatever the f*ck you want with NO shame!) The important thing to remember with the Devil is that we are not inherently evil for preferring escapism to the reality of engaging with our own complicity in racial violence. We can acknowledge that of course doing this work brings up big feels that we are in no way equipped to process, and of course it triggers a fight or flight response. How could it not? And sometimes we will choose escapism, and that’s only human. The task is to meet ourselves with kindness and compassion in this process, to allow ourselves to be imperfect and make mistakes, and to show gratitude to ourselves as we continue to show up.

Last weekend’s solar eclipse occurred just 1 degree away from the North Node in Gemini, which suggests that fates are changing. We have the opportunity to rewrite history; we have the opportunity to envision a new future altogether. Cancer season says: let this future be nurturing. Let it be full of care. And no, this doesn’t mean exchanging killer cops for social workers, who as Dorothy Roberts reminds us are just as complicit in harassing and policing families of color. When all of our systems are broken, we have to start from scratch. We have to dream up new ways of being. Let us give the police departments to the grandmas, as Junauda Petrus writes so beautifully:

If you up to mischief, they will pick you up swiftly in their sweet ride and look at you until you catch shame and look down at your lap. She asks you if you are hungry and you say "yes" and of course you are. She got a crown of dreadlocks and on the dashboard you see brown faces like yours, shea buttered and loved up.

And there are no precincts.

Just love temples, that got spaces to meditate and eat delicious food. Mangoes, blueberries, nectarines, cornbread, peas and rice, fried plantain, fufu, yams, greens, okra, pecan pie, salad and lemonade.

Things that make your mouth water and soul arrive.

All the hungry bellies know warmth, all the children expect love. The grandmas help you with homework, practice yoga with you and teach you how to make jamabalaya and coconut cake. From scratch.

When your sleepy she will start humming and rub your back while you drift off. A song that she used to have the record of when she was your age. She remembers how it felt like to be you and be young and not know the world that good. Grandma is a sacred child herself, who just circled the sun enough times into the ripeness of her cronehood.

She wants your life to be sweeter.

What if we lived in a world where the authority figures in our lives were primarily concerned with making our lives sweeter? Seriously, though. Can you even imagine it? Because we have to imagine it. If we have any hope of enacting it. What future do you dream of? And do you have the courage to fight for it?

July Tarotscopes

Please take what serves and leave the rest! Be sure to read both your sun and moon sign.

Aries — Page of Pentacles

You are starting a new chapter of your journey. It’s time to reach even higher — the unattainable is becoming attainable. As you prepare, it’s important to check in with yourself and stay grounded in your own embodied experience.

Taurus — Four of Wands

It’s hard to feel like celebrating at the moment, but everyone needs joy and pleasure in their life. Especially Tauruses. Do your work and then give yourself the gift of enjoyment. You are not serving yourself or anyone else if you refuse to enjoy the blessings in your life.

Gemini — The Chariot

You are feeling the cardinal energy of Cancer this month, and with the North Node in your sign you are ready to make some big moves. Be sure that you have a solid support structure in place. Just because you’re driving the chariot doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask for the support and resources you need.

Cancer — Ace of Pentacles

What can you nurture this month? What seeds can you plan with this new moon and how can you tend them? Caretaking is essential work. And it begins with ourselves. What would it look like if you treated yourself with the same care that you treat your loved ones?

Leo — The Sun rx

Something is blocking you from fully stepping into your power. Hint: it’s internal, not external. Sometimes, in order to step into the light we have to work with the shadows. How can you make space in your life for both?

Virgo — Four of Cups

This is a moment to be very critical of the choices you are being offered. For instance, those who would have us accept police reforms do not understand that the system itself is fundamentally unethical. It’s time to put your discerning judgement to work. Don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions. Don’t be afraid to say no to something if it’s not in alignment for you.

Libra — The Hanged One

Because you care deeply about fairness and justice, you are likely feeling compelled to take some action. But before you can act, you must learn how to be with the discomfort. Focus on being present with everything that is coming up for you, and trust that it is only by working through this discomfort that you will discover what action you need to take.

Scorpio — Three of Wands rx

Your plans for the future are on hold, if not completely upended. Your task this month is to learn how to embrace uncertainty. The future is fundamentally unknowable. The sooner we accept that fact, the sooner we will be able to let go of our grip on the future and fully experience the present.

Sagittarius — Knight of Swords rx

What journeys (physical and/or metaphysical) do you feel blocked from at the moment? You are feeling a sense of urgency but in fact, the only way to figure out where you’re going is to pause and reflect. If you’re not able to move as fast as you want to right now, can you use this time instead to examine what beliefs might be holding you back from where you’re meant to go?

Capricorn — Nine of Swords rx

You are on the verge of a breakthrough, but your brain is consumed by fear. Remember that thoughts and feelings are not always true, and that expansion is always accompanied by contraction. Give yourself some compassion and take the time to sort out the mess in your head; you won’t be able to get anything else done until you do.

Aquarius — Four of Pentacles rx

You have been focused on the ideals and values you believe in, but don’t forget that we all rely on material resources to sustain us. This card asks you to pause and check in: what does your body need right now? What practices can you put in place to ensure that you are taking care of all parts of yourself?

Pisces — Seven of Wands

It’s clear. You have to take a stand. There is no neutral. It’s time to pick a side and find the courage to fight for what you truly believe in. To stand up. To speak out. What does courage look like for you? What is one courageous thing you could do today? Start small, and dream big. We each have an important role to play.

Doing the work: Astrology for racial justice

July Tarotscopes

After RBG

No Justice, No Peace: Resist, Rebel, Revolt