On this week's bill of festivities we have the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and, of course, the start of winter in the Southern. We also have the Sun's passage through the sign of Cancer, Mercury and Jupiter still together, and Mars's ingress into Gemini on the last day of the week.

The first degrees of Cancer, where the Sun now travels, signal the need to nourish and care for the areas of life that deserve the most attention, or for whatever depends on us and lies in our charge. Cancer is the house of the Moon, the luminary that nourishes and gathers in — and so the images that embody nourishment, sustenance and strengthening flourish in this place. Like the mother who feeds her child, the watering of a plant or a project in need of investment are forces that feed and give vigour to something that needs to grow.

Yet there is something darker here, for lack also grows, along with dissatisfaction and the anxiety of missing something. The child who is not nursed and cries, the young animal that cannot find its mother and collapses from weakness, the plant that withers for want of substance — the swing between moments of complete satisfaction and of frustration also shows us where we are most dependent, and who depends most on us.

It is also Jupiter's last week in Cancer, its place of exaltation: the greatest of the benefic forces set in the sign of care, an image of abundance that protects and overflows — the luminous reverse of lack. On 30 June it departs for Leo, and that generosity changes its tone.

The forces that bind us to something are the same that sustain the flow of the umbilical cord, securing the continuance of nourishment. Its interruption immediately weakens everything that is connected, and this is reflected in the various areas of life where we have the most impact and agency, as in relationships, whose bonds weaken if we show distance and disregard. We might even readily notice, given today's geopolitics, how the closing of a small strait in the Middle East can disturb the flow of resources and the markets on a global scale.

It will therefore be a good time to meditate on our dependencies, our addictions, or whatever most unsettles us in the absence of what sustains us and grants a full sense of personal satisfaction — where emotional intelligence will serve us, and where attention to the environment we are connected to reveals more than analysis.

As for the remaining ephemerides, we also have Mars's ingress into Gemini, intensifying the choleric tone in the areas that demand more sociability and the action of our intellectual side — expect tension in communication, conflicts of an airy nature, rumours and misunderstandings. This is also signalled by the slowness of Mercury, which will turn stationary, refusing to leave Cancer, where it will remain for a few more weeks. This ephemeris will be examined more closely later on.

At bottom, the whole week returns us to the same question: what do we feed, and what feeds us — and what weakens when the thread is drawn tight?