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Zodiac Sign
Cancer:
Reflections
of the Heart
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters
of Life's longing for itself.
- Kahlil Gibran
Before we gaze at the zodiac sign Cancer, let's look back at
the past for a moment... In the three previous zodiac sign articles, we
explored and examined the cycles of the Sun and Moon as they trace
circles around the Earth.
Of course, the Earth really orbits the Sun,
but from our perspective, we see an illusion in which the Sun seems to
travel around our centre. ("Geo-centrism�ain't that just like a human...?")
As the Sun travels through the zodiac, the Moon travels
around the Earth (this time it's for real). As the Moon circles
toward and away from the Sun side of the Earth, our view of the
Sun's light reflecting on the Moon's surface changes (see
diagram below).
 We see these changes as the waxing and waning
of the Moon's phases. This brings an important point: the Moon
has no light of her own. She can only reflect the light that's
given to her. This quality of reflection is a central factor in
the Cancer archetype.
The rational Gemini self-awareness leads
readily into Cancer's intuitive self-reflection and its
personalized, feeling-based assessment of life. 
To Laugh, To Cry
In the zodiac sign of Cancer, we enter the
world of emotions and feelings (�"Feeeelings! ...Nothing more than...
Feelings!"�) as well as needs,
intuition and the ability to bond with another human being. After the
rational world of Gemini, we now enter the realm of the non-rational�
not necessarily irrational, but that which does not adhere to
conventional logic or cause-and-effect.
It is said that feelings
can be boiled down to four basic emotions: Mad, Sad, Glad and Afraid.
Think of a feeling and you'll be able to fit it into at least one of
these four basic categories. Feeling splendiferous? Another word for
Glad. Feeling apprehensive? Kind of like Afraid. Feeling depressed? Sad.
Feeling frustrated? Sounds like Mad. ("Sounds like crabby, Cancer!")
This feeling stuff sounds
pretty straightforward and simple, right? Not! To many of us,
feelings are uncharted territory or a treacherous obstacle course! Like
the ebb and flow of the tides, feelings can sometimes make us feel cast
adrift through inner space. It may be easier to avoid feelings and
approach life from a rational perspective, disdaining feelings as weak,
unimportant or illusionary.
On the other hand, to someone fluent in the language of
feeling, it is the stuff of poetry, song, art and love. Feelings
connect us to our world in a very personal, creative way. Deny
an emotionally-based person (e.g., a Cancerian) the ability to
feel, and you remove all connection to their personal centre.
Add Water And Stir...
From Aries through Cancer,
we experience all four elements: Fire (Aries), Earth (Taurus), Air
(Gemini) and Water (Cancer). These constitute the four basic realms of
human experience: inspiration (Fire), physical reality (Earth), the mind
(Air) and the heart (Water).
In nature, water has no shape of its own,
no taste or colour. It needs other materials to be observed. Pour it
into a container (like a bowl or a lake bed) and it takes on a shape.
Flavour it with a substance, and it can be tasted. Toss a rock into it
or reflect light off it, and it can be seen. ("Me, I like splashing in the puddles!")
Feelings and emotions are
like invisible forces made perceptible by external events that cause
internal ripples. Our feeling state can be affected by internal
psychological dynamics (like water flowing over a rock in its own
stream). Our feeling state includes emotions, but also includes the
intuitive senses. You can have a "feeling" about something without
necessarily having an emotional response to it.
In Water, we have both
intuitive and emotional feelings. As children, we are very
open. We freely express our emotions, from delight to contentment to
primal rage. We learn to consciously identify our feelings by observing
how we react to various situations and sensations. Does this taste good?
Does that hurt? ("Kid-talk: Goo-goo! Ga-ga!")
As we mature, we develop a more complex repertoire of feelings.
("Adult-talk: Going ga-ga! And they say
there's intelligent life on Earth....")
Our first experience of
being emotionally affected by others is our family-of-origin, initially
by the mother or mother-figure. Whether we experienced our childhood as
nurturing, supportive and safe, or as painful, erratic and
dysfunctional, our internal emotional growth tends to take on the shape
of the environment in which it grew (like water).
It is here we first
learn how to nurture and be nurtured, to bond and be separate, to be an
individual and yet be part of a larger whole (the family)�for better or
for worse! Unconscious dynamics which are passed down from generation to
generation also have their roots in Cancer and the 4th house.
Hence, Cancer also governs
family, childhood, mother, our ancestry, and the past in general. I
believe Cancer also contains the most basic dynamics of the Inner Child
(shared with Leo; more about that in the Leo article). ("Don't leave me hanging! I want my
Mommy!!!")
The Significant Other
Our childhood family also
furnishes our first relationship with "The Other." As infants, we learn
to bond with another person (usually the mother first) and later begin
to distinguish between where we stop and others begin. ("That's easy�do you know anyone
else with feathers AND hair?")
Our initial symbiosis with the mother-figure, combined with our
subsequent ability to separate ourselves, matures into a capacity for
empathy.
Many of us had childhood experiences which blocked the full
growth of these skills, resulting in difficulty with boundaries and
over- or under-extending ourselves in adult relationships. The roots of
our needs and behaviours in adult relationships are found deep in our
Cancerian past.
The archetypes of Aries,
Taurus and Gemini form the foundation of the Self in its own right.
Although Gemini brings us a conceptual experience of others
(through information and environment), Cancer involves an
experiential, deeply personal encounter with others. In the
progression through the signs of Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio and
Sagittarius, we will further explore our encounter with "The Other."
("Oh horse-feathers! She's gonna leave us hanging
again!")
For now, in Cancer, it is enough to return to our roots and
past to discover the dynamics which enabled us to grow into the
person we are today. If we try to go forward without knowing
where we came from, we risk becoming aimless, reckless and
disconnected.
� 1996, 2004,
2005 Wendy Guy. All rights reserved. Reprinted
with permission from Transitions
Astrology Newsletter, Gemini-Cancer-Leo 1996 Issue. |
