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CANCER The Fourth Sign

The Crab

Cold blooded and instinctive, dwelling in the watery depths in the safety of its shell.

Ruled by the Moon

Cardinal water, feminine / receptive

“I FEEL and I FLUCTUATE”

This 4th sign correlates with the 4th house.

The moon is accidentally dignified in this house.

Parts of body: stomach, breasts, solar plexus.

Concept: mothering, nurturing; emotional ebbing and flowing; home, foundations, roots. “I seek myself through what I feel.” Growth of the soul through the life-force, which is tenaciously nurtured and sustained. Emotional and instinctual subconscious activity, indirect emotional “reasoning,” reflective/sentimental feelings [the Moon reflects], need for a home and security, collective family-oriented instincts.

Qualities: emotional, sensitive, fluctuating moods, instinctive and/or indirect responses; family-oriented, nurturing, caring, mothering; security-minded, tenacious, possessive. Business and executive talent.

Liabilities: over-emotional, insecure, dependent, low energy, clannish, too self-protective, moody, impressionable, psychic sponges.

Need to learn: to live in present, to find one's inner centre and function from there; becoming secure and overcoming fearful emotions.

Handling Cancers: let them quiet down before trying to approach them. Gently win their trust.

KEYWORDS

emotional

security

nurturing

mothering

dependency

clan

family

sensitive

private

protective

canny

organised

possessive

business sense

timid

understanding

compassionate

domestic

absorption

fluctuating moods

hoarding

What sorts of consumers are Cancers? They like good locks and good food, and things for the home.

How is Cancer capable?

They have excellent instincts, a good heart and are canny managers. Their need for security makes them good at saving for a rainy day.

How is Cancer cardinal?

They combine initiative or action with their nurturing instincts. They will push for family solidarity and protect their kin fiercely. They are active in business and take initiatives to ensure security.

Cancer psychology

Caner is changeable and often moody. Security is a huge issue, and whether or not they feel threatened has a lot to do with how nurturing they are able to be at a particular time. They tend to manipulate so that people stay around them and attend to them. They are terriers if they are determined to do something. Nurture of others is a strong instinct, Cancers often wind up as parent figures at work or in the community.

Mythic Cancer

Thetis

The story of the sea goddess Thetis describes some of Cancer's typical issues. It was said that any son of Thetis would be greater than his father – so no god would dare to have children with her. Although beautiful and appealing, she had to be content to marry a mortal.

Peleus was this mortal. They had 7 sons together. Thetis couldn't bear the thought of them dying as mortals, so in one of the grislier acts of mythology, she systematically went about burning off all their flesh, in the notion that her children would be immortalised in the process.

At the very end of her treachery, when she was burning the last son, Achilles – the enraged father discovered his wife's deeds and took a firm grasp of Achilles' ankle, pulling him away from Thetis. Peleus's fingers kept Achilles' heel from burning, and this still-mortal flesh remained as a weakness in the later hero. [In a different version: Thetis dipped Achilles in the river Styx for immortality, and held him by the heel.]

In applying this myth, we observe that the children of Cancer parents are often expected to become ‘olympian' or immortal – even if it destroys them in the process. Cancers often prefer to excel through others. Liz Greene says Cancers who do not produce children may turn this expectation on their own creativity, and find that anything not actually divine is ‘foul.' [Astrology of Fate, pp 201-3, Weiser]

Herakles and the Crab

In another Greek myth, we see the great hero Herakles as he is given the task of slaying the hideous and venomous Hydra, the monster of the swamps. Hera, the wife of Jupiter, hates Herakles because she fears that he may usurp her, and she also believes him to be the issue of one of Zeus' many paramours.

Hera sets about undermining him by placing an enormous crab in the water, - one that nips at Herakles' heels and nearly costs him his victory and his life. Eventually Herakles crushes the crab underfoot and lifts the Hydra into the light, causing its death.

Hera honours the crab for its efforts by placing it in the heavens as the constellation of Cancer.

This myth brings up the dark undermining attitude of the mother who wishes to retain control, and the fight that many children must wage to gain their autonomy against manipulation.

The Mother

Cancer in general is mythologised by all mother tales: the great mother who bears the life-force.

Again according to Liz Greene, [ibid] the dark face of this daimon is the overpowering mother-bond which paralyses both man and woman, and binds them in such a way that individual potential drowns. This is the archetypal Terrible Mother who would rather destroy a child than let him be free.

The light face of the mother carries the potential to midwife the images of the unconscious. The waters of Cancer are the uterine waters of the mother, the nourishing life-substance. The issue of separation from the mother is a monumental rite of passage in Cancer's life, and it must be done not once but many times, on many different levels.

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