hello loves. that cancer season was a doozy, wasn’t she? that full moon on the 13th almost took me out. let’s close out by reflecting a bit on the energy of cancer, shall we?
and if you love this and want to show me some love, please feel free to do so <3
Finishing with the first iterations of the elements,
we have water’s sky guide, Cancer,
water is mystical, a portal, an incubator
water cleanses and refreshes, water tends to life,
allows sound to travel, reverberates and amplifies noise, or, when submerged, absorbs it altogether
water, that which reflects light, brings about its brilliance, and reveals its full spectrum
Cancer, not merely water, but cardinal water,
bursting forth with a force, a mission, an intention
to support, to hold up, to sustain as the root of an endeavor
imagine the water seeping into a root system of a grandmother willow, keeping her and all she houses alive and well and sheltered
Cancer is known by some as the mother of the zodiac after all,
and to sit or stand or gaze upon the precipice of waters’ beginning feels always, to me, a great privilege, almost as if I’m a co-conspirator with mother nature
have you ever been at that sacred break, where to your left there’s clear skies, and to your right there’s rain? Or perhaps the other way around
have you stood at the top or the base of a surging waterfall or witnessed the rush or quiet of a river where it meets the ocean? experienced the force or release of a cloud burst in a tropical rainforest?
Therein lies the magic a of cardinal water, the physical manifestation of Cancer’s power
Cancer is also in the tears that sprout from our eyes when we love or care or feel so much that our body simply cannot hold it all inside.
Water is where we source the depth of our compassion.
La Marr Jurelle Bruce defines radical compassion in How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind (thanks to Q for sending this my way) as
a will to care for, a commitment to feel with, a striving to learn from, and an openness to be vulnerable before a precarious other
the word precarious does a lovely amount of work here, as it contends with one of the more sinister turns of the concept of compassion,
as those with stolen power or whiteness or wealth want it to be surged in their direction in order to maintain their stolen power through whiteness or wealth and the like, but no
there is nothing radical in soothing the sallow whims of your oppressors children, though they may whine and wail for it
now if the others you’re facing,
the others you’ve noted, through the Gemini experience of talking and watching and walking your neighborhood with the purpose of understanding,
if they are others in a position of precarity, well then there’s wondrous potential for accessing water’s assuasive attributes
and now that we’re through with the scavenging of Gemini, it’s time to take what we’ve learned and gathered
and fashion it together into a nest
that nest can take many different forms –
home, for one
Cancer, depicted in the stars as the crab,
known for burrowing into little holes along the coast, and walking the ocean floor
reminding us of the safety found in shelter and the comfort found in the dark depths of that which we know
finding and discarding homes when need be,
and yet taking neither safety nor security for granted,
for the crab has their pincers for good reason:
Cancer is a fighter, a defender
a fighter for their home, which they will not allow to be taken easily,
for love, which comes in a variety of forms,
and ultimately for maintenance of a soft underbelly.
Ruled by the moon, queen of the night sky and the waters of the earth,
there’s always tides to turn, vulnerability to value, souls to shine light on,
feelings to fight for, waters to test
family is also a nest to return to
and more specifically, a mother, and therefore also a grandmother
(who holds the knowledge of the lineage, another, deeper Cancerian nest)
who remembers, consciously or otherwise, both her grandmother (and great, great grandmothers) before her and carries their wisdom onto her grandchildren (and great, great grandchildren) who come after her
I think of the moon as our collective grandmother,
memory (yes, another nest) lives with the moon, she remembers all that occurs beneath her night and holds it as she hastily makes her way through the skies.
When she returns home to her Cancerian nest, she parses through all that she’s collected on her journey around the zodiac, around the earth
leaves it at home, piled into messy stacks, an order nonsensical to any but her, and in a matter of hours, charges forward again,
the moon is ever-shifting, in form and sign and color and light,
and so there’s an ache for familiarity in Cancer, some stability to offset all this inescapable quick and constant change
In astrology, the moon represents the body, another type of nest
as well as a satellite to your essence, reflection of your being, hunk of matter that matters, so very much, to life
and matter that, too, changes little by little all the time.
Aging every day, growing larger and smaller, becoming more and less able, shedding and integrating, responding and reacting to any and all matter that comes into contact with it
Cancer is a reminder that the body is our first home,
initially incubated in the wombs of our mothers, made up so much of water, and ultimately in the flesh of our own unique forms, made up, still, of so much water.
In fact, the womb, the stomach, the chest and breasts all fall under Cancer’s realm
the realm of nourishing, a matter of (potential) providing
breast milk, womb, placenta, all parts that do with nourishment that is inherent, sourced from within, life-giving
is not simply giving parts of yourself, but ultimately offering the whole of your body, time, energy, being to another,
and should, and I do not use shoulds lightly, be an enthusiastically embodied experience.
Anything but gives way to problems in the delicate balance of homeostasis and does not lend itself well to sustainability
as beautiful and powerful as it may be, birthing is also sacrificial, an irreversible and demanding responsibility.
Personally, I’m terrified of such an undertaking.
Cancer brings us to the section of the zodiac that does not only engage with relationality, but encourages the experience of centering another, considering another over our self,
either forever or for however fleeting a moment,
as Cancer is also a matter of somatic memory, and the offering of oneself a metaphysical process I imagine all of us have experienced in some form or another
the way the body holds memories of your mother and their (m)others before them,
Cancer knows that in between the bones we are made up of many others, some of whom we’ve never even met and will never know
elucidating the sensitivity of the sign,
sensitive not (only) in the way of proclivity for an emotional response, but sensitivity meaning that the body knows
and so to be able to hear and feel those ofttimes subtle sensations and vibrations, either externally or internally sourced,
why it’s a skill and sometimes a burden and annoyingly discounted by many and at the worst possible times
and yet, sensitivity is a gift, a practice, a language
one of my fave insights I’ve heard of Cancer recently came from Black feminist astrologer djenneba in a lovely reading I had with them, part of a collection of redistributed readings for queer Black baddies in honor of ~pride month~ and Juneteenth.
she said that Cancer’s only gonna hold what Cancer wants to hold, and I said, sister if that ain’t the truth (or something like that)
because Cancer will let a thing or two slip through those lil pincers if need be,
a situation, a feeling, a person, a responsibility that was once a home of sorts (or perhaps a literal home, too) essentially affixed to their body can be cast aside at the drop of a…shell?
work with me
but if it no longer suits their needs, or hits that sweet spot of fulfillment, or if their inner knowing lets them know it’s simply time to move on—
the corresponding tarot card ain’t The Chariot for nothin.
One of the powers in Cancer is choosing who and what to love
the how of it all tends to be linked to the mothering and lineage
but the rest, the messy shit that lingers whether you like it or not, that’s for the following water signs, Scorpio and Pisces, to either get lost in or attempt to untangle.
The shit that Cancer chooses to hold though?
oh they hold it with such intention.
Cancer gets shit done in the name of love
that’s the Cardinal nature, doing shit with some mf purpose behind it, with a gusto if u will,
the TENDERNESS that Cancer has available to provide, mm it’s some unmatched shit
and to be both receptive and cardinal is a powerful combination that Cancer shares with Libra
djenneba also noted that Venus in Cancer (where Venus is at the time of this writing and my very own Venus placement, if u didn’t already know) is some top-notch lovin energy
and i’m wont to agree
Venus in Cancer provides a proclivity for relationships to become familial in nature and spirit, a longing for love in all its forms, ah, I digress.
Loves,
Cancer is the journey of learning
that everything can change in 28 days
that you’re never the same as you were yesterday
that you can bask in another’s light and radiate it long after they’re gone
that you’re a reflection of the company you keep
and those you come from, those who gave you light (and/or life)
and if you carry anything with you into Leo season, the best season, let it be radical compassion. More from La Marr Jurelle Bruce:
Radical compassion works to impart care [Cancer],
exchange feeling [Scorpio],
transmit understanding [Pisces],
embolden vulnerability [all of the above],
and fortify solidarity across circumstantial, sociocultural, phenomenological, and ontological chasms in the interest of mutual liberation [Pisces, and we will come back to this concept in March!]
<3
in love, understanding, vulnerability, and solidarity
kay