Character:

There is little doubt that the Cancerian is not the easiest of characters either to understand or to bear with. At her best, kind, affable, helpful, thoughtful and understanding, she can also be - and for no good reason - bad tempered and moody, short and snappy with anyone that speaks to her, or perhaps refusing to speak at all. Sometimes willing to listen with great sympathy to other people’s problems, and to do what she can to help, at other times she would find it extremely difficult to listen patiently to any tale of woe but her own.

The Cancerians often seems hard as nails, and indeed in many ways is hard: she may be completely without magnanimity, for instance, forever harping, perhaps, on a tiny injustice done to her. Again, while she will quickly quickly upset her friends by unthinking comments and hard words, she is herself over-sensitive to criticism. But under this hard and perhaps unprepossessing exterior, is the soft inner flesh. Sometimes fearful or inhabited, she uses the exterior thoughness as a form of protection - very like a crab her sign denotes.

That is the Cancerian’s conflict: positive, kind, protective at one hand - harsh, moody, bad-tempered on the other. It is not surprising that she will tend to swing, pendulum-like, between the two extremes. If the pendulum comes to a rest, it will more than likely do so under the influence of a home and a family. She will love her home and cherrish her marriage.

The Cancerian has a sentimental streak: she is forever harking back to ‘the good old days’, and can very easily live in the past.(Mercury in Cancer will underline this trait.) But she also holds on to the present: there is more tenacity in Cancer than any other Sign, and any project started by a Cancerian will be brought to its conclusion. She will also cling to a personal relationship until the bitter or sweet end.