As part of my new astroblog, I thought to now begin the cycle of writing about each sign during their corresponding month. Since it is still mid July, we will direct our attention at that most unfathomable sign of Cancer.
I am married to a Cancer, so I feel that some of my ideas about this sign should show at least partial validity. In fact, before meeting my wife I had never really developed a strong sense of this sign. I had met some Cancer females over the years and found that for whatever reason, I did not necessarily click with them. A friend of mine from grad school married an Egyptian Cancer and I never really got what she was talking about when we were engaged in conversation at the university. I often hung out with her Egyptian friend who was a Gemini and I always got the gist of what she was talking about with her thick accent and all, so I feel that I just couldn’t really reach for what the Cancer was trying to communicate, cultural differences aside – it was a sun sign thing. And so the Egyptian Cancer would stare at me with those big eyes behind big glasses. One of the things that I did understand from Maha (but only years later) was when she said: “I never take my glasses off when I am talking to anyone because I like the safety of a barrier.”
This would be part one the personality of every cancer I have ever known since then: the idea of protection. Cancer the crab wants to put a shell around everything possible. Be this the non-revealing of self and personal life news, keeping the new bread loaf in the freezer, or meticulously drying hand washables even during the busiest day of the week in order to make the clothes last longer – all these acts are about protecting and ensuring.
Cancer, then, enjoys this act of protection above all else. No other sign who professes a love for a Cancer should criticize or attempt to bend this trait because it is indeed an elemental building block of Cancer’s personality. This quality also expands into the world of finance and money. The Cancer native will go about saving money in some fashion or other based on their appropriate socioeconomic strata. Generally speaking, I have also noticed that cancers will pride themselves on this trait and actively be outraged by people who do not place a high value upon the art of saving money. Money buys protection and safety which again are major Cancerian themes. It is perhaps unnecessary to go into detail about how cancer protects the home life, which should consist of stability, comfort and safety for money, family and older family memories. The Cancerian home strives to project an oasis away from extremes of heat or cold.
On the other side of all of this protection is the obvious question to be asked: “What should I be protected from?”
The answer for this cancer inquiry is simple: protection from fear. And cancer has many, many mysterious fears and they are intense ones. Sure other signs have their fears, but cancer fears basically all the time and therefore constant protection must be sought. After all … what is there not to fear? The answer: lack of protection. And here we see a steady conundrum. The cycle of fear and protection reigns supreme within the life of a cancer.
There is no escaping it. The specific fears may fluctuate but may include fear of poverty, running out of food, having strangers learn too much about you, etc.
Finally, then, we move to the other huge piece within the life of the Cancer native and that is the fighting off of wild feeling and appetite. Cancer feels everything to the power of ten and as they float in this pool of emotion they hunger for virtually all sense pleasure be they food, exercise, sex, love, joy, mothering of people, nostalgia and on and on the list goes. Cancer is indeed a walking appetite. This can be a difficult piece for natives of other signs to whom the idea of unconquerable appetites is actually frightening. It can be quite tiring for this double Libra for example. Because to my intellectual lens this lifestyle would seem like a formula for much unhappiness. After all, appetites are meant to be controlled; otherwise all hell can break loose. But this is not the case for a Cancer native for they can consume and consume with little to no damage done to their psyches. In fact they thrive on this consumption of life. The more and faster the better.
Finally, I would be remiss to not mention that like the cliché of the crab myth states – Cancer is perhaps the most tenacious sign and will grab a hold of something with its big claws and not let go. I personally doubt that they are able to let go – they just can’t control this mechanism. My sense is that an alpha male Cancer say an Ernest Hemingway or the Dalai Lama can use this force quite powerfully towards hard won masculine change, but again whereas Papa Hemingway would wrestle a powerful novel out of his long sits at the typewriter – he would also grab onto a bottle and not let go until it was consumed. And then he would reach for another bottle. The Dalai Lama seems to hold onto peaceful methods of dealing with the Chinese occupation of his homeland until the bitter end as the role model of all Buddhists. I fully believe he will be able to hold on to the notion of peace and non-attachment forever.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Cancer likes to hug.
