When you wake up in the morning and fall out of bed and head to the kitchen to prepare coffee and a croissant, you are fulfilling a Cancerian/Moon activity. You are filling that empty tummy sac/container. In fact that delicious croissant, which means crescent, was named after the crescent moon, Cancer’s ruler. In Gemini you gained a nervous system and lungs, divisions in the body and arms and fingers. In Cancer you are laying down a creative foundation. The balancing of Cancer and its opposite sign Capricorn, brings into play the container of the body, the separations and divisions of the organs within it, and the framework which supports it. The two signs support each other.

When you wrap those arms around the object of your affection, you are nurturing, which is a Cancerian Motherly trait. You are attempting to contain and protect. How often have you seen the mother and child pictures with the mother’s arms wrapped around the child. The circle of the arms around an object, has great magical power. This includes fathers and men desiring to nurture.

The sign of Cancer is not ruled by a planet, but by the Earth’s satellite - the Moon. The moon has no light of its own, but reflects the brilliance of the Sun. It has a very strong effect over the fluids in the body. It’s influence has probably the most obvious effect, more than any other celestial body. The moon rules the tides of the ocean, just as it rules the tides in our own body.

The symbol is a crab with the hard shell that walks sideways. There is a clue here as the sunlight effect on the moon is oblique - sideways. In magic some preparations have to be prepared with an oblique light. Actually to get something across to someone born under the sign of Cancer, it is a good idea to give information obliquely also. Any frontal attack or directness will make them pull back into their shell. They are changeable and moody, yet funny and caring, following phases of the moon and represented by various Goddesses, good and bad.

The symbol of the crab is interesting if you have been following from the previous chapters. The crab’s body once again represents the safe container like the center of the head. The two claws represent both lobes of the brain. Both claws reach out for food to sweep into its stomach/brain. We talked previously of the Lovers card in the Tarot, whose meaning was the right and left brain in sync. The right side of the brain, we are told, rules subconscious activities. These are hidden and mysterious. It is the place where our imagination rules. The subconscious brain is ruled by the Moon - Cancer’s ruling influence!

Now an interesting fact here is that the body is 98% fluid! Fluids are ruled by the Moon. The Moon has the strongest effect over our emotions (e-motion is energy in motion.) The fluids then are everywhere in the body, even in our tears which appear under the Aries influence of the eyes. Many experiments have shown how energy, good or bad, has an effect on water. This means that a bad environment, emotion or hateful energy, seriously affects the consciousness of the individual. That original cosmic divine spark is now contained in the fluidic parts of the body which circulates it! The effect is as important to men as well.

Physically the Cancer sign rules the breasts, stomach, and womb and co-rules the spleen. The stomach is like a cauldron or pot that provides our nutrition. The spleen is a very interesting organ. It filters the blood serum and stores quite a volume of blood within it. The spleen produces the macrophages and lymphocytes that attack foreign bodies entering the system - it protects against foreign invasion and toxins. . I was struck by a picture of these two wonders and couldn’t help seeing a relationship to the Chariot in the Tarot.

The Chariot card in the Tarot ruling Cancer, is Cheth which is Fence. The fence is the wall of the cell or container. It is a Chariot that rides around in the blood stream. The Chariot contains the Lord of Light (Spirit/nucleus) who caries the Holy Grail and is the child of the powers of the waters. The DNA is protected within the cell in the bloodstream.

The magic that is taking place now is that the divine spark received in Aries, is now at a place where it must have the ability to perpetuate itself. The budding matter in Taurus and the electrical communication in Gemini, now realizes -

it must have the ability to reproduce itself or die!

The body must have constant cell division and multiplication (X). The nurturing and feeding of the cell to provide a proper and safe home for the Spirit/Soul now encased in an identifiable body, is paramount. It is not in Cancer’s realm that we can produce another human being. It can only happen with the help of impregnation. That happens in Scorpio, which also rules the vagina and reproductive organs. However the cell division and creative process for the making of a human is a Cancer working. To produce another human, Scorpio, the other water sign, must be involved. We reproduce ourselves on a daily basis.

The baby is a growth of the Mother and does not have an individual soul until first breath!(See Pisces posting.) This will certainly clash with current belief systems! However the child’s spirit does linger ethereally around the Mother until it is the correct time to enter. We can’t go further without mentioning Mother’s milk and the breasts, and of course my mind went on a tangent, but just examine the picture to the right and see how happy everyone is! Remember in the Gemini posting last month, I mentioned that Yellow in Hebrew is Yarek which means to split. Now the color energy that came from the high frequency of ultra-violet has now slowed down and moves through the green/yellow to yellow. The color yellow is also Kan which is a word for Spirit. Yellow is the color of the child, food and nurturing.

We carry the magic of Mercury’s invisibility on by pointing out that communication signals fly through the air and are picked up and translated by a receiver, as in a television receiver or cell phone. The same goes for our physical bodies. We accept or ignore that this is happening to us too and only complain when the receiver is giving us scrambled messages.

When the cell is chemically perfect, receiving the correct nutrients and the waste removed, the glowing personal Spirit shines through, and expresses itself perfectly. The internal light shines through the clear crystal cell. People who are ill have a grey, dead pallor. The life force can really make an individual glow and radiate and in the vernacular - project really good vibes! We talk of the Moon reflecting the Sun’s light and now the round moon cell reflects the Spiritual Sun’s light. You can literally GLOW.

Continuing on with the ability to glow is the fact that the most important salt for Cancers is calcarea fluorica - fluorine and lime. This mineral is found in vascular linings, bones, teeth and it has a crystalline structure. The shape is like two four-sided pyramids attached at the base. Now this is interesting as Cancer is on the square from Aries and Libra. So the structure has a square base. This tissue salt can also be found in the eye along with Silica. It is very elastic and combined with the silica creates the lens of the eye. This reflects back to Aries once again! In the commercial world the mineral is used in windows, lenses, prisms and for optical use. How else would our Spirit be able to see?

The elastic quality is a reflection of the Moon waxing and waning. The salt gives our bodies the ability to stretch and shrink. When we become flabby, a lack of this salt may be the cause. It is a very calming mineral. Interestingly a deficiency of the salt can psychologically create a groundless fear of financial ruin. This is due to the brain losing elasticity and causing depression and fear. Hence the gloomy Moon card of the Tarot. The financial aspect here indicates assets. You have to put your assets into a container, be it a bank, purse or a box under the bed. The Spiritual asset container is the physical body, particularly the vault in the middle of the head. Is it clear now, the importance of the health and strength of the body?

The letter C now shows up as in cup, container, corpus, crescent. The great Mother, the sea - C, is the Moon in the Cabala, and the Moon rules the waters. The Chariot is W in the English Alphabet and the W and M of Mother indicates the watery nature of the mystery. The circle we discussed in Taurus and the orbs, now have an opening for the input/export of nutrients and a great door for birthing. These are Mercury’s bag of tricks, each sack having an important duty. The cock has now become the stork or crane, carrying the baby bundle.

Cancer sector of the Zodiac indicates a gateway, as does Capricorn the opposite sign. The moon was seen as a gateway for the dead on their way to paradise. The goddesses were seen as creators and devourers of the dead as well as givers of life. I like to think of the devouring taking place in the spleen as the body functions devour the dead cells!

The fluidic aspects and cycles of the moon also had rulership over the breast milk, semen and the menstrual cycles, which is the shedding of blood. The red menstrual blood, ritualistically utilized, was said to bless and create kings. A young girl’s first menstrual flow was symbolized as a flow-er. In nature, a fruit follows a flower, so a child is the fruit of the womb. The ingesting of the menstrual blood was said to make a man immortal. Red blood was considered the creative power and gave sexual potency whereas the male semen was white. White was considered passive, negative and meant death. We shall discuss this death relationship to semen in Scorpio. Later this powerful creative flowing became a threat to men and tribes. The menstrual cycle then took on a negative connotation which exists to this day. Happily we are more knowledgeable and are aware that all fluidic excretions of the body, male and female, have a positive purpose.

The half moon crescent later becomes the sickle symbol of Saturn the ruler of Capricorn, Cancer’s opposite sign. Capricorn is the grim reaper and keeper of another gateway. So we can have creative birth in Cancer and a dying in Capricorn. The moon crescent reminds us of the children’s fairy rhyme - “Hey diddle diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle, the Cow Jumped over the Moon” Remember IO the cow goddess in Taurus, also known as Isis. So the cow is also associated with the Moon

The connection of Io, Isis, Artemis and Diana to the moon once again indicates the feminine principle ruling the sign of Cancer. The picture here is Diana after a Bath. Although Diana was said to rule the forests, women and children and power over life and death, in light of the above posting you can now put it all together. The virgin aspect meant that the territory was untrampled, pure and uninvaded. The physical body has to be pure and clean for the manufacturing of new cells.

Diana’s bath reflects back to the watery nature again. Her bow is symbolic of the new moon phase and if you look closely she has a half moon sitting on her forehead. Isis also had the half moon symbol. As the sign Cancer has rulership over birth and death, her Bow became the Arc on which souls were transported through the watery mysteries.

There is a myth that Diana was actually born before Apollo, her twin. The story is that she leapt up fully grown to assist in his birth. However earlier myths stated her rulership over the Sun as Artemis or Leto and that eventually the Romans gave Apollo control over the Sun. This then moved her back to Cancer and the moon and Apollo took over lordship of the sun and Leo. In some stories her day of celebration is in August which seems to be a hint that it was true. The reason that this is interesting is the fact that her bow then becomes the Archer’s bow in Sagittarius. This supports a possible fiery nature from Leo to Sagittarius.

We have followed the golden thread of the Fool all the way from Aries and now its golden glory reigns in the next sign of Leo, the brilliant child, born of the womb of Cancer. The cosmic divine spark now becomes the fully formed individual and we will now begin to see the will in action. The crab nebula in the Milky Way is below.

Where will the animal passions lead you?..............................................................see August