The Crab
The Crab| <-- Move cursor over | June 22 - July 22 |
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| Abstract meaning | Concrete and Traditional Meaning | Part of Body Ruled |
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The concrete foundation for the expression of the I AM. The living organism and its power of growth. |
The home and all domestic feelings. The soul and all psychic feelings. Imagination, receptivity. Sensitiveness, mediumship, suggestion. |
The chest cavity; the breasts and the stomach
the muccous membranes. |
| I Seek My Self Through What I Feel | |
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| positive natural tendency | misuse or exaggeration of trait |
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sensitive to all feelings cares for others' needs and wants psychic and impressionable holds the family together understands all human conditions |
can become hysterical and/or irritable can be extremely selfish can have hallucinations and unfounded fears can be too clannish and snobby is oblivious to all desires but own |
| Physical Characteristics | Mental Tendencies |
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Not usually above average height tendency to stoutness sometimes an awkward or heavy gait round face, full cheeks, tendency to double chin short nose sometimes prominent at the tip gray or light blue eyes, pale complexion wide chest, hands and feet small uses crab-like positions and motions of the arms |
Fond of novelty, change and traveling, yet usually attached to relatives and home inclined to public life desirous of possessions cautious, prudent careful with money yet often imposed upon sympathetic and changeful some psychic or occult faculty manifests |
| Emotional Key Words | Mental Key Words |
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Artistic and dreamy, maternal, kindhearted, romantic, domestic, impressionable, psychic, imaginative, serene, intuitive, restless, despondent, sometimes lazy and self-indulgent. |
Versatile, self-sacrificing, receptive, expresses great veneration for ancestry and precedent, thorough, persevering, cautious, reserved, brooding. |
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Equally important as the connection with water is Cancer's connection to the symbolism of the Moon. In the myths of Kali, the Great Goddess in India, it is through her cosmic womb that life is given its form, and the Moon has been called in both India and the West as the Giver of Form. The Moon itself can be observed to pass through so many shape changes - the Full Moon, the quarterly moons and the dark or New Moon - that the ancients connected it with the birth and death of form, planting their crops according to its phases. The many moods of the Moon were also observed in connection with the 28-day transiting Moon, the physiological changes in women's bodies associated with the lunar orbit and the emotional moods connected with that cycle. The Moon was a bestower of the gifts of feeling, of intuition and of nurturing instincts which men did not seem to possess, and so the goddess and her priestessess were deemed capable of mysterious insights and intuitions, such as the power of trance mediumship. |
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Cancer, the Crab, from Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. At the center is the four-star "Manger," and at the center of that, the Praesepe or Beehive star cluster. Gemini, with bright Castor and Pollux, is at the right, while the Sickle of Leo, with first magnitude Regulus, is at left. Procyon, in Canis Minor, labelled "G," is down toward bottom right, while the head of Hydra, the WaterSerpent, is down and slightly to the left. The dark band marks the region around the ecliptic in which the planets and Moon can be found. 
Courtesy of the Rare Book Room and Special Collections Library of the University of Illinois. |
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Friendly Gemini helps us interact with one another, although not intimately so, and without any real sense of deep connection to one another. Smiles, handshakes, and even witty remarks abound as everyone's talking up a storm. Unkowingly, Gemini sets the stage for Cancer to emerge, by demonstrating how much fun it can be to intermingle with those we find interesting - the concept of informal sociability is thus born in Gemini. But what is done innocently in Gemini turns into one of the most powerful forces ever to take hold of humankind in Cancer - raw, gut emotion. This is something beyond mere instinct, and almost scary to behold, yet it is a very compelling power that seemingly came from deep within. Cancer is the first sign to put us in contact with our soul, which is a different entity than the fiery spark of spirit that Aries embodies. This is not to say that Cancer may be all too clear about what "soul" means, but they sense that something potent inside itself moves it to want to protect all in life that is vulnerable and in need of shelter making Cancer the first sign to poignantly feel both love and sadness for the human condition. Cancer's biggest worry is that the often indifferent outer world, which cannot easily fulfill our inner needs, doesn't even have a notion of who we really are deep down inside.
As a cardinal water sign, Cancer is very active and sometimes pushy in the expression of its feelings. In the same way cardinal Aries cannnot easily turn off its dynamic, fiery energy, Cancer has difficulty shutting off its emotional faucet. The water always seems to be running forcefully because this is a highly reactive sign, driven by its surging feelings. The Crab was born with an amazing sensitivity that allows it to absorb what's going on inside others, even the stuff that's kept hidden from surface exposure, a trait it shares with both the other water signs, Scorpio and Pisces. Cancers are always alert 
to the unspoken feelings of others, somehow thinking they are obligated to offer their sympathetic support to those in need. People's neediness arouse its maternal instincts, making them feel compelled to mother people - once it picks up on their distress signals - and thus intrude on their emotional space. Yet the Crab sees itself more as being timid and shy, although this can hardly be so with such assertive energy as cardinal.
Actually, how Cancer responds to its surroundings is as varied as the phases of the Moon, its planetary agent. Some see such changeability of temperament as moodiness, although the Crab would maintain that he/she is only reflecting the invisible currents in the psychological atmosphere of the moment. In fact, Cancer readily sponges up the environment and often without using protective filters. It's only after the Crab has taken in too much "negative" emotional discharge from others that it learns to build a hard shell to ward off further invasion. Sadly, along with such armor comes a crusty, crabby disposition that belies Cancer's softer, gentler side. Sometimes these mood swings are how Cancer deals best with its own feelings in flux - its own internal high and low tides. Nonetheless, the Crab is the first sign to introduce a warmer kind of caring that goes deeper than the comforting energy of Taurus. Cancer envelops others in its protective aura as it tends to their needs, although it attaches itself in ways that feel suffocating at times, unable to be objective enough to realize how oppressive this can be to others.
Cancer, the Cosmic Womb, is the first Water sign, and this connection between Cancer and water is very important. The glyph for Cancer is the male and female seeds, and the archetype of Cancer that of the Cosmic Womb in which the seeds of creativity grow and burst forth in diverse ways - biological, artistic or intuitive creativity, imaginative creativity, even business creativity. There is also mystical creativity, giving birth to the Divine Child within, the Magna Mater being the most ancient personal manifestation of divinity found around the world. This archetypal connection between water and creativity appears in many creation myths. In the Bible story of creation, "The land separated from the water and the firmament from the earth." In another there was a Goddess named Padma (Lotus) who sat in a stream (water) while the Earth sprang from her navel. In Sumeria, the Goddess Inanna gave birth to the world, or the Earth hatched from the yolk of a cosmic egg.
The Moon, representing feelings and emotions, is an instinctual, intuitive, nurturing planet, but also a planet that fosters emotional attachment to the form she provides. In Taurus, the sign of the Moon's exaltation, this appears as attachment to emotional and financial security. The Crab, the creature that tenaciously hangs on with its claws, is an appropriate symbol for Cancer attachment, which can have its light side, as the Gentle Mother Kwan Yin, of Chinese Mythology, or its dark side like India's Kali Ma, or the Greek Medusa. The connection with attachments goes beyond attachment to form, for it also represents our unconscious habits, because of the traditional connection of the Moon and habit. In strong contrast to Hermes, ruler of Gemini, where the mind is consciously active, the archetype of Cancer works on a psychic, instinctual and deeply unconscious feeling level.
Perhaps the truest meaning of Cancer can best be understood by its position in the seasonal year, for it marks the summer solstice when the longest day of the year (and of course, the shortest night) occurs. It may seem strange that we should attribute the Moon, symbol of the Great Goddess and the eternal feminine, to this moment when the solar force is at its greatest, but it is precisely at that point that the sun is turning back, beginning its progress into the world of the Nightforce or collective humanity, the yin or feminine component of consciousness and civilization. In archaic times (and particularly during the Age of Cancer c. 8,000 to 6,000 BCE, the time which many sholars identify as the era of Goddess worship), the summer solstice was the day upon which the sun god - or his earthly representative - was ritually slain and sacrificed to the Great Mother. In these ancient rituals the sun god was often the consort of the Divine Mother, and the priest who played the god's role ritually coupled with the priestess or Divine Mother before his symoblic death. The fact that the Sun is at its moment of greatest power in the sign which itself is ruled by the Moon unites the symbols of Sun and Moon, masculine and feminine, in one archetype. In this way was can think of Cancer as the sign of the "mystic marriage", the union of alchemical opposites. This may explain why males feel both an attraction to and fear of merging with the feminine, for at the point of merger, the ego or masculine component of consciousness loses its control, is "swallowed up", and, symbolically speaking, dies in order that consciousness (yang) and unconsciousness (yin) can be united. No wonder, then, that Cancerian people are said to be psychic, for they are particularly open to the influx of vast universal forces which channel themselves in to the confines of one's individual consciousness.
The 
The sign of Cancer symbolizes our tribal origins and our family, and Tribalism became the dominant mode of consciousness during this period. Even today, much of our unconscious fear of the dark and death is connected to the fear of the Great Mother, who symbolizes here a regressive loss of ego-consciousness and a merging back with the tribe. This was
the period of moving from caves to fixed dwellings, when humans learned to spin and weave and make pottery, to grow crops and domesticate animals. The Australian archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe coined the term Neolithic Revolution to describe this period when ancient peoples switched from nomadic, hunter-gatherer behaviour to a settled, agrarian way of life, and it was the first of a series of agricultural revolutions punctuating human history. Agriculture gave humans more control over their food supply, but required settled occupation of territory, encouraging larger social groups. Believed to have occurred somewhere in southwest Asia around 8000 BC–7000 BC, the Neolithic Revolution has been called the single most important change in the history of humanity. Living in one spot would have more easily permitted the accrual of personal possessions and an attachment to certain areas of land. From such a position, it is argued, prehistoric people were able to stockpile food to survive lean times and trade unwanted surpluses with others. Once trade and a secure food supply were established, populations could grow, and society would have diversified into food producers and artisans. Such relative complexity would have required some form of social organisation to work efficiently and so it is likely that populations which had such organisation, perhaps such as that provided by religion were better prepared and more successful. Also, during this time property ownership became increasingly important to all people.
No longer solely at the mercy of Mother Nature, new choices were born and intellectual development began to birth a new myth out of the Great Mother. Jacques Cauvin, the excavator of the Natufian settlement at Mureybet in northern Syria, was the first to express the idea that the Neolithic revolution was the result of a revolutionary change in the human psychology, a "revolution of symbols" which led to new beliefs about the world and shared community rituals embodied in corpulent female figurines and the methodical assembly of aurochs horns.
