Cancer Archetype
Core Insights for Cancer
Mode: Outward (Activating, Initiating, Creating, Expressing, Illuminating)
Element: Water (Imagination, Impressions, Emotion, Soul, Sensitivity)
Archetypal Images: Healer
Planetary Governor: Moon
House Association: 4th House of Hearth and Mythic Being
Body Wisdom: Stomach, Breasts, Abdomen, Emotional Field.
Spiritual Principle: Compassion “Love Without Conditions:
Harmonious: Sensitive, Nurturing, Protective, Supportive, Tenacious, Traditional, Food & Family Oriented, Domestic, Empathic, Imaginative, Intuitive, Comfort-Oriented.
Shadow: Crabby, Worried, Attached to Past, Protective, Irritable, Clinging, Dependent, Insecure, Clannish, Moody, Snobby, Fearful, Shy, Indulgent, Hysterical, Manipulative.
Cancer is the archetype of protection, healing, nourishing, and the establishment of roots. Through sensitive attunement to emotion, imagination, and feeling Cancer sends healing energy to the world. Cancer symbolizes the mother who provides for the needs of others and who holds families together. Cancer’s outward mode of expression allows it to heal and nurture endlessly.
People who have planets in Cancer gain that special ability that mother’s have of foresight, so easily impresses by feelings and emotional contours. They just know when people are in pain or suffering even when miles apart. Of the three water element signs Cancer is the activator and creator of imagination and the master at expressing emotion. They might be more traditional, but they are devoted deeply to those who they love and in the enlightened person, to all life.
This archetype is about anchoring the heart in the living intuitive flow of love (LIFE) and opening the heart to the feeling dimension of human experience. When this happens, the heart is soothed and the soul is alive as people are empowered to accept and forgive each other. Cancer teaches that at the center of being is a temple of holy silence where you can commune with divinity. Find it and you will discover compassion for all living beings.
Cancer and the Moon symbolize the establishment of a physical home as well as the spiritual hearth of our souls that I like to call the Well of Being. The 4th house or Nadir is the field of life experience that relates to this inner well that contains the underground river of ancestral memory. It links us to the traditions that have been handed down. Cancer governs emotional well being and healing.
Our homes and families offer us a forgiving source of protection and nourishment. The home is a place that feeds the soul with hour upon hour of quiet reflection. It infuses us with a feeling of safety and emotional security. When we leave it, a psychic cord always connects us back to the place where we dream, and eat, and love. Homes contain chambers like the shell of a crab that we can live in and share life with others, inviting them to sit at our hearths and tables. Empathic Cancer inspires you to nurture, protect, heal, and open the heart in the field of life experience that it shines into in your chart.
The house with Cancer on the cusp is where you need to be a source of forgiveness, support, and soulful yearning. The same goes for the House that contains the Moon, the soul of the chart. It is in those realms of life experience that you can show others how to navigate emotion and create imagination. If the soul is not nourished, the imagination becomes rigid.
Cancer governs the stomach, breasts, abdomen, and the emotional field of our souls. Place your hand on your belly and feel its softness, the place where food is digested. The mother provides life to the infant through the soft breasts. Cancer governs the milk of life. When something terrible happens the first thing we do is curl our bodies inward into that familiar fetal position. We might hold our stomachs when we feel bad.
When your Cancer energy is misdirected you become oblivious to all need save your own. Then you can become extremely snobby, hysterical, and full of worry and fear. Lost in emotional over-protectiveness, the shadow of Cancer emerges making you irritable and irrational. You become self-indulgent and might eat or drink just to feel safe as you did when you were a baby. Insecurity and a lack of sensitivity is the sign of Cancer depleted and lonely. Learn to overcome the shadow through expressing the opposite sign Capricorn, gaining discipline, responsibility, and wisdom.
The key word Protective appears on both the light and dark sides of Cancer. Cancerians are great protectors, but when they become insecure and worried about things they get over-protective. This over-protectiveness quickly fuels emotional manipulation and guilt trips aimed at the very people they love.
The Spiritual principle of Cancer is compassion, the recognition that people are being the best people they can be within the limits of their upbringing, education, and current awareness. This included those you perceive as enemies. You can have compassion for everyone if you decide to. The best tactic is to respond to destructive behavior with love and forgiveness. That is the warm, eatery essence of Cancer’s compassion.
The glyph for Cancer symbolizes a mother nurturing a baby at her bosom, two souls in loving union. Like the pincers of a crab, the two arcs of heart receptivity and consciousness extend from the creative centers of the two individuals, the complete realization of familial bonds. The symbol reveals the oneness of all life. As it rotates and expands it invites us to open our hearts to love without conditions and acceptance of human frailties and differences not as weaknesses, but as unique qualities and wonderful patterns of diversity.
Last updated on August 16, 2017 at 2:26 am. Word Count: 921
