Cancer time brings the time of year that's good for learning about emotions and tenderness.
The Sun leaves Gemini and enters Cancer around June 22 each year. This shift brings the Solstice and a new season (summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern). By taking us from air to water, from our heads to our hearts, it offers new opportunities to honor our feelings and create greater emotional security. In the process, we can unite Gemini's logic with Cancer's caring to give our most beautiful thoughts the motivation they need to manifest.
When the Sun travels through Cancer each year, it brings a tender, watery energy that invites us to feel deeply, use our imagination, enjoy memories, and nurture ourselves and others so we feel safe, connected, and cared for. Like the zodiac's other cardinal signs—Libra, Capricorn, and Aries—Cancer asks us to take action, often by exhibiting leadership or by starting something new. As with astrology's other water signs—Scorpio and Pisces—Cancer insists that we tap our emotions so we understand what we truly need and feel motivated to take care of ourselves properly.
After the experience of airy, lively Gemini, this energy can feel weepy, needy, or even weak. Ultimately, however, it supports all the curiosity and new information we experienced during the Sun's time in Gemini, as Cancer's receptive, emotional intelligence helps us humanize our ideas and harness our intellect to serve the greater good in a kind and loving way.
This sign's powerful intuition allows Cancer to sense the truth and gives rise to mothers' legendary ability to know what their children feel and need even when they do not express it. Cancer's remarkable memory gives this sign a love of tradition, history, and antiques. Although these traits help us open our hearts and value the past, if taken to excess they can cause challenges. Mothering may morph to smothering and attempting to control others, and sensing what others need may lead us to do for others what they can and must do for themselves. Also, a strong memory can cause us to wallow in nostalgia or to remember every slight and snub and hurt, refusing to forgive as we hold a lifetime's worth of grudges. At its best, though, Cancer and the Cancer time of year enrich our lives by helping us feel and remember so we can learn from history, assist society's weak and wounded, and show others how much we care.
Cancer is ruled by the Moon, the ancient symbol of the mother, which gives rise to Cancer's association with mothers and children as well as nurturing, food, and security. Besides inspiring poets and lovers with its mysterious light and constantly changing appearance, the Moon affects Earth's tides and women's monthly cycles.
The Moon's movement around the Earth and its rotation on its axis are synchronized so closely that those of us on Earth always see the same side of the Moon. Paradoxically, this unchanging face changes constantly in appearance because of the Moon's phases, a physical fact that calls to mind Cancer's often shifting moods. Regardless of its phase, the Moon reflects light from the Sun, and except for the new or "dark" moon at the beginning of each monthly lunar cycle, the Moon appears in the sky as the brightest object we see besides the Sun.
Cancer's symbol, the Crab, has a soft body encased in a hard shell, and those born under the sign of Cancer generally are highly sensitive and tend to retreat into their safe shells when vulnerable or hurt. This image reminds us that everyone needs a home that feels safe and allows for emotional healing and growth. At its best, Cancer energy encourages us to mother ourselves well so we can be tender and risk caring for others despite past hurts. When out of balance, however, the Crab may use its big claws to hang on to what it has outgrown or to hoard money or food; it also may retreat permanently to its shell and refuse to risk change while it laments losing the past.
During each year's Cancer time, we experience strong impulses to open our hearts and take emotional risks. In northern areas, the shift to Cancer is associated with the Sun's zenith, its annual glory, as the daily amount of sunlight reaches its longest duration. From a spiritual perspective, this climax of light corresponds to the potential for inner awakening or illumination, which can serve as inner light over the next six months while outer, solar light diminishes steadily until the next Solstice in December.
Each astrological sign is associated with a phrase, and for Cancer that phrase is "I feel." This feeling can be expressed negatively by blaming others when we feel anger, hurt, or other strong emotions or by using guilt and other emotional weapons to harm or control others. At its best, though, this urge becomes a loving commitment to experience emotions, learn from them, and use their energy for spiritual purposes.
Now is the time to accept your emotional power. You have gifts of a human heart that can feel deeply and human intelligence that can help you ride waves of feeling without being pulled under by them. If you will take up the task of acknowledging your true feelings and aspiring to use them consciously to help create emotional beauty and caring, you will come to understand why the Moon, who lights the night with ever changing mystery, has been called the Divine Mother.
Get in sync with Cancer immediately with art and gifts inspired by this tender, loving zodiac sign.
Visit my online art shop featuring the Cancer watercolor painting from my astrology book, Follow The Sun: A Simple Way To Use Astrology For Living In Harmony.
You'll find many gifts in my art shop, from colorful wall art and beautiful home decor to helpful lifestyle products and stationery to tech gadgets and apparel.
To see art and gifts for all zodiac signs, visit the horoscope signs watercolors art shop.
And for additional art, including beautiful spring flower photography, go to the main art shop, where you'll see all my art and gift collections.
Tune in even more to the Cancer zodiac sign with the Cancer Meditation.
Enjoy the meditation now:
This is the characteristic
Strengths: Tenacious, highly imaginative, loyal, emotional, sympathetic, persuasive
Weaknesses: Moody, pessimistic, suspicious, manipulative, insecure
Cancer likes: Art, home-based hobbies, relaxing near or in water, helping loved ones, a good meal with friends
Cancer dislikes: Strangers, any criticism of Mom, revealing of personal life
Hi, Joe. Thanks for weighing in about this zodiac sign, with so many Cancer traits. Such richness in each sign, with all the potential and depth!
Thanks Anne Marie. As always great insight. Love you gal.
🦋❤️🦋❤️
Oh, thank you, dear Irene! Love and hugs to you as well! 😍💖