Cancer

Cancer begins at the summer solstice, the longest day, when the Sun stands at its highest and turns back. The sign inclines toward feeling, nurture, loyalty to family and the past, and a strong instinct to protect. Like the crab, it often shows a firm shell and a tender interior. Its gift is care; its difficulty can be holding on too tightly, or retreating when hurt instead of saying so.

Element, mode and polarity

Cancer is a Water sign of the cardinal mode. Water makes it emotional, intuitive and receptive; the cardinal mode means it initiates, though through feeling and protection rather than open confrontation. It is feminine (receptive) and nocturnal. Its fellow Water signs are Scorpio and Pisces; its fellow cardinal signs are Aries, Libra and Capricorn.

Rulership and dignities

• Domicile: the Moon; Cancer is her only house.
• Exaltation: Jupiter, traditionally at 15° Cancer.
• Detriment: Saturn, whose home Capricorn lies opposite.
• Fall: Mars, opposite its exaltation in Capricorn.

The Moon rules Cancer in both traditional and modern astrology.

In a chart

Planets in Cancer tend to act from feeling and from a wish to keep someone or something safe. The Sun here often finds its sense of self through belonging; Mercury inclines toward a memory coloured by emotion; Venus loves by looking after. Mars, in fall, may struggle to fight openly and act instead in indirect or defensive ways. The house with Cancer on its cusp is often where a person wants roots, privacy and emotional security. With Cancer on the Ascendant, the Moon becomes the chart ruler, and the person may seem gentle, changeable and quick to sense a mood.

The tradition

Ptolemy names Cancer one of the two solstitial signs, because the Sun turns back at its start; he gives it to the Moon as the feminine of the two most northern signs, and explains Jupiter's exaltation here as the place where that fertile planet reaches farthest north. Lilly calls Cancer the "onely house of the Moon", first sign of the watery or northern triplicity, "cold, moyst, flegmatick, feminine, nocturnal, moveable", a solstice sign, fruitful and northern. It governs the breast and stomach. Its places are the sea, great rivers and navigable waters, springs and wells, marshes, and in a house the cellars and wash-house. Its colour is green or russet; among its countries and cities Lilly names Scotland, Holland, Venice, Amsterdam and York. Lilly gives the Water triplicity to Mars by day and night; Ptolemy joins Venus to Mars by day and the Moon by night.

In the tarot

The Golden Dawn's correspondences, which most English-language decks follow.

Major Arcana: The Chariot

Its three decans: Two of Cups (Venus, 0°–10°), Three of Cups (Mercury, 10°–20°), Four of Cups (Moon, 20°–30°)

Suit: Cups (Water)

Related

• Capricorn, the opposite sign
• Moon, its ruler
• Fourth House, its natural house
• Water · Cardinal