The Crab
June 23 - July 23
ruled by The Moon
Cardinal Water
birthstone: pearl
key:family
slogan:"I feel"
Cancer is an enigmatic zodiac type. Familiarity with a Cancerian reveals loving kindness and caring between an unpromising surface.
Their positive traits include perception, intuition, sensitivity, tenacity, tenderness, and caution.
Negative traits include immaturity, stinginess, irritability, melancholy, clinging, cowardice, over-protectiveness, possessiveness, moodiness, and being over-emotional. They can lack logic, and be over-sensitive.
Cancerian instincts, if trusted, are sound, and they are at their best when working instinctively. Most of them have excellent memories and wonderful imaginations. They are caring, perceptive, and intuitive, and can project great kindness and sympathy to those around them.
Cancerians are sentimental and very nostalgic, preferring the past to the present. They love the good things in life, especially money, and will do anything to gain material comfort as well as the love of their family. Security, which they see in the form of money, is important to them.
Their main motivations for working hard are their family and home: they have a fundamental need to love and protect others. They always like to create a family atmosphere around them, whether in the home, or workplace, or among friends. Anything that disturbs their familiar surroundings makes them very suspicious, unless it is proven to be harmless..
They can be ambiguous and difficult to pin down, following the tendency of water and the unconscious to slide fluidly from one shape to another. They live in a world where nothing is quite the same as it was a few minutes before. Yet, they can be apprehensive about the future, and do not like change in their own lives, unless obviously for the better. They enjoy the company of others, and like to influence them, but are a bit scared of the influence of others upon themselves.
Like the crab, Cancerians are tough on the outside, but tender and sensitive on the inside. While they like to be busy in the outside world, they are also private people, living in their own imaginations. Nothing less than deep emotional loss will goad them into confrontation with life. When there is danger, or even the slightest hurt, they retreat inside their shell.
Their active imaginations can make them easily frightened by things that could go wrong - it is hard for them to get a grip on the objective world.
Cancer is ruled by The Moon: the great Mother image is the most powerful force in Cancerian life. She is the bearer of life: the womb from which the child emerges, and the unconscious from which the individual identity emerges. The form that the Mother takes will change, over the lifetime of the Cancerian, but whatever the form, there is always a bond to her for good or for ill. This mother-bond can overpower and drown individual potential, but on the other hand, it enables the Cancerian to achieve their great rite of passage - separation from the mother - which they must do throughout their life many times on many different levels.
Just as the actual crab stays close to both water and land, Cancerians must keep one foot in the concrete world, and the other in the water, always, so that they can become the womb through which the children of the sea are born. They need to bring to birth either a child or , more often, an artistic creation. The latter may be projected upon a creative individual whose potential the Cancerian elects to nurture.
Cancerians actually enjoy moaning on and on, about anything and everything. They complain constantly, moaning and grumbling about the way people treat them. They like to be the victim. They have too much emotion, and like to wallow in sentiment, and love to arouse sympathy in others. Thus it is difficult to know whether they are in genuine need of solace, or just playing for attention. Indeed they hardly know themselves.
They are introverted, with selfishness that will last a lifetime - they are only interested in themselves and their surroundings. They are shy most of the time,but on occasion can astonish people with outbursts of anger. Then their shrewd, cunning, interfering, and prying natures will cause destruction. They are full of self pity, and are poor losers.
It is difficult for a Cancerian to form a relationship, as they make excessive emotional demands, and indulge in childish whims. They crave love, and need to be reassured constantly. Jealousy and possessiveness often ruin their relationships, even with their children. Cancerians often marry to gain social status.
However, Cancer is the true romantic, loyal, and loving, whilst in love , and capable of profoundly sincere feelings.
