Cancer RisingThe Symbols: This person has come into the world wearing the mask of the Nurturer,

Cancer RisingThe Symbols: This person has come into the world wearing the mask of the Nurturer, the Healer, the Mother, or the Sensitive. Other images for Cancer include the Invisible One, Old Mother Hubbard, the Hobbit, the Rememberer or the Homebody. Less than optimal manifestations of this Ascendant might include the Smother-mother, the Clingy One, the Hypersensitive One, or the Crybaby.The Style:As with all water signs, this Ascendant is complex, so we’ll spend some extra time here.Cancer doesn’t mean biologically female, but this is the sign of the archetypal feminine, the archetypal Great Goddess, the lunar counterpart to the Leonine Sun God. Think of Cancer as the epitome of “yin” energy, that which is nurturing, receptive, and fertile–and dark, mysterious, inward and unpredictable.In prehistoric societies now lost in time, before we knew that sex led to babies, we might well have associated the creative function with women, who mysteriously brought forth children from their own flesh and blood. When not bearing children, and before the age of artificial lights, it’s likely that women’s cycles tended to attune themselves to the approximately twenty-eight day cycle of the Moon.Until relatively recently in modern astrology, it’s been all too easy to dismiss the Moon and the yin territory that it rules, just as it’s been all too easy to dismiss the feminine. We would do well to remember that some of the earliest astronomical and astrological records were of the Moon’s cycle. The Sun rules the day and is predictably invisible at night. The Moon, who rules the night and the dark, is sometimes visible during the day and sometimes invisible at night. Yin energy is cyclical, too, sometimes dark and sometimes full, just as the Moon waxes and wanes and changes speed. The Moon rules over fertility and birth–and over the dark, the night, the real and imaginary creatures who walk there, and the ultimate night of death. As a midwife once told me, “Death is always present at birth.” Perhaps that’s one reason, apart from the Moon’s phases, why many lunar goddesses have more than one face: maiden, mother, crone.The Moon rules the high and love tides of our oceans and of our emotional lives, whose karmic imprints we all carry. It rules the body’s automatic systems: digestion, endocrine, etc., all the bodily functions that aren’t under the conscious control of the mind. The Moon rules the fluids of which our bodies are mostly composed. It rules caves and the chthonic energy associated with them. It rules our ancestors and, I suspect, whatever known or unknown influences they have in our lives.Just as people with Leo rising wear the Sun God’s energy and all it implies of archetypal kingship or even the godhead metaphorically imprinted on their faces, people with Cancer carry the full fluctuating weight of the Moon Goddess upon theirs. Someone with a Cancer Ascendant has reached an evolutionary stage where he or she should present a gentle, caring, tender and reflective face to the world. Remember that one of Cancer’s traditional symbols is the Crab, a delicate creature with a hard exoskeleton that helps it survive. A person with this Ascendant needs some “shells,” some protective mechanisms, some deflector shields. The development of enough discernment to know when to raise the shields and when to lower them is crucial. Otherwise, people with Cancer rising can go through life either inappropriately defended and defensive, or so open and vulnerable that they become codependent or are repeatedly hurt and manipulated. Years ago, I heard the astrology Richard Idemon call dysfunctional Cancer “the breast looking for the baby or the baby looking for the breast.” To that image I would add “the barnacle:” someone who’s shut down behind what could become a PermaShell, usually after bouncing back and forth between those breast-or-baby extremes and not yet integrating them.People with Cancer rising should face life with imagination, receptivity, the full development of their feeling function and of a rich inner life, and as open a heart as possible consistent with their emotional survival. The fuel of whatever strengthens the feeling function and feeds the imagination and makes it fertile. The terrain is anywhere one must navigate by feeling, intuition and patience rather than by logic.If the rest of the chart is self-contained and analytical, the Cancer Ascendant is intended to soften this person and help him or her be more aware of the feeling side of life. If the rest of the chart is creative or psychologically oriented, the Cancer Ascendant is intended to help give this person access to deep inner sources of self-awareness. In any case, this rising sign’s demeanor should convey the message: “Here is a sensitive, imaginative, empathic and supportive person, who may be quiet or unavailable at the moment, but these still waters run deep.”If no one provided adequate nurturing in the Cancer Ascendant’s childhood, this person can become “the baby looking for the breast” and keep searching for someone to play mother, so that he or she can at last be the baby. On the other hand, these people may instead become “the breast looking for the baby” and mother everyone else, all the while ignoring their own needs, perhaps because it’s too painful to feel how those needs aren’t being met, or perhaps because they’re unconsciously hoping to get some mothering back eventually. Another reaction to inadequate early nurturing may be to give up on every finding any at all, and to withdraw–the “barnacle”–behind the Cancer shell. Such people may be very focused on themselves and on meeting their own needs, while those of others are given short shrift. If the childhood was chaotic, traumatic or dangerous, people with this rising sign can become extremely shy, cautious or self-protective. All of these types would do well to learn about healthy self-nurturing, aided by their own powerful feelings and potentially rich and fertile inner lives. Then it’s easier to relate to the outside world from a position of emotional strength and wholeness, rather than need or lack. –Jodie Forrest, The Ascendant -- source link

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