Understanding Cancers and the Cancer Full Moon 2004

by Malvin Artley		print version
		print version (graphics)

Greetings!

All Vacations are always the shortest days of the year. I had really enjoyed my trip to my old home and seeing family and friends. But, alas, all things come to their timely end. There weren’t many words spoken on the way to the airport. 5:00 AM comes much too early. As the car sped down the highway and I listened to the rhythmic bumping of the tires over the repaired pavement I tried to shut my eyes and grab a wink, more to hide my sadness at leaving than to gain extra sleep. I have never been very good at goodbyes. Then we arrived at the fateful parting and I suddenly realized that I was to go in to my plane alone. My folks had to leave me there at the curb after a tearful goodbye. I could tell they were hurting, as was I, wondering if they would see me again. Perhaps it was kinder to do it quickly, but I felt cheated of precious moments with them, wanting to say a “proper” farewell, if there is such a thing. But, life is always like that. We all come together for a short time, hopefully spend the needed time together, then we have to part. The only certainty with human relations is that they will never last forever. And, we realize with that how important it is that we live each moment to its fullest potential together and not waste time thinking on the thousand things that so easily distract a mind. But, we all had a good time, though some things could have been done better. Life is like that, too.

It has been said that once we leave home we can never go back and that an expatriate always feels like an alien in the country of his or her birth. My recent travels in the motherland have highlighted these points for me to a degree. Change moves ever onward and the longer we stay away from a place the more foreign it becomes to us because our systems become attuned to our new abode.  Though the connection with loved ones will always remain, the body eventually becomes as one with the new place of residence, being imbued with its substance and aura and thus no longer tied to the land that brought it forth and nurtured it for all those years. We feel even repelled by some things that we once held dear and discover other things in the old place that feel completely different to us now and actually feel better than before. Cancerian moons are always good for that sort of thing.
 
Having just completed the high spiritual point of the year, we now enter into the series of nine solar festivals which are especially linked with humanity and the evolution of human consciousness. These nine festivals are all associated with the signs Cancer through Pisces, moving forward through the Zodiac. The three festivals that we just had—Aries, Taurus and Gemini—all provide the subjective and thus more potent framework upon which the outer manifestation for the remainder of the year is to be built. The upcoming festival of Cancer is of particular interest to us because it sets the tone for the remainder of the solar year in terms of how we build upon the subjective experiences of the three months preceding this one, and it goes a long way toward showing the prevailing undercurrents of thought that condition the mass of humanity in any given year. Cancer is a sign that is intimately connected with humanity , as we shall see, and the concepts of birth, home, the building of community and the groups of people with whom we are associated all spring from this, possibly the oldest, sign of the Zodiac. It will also be of great interest to us to note that the history of Earth humanity began in the sign of Cancer because we gained our very Souls in that far-distant eon of time and that Venus was directly a part of that process though, even esoterically considered, Venus is not associated astrologically with that sign at all.  
 
This full moon of Cancer occurs on the 2nd of July 2004 at 9:10 PM AEST.  There are many interesting features in the chart for that event to which we will attend in due course, but probably the most notable are the fact that the Sun conjoins Saturn then--Cancer being the sign of Saturn’s detriment astrologically--and the fact that Venus has just gone direct and is still on the degree of its station. Venus is again tied intimately to this solar festival, but for different reasons than those of the Gemini festival. The main reason that it is of such importance in this one is precisely because it does turn direct while the Sun is in this sign and it thus sets the objective course for the newly adjusted human relationships that have come about from the recent powerful Venus transit. The newly adjusted relationships to which I refer are largely subjective (being between Souls and people’s alignment with those Souls) and will work out on the material planes in due course. For some people there have already been radical changes in the ways and means in which we relate to others and to our inner life, but for the majority of people the Venus transit has passed unnoticed, aside from the media coverage of the event. People for whom Venus is a primary planet astrologically, like me, have likely felt much more of an effect than have other people. That has certainly been the case for me. So, before we launch into an investigation of the planetary dynamics of this Festival of the Ashram, as I call it, we should examine more deeply the significance of this most august of signs and see what secrets it holds for us—and there are a great many, as it turns out.
 
In its orthodox interpretation, Cancer is said to rule the home, history, women, childbirth,  the alimentary canal, the chest and breasts, nurturing and nourishment, food, cities, domestic life, water, motherhood, fish and fishing, cancer (the disease), places near water, the masses, land and lands, ones inherited tendencies, gastric disturbances, asthma, emeralds, the self-protective instincts, sheep, white roses, Africa in general, Central Canada, nursing, stores and toilets, to name but a few things. We thus see that through this sign we get our sense of lineage and shared history, the primary groups with which we are associated, the ways in which we nurture ourselves and the sense of foundation and support that we develop within and amongst ourselves. The primary force behind these things is the feminine archetype and Cancer has long been associated as the main sign through which humanity is fostered and nurtured. It is the sign that breathed us forth as humans, hence its association with the lungs and chest and it is the sign wherein we give birth to new lines of manifestation as Souls. It is a sign associated with beginnings, but manifested ones in distinction to Aries, which gives the impulse to manifestation.
 
Cancer is said to be one of the most misunderstood signs of the Zodiac. Given the fact that Neptune has sole rulership over it esoterically, the previous sentence comes as no surprise. But, the reasons for such misunderstanding go far deeper than that and reach all the way back to the dawn of human history, as I mentioned previously. Some of what we are about to consider will seem fantastic and implausible to some readers, but I ask you to simply let it all wash through and take it as a possibility or hypothesis if nothing else. Unless one is able to read the records of time in the akasha and thus the records of the Lords of Karma, hypothesis and conjecture is what that which is to follow must remain. If you want the full story, then a reading of The Secret Doctrine (by Helena Blavatsky) will fill in the gaps.
 
Many readers may not realize it, but there are three main groups of humanity upon our little globe. They are the human beings which were first incarnated on this globe, those humans who were holdovers from the Moon when it was a planet, and a third, much smaller, group with which we will not deal here. They are largely awaiting a later time in Earth’s history to “walk among men” and will be more involved with the closing of certain great cycles of the human race and with the inauguration of many new and unusual aspects to civilization. The oldest, and thus the most advanced from a spiritual evolutionary perspective, appeared on Earth in the early days of Atlantis. They were the Atlanteans of historical interest, the advanced Atlanteans. They were held over from the Moon. The Moon is called the Mother of the Earth because it was the globe from which most life on our globe was passed when it met its untimely demise. You see, the Moon was a failed experiment in many ways in terms of a planetary development. To put it very simply, human evolution on the Moon when it was a planet went awry and it became too much of a danger to the other “locals” in our solar system. The higher Self of the Moon (yes, planets have higher Selves, too) at that time deemed it necessary to cut short the life of the Moon and its life was then passed on to our Earth at the appropriate time. The whole story is too long to unravel here. Suffice it to say that the Moon is now a dead body, circling its progeny (our Earth) and slowly decaying. The Moon was also the mother of the humanity on that globe so, no matter how we look at it, the Moon and Cancer are both closely associated with humanity. The Moon is the orthodox ruler of Cancer.  
 
Our true Earth humanity appeared in Lemuria some 18 million years ago. These Souls constitute what are known in the New Age movement as the “young Souls”. They represent the great bulk of humanity on our planet today. The Souls from the Moon are the most advanced in terms of spiritual development and comprise the intelligentsia and “Lighted” members of the human family. There are always exceptions to any rule, though. It is said that there is only one example of true Earth humanity who has achieved the status of spiritual mastery thus far, and that Soul incarnated as the life we know historically as Jesus of Nazareth. His progress is said to be quite exceptional, and when his life is examined in that respect his words take on a very different tone. When he stated “These things you have seen me do, you will do also, and even greater”, it was at once a literal statement of fact and an example of what can be achieved by the humanity who became human on our planet. There is a fabulous message of hope in that and an indication as well of the promise that this little cosmic experiment we call Earth evolution holds for all involved. His life showed in full glory what is possible for all of us on this Earth—that evolution can be accelerated at a fantastic rate and that we do indeed have a lot to offer the cosmos if only we could get our collective act together. Most, if not all, of the other great spiritual Teachers who have walked the Earth are examples of Souls from the Moon.
 
This brings us to a consideration of the role Venus has played regarding Cancer and why its station and resumption of direct motion when the Sun is in Cancer is such a potent symbol. Human individualization occurred in Lemurian times as stated when the Sun was in Cancer by the precession of the equinox. In short, we were in the Age of Cancer when Earth humanity took form. I made reference in recent letters about Venus to the effect that Venus represents the same relationship to the Earth that the Soul does to the persona (animal man) and that every change in Venus is somehow reflected upon Earth. In those ancient days there were certain classes of animals that had evolved instinct to a point where a true fusion of mind could take place and thus allow a higher expression of life to occur. Coincident with that, there was a parallel development on Venus (all planets have a humanity of some sort or density) wherein a certain number of its humanity achieved liberation and the lower aspects of their Souls were no longer needed.  God is an economical sort and the stage was set: Give the potential Earth humans the aspects of Soul needed for their full development as humans from the liberated aspects of Venusian humanity. In Theosophical literature this is known as the Lords of the Flame coming from Venus and giving self-consciousness and thus Soul to Earth humanity. I am deliberately leaving a lot out and being sometimes not pedantically correct, but the gist of the story is what is important here. Venus gave us our Souls as Earth humanity. The rest is history, occult and otherwise.