Sylvan E Thorncraft © August 2003

     Cancer teaches about nourishment, comfort, and protection (I Feel).  She is very sensitive. Drawing wisdom from breast and womb.  She carries her home, her protective shell, as turtle or crab, her traditional symbol.

     In tarot she is the Chariot (7) which represents the principle of change, movement, the combination of stillness and activity.  Cancer moves us to choose change that will be nourishing to ourselves.

     Cancer’s time is the summer solstice, a time of fullness, of light, but also stillness before change.  She is a tidal river, banks swollen, water slack before the tide turns and the water is released back to the sea.  She is the branch laden with ripening fruit.

     The moon in her first quarter phase, she rises at noon and sets at midnight.  The light and dark are balanced but both the light and young plant are growing.  Energy is being used to build the structure to support one’s life work, the light steadily reveals more about what that may be.

     For Cancer I turned to the Ancient Mother, Yemaya Olokun, the Yoruba Goddess of the depths of the sea.  Water as the vast, nourishing womb that holds the seeds of creation.  It is hard to weave words that speak to this nurturing quality of being held so deeply.  I feel her draw me to her with the call of waves on the shore, and her thick, briny breath.  She teaches us how to care for ourselves and our families.