I woke up at 3:30 a.m. today. When I couldn’t go back to sleep, I headed to the altar table to contemplate Cancer in the dark, quiet stillness. As I meditated on the beautiful Bosschart image, I felt compelled to grab a book from my shelf: Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindberg.
Anne and famed aviator Charles Lindberg were married with six children. Their first child was kidnapped and murdered in 1932, a major news event at the time. She was an educated, accomplished woman and a devoted mother.
A friend gave me the book in December 2000, and I hadn’t touched it in many years. It’s a short book, only 137 pages, and I’m a fast reader, so I re-read it.
It is a book of personal essays written while Anne vacationed solo (and briefly with her sister) on Captiva Island in Florida. She collected shells as a meditation tool, using each shell to illustrate her experiences of womanhood and motherhood in the 1950s. Anne covers thoughts on aging, love, marriage, peace, solitude, and contentment.
I was struck by the synchronicity between Anne’s life, these essays, and the symbolism of Cancer and its three decans. Out of curiosity, I looked up Anne’s birth information. She was born on June 22, 1906. The time is unreliable, but some sources say 11:15 am in Englewood, NJ (DD rated). The Sun, Mars, the Moon, Neptune, and Mercury were in Cancer. Wow.
Cancer is a Cardinal Water sign. Like all signs in the Cardinal mode, it initiates. Cancer’s motivation for taking action is emotional and relational. Water cools, connects, moisturizes, and nourishes. Classical astrology describes it as feminine, fertile, and nocturnal and has long been associated with maternal archetypes and intuition. In health and medical astrology, Cancer rules over the chest, breasts, and stomach.
In Ancient Astrology Volume One, Demetra George shares some personality traits associated with Cancer: “Digging, fond of repute, popular, changeable, theatrical, cheerful, fond of pleasure and entertaining, inconstant in knowledge, wandering and sojourning abroad.”
Cancer is the home of the Moon, the original wanderer in our night sky, changing signs every 2.5 days. The Moon is associated with fluctuating circumstances and fortunes, as it translates light from the Sun and other planets to Earth.
The primary card correlating to Cancer in tarot decks is The Chariot (7), sometimes called Child of the Powers of Water. Like the Crab with its shell, the human figure is fully armed in the Thoth Deck and contained within the structure of a chariot. This card symbolizes action driven by willpower alone. There are no reins from the beasts to the driver; communication occurs through the mind. It is associated with journeys, quests, and eventual triumphs.
A relationship story emerges when you explore the minor arcana associated with the three decans of Cancer. The first decan is ruled by Venus (the planet of love and desire) and illustrated with the 2 of Cups. The card represents the initial spark of attraction and desire between two people, the emergence of a partnership or union, a perfect pair. Desire begins.
In the 3 of Cups (Decan II ruled by Mercury), desire has created new growth. The pair multiplied, and now there are three. This card represents shared experiences, fruitfulness, abundance, and rejoicing. In some decks, it appears as three women dancing with raised cups, and it has often signified friendly get-togethers in my daily life.
Every relationship seems simple at its start. Two people listening to each other, two shells meeting each other, making one world between them. There are no others in the perfect unity of that instant, no other people or things or interests. It is free of ties or claims, unburdened by responsibilities, by worry about the future or debts to the past.
And then how swiftly, how inevitably the perfect unity is invaded; the relationship changes; it becomes complicated, encumbered by its contact with the world.
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The 4 of Cups card correlates with the Jupiter-ruled Decan III of Cancer, and its meaning is a bit more challenging to decipher. Fours usually represent a stable situation, so here, there is stability in a relationship. The initial excitement and desire have worn off, and ennui has settled in.
Sometimes, Jupiter's excess leads to a situation of “too much.” Even too much of a good thing can be a problem. In interpersonal relationships, too much time together can lead to boredom and minor irritations that segue into more significant conflicts. After all, absence, not presence, makes the heart grow fonder.
Perhaps this is the most important thing for me to take back from beach-living: simply the memory that each cycle of the tide is valid; each cycle of the wave is valid; each cycle of a relationship is valid.
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh
As I kept reading Anne’s essays, I realized that the 4 of Cups could also correspond with compassion fatigue. Originally, compassion fatigue was used to describe the secondary stress impacting caregivers and professionals who work in the healing and helping professions. Exposure to repeated experiences of stress and trauma in others can lead to physical, emotional, and psychological impacts on the caregiver.
Another definition, from Merriam-Webster, is “apathy or indifference toward the suffering of others as the result of overexposure to tragic news stories and images and the subsequent appeals for assistance.”
While the concept of compassion fatigue wasn’t part of the vocabulary in the 1950s, Anne described the impact of increasing demands for compassion spread through media.
We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world; to digest intellectually all the information spread out in public print; and to implement in action every ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and minds. The interrelatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold. Or rather—for I believe the heart is infinite—modern communication loads us with more problems than the human frame can carry.
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Her remarks were prescient. The demands for our compassion and care and the sheer volume of media appeals have increased exponentially in the last 70 years. It doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, yet our human frames can’t respond to all of it without stressing ourselves.
Like Anne, we all benefit from making time for solitude and finding ways to bring peace and contentment into our full, busy lives. Maybe it can’t be a week at the beach, but simply an hour in the darkness at home.
Thank you for joining me in today’s reflections. Tomorrow, I’ll move on to the Sun’s home, Leo.
XOXO,
Denise
