INTRODUCTORY ESOTERIC ASTROLOGY

INTRODUCTORY ESOTERIC ASTROLOGY

CANCER 2009

Labor of Hercules
Capture of the Keryneian Doe or Hind

Capture the Doe of Moon goddess Artemis (& Sun daughter Diana); hold it close to his heart; bear it to the Altar.

Motto: I build a lighted house and therein dwell.
(Cancer visions life in Leo)

Cancer and Neptune
Cancer is rules by the Moon on the personality level and by Neptune on Soul and Hierarchic levels — in other words, Form hiding the Life within. Neptune is the principle of Sacrifice, or free will choice between the dualities and between worlds.

For anyone at any stage of development, Cancer represents a challenge. A lifetime where the ‘refuse’ of previous lives has accumulated and reached a point of needed reorientation. Cancer represents the ultimate choice for humans – of incarnation, meant to fulfill the choices of Capricorn. Esoterically speaking, ‘refuse’ also means what is refused in terms of choice, as well as the substance that gathers around one’s incarnation due to karma. Humans incarnate from no lower than the fourth etheric plane. They do not incarnate on dense, liquid or gaseous levels. That is provided by ‘The Mother’ in its many senses.

Cancer’s opposite sign Capricorn is concerned with ambition, aspiration, achievement and renewed efforts, and so is concerned with how he presents and is seen by the world and society at large. Cancer represents inheritance from the deep past, attachment to form which enables incarnation, and is generally oblivious of how they present and how others think – no matter how much uproar is created by their sensitive reactions to those factors. I now expect protestations and reactions all round. Let me explain.

Cancer is generally focused more around the self and parochial interests, measuring himself by local and family standards in order to use this congestion of inherited forms for a creative purpose – in order to survive. Coping and scrambling tend to take the place of predetermined and deliberate effort based on a mountain-top (or slag-heap) point of view. We are all prisoners of the planet, this womb and tomb of Earth, and it bears resemblance kama-manasically to a tar pit. The developed Cancerian view and concern is how forms can function in the environment without destroying each other or creating a tar pit of circumstances that serves nothing pleasant. Cancer is sensitive to the cries from that tar pit, and this tends to qualify viewpoints, concerns, responses, mobilization, and action. Cancer’s basic attitude is creative. It wants to find ways of turning the dissonance and uproar of colliding forms to good constructive use.

Of the three planes of love, emotion and sentience (leaving aside the Moon/Form for the moment) it is clear that Neptune sacrifice and death works differently from Jupiter inclusiveness and Venus love-wisdom. Sacrifice is simply free will choice. This is a purified version of unconscious and instinctive self-will. This is speaking from the point of view of Neptune ruling and conditioning Cancer on soul and IVth creative hierarchy levels. It must face its large accumulated pile of forms and make choices. Neptune’s freedom is very different from the freedom of Jupiter, which increasingly includes and radiates to free itself through a much wider and less parochial vision and vista of circumstances and possible spheres of interest and influence. Sacrifice or choice also works with Venus’ method of focusing on Quality, beauty, and refinement; choosing between lower and higher psychism and eventually coordinating them by necessary subjugation of the lower, and thereby freeing itself from that lower influence. All three planets are found prominent in the tests of the 2nd initiation.

Now let’s take a look at the transmutation of instinctive self-will directly into intuitive divine will. It is said one of the most difficult things to understand is Neptune and Vulcan in opposition — the Laws of Vibration and of Death, and their essential relationship. So let’s look at the planets of will – Pluto, Vulcan, Uranus – and how they relate to Neptune, which is said sometimes not to be a part of our solar system (perhaps because it transcends ‘systemic’ life, cosmically speaking?)

Pluto has a mental effect that is recognized later in one’s series of incarnations, but it represents the lower mind in association with free self-will. Therefore it is related to the lower unity of the physical body. It is found ruling Scorpio and Pisces, both signs of physical death and the ultimately beneficent process of reincarnation where outworn forms are dropped.

I would suggest that Vulcan has its effect on the psychic level, refashioning matter through constant hammering and the application of fire. This esoteric work on oneself and the world begins to condition one’s appearance and self-presentation in the world and tend to make one unique to the point of appearing out of place in any given standardized society. An intense focus on self-improvement or group-improvement generally tends to make one unpopular with the parochials. No good deed or intention goes unpunished. Vulcan was considered so ugly by Juno, that she threw him from heaven to earth, whereby he became lame. He retaliated by creating a beautiful throne for Juno, a mechanism triggered to incarcerate her, until Zeus intervened and gave him Venus as wife. A broad field of reflective possibilities emerges from these symbolic myths. Vulcan rules Taurus on the soul level (Venus on the personality), and Vulcan conditions the soul work of Virgo, another sign representing human inheritance from the deep past and associated with the perfection process that gives rebirth to self and birth to evolutionary improvements for humanity. Neptune for a Cancer native, in relation to Vulcan, often demands sacrifice or choices which alienate Cancer from the social herd, something particularly painful in this sign.

If Uranus represents the success of the previous solar system in developing active intelligence, it is understandable that it also rules genius and its unusual or unconventional methods for achieving results. It has a large field of vision and so frees itself through the drive or will to Improvement. With Venus it is exceptionally effective in the development of scientific paradigms, in contrast to science as technical research and technology, though its visionary effect is not entirely uninvolved in the latter.

Uranus and Neptune both represent free will choice –the principle of freedom and independence– though one works upward (mystically), and the other focuses downward (occultly) from the heights. Cancer is known to work particularly well with Aquarius, Libra and Aries – on soul levels and in the exemplary sense.

So we have scanned Cancer in the Subtle and Fiery Worlds, the worlds of Psyche and of Will. I hope this will help with Cancer’s major test of self-development – evolving directly from mass conscious instinct to group conscious intuition. For this lifetime the self-conscious intellectual stage represented by Leo is downplayed. I hope everyone sees this clearly in the sometimes difficult-to-understand Cancer type.

Good cheer and blessings all round.

Inspiration: Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Astrology, and her 24 books on esoteric philosophy.
NY: Lucis Publishing Company – website (http://www.lucistrust.org/en/publications_store).

H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Centennial facsimile ed. Los Angeles. Theosophical University Press, 1988.