Field Notes on Cancer

Only a Cancer could turn the sound of someone paying their bus fare into Careless Whisper.

If you think of the zodiac as a 12-part hero’s journey, here’s how it begins:

- Hero begins the adventure (Aries – Cardinal Fire)

- Hero gathers valuable resources (Taurus – Fixed Earth)

- Hero learns crucial information (Gemini – Mutable Air)

Cancer, the fourth sign of the Zodiac, is initiatory in two ways. One: It’s a cardinal sign. (Cardinal signs initiate something – that’s why they tend to start on solstices, or the beginnings of the four seasons.) Here, it initiates the second phase of the hero’s journey. Two: It’s the first water sign in the natural progression of the zodiac.

It seems odd, then, that Cancer – a sign associated with being safe and comfortable at home – is so initiatory. Until you realise that there are some things that just cannot begin until you pause, get comfortable, and take the time to nurture it. Like a relationship based on true love. Not passion or sudden infatuation, but the slow kind, built after lots of quality time together. Or being born, arguably, because birth requires months and months of gestation beforehand. (The sign of Cancer is associated with motherhood.) Or a creative project.

Creativity is associated with Leo, the 5th sign of the zodiac. Maybe the reason it follows Cancer is because a creative project needs a safe, nurturing environment to grow. Another word for this safe, nurturing environment is ‘imagination’ – the project’s container. You have to kind and patient with an idea – think through every possibility, draft some terrible writing, edit it until it’s decent, move chapters around, throw the whole thing in the bin after a tantrum, and start fresh, etc, over and over again – until you realise that this project just has to get done. The project has to get done because the imagination it sprung from is still there; it will get too restless without a creative outlet.

Cancer is the only sign ruled by the Moon.

To continue the hero’s journey paradigm laid out above, I think Cancer is when the hero becomes emotionally invested in their mission. That’s when things start getting interesting. Because once emotions are involved, the hero has something they’re really willing to fight for, maybe to the death. The story has more gravity now; the stakes are raised. The audience becomes invested. Think of Episode 4 of a TV show – that’s usually when you know whether you’re going to ditch a series or stick with it.

Cancer is associated with safety because emotional investment in anything – to love anything – comes with a fear that the thing will be taken away. There is no love without fear. Cancer knows this, which is why its style is less “let them try to hurt me and let’s see who’s stronger” (that’s Aries) and more “I will build a fortress so strong that nobody can disturb my peace.” Coping mechanisms that develop around a wound in order to keep it safe from further damage – that’s Cancer.

This scene from Gilmore Girls, also a Cancer:

While Cancers are great at building fortresses that keep themselves and everything they love safe, they might be the last to notice when the call is coming from inside the house. Take Lorelai Gilmore, for example. (Not a Cancer, but acting out the Cancer archetype in this scenario.) She does everything she can to can to protect her daughter from her parents’ restrictive, cut-throat, cold WASP world, constantly telling Rory how sweet and exceptional she is. But Rory is only exceptional in Stars’ Hollow, and the cloistered world Lorelai created for her. So when Rory becomes an entitled Yale student who runs straight into her WASP grandparents’ arms when she’s treated like a normal person… nobody is as surprised as Lorelai.

What I love most about the Cancer archetype is its capacity for whimsy. Whimsy has a bad reputation. Somewhere along the line it became associated with owl motifs and Manic Pixie Dream Girls. But that’s just a few judgmental people’s ideas of whimsy – whimsy itself is much more complex.¹ Whimsy is just an attempt to reconcile imagination with reality.

Here are some examples of Cancer placements deploying whimsy:

• Miranda July: In All Fours, a character renovates a nearby motel room to look like a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris

• Elizabeth Gilbert, in literally anything she writes

• Missy Elliot writing a megahit song where the chorus has a line that goes ‘Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i’. (She also put off touring for years so she could spend quality time with her elderly dog – Cancerian priorities!)

• George Michael being inspired to write Careless Whisper after hearing the sound of coins dropping into the bus fare box

If a Cancer trusts you enough to let you in on their inner world, it’s a warm, generous gift, full of archived memories, personal and collective. (To paraphrase my father: “An elephant will forget, but a Cancer will remember.”) If you make them feel bad about it, remember that those crabs have claws.

See you in Leo season,

Nikkitha

1. I have a hunch the whimsy hate is some weird offshoot of misogyny. Because whimsy is basically a more feminine, less threatening and anti-social form of being weird. In masculine figures, whimsy tends to be treated as a form of eccentric genius. In feminine figures, it’s often dismissed as annoying. (See: Gabmore Girls, which I find distasteful but also kind of funny.)