people and their feelings than with power, achievement, or position in
society. Kindness, consideration, and tenderness impress you more than
any sort of honor the world can bestow.
You are primarily emotional and your views are often dominated by
your feelings and by your own personal, subjective experiences, rather
than reason, logic, or abstract principles. It is difficult for you to judge
situations in a fair, objective manner for your personal sympathies and
loyalties usually enter in. You take things very personally, and some-
times build a wall around yourself to protect yourself from pain and
rejection. You feel rather shy and vulnerable at heart. You also tend to
be moody, experiencing frequent emotional ups and downs. You need
to have a place and time in your life to withdraw, introspect, dream,
and replenish yourself; otherwise you become cranky and unhappy with
those around you.
You function in an instinctive, nonrational manner and like to
immerse yourself in creative activities where you can express your feel-
ings, imagination, and instincts. You often love to cook, since it can be
both creative and a way to nurture and nourish others. You also have a
great affinity for music, because it evokes and communicates feelings
that may be difficult or impossible to put into words.
Your compassion, sensitivity, and imagination are your strong points.
Your faults include an inability to release the past and go forward, clan-
nishness and prejudice, and a tendency to be self-pitying when you meet
hardships in life. (From “Merlin,” by Gina Ronco and Agnes Nightin-
gale. Courtesy of Cosmic Patterns [http://cosmic.patterns.com].)
Opening the inner eye, mapping the topography of consciousness,
learning to express compassion —these are Cancer’s evolutionary aims.
To assist in that work, Cosmic Intelligence has cranked up the volume
on the Crab’s ability to feel. No other sign is so sensitive—nor so vul-
nerable. A certain amount of self-defense is appropriate here; after all,
this world isn’t exactly the Garden of Eden. Trouble is, legitimate self-
defense can degenerate into shyness or a fear of making changes. You
really do care about the hurts that other beings suffer. That’s good
news. You also have an instinctive ability to soothe those hurts, hom-
ing in on the source of the pain. More good news. The bad news is that
you could choose to remain forever protected within the safe (and
invisible!) role of the Healer, the Counselor, or the Wise One.
With the Sun in Cancer, you feed your solar vitality by finding a role in
the world in which you address the hurt in the lives of other beings.
You become a nurturer or a healer of some sort. You also need to make
sure that you have enough real intimacy and quiet, private time to
“nurture the nurturer”—yourself, in other words.
Those methods strengthen your sense of identity. They trigger higher
states of awareness in you. If you don’t express your soothing wound-Cancer
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