The Shadow Side of Cancer
Yesterday, the new moon posted up in the sign of Cancer. Ruled by the moon and represented by the crab, Cancer is deeply connected to the fluctuations made by its ruling planet and the tides she controls in the sea. When the moon is new, it means that it is dark in the sky. This isn’t the joyous, celebratory full moon. It can be marked as a serious time.
When a Cancerian goes dark she turns into the Dark Mother. She becomes overly invested in her own emotional life, to the point that she might feel so overwhelmed that she refuses to engage in life. Rather, she turns into the hermit, hiding away in the confines of her living space, or at the very least going so far inward that others can’t reach her. Cancer, operating from her shadow side, will be emotionally needy. Unable to separate her own feelings from reality, she will instead project her internal experiences onto the outer world, seeing the people she loves abandoning her instead of just doing their own thing.
The Cancer shadow also manifests as a need to control the emotional frequency of the family. The quote “If mama ain’t happy then no one is” personifies this. There is a compulsion for Cancer to force her loved ones to feel as she feels. If they refuse, the Dark Mother is liable to reject them, at times going so far as to downright cut them out entirely. The Dark Mother, as the Cancer in her shadow, may also regress to a childlike state, wherein she loses all ability to be self sufficient and take care of herself, instead relying on those around her.
The Cancerian shadow may also manifest in a paranoia in seeing danger in anything or anyone unfamiliar. This can turn into the Cancerian stubbornly refusing to try something new that might help them, as well as them refusing to get to know anyone new. Cancer is deeply vulnerable in this state and can go for years swimming in the familiar waters of their demons even if they are close to drowning.
Cancer’s over-reliance on familiarity also explains their obsession with the past. While in the positive pole, this often makes them the keeper of family records and the one who logs important family history notes, when Cancer manifests from the negative pole, they can give Scorpio a run for their money in holding grudges against people who wronged them. Their memory is long and they’re liable to vindictively bring up that one thing that happened 20 years ago or so at Thanksgiving that you forgot about just to remind you that they still don’t trust you.
Cancerians are incredibly good at at intuiting the emotional nature of the room and when steady within themselves can also clearly see when their loved ones are struggling. From a healthy place, Cancers often know just what you might need to ferret those emotions out to heal you. However, when Cancer is lost in their own emotional storms, they will often resort to guilt trips and emotional manipulation in order to try to maintain some semblance of control of the human environment and also as a reaction to their inner fear of abandonment. Logic, reason and rationale cannot penetrate the Cancerian’s swirling whirlpool of pure emotion and feeling.
And that’s the rub- Cancerians on some deep level fear abandonment. I posit that this is because they’re so deeply connected to the mother archetype, which also, of course, connects to the child. Since they’re so intuitive, they can energetically hold onto the moments in their lives when they didn’t get the support they needed emotionally. In order to ensure that people remain loyal, they’ll often stoop for sometimes cruel emotional tactics, which say, “I know too much about you for you to leave.” What’s particularly painful here is that these behaviours often manifest within their own families.
At their best, Cancerians (i.e. Cancer suns, moons and risings) or people who are strongly influenced by the moon, are people who are loyal, caring, nurturing and maternal, regardless of whether they have children or are women by birth (or choice). If they do not have children, they will dote upon their pets, their friends and their families. Cancer people are intimately comfortable with the shaky, always changing world of feelings. They know that every emotion is a teacher but that a feeling, if you don’t get too invested, will come and go as quickly as waves come and go on the shore. They are a safe place. They feel like home. They may take a while to warm up but once you’re in the inner sanctum, they will always be there for you.
Cancerian people can really benefit from things like inner child work and learning how to speak to themselves like a loving inner parent so that they don’t have to overly rely on their loved ones to do the emotional holding for them. In addition, having a place to call home that they can decorate, tend to and care for can make for a secure holding ground for them to regain their bearings. Spending time by the water or taking regular detoxing baths can also help them maintain their emotional stasis. Learning some techniques to counteract their strong feelings can also help them be able to witness their feelings but not be pulled under by them.
This series (of which this is the first piece) is meant to discuss the dark side of each zodiacal archetype. Knowing the dark sides of these archetypes are not for giving you more firepower because you knew a few “bad apples,” but are meant for your own understanding. In order to get to the light, we must shine it on the darkness, as well. This also doesn’t mean putting up with toxic and hurtful behaviour. We are all responsible for making different choices and choosing to heal. Recognising that this archetype lives within all of us and is in our charts somewhere can help us be compassionate towards ourselves and others as we embark on our own healing journey.
