Zodiac Sign Cancer, Solstice, & Edward Hopper

Reviving here paragraphs from Ingrid Lind's little book Astrology & Commonsense (1962) to discover her take on the sign ruled by the Moon ~ Cancer:

The conflict here is the busy, active cardinal quality as part of an otherwise entirely emotional, negative and intuitive nature, The signs starting from Aries are alternately positive and negative. Taurus has many negative or feminine characteristics and this is true of Cancer. Here, to carry on the picture of gradual expansion from primitivity, woman has now fulfilled herself in motherhood, Whereas in Taurus her man came first, it is now her child and her home; and her energy is expressed in the effort to protect and preserve these.

Thus, in men or women whose charts show strength in Cancer there is a pronounced love of home or family and great loyalty to these. Just as a mother instinctively knows the need of her child and senses the approach of danger, so the Cancerian is intuitive and aware of surrounding atmosphere and public feeling. During the period of gestation any woman increases in sensitvity; she protects the child in her womb and has a natural feeling of self-importance in this act of creation, Cancerian women seem to have much of these feelings as a normal part of their emotional makeup. It would possibly be taken amiss if I were to suggest that Cancerians are like permanently pregnant women; but indeed it is true that much of the hypersensitivity and tendency to take things personally is typical of this sign in men and women.

Cancerian Qualities
Tenderness
Intuitiveness
Sensitivity
Thrift
Protectiveness

Cancerian Faults
Possessiveness
Fussiness
Touchiness
Hoarding
Taking things too personally

Earlier posts about zodiac sign Cancer can be easily accessed via the Label Cloud in the sidebar - just click on "Cancer".


Cancer also stands at the gate of Solstice, Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere, Winter Solstice for our southern cousins. There was a good article on Solstice in a rather unexpected place yesterday: Common Dreams. Written by James Carroll : A Solstice Approaches, Unnoticed. He begins:

ONCE, HUMANS were intimate with the cycles of nature, and never more than on the summer solstice. Vestiges of such awareness survive in White Nights and Midnight Sun festivals in far northern climes, and in neo-pagan adaptations of Midsummer celebrations, but contemporary people take little notice of the sun reaching its far point on the horizon.

We know, don't we, that there's still a coterie of astrologically aware people who keep an eye on the sky, and who are quite often ridiculed for so doing?

And he closes thus:

As our sense of the complexities of life quickened and deepened, our destructiveness of life also quickened and deepened. Through ambitions of unlimited growth, consumption, competitive manufacture, and self-expanding technology, we humans have become a mechanism of extinction. When we stopped noticing Earth, we began to destroy it.

Intimate awareness of nature and its cycles, as we saw, was an ancient mode of survival. But survival is at issue again. Noticing the length of light now, reveling in the sun’s achievement, rejoicing in Earth’s perfect balance, honoring the summer solstice — loving it: This is how we became human, and it is how we stay human.

Solstice Greetings to all passing readers, in both hemispheres.




One of the best examples I know, of a Cancerian-type displaying his astrological credentials in his art, was American painter Edward Hopper. Born 22 July 1882, Nyack, New York. No birth time available - chart for 12 noon.




Much of Hopper's artwork reveals two things - a feeling of loneliness and isolation, and the stability of a home. He loved to paint houses - homes. He also liked to portray the isolation which can come from city life. In some of his paintings there's also more than a hint of love of the sea - yachts, lighthouses. How could the sign represented by a crab not love the sea? He also was fond of painting aspects of summer - some examples below.

Hopper's natal Sun and Mercury in Cancer reflect his very obvious attraction to houses - homes, together with an ever present feeling of isolation or withdrawal. The sign of Cancer is well known as being the "homely" sign of the zodiac, Cancerian qualities also include shyness and withdrawal (think of a crab disappearing into its shell).

Saturn and Neptune in Taurus with Venus, Mars and Uranus in Virgo bring a lot of Earthy element to his chart - another hint as to why he was so attracted to portraying houses, homes, buildings, something solid, stable and reliable.

Pluto and Jupiter in Gemini. Moon is certain to be somehwere in Libra whatever the time of birth. These placements provide Airy lightness and a nice balance in his personality.

Pluto in Gemini brought forth so many great communicators, both verbally and pictorially - Hopper is certainly one of these. Lloyd Goodrich wrote of him:

No artist has painted a more revealing portrait of twentieth-century America. But he was not merely an objective realist. His art was charged with strong personal emotion, with a deep attachment to our familiar everyday world, in all its ugliness, banality, and beauty.

His best known painting: NIGHTHAWKS


And a video for good measure, with Benny Goodman playing along ~