Cancer the sign, the ascendant; Moons - but no Junes...or Ferris Wheels.....

A person could fill several pages, a couple of books even, with thoughts, quotes, pictures featuring the Moon, "ruler" of zodiac sign Cancer. I shall severely limit myself to one or two less-used bits and pieces.

“It was lunar symbolism that enabled man to relate and connect such heterogeneous things as: birth, becoming, death, and ressurection; the waters, plants, woman, fecundity, and immortality; the cosmic darkness, prenatal existence, and life after death, followed by the rebirth of the lunar type ("light coming out of darkness"); weaving, the symbol of the "thread of life," fate, temporality, and death; and yet others. In general most of the ideas of cycle, dualism, polarity, opposition, conflict, but also of reconciliation of contraries, of coincidentia oppositorum, were either discovered or clarified by virtue of lunar symbolism. We may even speak of a metaphysics of the moon, in the sense of a consistent system of "truths" relating to the mode of being peculiar to living creatures, to everything in the cosmos that shares in life, that is, in becoming, growth and waning, death and ressurrection.”
― Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion

The Cruel Moon
by Robert Graves

The cruel Moon hangs out of reach
Up above the shadowy beech.
Her face is stupid, but her eye
Is small and sharp and very sly.
Nurse says the Moon can drive you mad?
No, that’s a silly story, lad!
Though she be angry, though she would
Destroy all England if she could,
Yet think, what damage can she do
Hanging there so far from you?
Don’t heed what frightened nurses say:
Moons hang much too far away.

“Maybe there's a whole other universe where a square moon rises in the sky, and the stars laugh in cold voices, and some of the triangles have four sides, and some have five, and some have five raised to the fifth power of sides. In this universe there might grow roses which sing. Everything leads to everything.”
― Stephen King

Here's an alternative take on Moon's gender by Michael Cheval: Sunset Tango with a male Moon and female Sun. (More on this artist and his gorgeous work in an archived post HERE).

The Moon is a Painter
by Vachel Lindsay

He coveted her portrait.
He toiled as she grew gay.
She loved to see him labor
In that devoted way.

And in the end it pleased her,
But bowed him more with care.
Her rose-smile showed so plainly,
Her soul-smile was not there.

That night he groped without a lamp
To find a cloak, a book,
And on the vexing portrait
By moonrise chanced to look.

The color-scheme was out of key,
The maiden rose-smile faint,
But through the blessed darkness
She gleamed, his friendly saint.

The comrade, white, immortal,
His bride, and more than bride—
The citizen, the sage of mind,
For whom he lived and died.

Speaking of painters...an archived post featuring a Cancer-ish painter Paul Delvaux, his nudes and moons can be accessed HERE.

20th century British Astrologer C.E.O. Carter's piece on Cancer, the zodiac sign, is a good read. He isn't much impressed with Cancer rising though (my own natal rising sign). A few snips on that strange tid-bit, and a couple of others I'd not been aware of before:

I should say that Sun in Cancer is better than Cancer rising, and of course the Moon in Cancer is good. Not only kindly, but shrewd. It is not difficult to understand why it is not a very good ascending sign. Of course, as I am never tired of pointing out, it all depends on what means by "good." But the ascendant and midheaven are the most exposed parts of the figure, and it seems on the whole desirable to have strong signs in these latitudes Cancer rising usually brings Pisces on to the meridian and so one gets an unusually sensitive personality.

TRUE ENOUGH .

..........................Cancer is the quincunx to Sagittarius, and so one would expect them to be unlike, but they are both travellers. At least, tradition call the 9th sign the sign of travel abroad. Actually I should say it is more explorative than Cancer; it has an urge to find what lies beyond the ranges but Cancer is perhaps rather the tourist, or commercial traveller.................

NOT EXACTLY - I can be both explorer and tourist...but never commercial traveller!

Cancer is not easily thwarted and put down. Unlike the quincunx sign Sagittarius with its sudden enthusiasms and changes of interest, Cancer holds on. Even if its claw is torn off, it grows another. When it succeeds it is usually due to this doggedness, a word not inappropriate actually, since both Sirius and Procyon fall in the longitude of the 4th sign!

RIGHT AGAIN...I've always put this down to Aquarius Sun being a Fixed sign, this "dogged" factor could further underline that, I guess.

......Socially Cancer has a valuable card in its powers of mimicry....... For example, they can render dialects excellently .........

NO, I'M NO MIMIC, but I usually am quick to recognise and identify accents/dialects, but perhaps those who can mimic with accuracy have Gemini, the adjacent sign to Cancer, emphasised in some way (I don't have any planet or point in Gemini).

......I do not think Cancer is a happy ascendant, but it is plain from what has been said that it can be a gifted one (a list of well-known and well-gifted people with Cancer rising preceded this remark of C.E.O. Carter.)

I'm not sure that astrologers ought to be declaring ascendant signs (or any signs) good, bad or indifferent - the rising sign is but a single strand in a multi-layered personality pattern. I'm wary of going along with the standard astrological lore that the ascendant is "how we are seen by the world and how we see the world"...or words to that effect. I know that's what astrologers tell us to think, but...I prefer to look on the rising sign as simply part of a whole; it can be, and is, modified or emphasised by other strands forming the pattern.

 Moonshine by Paul Klee

Moons and Junes and ferris wheels,
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real;
I've looked at love that way.
(From "Both Sides Now" - Joni Mitchell)