The Cancer Character -- The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

The Cancer CharacterThe Fourth Sign of the Zodiacby Rebecca Brents

Cancers are spirits of emotions and moods. Their feelings -- and inconsistencies -- the shifting climates of their inner world form the landscape where they live. Cancers have a mood for every occasion. Feelings count with them more than thoughts, or logic, or even the evidence of reality. Cancers pay attention to their intuition, gut reactions, hunches, and their "take" on people, ideas, places, situations, and problems. It's one of their most used and useful gifts. They have wonderful access to areas of reality we consider psychic, and you can't argue with their results.

Their way of approaching the world drives "logical" people crazy; it so defies reason and analysis. But their special wisdom is some of the best evidence we have that information from intuition and feelings can be more valid and trustworthy than all the graphs, tables, equations, and statistics those more "rational" signs put such stock in. Cancers love to experience and explore all the shades, hues, tempos, and varieties of this most elusive faculty.

Cancers can be with someone emotionally in ways that bring companionship and comfort -- especially in troubled times. Cancers can make just the right gesture, say just the right soothing word -- or nothing at all when that helps the most, and show compassion for another's anguished, injured spirit to jump-start the healing process as nothing else can do.

Cancers are sensitive. They feel and sense and absorb what they need to know through channels they can't describe in words ... but then words can't convey empathy in the first place. If you're not a Cancer and you need a little TLC in your life, for heaven's sake find out who among your friends IS ... and let them do their thing!! Cancers are gentle, tender, kind, and "mothering."

But always, there is another side to the story. And what is "sensitive" -- meaning receptive and responsive -- with just a twist of the emotional mood-wheel becomes "sensitive" -- meaning moody and easily bruised. This is also part of the Cancer personality -- a roller-coaster ride of emotional highs and lows that can be hard on everyone, hardest of all on the Cancer person. After all, he or she lives inside that changing world.

They can be almost bi-polar, and for all the positive reasons to have a relationship with a Cancer, that can make daily life with one quite a trial. Cancers feel misunderstood a lot. They're not being paranoid or self-pitying. They are hard to comprehend. The special pain for Cancer is they are often so "public" -- so obvious -- in their extraordinary sensitivity. When their feelings are hurt, when they are in a sulk, everybody knows it. And usually they just have to put up with it, too, because when Cancer wants to hear it's own sad song, everybody has to listen.

But the reason for this resides in Cancer's other primal interest, and that is the care, support, and perpetuation of the family. Cancer energy is the purest kind of maternal, nurturing, protective energy --not just that of mother and child, although that's certainly a large part of it ... but the care, feeding, maintenance, backing and defense of all its family members.

Here, Cancer must read the messages from loved ones who sometimes cannot say what's going on with them, what they need, and what they feel. That's where the empathy comes in ... the amazing Cancerian ability to be with a loved one intuitively and closely, and know what they know, feel what they are going through, and be an ally in the situation -- whatever that may be.

One doesn't have to be an infant or infirm to need such connection from time to time. We've all had moments where we just couldn't talk about what was happening with us ... but it was such a blessed relief to know we were not alone in our confusion and pain. This is why Cancers usually attract a huge family circle. They don't confine themselves to blood-and-marriage relations when they define their kin.

They wind up caring for a crowd of pets, strays, friends, colleagues, the friends of their children and relatives, the friends of friends -- pretty much anyone or anything that needs a helping hand. Hence the emphasis on protection, security, maintenance, and defense. Cancers care for those who cannot help themselves. Cancers consider that their job. These mended souls become "part of the family" ... and Cancer's sense of responsibility to them is fierce and unshakable.

Cancers are possessive, loyal, and extraordinarily well suited for the role they fill. Mothers-of-the-world (and Cancer men often make fabulous "mothers") need to be all the things I've just described and more. There is a devoted, domestic, tribal quality in Cancer, on display in men and women alike, which dissolves into sentiment, nostalgia, attachment to memories, respect for history and traditions, and a sense of connection that bridges the past and the future across the present -- in the generational ties Cancer is determined to preserve.

To Cancer, these concepts of family and continuity are literally sacred, and their special blend of qualities are those needed to keep things going. Only a fool would disagree.

(c) 2007 by Rebecca Brents. All rights reserved.