For a good year or so, I hated Cancers.
My prior experiences with Cancer-sun individuals had largely been negative. Even among the more kindly exceptions, I found Cancer’s nurturing energy overbearing to the fiery Sagittarian independence I am so comfortable with. Pop astrology and online forums reinforced this: Sagittarians and Cancers should not mix — to do so would lead to “an abundance of turmoil.”
Some time after deciding to never associate with Cancers unless absolutely required, I began to notice my own discomfort with concepts of nurture, protection, and emotionality. Those things which are so essential to the Cancerian archetype were not something that I valued or knew how to intentionally incorporate into my life. And even though I had not fully realized I was doing this, in rejecting the archetype, I was also missing out on the values, strengths, and lessons this sign has to offer.
While I cannot find the exact quote, Jewish theologian, professor, and liberation theologist David Blumenthal writes in his prominent work, Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest that “good theology is good psychology.” Although astrology is neither psychology nor theology — although it is at times treated as both — I think that you can know you have happened upon “good astrology” when it also aligns with “good psychology.”
If you arrive at their office with an intense hatred for an individual or concept, a skilled therapist will ask you, in varying degrees of bluntness, why. In the course of a few sessions, you might begin to see that your intense dislike is actually a reflection of something in yourself which you do not wish to see. Likewise, good astrology offers an invitation to consider the ways in which one’s discomfort with an archetype or individual is actually more indicative of one’s self. Since every chart holds every sign, to “hate” any part of the wheel is to be internally at odds with something inside ourselves. Disliking a sign, then, is actually an opportunity to gaze into what it reflects back at us.
Cancer shows up in my second house, the house of resources. In its most literal terms, this is often called the house of finances, but for me I find it is embodied most significantly as the house of mental and emotional resources, even though that can have impacts on my material resources as well and vice versa. During the period when I was consciously uncomfortable with Cancerian energy, I was also living through the start of a global pandemic and exiting a contentious relationship. Though at odds with nurture, it was actually something that I was being called to revisit and begin to offer to myself, even though I would not arrive at that space for some time.
Through learning to revisit and integrate Cancer energy as part of my own astrological profile, I learned that to reject this sign was to avoid my own soul’s work of boundary setting, emotional introspection, and vulnerability. Despite sitting at an uncomfortable quincunx on the zodiac wheel, Sagittarians and Cancers do share some things in common, when you decide to look for resonances. And in continuing to strengthen this part of myself, I create space to welcome folks with Cancer energy in ways that work for both of us.
So I’d be really curious: what signs and archetypes do you consistently feel at odds with? Have you ever asked yourself why? Do you have any stories of how you engaged with those feelings, or what that dislike prompted you to encounter inside yourself?
vesta fire astrology 