Cancer

Wisdom Teachings
The Signs of the Zodiac

Each star we see in the clear sky at night is a sun like the sun of our system. According to the Wisdom Teachings the inner spiritual sun, who is invisible and is at the same time the real sun, shines through all suns. It corresponds to the radiating centre of consciousness in man. The sun rays we see are only its reflections. This principle of reflection is the symbol of the universal mind and is called the moon-principle. The visible moon in the sky reflects the rays of the sun and represents the moon-principle for the earth. In us this principle corresponds to the mind. Shape and colour of the sun again correspond to the physical body. So the material, the lunar and the solar principles form the threefold existence of man - his body, mind and spirit, from which his consciousness radiates.

Cancer is a watery sign and for all mundane matters is ruled by Moon, the mother of forms. Cancer enables the embodiment of a form, the reflection of the invisible in the visible, of the higher in the lower. Each moulded form rises like a wave out of the ocean of existence and holds in itself the living spiritual essence. All that is, was taken from the wholeness of being, temporarily gathered into a shape, to flow afterwards back into the one existence.

This truth of existence is reflected in our minds like the sun in a bowl of water: The sun seems to be circumscribed by the bowl. Thus the principle of reflection causes in the mind the notion of „mine” and the illusion of possession, which is strongly developed in Cancer. We speak of „my house, my children, my family, my profession” and see the things as different from us. We think that the truth we realize belongs to us, that the thoughts we have are ours. But thoughts come even if we don’t want them. The body also does not belong to us; it was given to us and will also be taken from us again. From the spiritual point of view the concept of ownership is unreal and a distortion of truth. From the worldly standpoint however there exist „my property” and „the property of others”. We suffer from the inversion through the feeling of „mine” and the age-old instinct of possession, which today has expanded so much: Individuals, companies and nations are intelligently striving to steal or exploit others, to pass others’ ideas off as one’s own and to push ownership rights through with patents and copyrights, with contracts and laws. Many would even like to possess that which legally belongs to others.

As soon as we think we possess, we are possessed and get conditioned by the possession. We cannot possess anything at all, since all belongs to the One who permeates all. „All beings are in ME and I AM in them”, is an expression of the highest truth in the Bhagavad Gita. All we have and need is given to us in trusteeship, to use it for divine and not for selfish purposes.

At the point of the summer solstice which marks the beginning of Cancer, the sun seems to move sideways, as seen from the earth, before it recedes from its northernmost direction towards the south. Therefore the symbol of this sign is the crab (♋), which moves sideways on the shore of the ocean, between water and land. In the Cancer-stage the soul moves between the physical and the watery emotional feeling nature, imprisoned in the hard shell of physical incarnation. Like the crab builds its shell as a house and carries it on its back, the people born in Cancer are always conscious of what they have built, and they try to hold it. They are considered to be over-sensitive and emotional. Their sympathies and antipathies change with their moods, and their minds can jump in a flash from one subject to the other.

Silver, the metal ruled by Cancer, affects sensitivity, psychic susceptibility and behaviour. It is related to the solar plexus centre and the reactive faculty of the mind. Silver in homoeopathic form (Argentum nitricum) is a remedy suited for calming the solar plexus. You also can fill water into a silver cup in the morning, keep it in a room with a current of air and drink it in the evening. Then you refill the cup, put it to the air and drink the water on an empty stomach in the morning. The water gets impregnated by the quality of the silver.

Cancer stands for the relation between nature and man and the instinctive bond between mother and child, through which the mother becomes aware of the needs, pains and pleasures of her child. In the womb both are linked through the umbilical cord. Surrounded by the waters the foetus grows up, when man, imitating the drama of evolution, descends into incarnation.

Cancer represents the gate, through which the soul „falls” at birth from the spiritual world into matter. The opposing sign Capricorn is the gate through which the soul, liberated from matter, can ascend again. In the cycle of the year the entrance of the sun into Cancer on the 21st of June marks the beginning of the „cycle of descent”, where the subtle matter becomes more dense, until from December 22nd on it becomes lighter and bright again. That which has been gained in the spiritual during the first half of the year, should be consolidated and lived from Cancer onwards through application in everyday life. We have to regularly recall the higher to memory, since otherwise we will forget the wisdom in the outer life.

In the old Egyptian zodiac of Denderah Cancer is represented as a beetle, which can sing and transform a worm into a winged being by the power of his music. This beetle stands for the Neptune-principle, the planet of divine music and devotion, whose vibrations are transmitted to earth through the moon. By contemplating these magnetic lines of force during the full moon hours of Cancer, the winged soul can ascend from the plane of the earth to the more subtle, musical planes, until it finally settles at the place of the experience of liberated presence.

Every morning we awake from sleep; then we are active during the day and go again to bed in the evening. When we wake up in the morning, our awareness awakens. Out of the state of existence the light of awareness rises. In the same way the Light of the World rises out of the background of existence, and the cyclical movement of creation emerges. In the East the first, highest Light is called Aditi, the Divine Mother, the radiant white light.

The primeval, unlimited Light centralises, a field gets formed, in which a birth of centres of light takes place. Out of the original Light the 12 Aditiyas, the centres of light, emerge, which give rise to the solar bodies of light. Thus the one light divides into 12 lights, which come to us through the 12 signs of the zodiac. The 12 varieties of light condense into the fabric of material existence. Just like the soul, the solar angel, descends into the body as its reflection, our sun condenses into the fabric of the solar system and the planetary centres. From the solar principle the light weaves the denser structures. The Weaver in the Light is called in the East the Son or the Mind of the Sun, Vaivasvatha Manu. He conducts the process of manifestation on the planes of the more dense moulding of forms.

All light is part of the one Light of the World. It is worshipped in the female form, since it is the first emanation of the eternal existence: This is the origin of the worship of the Divine Mother. God in creation is the Mother, the Father is beyond creation. Potentially the creation is male-female; the Father is the content of the form, the form itself is the Mother. The Father permeates every plane of existence; the formation of the planes however is the work of the Mother, which she carries out with the support of the Father. So that which we call God in creation is the Divine Mother, and the Father is contained in her. The Mother of the World receives energy from the Father and distributes it into creation. She herself is the vehicle of manifestation, the custodian of the living spiritual essence.

The zodiacal sign of Cancer symbolises Nature as Mother, whose quality is to receive in order to distribute. The fourth sign, the house of Cancer, stands for the home and represents service to the family and to society. Love and cordiality are the fundamental principles holding the family system together. Love is magnetic and holds different things together in unity. The love of a higher dimension sets free and doesn’t try to possess others. The masters of wisdom, as expressions of the divine Mother aspect, allow as much freedom as any soul seeks. They further the welfare of humanity; they help us, when we ask for it.

In the East Cancer Full Moon is celebrated as the full moon of the teacher (Guru Purnima) and is dedicated to the great Master of Wisdom Vedavyasa. Vedavyasa is the teacher who for our time cycle gave the great epic poem Mahabharata with the Bhagavad Geeta as well as the Bhagavatam and who created a classification of the Vedic wisdom. It is said that he has ascended to higher planes, but gives his presence at this full moon.

The chain of teachers reminds us that we receive in order to give: Every teacher received knowledge and wisdom from his teacher in order to give it to others, who can grow up that way. When we receive wisdom, we are a moon, when we give; we are a sun for those who receive. If we receive without giving, there is a jam and we suffer from the possession. This is true for all that comes to us: If we receive money, we should see that it is also used for others; if we can heal or if we have power, this should also be used for the well-being of others. Since we have received a body, we should also give a body. Through right receiving and giving we gain balance of mind.

The ruler of the sign of Cancer is the moon. The moon receives its light from the sun and distributes it to the earth. The light of the moon is full, when it passes the sunrays on completely. The moon principle of receiving and reflecting exists on all planes of existence, our sun is also a reflective principle on a higher plane, which receives its energies from a central sun and distributes it to the solar system. The reflective principle, called Chandra in Sanskrit, speaks of transparency. If someone is full of transparency, he is full of love; if however he has a hidden agenda, he cannot love. He tries to manipulate others by means of one-sided or withhold information. To be transparent means to communicate and to share information and knowledge. Where there is no transparency, the moon – the symbol of the mind – is troubled. Those who possess power, money and luxury without sharing cease to be transparent, and that is their trouble. Hunger and thirst for possession and holding, but also waste and irresponsible shopping are expressions of an inner impurity, which has seized great parts of humanity. The human psyche gets more and more hungry and thirsty for things; we fill our houses and still have the feeling of not having enough. The desire to hold on is an expression of the nature of Cancer. To store out of fear for tomorrow is a dangerous attitude, which blocks the stream of vital energy. We get conditioned and imprisoned by our ideas and concepts. We can only free ourselves of the prison by shifting our awareness and by neutralising our conditioning through service to the surrounding life. It is only through service – on whatever plane – that we can develop inner and outer purity.

Today it has become very difficult to maintain purity. It is hard to get pure water, pure air or pure food, pure thoughts of devotion are also disappearing. If young people don’t have sexual relations already in an early age many consider it to be not normal. Drug consumption is also widespread. Purity however is a fundamental prerequisite for spiritual growth. We can promote the habit of pure thoughts by asking ourselves: What is my attitude to the people in my surrounding? Am I pure in my thoughts and emotions or am I proud, jealous, possessive? Purity in our way of life opens the doorway to higher beings. In purity we can receive to give on in purity. Through the principle of purity the Divine Mother protects and guards us against dangers.

With the entrance of the sun into the sign of Cancer at the summer solstice on June 21st the annual cycle enters into a phase of condensation and concretising. Therefore Cancer is also called the dusk of the solar year. We walk into a process of descent, in which the objective side or the aspect of matter is prevailing. Here is the opportunity to consolidate that which has been gained during the first part of the year. Now the challenge for us is not to forget the wisdom acquired and not to lose ourselves in the outer. If we succeed to keep our inner intention in mind and to carry this wisdom into daily life and put it into practice, we will be ready for a new step of development in the next cycle of ascent.

When we listen to a beautiful music, the eyes close themselves after a while and we get absorbed into the music. We forget that we listen to the music: All that remains is the music, neither the listeners remain nor the musicians nor the room in which the music is played. If at this moment somebody comes to us and says: “That’s very beautiful music, isn’t it?” this question is very unpleasant for us and we answer: “Please keep silent.” The pure experience doesn’t allow any thought. A thought serves to explain something about the experience and make it clear after the experience is over. During the experience itself the thought is an obstacle: As long as we think about our hearing of music, we don’t really listen to it. The same can occur with other forms of creative work: Only after a while we realise that time has passed. We know nothing about the span of the experience. Often the same is the case with an intuition: We simply carry it out – only later a logic develops in our mind around the intuition, which tries to support and to explain the intuitive action.

Music has the ability to directly rise the consciousness from the emotional plane to the plane of the soul and to make it dive into it without the help of the mental planes. This path is related with the sign of Cancer and its ruling planets Moon and Neptune. Musical sound work through the unconsciousness as a mantra. If they are used rightly, they can have a healing effect. The sounds dissolve obstacles in us, and we can experience the bliss of comprehensive levels of consciousness.

Without a skilful teacher however the work with sounds is a dangerous way: Actually music should build us up and make us harmonious, but if we listen to certain kinds of sounds we get deeply disturbed and our energies dissolve. Today sounds and rhythms are also created without any sensitiveness and it is called music.

Through music great masses can be influenced. We can be led into subconscious levels and into illusions and indulgence; in this our mind gets weakened. Especially in combination with alcohol and drugs music develops an intoxicating effect, which is related with the lower influence of Neptune. Therefore people with a keen intellect might reject working with sounds and mantrams. Since the concrete mind tries to systematize and to crystallize, they find it difficult to engage in a transformation process which goes via experience and not via meaning. Sounds and music however are considered to be the highest means for inner transformation and also for energising the surrounding. Reciting the Gayatri-mantra for example has a musical, metrical and charming effect. When we go deeply into the sound, we get totally aligned. The scattered energies in us find together, the body cells are purified and transformed, our mind gets silent and transparent. The soft, harmonious music of flute, violin or guitar flowing like a wave can also build up our vital energies and arrange the vibrations in the house.

The mind is connected with the moon, and the moon conveys to us the influence of Neptune. In this lies the importance of the full moon meditations, especially at Cancer full moon: It is not a question of the moon light, but that we become aware of the magnetic lines of force coming from the musical vibrations of Neptune being reflected by the moon to the earth. In the East it is said that the reflection of the moon even transmits Soma, the nectar of life, to the earth. We try to attune to these energies and to contemplate on them.

In its movement around the earth the moon follows a rhythm: It runs through fifteen phases until full moon and then goes again back through fifteen phases to new moon. The cyclical movement through the new moon and full moon in each sun sign builds up patterns out of the magnetic forces. They create high tide and low tide with the waters of the earth and etheric and astral currents with man. By the sun an electrical work is being done. In this the daily path of the sun around the equator works like an induction coil, which builds up the required electric field around the earth. The seeming southern and northern movement of the sun from the tropic of Cancer to the tropic of Capricorn weaves the electric lines of force. In this way the equator is charged on both sides with the radiant energies of the sun and the electromagnetic field is generated around the earth. These electromagnetic phenomena form the vital sphere around the earth. It is called by the Masters ‘Plenty of Prana’ and is worked out by the earth as the life of the planet. The living beings carry this life as their individual electromagnetic field. The movement patterns of sun, moon and planets create the innumerable diversity of the patterns of the individual living beings and shape the behaviour. They correspond with the patterns a man has developed in earlier times and is connected with the time of birth of the person.

The cardinal watery sign of Cancer represents the “mother’s womb” of the subconscious nature. It protects and directs life through instinct, impulse and behaviour, until it awakens to the soul. On the mundane plane Cancer rules the mental activity, which is coloured by emotions and feelings: Our mind wavers, sometimes it is hopeful and luminous like the waxing moon, then again dark, full of fear, hesitation and pessimism. We only overcome the ebb and flow of the personality when we adjust ourselves to the tide of soul life. In the chamber of the heart we experience, how the current of the sound of silence eternally flows in and enlivens us. The music of the soul pulsates in our being, through it Neptune gives us a reorientation to inside. Krishna’s flute music was of this neptunian quality, it could lead people into soul awareness, no matter in which state they were. When we listen to the pulsation, which is the basis of our respiration, and are totally engaged in it, we can hear certain sounds like bells, flute or string music. It is an original music and so beautiful that we would like to unite ourselves totally with it. He who lives out of this origin is beyond all patterns and set patterns. He is an original, he has no frame which binds him. We cannot expect him behaving in this or that manner. However he can adapt at any time and at any place to each pattern and every structure. The way he behaves and reacts is always something which has never been there before. He is charming and very inspiriting. All Great Ones live out of this origin, therefore we cannot typecast them and also understand them only a little. But we can reach this originality ourselves by associating ourselves more and more with the music of the soul and by resounding through us.

In creation there are two main principles: the creative and the reproductive principle. The creative principle is life itself and is called the Father-principle. The reproductive principle is the Mother-principle ruling over nature, it is the radiant expression of the Father, the Absolute One. The Mother is the vehicle through which the Father presents himself, without her the Father cannot be experienced. She is also the child-bearing principle. The relation between nature and man is like the relation between mother and child. It works through the subconscious and expresses in the instinctive affection of the mother to her child. This is the umbilical cord, through which Mother Nature nourishes and protects the child, before it grows into soul consciousness.

In the zodiac Cancer stands for the universal Mother aspect. This principle is often also called Moon, which is also the ruler of Cancer. The moon we see is a satellite transmitting to us the moon principle. The original moon is the Mother, who receives in order to give. The sun also transmits the moon principle, he receives and gives. The Eastern wisdom teachings call this principle Chandra. The times of Pralaya, of the dissolution of creation, are represented as a crescent on the head of Shiva. It is said that Shiva is there even when the creation is not there. The crescent is painted only to indicate that creation is potentially there. When creation is in manifestation, Shiva recedes into the background. The full moon makes creation radiate in its splendour, and we don’t see the background any more. It is like with the screen which we don’t see any more when the pictures are running over it. The illuminated screen is the Mother, the non-illuminated black screen is the Father, the background. He supports the light and makes creation appear.

Moon has the special property of fertilizing and germinating. Without moonlight the plants on earth would not germinate and bear fruit, there wouldn’t be pregnancies either. The reproductive principle of nature works through the moon, and the orbital cycles of the moon of 28 days were called the calendar of the Mother by the ancients. These cycles have an influence on the female cycles of fertilisation and on the growth of the embryo.

The mind too is ruled by the moon, for it represents the reflective principle. According to our alignment the mind mirrors the higher and subtle or the lower and material. Especially in Cancer spiritual students should reflect upon the higher and think about their Teachers and Guides. The Teachers themselves work as reflective principles and transmitters of higher energies, they transmit them to those who follow them. Thus Master E.K. says in the meditations of Spiritual Psychology: “These are from Higher Circles. These are from whom I follow to those who follow me.” In the East Cancer is therefore considered to be the month of the Teacher and Cancer full moon is celebrated as the full moon of the World Teacher, Guru Poornima.

The great initiate Veda Vyasa is the master related to Cancer full moon. Over 5000 years ago he has given the wisdom teachings for the present age, in order to keep the wisdom available to mankind also in these materialistic times. However, although he had given out innumerable concepts about the cosmic, solar and planetary system and his contemporaries looked upon him as the greatest light, he was dissatisfied with himself. He had the feeling that something was missing in all the work he had done. His son Sukha lived in complete union with God without doing all the work his father did. Each time Vyasa was looking at his son he was reminded that he was missing something in life, but he did not know what. It was a mystery for Vyasa how his son could live so much in tune with everything and didn’t worry about himself at all.

Once when Vyasa was deeply contemplating on it, Narada, one of the Kumaras passed by and said: “I see that you are worrying and also why. You have given out everything as abstract wisdom, but you haven’t seen the beauty of the Lord in his creation. You see God in a scientific manner, as universal energy, how it penetrates the entire cosmos. But there is also the art of experiencing Him. Your son lives in the presence of the Lord and in this forgets himself completely. You have still maintained the I AM-consciousness. Experience the bliss of the presence and take the last step.”

Narada gave him the hint for a direct path of getting into the presence of the Lord: “Tell the wisdom in form of lively stories about the work of God. Then you will discover a new dimension which you don’t know yet.” Wisdom stories are much more attractive than abstract wisdom. They absorb the reader entirely into the content and make him merge with the experience. In this way the last book of Vyasa came about, describing in stories the life of the Lord as Krishna and his working through the world disciples. Thus story-telling about initiates became an important instrument for the imparting of wisdom. Good teachers are good story-tellers, and also the Masters sometimes gather to tell each other stories.

The moon is used by higher circles for many purposes, it is a transmitter who conveys the vibrations to the earth. It reflects the influence of Neptune and thus makes Cancer receptive for sound and the music of the soul. The downward flow of the year into objectivity also begins with Cancer, and the manifestation of dense matter is related to the Lord of the Waters called in the East Varuna. Varuna is a cosmic being and works together with Uranus and Neptune; Cancer is called his birth-place. Symbolically Varuna is represented as a five year old boy with four arms carrying in his hands a trident like Neptune. He moves through the waters of space drawing with his trident lines of force which give the direction for the manifestation of creation. The coming-down of the waters is also represented by the rain, and therefore Varuna is considered to be the rain-god. With the directions Varuna is the Lord of the West, and Cancer also represents the dusk of the year. As a cosmic principle Varuna is related to the mother energy; he helps the souls by providing right bodies for their coming down. The movement of the year beginning with Cancer brings consciousness into matter, and thus this time is ideal for consolidating and implementing good intentions now.

Sources used: K. P. Kumar: Hercules: The Man and the Symbol / seminar notes / E. Krishnamacharya: Spiritual Astrology. The World Teacher Trust - Dhanishta, Visakhapatnam, India. - A. A. Bailey: Esoteric Astrology, Lucis-Trust, London. ( www.netnews.org / www.lucistrust.org ).