Cancer New Moon

What do crabs, snapping turtles and scarab beetles have in common? Cancer season is here so get ready to learn about how this understated little cluster of stars can teach us to not sweat the small stuff and 'just be'.  We'll be exploring its links with the great hero Hercules and how this humble sign has worn many guises in Sumerian, Egyptian and Chinese lore. The meditation this month puts us in our place and reminds us just how perfectly we fit into the grand design.

Transcript

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Moon and you the podcast that's all about the changing seasons of the moon and how we can connect with it to unlock our own potential. My name's Jonah. I'm an Aussie living in South London, and this episode is the fifth in the series, which is focusing on the new moon in cancer.

Cancer is Latin for crab. It's the fourth sign in the zodiac and the first water sign and its ruling planet is the moon. So I think a really defining feature of cancer season that I've picked up is the smell of Jasmine. It's definitely dominating the night air. And I've seen in everyone's gardens that the white flowers have gone almost like that full cycle of coming into bloom and dropping off the, the vine, where then when they sort of yellow up.

Uh, but the scent is, is really, really beautiful, um, in, especially in the evenings. So there hasn't been too much rain. There's been a bit of it, um, in the past couple of weeks, but I've noticed that the, the ground in all of my local parks is quite hard, um, because it's so dried out and the grasses have turned this beautiful sort of golden freckly color, which just, you know, sings of the summer.

On top of that, I can see that there's lots of lavender in bloom and salvia and all of those really sort of fine summer flowering plants are doing their thing. Um, and something that's also been catching my attention quite a lot is just the movement and the busyness of insects around me. So not just the bees, which is still, you know, happily bumbling around, but I've noticed that there's quite a lot of those like princess ants or those black ants with wings.

Um, so there's probably something about them exploring to find new homes while it's sort of safe and warm to do so. I'm sure I'm not alone in my struggle to keep weeds out of the garden. They're going absolutely berserk at this time of year with lots of dandelions still growing, literally everywhere they can.

Lots of grasses and uh, some sort of showstopper weeds like, um, scotch thistle that I've noticed popping up in people's gardens and in between the cracks of parks. On a wider scale, it's also cherry season and raspberry season. In fact, there's quite a few berries that are coming into season at the minute.

And, um, there's also a number of other shrub like bushes that are starting to grow and stretch and flower like, uh, especially mug warts and anything in the Artesia family, which you can usually recognize from their bluey silvery leaves. Uh, they're, they're popping up everywhere around me, um, right into the countryside.

So with the summer here in full force, it's time for everyone to sort of pick up and flock to the sea, which everyone's doing, myself included. And it's oyster season. And something that I learned is that, um, St. James, who is the patron saint of seafarers and fishermen, he's actually celebrated his Holy day is on the 25th of July.

And if you didn't know this, July's, uh, not named after a God. It's named after Julius Caesar, who is sort of famously attributed to. To developing and popularizing the Gregorian calendar, which uh, we use today. So onto cancer itself, the first thing that I would say is that it's a much softer constellation than its peers famously.

So, uh, in its first Greek recordings and, um, it's almost impossible to see in city skies. So back then when they didn't have as much light pollution, it was still quite a difficult. Difficult, uh, constellation to, to spot. So the positioning of cancer was the backdrop of the sun during its peak time, like during the summer solstice back in the day.

But, uh, of course, the way that the planet's axis moves means that it's kind of shifted a little bit today, uh, but it still rests above the constellation of the hydra, which is a fabulous little segue into the story of cancer and what it's all about in Greek mythology. B for one though, cancers, uh, probably one of the most anti-climactic signs in Greek myth.

Um, in fact, it doesn't even, uh, it's not even the main character in its own story. But, uh, we'll get onto why that's important in a tick. Uh, that said, many will have heard about the story of Hercules or Hercules, who's. One of the most famous heroes in European classical literature and one of many illegitimate children that Zeus had with women other than his very devoted wife, Hera, who was the goddess of sort of, uh, many, many things.

But one of them was, was traditional marriage in the sanctity of marriage. So Herra really had a thing against Hercules. In fact, she had a thing about every child that was born of Zeus that was not her own. And when Hercules was a baby, she sent a couple of snakes towards his crib so that they could poison him and end his life before it even began.

But luckily, for Hercules, he'd inherited his father's strength and managed to tie the snakes together even as a baby and protect himself. So flash forward to Hercules adulthood, and Herra was still mad that he existed, and in one of her most, uh, toxic acts, she dispelled him into a frenzy that was so intense that he killed his own wife and his own children.

So broken. He pleaded for atonement. And Apollo, who was Hercules', half-brother and God of healing, answered his call. Apollo promised Hercules that he would find atonement and be immortalized if he completed a number of great trials. The numbers vary depending on the iteration of the myth, but uh, one of them was to battle the mighty hydra.

So the Hydra was a fearsome monster. It had multiple heads and it guarded one of the watery gates to the underworld, uh, in the sea. Um, but Hercules, you know, motivated by his willingness to atone and also his quest to become immortalized and recognizes the God himself, he took the hydra on. Um, but what he didn't realize is that when he chopped one of the heads off the hydra, more heads would grow back.

So Hera saw an opportunity here amidst all the chaos and the confusion and the drama. Um, and it's here that the crab comes in. So she sent a giant crab to distract Hercules in the middle of this battle. Um, however, unfortunately for the crab who lasted like one second, her Hercules was much stronger than Hera anticipated.

Um, and the crab became cannon fodder very, very quickly. Um, she. Recognize this act of service. Um, still, even though the crab was kind of useless, um, but she immortalized the crab in the sky as the constellation of cancer. And on reflection, it kind of makes sense that the constellation's quite subtle and understated because basically, like I said, cancer isn't even the, well, the crab isn't even the, uh, main character in its own story.

And if you are curious, Hercules did manage to eventually defeat the Hydra by working with his cousin to remove one of the heads and then quickly soldering the neck before more could regrow. So, to be honest, I don't really know what to make of this story, um, about this poor crab other than life is tough and then you die, I guess.

So I thought it would be helpful to backtrack, um, some earlier origins behind this sign, um, starting with ancient Suma. Well, the Greeks attributed the sign to a crab. The Babylonians attributed it to a snapping turtle and called it Mal al lul. Enki, who was one of the most revered Sumerian Gods, had the powers of creation and shaped the world, which we know and love today.

He's embodied by the ebbs and flows of freshwater, which in the Persian Gulf was the gift of life itself. We know a lot about ancient Sumerian culture from written recordings of the time, and sadly we only have half of this story, but I'll tell it anyway. Um, so Enki was wise. He was a generous God, but he knew full well the nature of greed and envy.

And so he created the snapping turtle to act as a loyal protector, um, over his gifts. And, uh, he intuited that one day there would be an uprising and envy amongst his peers, and that they would eventually come for his godly powers of creation. He was very right and wise to do this because his brother Ninurta did indeed turn his eye towards Enki's powers of creation, and, uh, launched a heist against them.

But thankfully, the snapping turtle managed to catch him by his heels, drag him back and bury him in the depths of the earth before he could get away with it. So to the Sumerians, the sign of cancer represented that snappy guardian, and this is my own theory, but it probably links to the quest for survival in the Fertile Crescent and the importance of access to fresh water in the heat of summer.

Not all cultures attributed the sign to water, though in Chinese astrology, the sign of cancer represents what's called the Vermilion Bird of the South, which represents the element of fire and the heat of summer. I, I think this also makes sense when we consider the positioning of the constellation as a backdrop against the sun during its highest peak, which I referenced earlier.

In ancient Egypt, the constellation represented a scarab, which linked it with the law of the rising and setting of the sun, which they believed was sort of pushed through the sky by a, by a giant scarab. Um, and I couldn't find any particular fables about it other than a general sense that the constellation represents the scarab, which is a symbol of everlasting life and shares, parallels with the journey of the sun through the sky, represented by a very minor deity called Kephri. So all in all, something about this constellation is a little understated, but I quite like it. And I think in a way that's what makes cancer so special. It reminds us that we don't always need to be big, and we don't always need to be the star of the show. Cancer itself is not showy, and it reminds us to be humble and asks us to get in touch with ourselves and explore our own hidden depths.

I think there's a really cute parallel between the crab and the scarab beetle because both have sort of soft in insides, but really hard outsides and both spend a lot of time in the sand and. I guess the take home message that I'm getting from cancer is that sometimes it's okay and the right thing to do to bury yourself in the sand to sort of literally disconnect and look inwards.

Um, because that's where we can also, uh, reflect where we can challenge ourselves and where we can grow. I think also reflecting on the story of cancer in Greek myth that, well, the sort of anti climactic, um, Greek myth and the story of the snapping dragon, there's something about cancer that teaches us that there's a time and a place for everything.

Um, and also that we're part of a wider mystery of life where even the smallest, most insignificant sort of piece of dust and the largest galaxy in the universe plays a role. So this week's meditation is kind of a forced existentialism, which lets our mind wander through time and through space and appreciate how magnificent just being is.

So, make yourself comfortable, relax, and get ready to go inwards.

So we'll start as always, by drawing attention to our breath. Breathing in through our nose and out through our mouth,

letting our bodies and our minds relax into the moment, in through the nose and doubt through the mouth.

We will repeat this a number of times until we're fully comfortable and relaxed, so in through the nose and doubt, through the mouth,

in through the nose, drawing attention to our lungs and doubt through the math.

In through the nose, drawing attention to our diaphragm and letting it expand and out through the mouth.

Now draw your attention to the weight of your body as you sit or lie where you are breathing in through the nose. And out through the mouth, allowing yourself to feel heavy and connected with the ground beneath you

in through the nose and out through the mouth.

Now I want you to draw your attention to what sits beneath you. The carpet or the floor, or the concrete or the soil.

See if you can feel its texture on your skin in through the nose and doubt through the mouth.

Now in your mind's eye picture, the origin of this floor, this wood

trace back where the wood came from, the hands had passed through, the distance, had traveled. And the forester once called home,

trace it back its journey as a wise old tree back through time to when it was a young sapling back through time again to when it was a seed.

Trace this back to its parents. To when it lived in a cone or when it lived in a seed pod on the tree of its parent.

Now reflect on this history for hundreds of thousands of years. In this perfect moment and in this perfect time, you sit or lay above wood. Now draw attention to the concrete beneath you and the soil beneath that

consisting of metals and minerals that have existed before time itself.

Trace it back. That single speck of soil consisting of carbon and metal that broke free from veins and rocky clusters in the earth's mantle. The

formed when the planet cooled. When above it were great seas

that had a life before that as lava

red hot rivers swirling in knots at the very core of this planet.

Witnessing thousands of years of history, of change, and of time

being big and being small,

being hard, and being soft.

Bending, twisting, and changing form over Aons to become the concrete and the soil upon which you sit or lay today. Now, turn your attention to the land that you, as far as the eye can see.

A byproduct of pressure, of time, of wind and rain and shifting tectonic plates beneath you.

Think about the time when it was covered by ocean. Think about the time it was covered by ice.

Think about the floods and the droughts that have scarred its surface

and expand this awareness even further beyond the horizon to encircle this planet.

Reflect on the fortune of all of these life-giving elements, being embodied in a single home,

the gift and exchange of food and breath, and all of the forms of life this planet supports.

Think about its history through time, the life forms that it has supported and that it has surrendered into the myths of time.

Think about its birth

when comets and stones and minerals collided. When they connected and when they span

forming a near perfect sphere

and expand this awareness even further into the solar system

and the delicate dance of planets and moons. Swirling and circling the Great Sun.

Now widen your lens even further to the Milky Way and to the stars above us all with their own histories and stories.

Let yourself feel small yet connected,

the perfect balance of form, fortune and fate in this time and in this place in absolute perfection.

Draw your attention back to your breath. Breathing in and breathing out,

in and out, like a golden thread that connects you to the tapestry of time and tapestry of life.

This is that we are one and the same with perfect purpose and perfect form. And when you are ready, open your eyes to return to the waking world.

Hope you're now feeling nice and chill and connected to everything. So the qualities attributed to cancer are things like empathy, emotional vulnerability, uh, homeliness and and nurturing. So the first thing that I'm going to ask you to focus on this month is to practice affirmations. So, Affirmations are different from mantras, and affirmation is more about helping us align with our true self or sort of trying to bring about or cultivate a personal quality within us that brings us in more alignment with our full self.

Well mantras are here to help us align more broadly with the universe around us. So, um, I know it seems a bit woowoo, but. Practice it for at least a week and see how it makes you feel. I don't think your affirmation needs to be anything fancy, and it doesn't need to be a big, uh, sort of ritual with bells and whistles around it.

It's really just taking the time to say a few gentle words to yourself when you are brushing your teeth or when you're in the shower or when you're ready for bed. Um, and let the affirmation. Sort of connect with the qualities that you want to cultivate and nurture within yourself. So my affirmation for this cancer season is love is my guide, and that's what I repeat to myself when I'm brushing my teeth and when I'm in the shower.

And I find that it really does bring me a sense of peace and calm, and helps a act as a bit of a navigator compass for the rest of my day. The second thing I think we can do to really vibe with cancer season is to connect with water. And by that I mean when we drink it, uh, spend a few seconds just being conscious of where it comes from and its story, how it came from the clouds, how it came from a river, because I think cancer is really a sign that reminds us to be, to be humble, um, and to appreciate the small things.

And. I would suggest that you adopt the same mentality next time you're going for a swim or whenever you're going for a bathe, to just really reflect on the life-giving qualities of water, how grateful we need to be for its presence on this planet with us, and how essential it is to our survival, and basically upholding all that is beautiful and magnificent about this wonderful planet that we call home.

And that brings us to an end of cancer season and also the first quarter of the Zodiac. So join me next time as we explore the sign of Leo and the qualities and gifts that it can bring to our life when we tap into that. See you next time.