seer: cancer season love letters
cancer ~ community in thema mundi || transgressor artemis, witch qadesh, destroyer tsonokwa
hello lovers,
welcome to cancer season, we love, we are loved, and we are - love, much peace through the act of loving. if you are a cancer sun, happy birthday and solar return to you ~ please check out the limited birthday promotion i offer through july for you! if you are not a cancer sun, consider gifting a session for someone’s birthday or treating yourself to a mid-year astrology or spirit guide messages reading with me!
i took my sweet time with writing this season’s love letter as things were changing in my life and i was not in the mood to write it early, prior to the ingress. some major life updates: i started my lgbtiq-focused summer internship which is taking most of my mondays through thursdays, i paused my tarot portals indefinitely after more than two years of offering them to make abundant space for astrology and spirit guide sessions, i healed and moved through layers of discernment regarding relationship dynamics - in which i performed a cord-cutting ritual to restore my energy. as always, i am only here for love. after all, the role of the cancer archetype is to embody the fullness and wholeness of our emotions deeply.
for the past few weeks, the tower card energy i forecasted during gemini season materialized itself - and i was not alone, thankfully, as some folks responded to my instagram story about how relevant those insights were for them. thank you so much for reading my posts and witnessing each other through our shared journey. this is why i show up to write my love letter every season, i know someone-somewhere out there who felt seen through this shared love container. if at any point you felt like giving back to me, please feel free to tip me below, get a reading or simply promote my offerings to your loved ones.
regardless, i also started reading a (spiritual) book by hazrat inayat khan and initiated collaborating with dark goddess tarot as a way to honor the cancer season. the pioneering goddess that showed up for me on the first day was scylla, greek monster maiden, represented by the amazon of water (page of cups). syclla’s fierceness felt very synchronistic for a cardinal water season, especially at a tender time for human rights everywhere. please do check the other dark goddess reels; perhaps there is a message waiting for you throughout the series.
let’s begin:
on cancer, community houses and thema mundi
the brilliant Sasha Ravitch in the new moon in cancer post wrote:
“The beauty about feeling emotions in oceanic measure is that there is an incalculable capacity for us to fathom our own strength, our own depth, and our apparently impossible limitlessness. The catch in all of this is what happens when we attempt to contain the infinite within the brittle carapace of an exoskeleton--what happens when the soft, gushy bits break free of the shell?
Cancer knows the fallibility of “I”--wherein “I” becomes a defense for when we are afraid of “we” or “you” hurting aforementioned “I”. Cancer knows that there is a mutual “need”, an interdependence, between the community and the individual; Cancer knows that our loved ones can become the protective shell when we are at our most vulnerable.…
These speak the psychological crux of Cancer for me: the safety of community is housing for our spirit, a mooring anchor which allows us to catch our breath in between the heaving sobs. We are capable of incredible diluvian waves of incalculable emotion, but we must remember the Lighthouse of Community when the storm feels that it will take us over. We must seek higher land. And most importantly, if we want to survive this mess, we must be courageous enough to be transparent about our vulnerability. We must ask for what we need, so that when the time comes for us to give, we are full enough to do so.”
if you feel called to support sasha’s beautiful (+ extensive) writing, the patreon is here, i really hope to be one someday, ameen!
above, i bolded the parts where sasha brought me deeper into loving and appreciating the cancer archetype. it is my 8th haus with (fallen + out of bounds) mars (malefic of sect + has triplicity) placement and i have always had a complex relationship with mars, naturally 8th house is a *difficult* house to navigate in astrology. growing up, i have always felt the deep violence vulnerability has brought into my life, more so internally, and being transparent with it has always been something i deeply feared and have had to consciously heal, mainly due to the experience of the emotional and physical cost associated with another (8th haus of shared resources). over time, *difficult* astrological placements have created their own subversive magick.
“housing for our spirit” made me think about the thema mundi - the inception of the universe with a cancer rising or ascendant sign. the concept of the rising sign stems from the starried-sky meeting mother-earth on the eastern horizon to rise at the time of birth - where our divine spirit becomes embodied, and our heavenly body becomes ensouled. we are housed here, on divine earth - before we are able to house others.
“the safety of community” sasha wrote made me connect to the thema mundi’s larger relational or social houses (11th House and 3rd House):
firstly, community security through the 11th house of community, alliances, hopes and good spirit (joy of jupiter) in taurus, the earthly place where our moon is exalted, and venus is in nocturnal domicile. unsurprisingly, safety and security are values important for folks with cancer and taurus signatures.
by astrological delineation of thema mundi, i believe that our divine moon (as the exaltation lord of taurus) is responsible for and regarded as the most celebrated form of container for universal safety, a feeling of safety that ebbs and flows as grounded truth for our collective bodies.
recently, the luminous Ari Felix wrote in their new workshop Love Exalted ~ “a teaching on how the seven visible planetary ancestors provide a framework for creating a culture of reparative conduct and relational repair” informational post:
“Moon in Taurus: reparative conduct begins as an intimate practice, grounded in the relational security that’s only possible when values are shared, contexts of conditioning are understood, and movement is at the speed of trust.”
i read the quote above and felt my psychic body relaxing on the ground and kissing the earth where these hopes are here, because i trust in our shared values. at the time of this writing, i have yet to indulge in the workshop fully because i cried at the mars in cancer part and stopped there, but it is here for love ~ buy it!
finally, in the thema mundi, venus (domicile ruler of 11th house) is placed in libra in the 4th house of home and ancestry, another affinity to cancer. ergo, having a universal community trust and reliability (taurus 11th) has a way to make us feel a deep sense of belonging in each other (libra 4th), a sense of “your harmonious home is also my peaceful home,” and it is achieved through venus, through deep love because there is nothing deeper than the 4th house, and the archetypal love being placed there.
secondly, community security through the 3rd house of locality, foundational learning, communication, and the house of goddess, the place where the moon rejoices.
in our thema mundi framework, virgo occupies this 3rd place where the benefics are exiled (jupiter) and fallen (venus) while mercury is both in domicile and exalted. in the gemini season love letter i wrote about mercury’s unique exaltation in virgo as a (self-)celebration:
“mercury is an interesting, and rather odd, traditional planet because, compared to the others, no sign-planet exalts them except for themselves, in virgo. in a way, it reflects mercury trusts and expects nobody except for themselves to celebrate their fullest transference of wisdom.”
most traditional astrologers attribute the 3rd house as the divination house, along with the 9th house. thus, the thema mundi has the virgo-pisces axis here, the classic mercury-jupiter dynamics, both related to the practical and mystical wisdom of life.
the role of exalted virgo mercury in the 3rd house of thema mundi relates to how much our personal universe-building wisdom has a lot to do with how we interact with our immediate environment growing up. the thema mundi’s third house is where we collectively use our brains. more accurately in virgo, it is the process of optimizing our body-heart-spirit with our minds, by gathering information, exchanging ideas with others, and discerning our intuition, to then sieving them and communicating them through (practical) action.
as a mutable astrologer, i forever love traditional astrology techniques and fundamentals, and i was also trained in modern astro via evolutionary astrology framework. thus, i have never discredited the “twelve-alphabet” system, though i do not wholly incorporate them in my interpretations or loudly advocate for them. for me, there is always truth in differences and in-between differences, and if we were to celebrate mercury as the traditional guardian of astrologers, we have to trust each other’s services and perspectives, while being discerning of our inner mercury.
the thema mundi’s virgo third house's likeness to mercury is inherently apparent, and our iconic astrologer Demetra George has expressed in her blog on it:
“We cannot entirely dismiss Mercury as having an important influence [with] 3rd house matters, even though [they] rejoices in the 1st. In Greek-ruled Egypt during the era when Hellenistic astrology was being formulated, the Greek Hermes (Mercury) was assimilated to the Egyptian Thoth, god of the Moon, astronomy, scribe, and diviner of the mysteries. They merged into the composite figure of Hermes Trismegistus, whom later Hellenistic astrologers cited as the fountainhead of astrology, alchemy, and magic. This syncretism points to an implicit connection between the intuitive divinatory powers of the Moon and the rational intellect of Mercury that finds its highest expression in the 3rd house.”
in my opinion, moon-mercury both have significance for becoming the mediator-messenger-exchanger for the purpose of the community-security and community-support. i am more predisposed to analyzing mercury as the messenger of the sun (spirit) while looking at the moon as the messenger of the earth (body). the role of the moon in astrological magick and magick serves as a primary example of how the moon cares more for the earthly reality, allegedly, compared to that of other planets, because she is the closest to earth by proximity. the moon is the only planet orbiting around the earth, and the fact that she also has her own lunar mansions further supports her interdependent role in astrology with that of the sun, the other luminary.
this line from the shining Amaya Rourke is my forever favorite on the moon:
“…Divine Mediatrix who governs all growth and decay on Earth, transmitting the light and will of the other planets and stars...
Much like the primordial womb giving birth to the souls who inhabit our beautiful green planet.”
also, changing a text i tweeted last year regarding the rejoicing place of the moon and intuition:
“The Moon rejoices in the 3rd House because caring for [siblings and] neighbors (nature, humans, unseen beings, etc.) [should not be limited] to the role of local diviners or community healers [or caregivers]. [Ritualistic] care practices increase your intuition, clair-senses, magick, etc.
And MAYBE it’s not even INTUITION, it’s just that you deeply CARE.”
it reminded me of how we learned to care for our siblings and childhood friends + unseen beings - it was our first experience and intimacy of any sort of kinship beyond blood, regardless of how complex our relationships are with them over the years. for without care and curiosity, we would never know how to reflect another person’s condition or luminosity. our joy sun-light in the 9th will never be reflected if we do not face them with our fullest heart-body, that is the 3rd house moon-light promise.
tangentially, the proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” bodes well with the idea of the 3rd house (village) being essential for the development of our future children (5th house). by derivative houses, the 5th house is the 3rd house for the 3rd house ~ because how we interact with our locality, the care of people there, and our rituals and behaviors are essential to how we express our creativity and creations. these 3rd house folks influence our future, for better or for worse.
our “children” will always be the product of our daily existence with our environment. i loved how vivid Ace (alicesparklykat) wrote about the 3rd house as conflicts, differences and catching up:
“The third house is about conflict through similarity and conflict through difference. This is a fast moving house, sextiled to the ascendant, where we feel like we’re feeling catch up with everything that is going on.
…
You see, the body does not merely reside in the third house. It is built by the third house.
…
This is what lives in the house of difference—bodies that we were never taught to recognize.”
thus, it is not a wonder how children often pick up our (adults/guardians) similar habits/communication or children accommodate/oppose them through differences, because children are trying to live in the strangeness of their own bodies, something they “were never taught to recognize” but it is also something they/we are trying to build together. i argue that this is because in the 3rd house and 5th house respectively we have not yet encountered “the mirror” or “the other” which has more to do with the 7th house. there is a deep sense of mimicry of children in the 3rd house, as much as it is about the creative performance of expression in the 5th (the 3rd house from the 3rd). this is why the 3rd house is related to the craft and competency of our lives before we could create something meaningful in the 5th.
final technical + inspirational note on the thema mundi, the moon in cancer in the 1st house is also the primary triplicity/trigon lord for earth signs (taurus, virgo, capricorn) in a night chart, considering the thema mundi has the sun in leo below the ascendant. again, it supports the idea that the moon is in service to earthly reality (gaia).
i must stop here, as this article is walking sideways like the archetypal crab themselves. my fallen mars in cancer (trines mercury in pisces) do not know limits, most of the time.
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on tarot guidance
for cancer season i have decided to pull 3 dark goddess tarot cards. i wanted to perform the triple goddex “maiden-mother-crone” messages for the season yet i am changing them to transgressor-witch-destroyer instead to honor the darkness and gender neutrality of the goddess themselves.
transgressor artemis (amazon of earth or page of pentacles)
this is the month to plan for the future, no, not the typical “monthly” future but for the values you wish to have for the next year of your lives - jupiter transiting aries is a prelude to the future next year, take notice + imagine more for yourself in the next cycle. artemis, goddess of the hunt, is about remembering our innocence - not just remembering it but protecting it with full force. artemis is a virgin goddess, but i believe she is also the ultimate slut - she is a slut goddess for adventures. if you have never called yourself a slut, i hope this month you be one, transgress yourself - no, not violating yourself but breaking down the barriers that you self-imposed, self-impositions are often times also societal-imposition. be a slut! be a slut for your inner-child who never got the chance to say yes to something because they are scared or felt too sacred. be a slut for your inner-authority who is tired of controlling and dominating every single outcome, be a slut for your inner-slut, be a slut as a code to be wild(er), to be free ~ because you deserve such freedom, be a slut without expecting results but finding them instead - accidentally. again, be a slut!
witch qadesh (siren of fire or knight of wands)
in the dark goddess tarot book - it says “do not sacrifice one love for another, be large enough to embrace more.” after you have honored your sluttiness with artemis, qadesh comes in to remind you how beautiful it is to celebrate your fire. pleasure is fucking holy and if you do not know that, write it down in your journal, write it down on your empty wall, and shout the words in your bedroom or with your pillow or at the altar. pleasure is something that should come with every single creation. if you are creating something new this month (assuming that was your inner-slut's calling), send it to me and let me know how great it feels to release it, let me witness you embracing your pleasure, because it is beautiful and holy. how pleasureful it is to have created something from a place of fire and water, from hotness and wetness, from the place of alchemy? if something feels difficult, conjure the words: i wish this to be easier and more pleasureful to me! because you can’t ask for beauty (venus) without balance (libra). for all the hurt and trauma you have experienced in the past, know that the opposite is here for you to reclaim. this month - there is an offering, an opportunity, no one else will feel the significance unless you feel it first - that’s the wisdom of a fire-carrier, the heat comes from within, before it is felt from without.
destroyer tsonokwa (six of earth)
“greed will eat your heart.” once you have created with qadesh on the pleasureful and beautiful things. do not be afraid to share, your resources are never just about you or for you, something you have more, another person would have less - your role is not to say you don’t deserve your “more” -ness but to say how could i create more for others with less too. what is not shared often times will be taken away and thrown away, just like an uneaten leftover in your fridge because your heart-body refused to pass it to a hungry unhoused person on the way back home. if you feel “wow i have more of this part of my life,” how could you also pray for more for others other than you. sometimes we give because we subconsciously expect to receive in other ways - that’s conditional giving. conditional giving is not the practice of freedom. we need to give from a place of giving and freeing. learn from nature, they have always been giving without expecting anything in return. if some of you think you have “nothing” to give, you are not paying enough attention to the abundance of your life. if you think you have nothing, you will receive nothing. the promise of the destroyer is this: “greed will eat your heart,” and generosity will renew it.
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that’s all lovers, wishing us all a beautiful cancer season. please let us know if any of these messages resonated as we move them together. share this newsletter with your loved ones.
we love you, keep loving.
As always, I launched my special birthday offerings for Tarot + Astrology Portal at a promotional rate for Cancer Suns - 8 spots only, and this is the final year I am offering this discount. You could also gift any sessions to a loved one, please message me. Regardless, do not wait for your birthday for reading, I would love to interpret your birth charts and connect you with your spirit guides. Please note that since July, my Tarot Portal is hibernating. Thus, a tarot reading session is only possible with a combination of other offerings.
Please share and spread the word on all of my divination services! My financial resources have been a source of perpetual anxiety during this Aquarius Saturn return years (ruling my 2nd and 3rd Houses) and this is my request for support for those who feel called to show up this way, please honor your authenticity and capacity too. Thank you lovers for being here with me, I forever cherish the jupiterian love-faith in our fellowship.
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