Welcome to Cancer – we’re halfway through

Same procedure as every year, James…

Each year, beginning at the summer solstice, we spend a month surfing through the solar sign Cancer.
During this time, our unconscious self invites us to go a little deeper into our inner emotional landscape, and memories from our past may reach out to us. We may also be asked to explore the archetypal relationship between the child and the parent in our psyche.
This relationship between the archetypes goes beyond us being the caretaker of a child or children or being someone’s daughter or son. It connects us to our sense of responsibility and personal power as well as to our vulnerability and powerlessness.
During this time, we might also get glimpses of our ancestral patterning and how these imprints play out in our lives.

Should I take care of you, or you take care of me?

All these areas of our psyche I mentioned above are associated with Cancer, and they make us see reality through the lens of how we care for ourselves and others, and how we need to be nurtured to feel cared for by life.

Those born with the Sun in Cancer, or people with strong Cancer placements in their birth charts, often have a great capacity for nurturing and caring for others. They possess an innate ability to understand what others need, which is actually a great leadership skill.

This trait can also be expressed in the very opposite way.
Perhaps you read Pippi Longstocking when you were a child. It’s a series of books written by the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, who always fought for children’s well-being with her pen.
In one of the stories, Pippi and her friends ingest magical pills that Pippi says will stop them from growing up and becoming adults. This is the opposite side of the spectrum. A person who desperately seeks for someone else to take care of them. It is someone who finds it overwhelming to take responsibility for themselves, their own life and their place in the grown-up world.

These are two very black-and-white images I just drew for you, an either-or, but if we mull over this a little bit, we will realise that we have areas in our lives where we are the nurturer to others, and other areas where we feel vulnerable and long for someone else to take care of us.

Visiting my daughter’s day job

My daughter, Reni, whom I wrote about earlier this year, has her Sun in Cancer, something that was very visible already in kindergarten.

As she started spending more of her time away from home, I was curious to see what her days looked like (and there was, of course, an element of mother-worry in there, as well).
So, now and then, I spent an entire day, first, at her daycare centre, then at pre-school and eventually I did the same thing during the first years of school – as long as I was welcome.

Especially in kindergarten, it was interesting to see who she became in this new environment and to watch her interact with the other children in her class.

Like a lieutenant in a military camp, she had an overview of the situation. She was aware of the individual needs (from her level of understanding) and did her best to pitch in when she noticed they weren’t met, while still following the rules and regulations set by the “commanders-in-chief”, the kindergarten teachers.
It was hilarious and heartwarming to see how she, with a very loving yet strict hand, bossed the other kids around. And they accepted it, even though they were about the same age as her. Her behaviour didn’t spring out of a desire for power or control, her only aim was to make things “work” (still according to her level of understanding).

She naturally took on the role that many nurses do: the translator or “softener” between doctors and patients. That person who facilitates communication and makes sure the patients get what they need, but at the same time, everything is done correctly.

There, at kindergarten, in an environment that would give me a nervous breakdown if I had to be there every day, “my” little human put a lot of effort into making things work. Without being asked, she took on the role of sheepdog, caretaker, and prison ward. And during my visits, she kept me in the loop.

– That one, he is not allowed to be in the corridor alone because he sneaks out on his own. We found him in the square once…

-This boy looks like that when he needs to change his nappy, but he forgets to ask for help. I will go and tell the teacher…

-That girl can’t sleep after lunch, so she is allowed to read books – IF she is quiet…

I could see the nurturer in her so clearly, and how she mapped out when and how each one of the other kids in her class needed extra attention and care. As I said previously, Cancerians often possess excellent leadership skills.

The other end of the spectrum was also visible in her.
My visits usually generated a lot of spontaneous joy in her class. A bit like cockroaches fleeing in panic when you turn on the light in a hotel room you never should have booked – but these little bugs were running in the opposite direction – towards me.

-A MOMMY is visiting!!!! She will spend the whole day with us!

This is the reason why I WOULD consider working with children despite the risk of nervous breakdowns – they are so wonderfully curious and honest in their responses. When they shower you with love or laugh because something is funny, it is a direct delivery from the heart, without any pit stops at the brain level.
When I came to visit, all the children had questions they wanted to have answered (at the same time, and on different topics). They wanted to play with me; they had interesting things to show me, and they all wanted to sit next to me (I guess this is what it feels like to be a rock star…).

As I was playing, giggling, answering questions and making room for as many as possible on my lap, I got to see the other side of my little Cancer girl. The one who longs to be nurtured, the needy part, the jealous aspect of Cancer. It didn’t help that I was being very mindful about including her in everything; her face had the same colour as the sky just before a thunderstorm, as if every fibre in her was sending the message: Back off! She is MY mommy, and all her hugs are MINE!

Wanting to climb back into the womb

This is, of course, a very natural behaviour for a four-year-old, but seeing it in an adult is something else and can be very hard to handle at times. These reactions often stem from a deep-seated need for security and safety and are attempts to ensure one’s needs will be met in the future. And it is one of the main character traits of Cancer – the need for emotional safety.

The image of the crayfish/crab is associated with this sign,  and you have probably heard the saying about taking two steps forward and one step back.
If frightened, this little animal will retreat into the safety beneath the nearest stone. It happens in the blink of an eye, and the only thing we see is the cloud of sediment its retreat creates.
If there are no stones to hide beneath, you have to watch out, or you may get badly pinched by its claws. This is the instinctual attack for safety and survival.

Cancer’s elemental home

Every sign in the zodiac belongs to one of the four elements, and for Cancer it is, of course,  WATER. Together, Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces form the triplicity of the Water element, with Cancer as the initial, unaltered and least refined of the three. One could also argue that it is the purest.

In astrology, the Water element is connected to the realm of emotions, and it is the memory keeper. In water, we will find traces of everything it has touched or blended with. It holds on to the frequency of everything it has interacted with, even if it is in a diluted form (a bit like homoeopathy).

Now you might feel that I am nagging, since you may have heard me say it so many times already, but I find it worth repeating: ALL OF US are travelling through the sign of Cancer right now, wherever we have the Sun in our charts. This Cancerian energy is even more prevalent this year, as the planet Mercury is retrograde in this sign while the Sun travels through it.
Even if we, in our energetic makeup, are more dry (in discussions regarding the elements, dryness has nothing to do with how interesting we are), like for example, earthy Capricorn, or if we have our sun in Sagittarius, the most fiery sign in the zodiac, we will still experience the flowing, emotional, Cancerian remembering the upcoming weeks.

What to expect

Right now, when we are simmering in these frequencies, more memories from our past will be available. It is not about making a conscious effort to recall our past. It is more a matter of allowing ourselves to be coloured by our own memories as they surface on their own.

We might feel more emotional

We may experience sudden urges to retreat into safety

We might be a little bit “snappier” than usual

We may be drawn to lose ourselves in our past, especially in childhood memories

We might long for parts of our lives that have changed into something else, or maybe grieve what has been lost

We may surprise ourselves by having more hunches, premonitions, or insights, both about the bigger picture and the future

The memories we reconnect with gift us with beautiful (not always pleasant) opportunities for self-discovery. We get the chance to see our own evolution from a longer perspective. So even if these splashy, watery and emotional frequencies are not usually as prominent in our personality, it is an opportunity to see ourselves from a different angle.

A peculiar kind of memory

I have always loved listening to people’s life stories and how they share what they have experienced; it is like getting an invitation into their memories. In my work, this is so valuable, as it gives me clues about how my clients perceive their world, what matters to them, what their minds focus on, and how they store information in their mental archives. How we remember things is surprisingly personal. The kinds of hooks we hang information on in our minds are very individual.

Cancerians, and those with prominent Cancer placements in their birth charts, often have more unusual ways of storing and accessing information. As I began diving deeper into astrology, I was fascinated by this and have been mindful about it as I have worked with client charts. From what I have experienced so far, it seems to be true.

I have seen quite a few charts of people who have photographic memory, just to mention one of the extremes, and they have all have important placements in Cancer.

Odd types of memory

I have also seen more quirky memory expressions coinciding with planets in Cancer.
My father, who had the Moon in Cancer, is such an example.
He had an excellent memory in general, but the unusual part was that he could remember all the telephone numbers he had ever had throughout his life. He told me that he had “tried to forget them”, but it had never worked. The only thing he never managed to memorise was how to conjugate irregular French verbs. Apparently, he had a very mean teacher, so his Moon probably stopped him from remembering.

 My daughter, Reni, is another example of someone with an unusual memory. She has an exceptional memory bank for song lyrics.
As she was recovering from her operation, we bought our first box of HITSTER,  to have something we could enjoy together but which didn’t require any physical movement. The first time we played this game, both her father and I stared at her in disbelief, as she sang along with almost every tune. If she had heard it before, she could sing it.
All the words were accurate both in Swedish and English, even though she is not bilingual, and they poured out of her mouth in the right order. On top of that, she followed the rhythm impeccably, and every musical pirouette the songwriter and producer had added was imitated with precision.
Even before our family battle, I was aware that she was equipped with a brilliant memory for things that interested her, but this was almost scary to witness.
Just imagine a kid singing along to 15 songs in a row, getting everything right as if she had practised for days!!?

As I have shared these stories about different ways of remembering and how some people have memory functions that operate a bit differently, have you thought about your own ways of accessing the past?
Perhaps there are memory strategies you master but take for granted, thinking that everyone else is the same? Taking a closer look at your Cancer area in your birth chart can be very revealing.

One more special feature

There is one more thing I want to mention before we wrap up the astrology for today, and that is intuition.
Both the Water element and the sign of Cancer are often associated with heightened intuitive ability.
One way of seeing psychic gifts is as the capacity of “remembering forward” and “the ability to remember other people’s memories”. A trained and developed intuition gives us the freedom to go in any direction and travel through the different vibrational frequencies. This might also be something worth pondering 😉

Getting closer to the music

The bridges that will lead us from Cancer into the music section in this post will take us on a little detour to Ancient Greece. There, among goddesses and gods, monsters and magic, we will meet the Muses. You see, my plan for today was to share my personal Muses with you.

Previously, when I was thinking about Muses, Leonard Cohen and his Norwegian Muse Marianne Ihlen were what first came to mind. Another association was Jacques Brel’s song “Ne Me Quitte Pas” – his heartfelt plea to Inspiration herself not to leave him. I also connected various statues I’ve seen around the world and, of course, the rock band Muse with the mythological Muses in ancient Greece.

Who were the Muses?

As I try my best to be a responsible blogger, I decided to do proper research on what a Muse really is.
I found a lot of interesting information that showed me that my Muses are still my Muses – even more so, actually.
There are many mythological variations on who the original Muses were and where they came from. The most common version presents them as the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory – or Memory personified.

These nine immortals were personifications of knowledge, the arts, literature, poetry, dance and music. Apollo functioned as what we would probably think of today as their manager, driving them around in a minibus and dropping them off at different gigs (I might have seen too many Korean idol dramas lately…).
In one of the ancient texts that has survived until the present day, Hesiod, one of the ancient Greeks from the seventh century BC, proclaims that the Muses bring:

THE FORGETFULNESS OF PAIN AND THE CESSATION OF OBLIGATIONS

We would probably call this state Inspiration and Flow in the modern era.
I am so lucky because I have found mine, who can bring me back into that state whenever I lose my creative mojo.

If you have been inspired to listen to the songs on my Magic Mittens’ Magic Playlist, you have already heard the voice of one of my Muses. If not, you can go back and check my Midsummer post from 2025. Today, however, you will have the chance to hear all of them.

My Muses are males.
In this day and age, gender equality has advanced compared to what it was like 2700 years ago (and thank heavens for that, even if we still have a long way to go). More women and men than not are free to express themselves creatively, which also must mean that anyone can be a Muse.
But before I introduce my Guardians of Inspiration, let me share how I found them.

My very first encounter with these musical magicians

For a number of years now, I have been taking online Korean classes, and we use K-pop songs as our textbooks (I am also following an online K-drama class because it is just wonderful to combine different interests).
The students take turns choosing a song they like, and we spend the lesson working through the lyrics, exploring the grammar and expanding our vocabulary. These Sunday lessons are so enriching as we learn the language through poetry and music, and we also learn about Korean culture and the dramatic history of this country, at the same time. We also get a natural insight into current trends and codes that would never be accessible in a traditional language class.

During break time a few years ago, our teacher shared a clip from one of the many survival shows Koreans are so fond of. The music and the voices gave me goose bumps and brought tears to my eyes – it touched on something inside of me that had been dormant until that very moment. It was a kind of recognition. There and then, I had found my Muses.

sEODo, the main vocalist, together with a group of incredibly gifted musicians, form the sEODo BAND. They are trained in traditional Korean music, but they then blend these traditional rhythms, ancient instruments, techniques, and sounds with modern musical genres. They experiment, they “play” with the music and with their voices in a unique way. Among many things, sEODo himself is a master of the traditional song technique Pansori.

The music they bring to life is so special that it has been given its own name – Joseon Pop! You can also hear their music in quite a few TV series and dramas on Netflix and other streaming services (Mr Queen is one of my favourites).

Perfect for the current astrological weather

My Muses are also the perfect choice for a blog post about the solar sign Cancer and the Water element. Many of their songs are about water and the sea, but even more fitting is their creative process.
They bring resources from the past into the present, where they blend past, present and future, birthing something completely new. Something that is not even similar to what the world has seen before. The energies that I “hear” are unlimited creativity, artistic freedom, complete openness and JOY. I think this is the reason why their music has such magical effects on my creativity.

And now the music

The second one is called PEACEFUL ARIRANG (you might have heard that name recently, since Arirang is the name of BTS’s new album and their world tour). It is a folksong known by every Korean, but here you get it “sEODo-fied.”

Finally, I want to share a YouTube clip where sEODo performs FAREWELL SONG. This is originally a classic poem from the enormous Korean literary treasure chest. A heartbreaking story about a couple who are bidding each other a tearful farewell. The song is sad but exquisitely beautiful and in alignment with today’s topic of the past, with all its flavours of nostalgia, melancholia and bittersweetness. I hope you will enjoy it.

The music has been added to the playlist, and I am delighted that I could share it with you all.

sEODo and sEODo BAND, I love, Love, LOVE your music!!!!

서도밴드, 정말 감사합니다!  여러분의 음악을 정말 좋아해요.

I have not yet decoded and figured out the mysterious SEO tools which would make Google like me better, so it is highly unlikely that you will ever see this blog post, but IF YOU DO, and if you ever find yourselves in dire need of an astrological reading, there is a freebie waiting for each one of you! That is the only thing I can think of to offer to show my deep gratitude and happiness for what your music does for me!

And to the rest of you, believe it or not, I actually have a lot more I would love to write about today. However, I have a compassionate nature (I have a bunch of planets in Cancer 😉), so I will spare you – for now.  

Stroll along memory lane while you take really good care of yourselves!

Much love,

Carin