Cancer III: Cosmic Convergence
By Persephony Fortune
The crab has evolved at least five times in the eons of life churning into being on our Mother Earth. From the deepest oceans to the canopy of forests, the long story of convergent evolution has given birth to creatures with this amphibious, sidestepping morphology for over one hundred million years. From this archetypal form, The Crab has evolved in the astrological imagination to the constellation of Cancer. A cardinal-water fountain of life, shaped constantly by the Moon - who rules over the sea with the same gentle gravity of this sign in our lives. The story of The Crab comes to fruition in her third decan. Having passed through conception and then development, coming into the world is an experience of extravagance, luxury, and the prices thereof. In Cancer, Mother doesn’t pay only when she is exacting her price.
Remember to whom you are speaking; for it is Crab that leaves Saturn in exile - conquering the long arc of time repeatedly. His power thus harnessed, renders mother Crab immortal - bound to the cycle of feeding to feed. A malefic curse any breastfeeding parent knows. She dances away from fallen Mars - walking sideways when he attacks head-on. If that fails, Crab has her armor to keep Mars’ blades at bay. Jupiter’s exaltation in both the sign of Cancer and this third decan in particular, means growth into nearly every size and biome imaginable. Then he draws her to the feast - both as a scavenger guest and as a delicious dish. Crabs time their feeding, migration, and mating to the tides and light of Cancer’s monarch Moon. The Cancerian is a world of lunar goddesses, and it is in the descriptions of this decan from the various mystics across hundreds of years and thousands of miles that we will find the goddess of this decan.
At birth, we become the universe in a bottle. That first gasp of air in our very own lungs is a shift in consciousness matched only by the instant of death. Infinite possibility pours into us, which is then limited by time, thought, and connection. This is how infinities grow, through evolution, which requires life. The liminal places where realms churn against one another, where the underworlds meet this one, where the sea meets the land, and where the sky meets the void, are where life comes into being. These are the shores where what Coppock’s ‘36 Faces’ calls “the overflowing cup” crashes like waves. In the tarot, the Four of Cups represents this decan, and thus the moment where one decides where to tip the overflow. A person sits beneath a tree with three cups before them, a fourth offered by a floating hand. It is a moment of either a missed opportunity or denied excess. These liminalities are the domain of Hekate - caretaker, witch queen, and keeper of crossroads. She is directly ascribed this decan as a place of power by Hellenistic mystics writing under the name Ostanes. She shows up in spirit amongst the dog-accompanied night walkers described in Agrippa's ‘Three Books of Occult Philosophy’ and in Crowley’s ‘777’, the latter naming her the Ptolemaic deity of the decan as well. We find her here as we do in various domains from the cosmos to the body, with crabs often scrabbling over her stoop.
As a triple goddess, Hekate had power over birth, life, and death. Within this decan’s arc of the zodiac in Cancer’s dodecatemoria, a subdivision of each sign into twelve parts, each belonging to a sign of the zodiac, we find the first part of that power. As the subsigns of the dodecatemoria start counting with the sign they are dividing, this third decan passes from the Piscean waters of the womb, through Aries' struggles towards the light, into Taurus’ sensuous hunger. At last, the most dramatic of wailing Gemini entrances as we first take in the air that still
echoes with the words of creation herself and scream it back at her. This is the greatest, most magical crossroads in human existence. Hekate Kourotrophos, caretaker of children, is there to help us along our way - through this story that repeats itself not just in generations, but in our lives, as we grow and change. Moon drives the impulses of this decan as surely as Crab dances to her rhythm. We are drawn into this world as some crabs are drawn to land by moonlight.
What eggs we lay here, and how they thrive is up to us.
We find her second power, over life, in the two goddesses described in the Liber Hermetis as being “of the Moon, and Juno” and “of Anubis”, the latter providing a twin reflection of Hekate met at a second crossroads, leading out of this life. Hekate Triformis, her three-headed form, is a lunar goddess, with a maternal aspect, and is sometimes represented with animal heads, specifically dogs. Hound-headed Anubis ruled over the Egyptian underworld and oversaw the dead. By Egyptian bounds, this slice of the sky belongs to Mercury and Saturn. A Venn diagram of Mercury’s power to travel between worlds and Saturn’s dominion over death and time casts a long shadow of the Witch Queen. The particular flavor of Hekate’s nephew and uncle combined invokes the ferryman that would guide the boat traveling figures found in Ibn Ezra’s description of the decan in ‘The Beginning of Wisdom’ and the similar image found in the Vedic text the ‘Birhat Jakata’, both of whom are seeking wealth found in the underworld - gold and jewels. All the luxury this decan promises flows from our parents until we find other ways to get it. To parent is both to feed yourself to the next generation and to teach them to feed themselves.
Her third form most famously emerges in Hekate Aimopotis, blood-drinking murder, or perhaps Hekate Amaimaketos, the invincibly raging, that came to the aid of the Olympians during the Gigantomachy. So fierce was her power that Jupiter was forced to honor her power over the land, sea, and sky. The vision of all-mother Durga we find in the first decan of Cancer is similarly transformed into the visage of all-destroying Kali we find in the third decan, from the light to the dark faces of the Hindu Mother goddess. The dark mother Kali was first called forth to consume the asura Raktabija who could make clones of himself from his blood. She drank the blood before it could form clones and drained him. A mother crossed is a terror to behold. The figure described in the fifth-century Indian text Yavanajataka is of a “woman who is the color of a dark blue lotus” feels like a most Cancerian cast of Kali, even though the text implies that she is barren. For Hekate when the bloodletting is done, there are still children to care for, dead to bury, and ghosts to guide to the afterworlds. For Crab, laying millions of eggs births a handful of heirs and a feast for whole food chains. To give birth is to curse a being to inevitable death, just as it is to bless them with the myriad opportunities and wonders of life.
About the Author
Persephony Fortune (S/he/They) Persephony Fortuna Fortune is a Hellenistic drag queen with Modern kinks. She is a father of six, theoretical anthropologist, games-based curriculum designer, and the spoonfull of sugar to help the fates' medicine go down. Their work revolves around the narrative structures at the intersections of tarot and astrology as applied through Jungian imaginal alchemy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and neurolinguistic programming. Currently studying zodiacal releasing, solar returns, and asteroids.
Twitter: Ms. Fortune
Instagram: Persephony Fortune
References
Coppock, Austin. 36 Faces: The History, Astrology and Magic of the Decans. Three Hands Press, 2014.
Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Llewellyn Publications, 2000.
Crowley, Aleister. 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley. Weiser Books, 1977.