Tarot and Human Development

Cancer in Tarot Cards: Learning How to Love Wisely

The five Tarot cards associated with Cancer: Chariot, Queen of Cups, Two of Cups, Three of Cups, and Four of Cups.

According to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the following tarot cards represent Cancer:

  • Chariot (VII)
  • Queen of Cups
  • Two of Cups (Venus in Cancer)
  • Three of Cups (Mercury in Cancer)
  • Four of Cups (Moon in Cancer)

In this article, I’m going to give some traditional ideas about Cancer, then three ideas I personally associate with Cancer, and last I will give my interpretations of each tarot card.

Traditional Ideas about Cancer

In her book “The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need,” Joanna Martine Woolfolk describes Cancer as “receptive, sensitive, and imaginative, sympathetic, kind, and emotional, and possesses an active, shrewd, intuitive mind.” (p. 23)

In his fifth lecture on Astrotheology, Manly P. Hall describes Cancer as representing the vice of emotional moodiness and the virtue of the “mastery of moods”—which I believe is another way of saying “emotional resilience.” Cancer is ruled by the Moon, and the Moon symbolizes “change” because its light is in a constant state of change from one phase to the next. Similarly, our emotions tend to be in a constant state of change from one mood to the next. Hall says that when we succumb to our moods, we become “a servant of the tides… like a ship in a storm.” The virtue of Cancer is reclaiming our authority over our emotions. Now this isn’t to say we should become a tyrant who rules with an iron fist and squashes our emotions anytime we begin to feel something undesirable. If we do that, our emotional self will remember those grievances and retaliate against us with a vengeance as soon as it gets the chance. (See “The Tower” card for an example of that.) Instead, we must see our Higher Self as the captain and our emotional self as a resourceful crew member who must be treated with dignity and respect. Hall ends by saying that the light of the Moon is temperamental; sometimes it’s a bright full Moon, and sometimes it’s a dark new Moon. Thus, instead of relying on the light of the Moon to guide us on our journey, he says, “We must gain the ability to keep our light, even when the Moon becomes dark.” Like Carl Jung said, when you discover what supports you after you can no longer support yourself, you will found an indestructible foundation.

Teaching from an esoteric astrology standpoint, William Meader said in his blog and lecture at the Theosophical Society that Cancer is associated with the “Principle of Foundations.” Because of this, Cancer is often associated with “the mother” and “the home”—both of which are foundational to life. Meader also said that Cancer facilitates the transformation of our biological instincts (another foundation) into divine intuition. He said he believes Cancer is one of the most Christ-filled signs of the zodiac (along with Pisces), with the Christ principle manifesting itself through the creation of a foundation of “nurturing wise supportive love” for ourselves and others. While other signs may be more goal-oriented, Cancer is a diffused sign, and its “big message” is that “home” is not the four walls you live in. Your “home” is your entire life, including your career, friendships, relationships, interests, and so on. Once we see every facet of our life as a different room in our home, Cancer then encourages us to ask, “How well lit are those rooms? Are any of the lightbulbs getting a bit dim?” When we go from having a foundation that is temperamental and conditional, to one that is all-pervasive and spiritual, we transition Cancer from its lower ruler of the Moon to its higher ruler of Neptune.

Now that I’ve touched on some traditional ideas, let’s move on to the ideas I personally associate with Cancer.

Concept #1: Emotions Always Reflect Needs

Cancer is one of three Water signs in the Zodiac. Water symbolizes “reflection” because light reflects off water, and “reception” because you can dive into a pool of water. Contemplation on these two words provides me with all sorts of concepts also associated with Water. For example:

  • “Listening” is receiving the light of others, and “Empathy” is reflecting the light of others back to them. When people consistently empathize with each other over a period of time, they develop “relationships.”
  • “Love,” “forgiveness,” and “trust” are about receiving someone as they are, and accepting them without judgment or requiring them to change.
  • “Intuition,” “divination,” and “scrying” are about receiving information from a spiritual intelligence beyond our thinking self.

Notice how all of the concepts above have a kind of “acceptance” or “going with the flow” quality to it. To me, this is the definitive feature of Water. While Fire is about the heat and energy that gets us moving, Water is about allowing ourselves to be moved. As Carl Jung said, “I don’t make myself. I happen to myself.” This is why others describe Water as being “passive” and Fire as “active”. However, I personally don’t like using the word “passive” because I can see it being used to describe someone who is apathetic and disconnected from others. Instead, I like to use the word “receptive” because I think that better highlights the fact that “listening” and “love” are still very much active activities.

Another traditional association with Water is the “emotions,” while Fire is associated with “desires.” When I first started my journey into occult philosophy, I had a very difficult time understanding this distinction. To me, “emotions” and “desires” were the same thing; “desiring” was just one expression of our emotional nature. More recently, I’ve internalized the distinction between the two—all thanks to the ideas within Nonviolent Communication and Human Givens theory.

Fire is all about our “needs.” We have physical needs, such as the need to stay warm, drink water, breathe air, and eat food. We also have emotional needs, such as the need to feel safe, to feel in control, and to feel we have purpose (see here and here for lists of our innate emotional needs). These needs are the “fire” in our steam engine that help drive us toward goals. I believe these needs could also be considered “impulses” since they impel our behavior, and as John Dewey wrote, “Obstruction of the immediate execution of an impulse converts it into a desire.” (Experience and Education, p. 67 or 68)

Water is all about our “feelings,” and just as a body of water reflects the light of a fire, our feelings are a direct reflection of (but still different from) our “needs.” For example, we have a “need” to drink water, but we have the “feeling” of being thirsty; we have a “need” to socialize is others, but we have the “feeling” of being lonely; we have a “need” to be in control of our lives, but we have the “feeling” of being powerless.

These “feelings” are not dictated by our logical thinking self, but by our unconscious emotional self. This “emotional self” is a resource that Mother Nature has evolved in us in order to help us decide how we ought to act in the moment. Except there’s one problem… because it is focused on being “in the moment,” our “emotional self” often lacks foresight, and is sometimes unable to recognize the complexity or nuance of a situation (which Joe Griffin calls “caetextia“). Examples of the “lack of foresight” include “road rage” and “depression”—two states of extreme emotional arousal that cause someone to forget that there even is a “future” or “consequences.” An example of the “caetextia” is a military veteran whose PTSD is triggered by the sound of fireworks, or a person so in love with a partner that they are blind to their abuses (like Stockholm syndrome).

Thus, one lesson of Cancer can be to recognize that, just as a “home” is a physical shelter designed to protect us from the dangers of the environment, our “emotional self” is a biological shelter designed to protect us from malnourishment of our needs. As I mentioned in my article of Aries, I like to think of my emotional unconscious self as a kind of huge grizzly bear that follows me around, which I call “Mama Bear.” The moment she detects danger, she will ROAR at the threat, ready to kill. However, she is not me; she is my mom trying to protect me. Likewise, we are not our emotions; we are the center of awareness who experiences the emotions. Once we internalize this difference, we begin to unlock a new power within ourselves, which is to…

Concept #2: Honor Emotions, But Choose Actions

One paradox of the human being is that we are both a “single Self” and “multiple selves” at the same time. These “multiple selves” include:

  • A body — the physical, material self.
  • A mind — the intellectual, thinking self.
  • A soul — the emotional, instinctual self.
  • A spirit — the observing, conscious self.

All four of these “selves” are like puppeteers fighting for control of the same puppet—you. If you do not make a conscious distinction between all of these puppeteers, then you will not be able to recognize who is controlling the puppet at any given moment. This can lead to traumatic experiences where our “emotional self” causes us act in irrational and disturbing ways, and our “intellectual self” is forced to grapple with the question, “How could I have done something like that?”

According to acceptance and commitment therapy, we ought to give control of the puppet over to our Observing Self, which is the self that witnesses everything, but is still separate from everything. This means that it free to observe our thoughts, our emotions, our body, and our environment, and it is free to listen to their guidance and advice, but it is still able to make its own decisions. I believe this “observing self” idea is somewhat similar to the “Holy Guardian Angel” in the Western mystery traditions, in that both entities represent a “higher” aspect of our Self that can act as leader of the council, as the “sun center” that all other planetary bodies revolve around.

When we internalize the reality of these different selves, we arrive at two important conclusions. The first conclusions is something that Dr. Paul Jenkins says all the time: “You are always right about how you feel.” Your emotions are always true, always valid, and never wrong, because they are your unconscious emotional self’s authentic reaction to what you are experiencing, whether it’s in your external world or internal imagination. Allowing our intellectual thinking self to shame and judge our emotional instinctual self for having the “wrong” emotion is unhealthy and counterproductive. Instead, we must accept that our emotional self is a kind of autonomous being with its own values and goals.

However, just because our emotional self is its own autonomous entity does NOT mean that it is uncontrollable. This leads me to the second conclusion: You can always control your actions, and your actions influence your emotions. Now, don’t misinterpret me here—I’m not saying that we should suppress or repress our emotions; as Mark Tyrrell put it in his video here: “If we never take account of our own feelings, we can lead unfulfilled lives leadened with suppressed unpursued dreams.” Instead I’m saying that, by recognizing that there is a Higher Self or observing self above both our emotions and thoughts, we give ourselves the opportunity to let THAT “self” control our behavior despite our emotions. That self can choose to do things that influences our emotions, such as removing ourself from a situation and envisioning ourselves sitting on a beach waiting for the emotion to pass. Since our emotions are reflective in nature, they will inevitably react to our next actions. Mark Tyrrell goes one step further in the same video linked above and says, “Evidence shows that believing you can change a negative mood makes you much more able to start doing so.”

The two conclusions above are echoed by multiple therapy professionals. Here’s how they put it:

In pop culture, the sign of Cancer is associated with homebodies who are fiercely loyal and protective of their closest friends and family members, kind of like some species of crabs who are highly protective of their burrows and mates. I believe this is a perfect description of our emotional self. Our emotions are like a friend who is fiercely loyal and protective of us, who will fight anyone who disrespects us, and who would prefer we stay safe at home instead of adventure into the unknown where there might be monsters. However, we must remember that they are our friend—not our boss. We must listen and empathize with them—because what type of friend would we be if we didn’t? But at the end of the day, our Higher Self is in control of our actions. Remaining in control of our behavior despite our feelings, which in turn helps us control our feelings, is the definition of emotional resilience, which leads me to concept #3…

Concept #3: True Love Grows Resilience, Not Comfort

“A sad demise in dignity is better than an undignified healing.”

Carl Jung, The Red Book, p. 126 of Reader’s Edition

Within this past year, I started therapy for the first time in my life. During my first session, I mentioned in passing a childhood memory of playing Mortal Kombat with a friend and intentionally losing because he would lose his temper when I won. I mentioned this as an example of my kind nature, and was caught entirely off-guard when my therapist responded, “And do you think that is what was best for him?”

I used to think that “Love” was about making others feel good and protecting them from feeling bad. However, as Reverend Ann Davies of the Builders of the Adytum pointed out in one of her lectures: “You have to have Wisdom to know how to handle Love properly, otherwise you can destroy, even with your Love… [like when you spoil people, keeping them from growing.] Wisdom is a part of Love because you don’t Love fully until you Love Wisely.” (For those studying Qabalah, this is a straightforward explanation of why Chokmah [Wisdom] is above Chesed [Mercy or Love].)

I now think that true “Love” is something that provides an indestructible emotional foundation upon which others can grow into more authentic and resilient versions of themselves, rather than making sure they feel good all of the time. Bad feelings are not something to be avoided at all costs—in fact, we shouldn’t even label them as bad! Let’s call them “uncomfortable” or “unpleasurable.” Both pleasurable and unpleasureable feelings are like flight instruments in the cockpit of our aircraft, helping us understand where we are now and where we are going. A loving friend is like the co-pilot sitting next to us through it all.

In video 2 of her series on “How to Help a Child with Anxiety,” Emma McAdam describes how the goal of a greenhouse is not to protect plants and keep them safe, but to create a space where plants can grow up to be functional, healthy, and productive outdoors. She then says:

“Now, one thing most people don’t know about greenhouses is that they don’t simply keep the plant comfortable. A good greenhouse actually has all sorts of features that gradually introduce the seedlings to challenges. These are things like fans, temperature changes, pot changes, and gradually introducing the plants to more and more difficult conditions. Now, your job as a parent is not to protect your child from anxiety, but to help them learn to be resilient, so they can be functional and healthy humans.”

If we shelter someone from all challenge all of the time, they will become fragile and dependent upon us to protect them every time they feel uncomfortable. However, if we support someone as they overcome their own challenge, we give them the opportunity to grow resilient, confident, and independent. Manly Hall described the Zodiac sign of Cancer as symbolic of “the womb.” Can you think of anything more loving than a womb? It might be the pinnacle example of a loving, nourishing, safe, and selfless environment. However, even the most loving womb does not keep a child safe forever; its ultimate purpose is to grow the child to the point that, once it separates from the womb and enters the outside world, the child is not only able to survive, but thrive. While within the womb, the child needs to grow an emotional exoskeleton that is hard enough to protect themselves, but also not so hard that they can’t move.

So how can we help the ones we love develop their emotional resilience? Below is a physical tip, an intellectual tip, and an emotional tip. (Note that, although all of these are intended toward parents, I believe they are relevant to anyone who loves anyone.)

  • Physical tip: Be a role model of resilience.
    • Emma McAdam’s first principle in her video here is that it is more effective for a parent to change their approach to anxiety, than to teach the kids new skills or only send them to therapy. Instead of trying to change your loved ones, change yourself. How do you handle your anger, sadness, frustration, and other uncomfortable feelings? Become a role model for others to look to.
  • Intellectual tip: Use the word “and” when validating emotions.
    • This is another tip by Emma McAdam in her video here. She says, “When we validate [emotions], we can also use the word ‘and.’ We can feel nervous AND breathe. You can cry at drop off AND go to school.” By changing our language, we are helping others realize that they can honor their emotions, but still choose their actions.
  • Emotional tip: Be their most powerful, biggest fan.
    • In his video here, Dr. Paul Jenkins said that kids need to know they have someone in their life who is more powerful than they are, and who loves them unconditionally. As a thought experiment, think of someone you really admire, like a famous athlete or artist or entrepreneur. Now, how would you feel if they reached out to you saying how much they love their work and that they want to support you any way they can. You would feel pretty damn good, right? When powerful people love us, we feel more powerful ourselves. Thus, the best thing we can do for other people is to become the best, most powerful version of ourselves, and then love and accept the other people “no matter what and even if” (as Dr. Jenkins says).

Tarot Card Interpretations

Keeping in mind these traditional and new ideas, here’s some of my personal interpretations of each of the Cancer tarot cards.

Chariot (VII)

In the Hermetic Qabalah, the Chariot sits on the path between the third sephira Binah and the fifth sephira Geburah. According to Dion Fortune, Binah represents “Form”, which she describes as a “state of interacting stresses which have achieved stability.” (p. 96 of PDF) For example, an “atom” could be thought of as a form that maintains its structure through the interacting stresses of the positively charged nucleus and the negatively charged electrons. Because of its “form giving” nature, Binah is described as the Great Mother of Life; yet at the same time, she is also attributed with the “vision of sorrow.” Fortune says about this:

“It must be remembered, however, that life confined in a form, although it is enabled thereby to organise and so evolve, is much less free than it was when it was unlimited (though also unorganised) on its own plane. Involvement in a form is therefore the beginning of the death of life. It is a straitening and a limiting; a binding and a constricting. Form checks life, thwarts it, and yet enables it to organise. Seen from the point of view of free-moving force, incarceration in a form is extinction. Form disciplines force with a merciless severity. The disembodied spirit [of force and Chokmah] is immortal; there is nothing of it that can grow old or die. But the embodied spirit [of form and Binah] sees death on the horizon as soon as its day dawns.”

Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah, p. 96 of PDF

In other words, Binah represents the vision of sorrow, because every birth into a “form” is also a death sentence, for all forms are inevitably devoured by Father Time.

Meanwhile, Fortune says that Geburah, the fifth Sephira, is ruled by Mars and represents “the king in his chariot going forth to war.” She describes the process of “metabolism” as composed of two functions. The first function is “anabolism,” where an organism takes in energy—such as food or sunlight—and converts it into a “form” where the energy remains dormant—such as fat cells or carbohydrates. This constructive process is associated with Chesed. On the other hand, Geburah is associated with the second function called “catabolism.” Catabolism is the process of destroying those “forms”—those fat cells or carbohydrates—in order to release the energy asleep inside of them and so that the energy may be used by the organism in that moment. Thus, Fortune associates Geburah with the idea of “sacrifice,” saying the following:

“Geburah is the sacrificial priest of the Mysteries. Now sacrifice does not mean giving up something that is dear to you because a jealous God will brook no rival interests in His devotees and is flattered by your pain. It means the deliberate and open-eyed choice of a greater good in preference to a lesser good, as the athlete prefers the fatigue of exercise to the ease of the sloth that puts him out of condition. Coal burned in a furnace is sacrificed to the god of steam-power. Sacrifice is really the transmutation of force; the latent energy in the coal offered up on the sacrificial altar of the furnace is transmuted into the dynamic energy of steam by means of the appropriate machinery.”

Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah, p. 120 of PDF

Thus, the Chariot represents that powerful intersection between the form of “your self,” and your ability to re-form the world around you. Whereas some cards are more about “letting go” and “going with the flow,” this card is all about reclaiming your authority to intentionally cause change in the world. This is why Arthur Edward Waite says in his book The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, “The chariot is concerned with the mystery of Nature and not of the world of Grace. The planes of his conquest are manifest or external and not within himself. He can change the world but might be caught in the bondage of logical understanding.” (p. 96) In other words, the Chariot is about your authority to impose change on the material world—but do not forget that your logic is that of a “reasoning ape” or a “thoughtful monkey.” If you make your “thinking self” the driver of your Chariot instead of your Higher Self, your logic will inevitably lead you to immoral and unsustainable situations where you treat everyone and everything around you as a tool to be used by you, instead of recognizing them as your brothers and sisters, as units of the same One Consciousness as you. Do not forget that “your logic” and “your emotions” are the two horses pulling your Chariot. They are the horses, not the driver. Your Higher Observing Self is the driver. I believe Cancer’s receptive influence in this card reminds us that our external behaviors should flow out of us naturally instead of being forced out of us intellectually.

One final note about the Chariot card. Much spiritual insight can be attained if you contemplate the fact that a Chariot is a vehicle that allows the driver to stand still, while the world moves around them. In his book The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order, Paul Foster Case describes this as follows:

“The I AM does nothing, for the I AM is the One Identity called “God,” and God is changeless. That One Identity is the witness of activity, but is not itself modified or altered by the transformations that go on around it. All change, all modification, is in the field of energy that revolves around the I AM. The Self does nothing. It never has done anything. It is simply the witness of the panorama of transformations proceeding from its own mysterious power.”

Paul Foster Case, True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order, p. 266

Queen of Cups

The Queen of Cups represents “watery water” which can be interpreted as a “pure reception and reflection.” Joe Monteleone, the amazing teacher over at the Tarot Mysticism Academy whose Level 2 class inspired me to start this blog in the first place, associates the Queen cards with interpersonal one-on-one interactions between you and one other person. (This compared to the King or Prince cards, which are more mass interactions between you and a group of people.)

Since the Queen of Cups is “watery water” without any other element mixed in, I believe she represents all of the virtues and vices of water. As I’ve already mentioned, I personally believe that the central feature of water is its ability to receive and reflect light. Because of that, I also associate water with the following words or ideas:

  • Going with the flow. Letting go. Faith. Surrender. Acceptance. Appreciation.
    • These are about receiving the outside world as it is today. (All of these lead us to a state of vulnerability, and absorption of the “mystery.”)
  • Listening. Empathy. Compassion. Trust. Love. Forgiveness.
    • These are about receiving and reflecting other people as they are today.
  • Feelings. Emotions. Happiness, sadness, hunger, etc.
  • Meditation. Contemplation. Grace.
    • These are all about a reception and reflection of the divine light of Source or God.
  • Intuition. Hunch. Instinct. Divination. Premonition. Sixth sense. Second sight.
    • These are all about receiving and reflecting information that is handed to you by someone or something beyond your “thinking self.”

As you can see, the “reception and reflection” of the Queen of Cups can express itself in many ways. If you are the type of person who talks a lot, often giving advice that was not asked for, this card represents just listening. The Queen of Cups is not about solving people’s problems; she is about making them feel heard. She is about reflecting others back at themselves, so they may see themselves more clearly. If the other person does ask for advice, she then turns her ear inward and listens to her intuition, her Hierophant, her Inner Teacher, and recites back what she hears that teacher say.

Last, the Queen of Cups is not about “striving.” The Knight of Wands, who is fiery fire, is about that raw assertion of one’s will in order to satisfy a need. It is important to be assertive in life, but it is equally important to turn off our assertiveness and just be receptive to the present moment. The Queen of Cups reflects everything as it is today, without needing it to change. This can be summed up by the quote from Guillaume Apollinaire: “Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”

Two of Cups

The Two of Cups is composed of 4 building blocks:

  • Cups as Water, representing reception and reflection.
  • Two as Chokmah (The Zodiac), representing force and transformation.
  • Venus, representing emotional needs and unconscious instinct.
  • Cancer, representing emotional support and resilience.

Water, Venus, and Cancer are the element, planet, and zodiac sign most associated with the emotions. This makes the Two of Cups an incredibly reflective card of the Heart, as opposed to an intellectual card of the Brain. However, whereas emotions and reflections are always reactive to the environment, this card is balanced out by the second Sephira Chokmah, which represents the raw active divine energy of the cosmos behind all transformation. This makes it a kind of active reflection, which can be thought of as reflection asserted from the God pressure within instead of environmental pressures from outside. This card can be summed up as actively transforming the universe through the pure reflection and unconditional support of its emotional needs. This is why the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn named this card, “Love.” With the Chokmah aspect, I think it could be more appropriately named “Choosing Love.” This card says to break the chain of revenge and disrespect, and choose reception and reflection instead.

At a practical level, this card can be about taking off your suit of armor and making yourself vulnerable, as Dr. Paul Jenkins describes in this video. How would it feel to get a hug from someone in a suit of armor? Not very good. We must take off our suit of armor in order to have any sort of authentic connection with others. However, when we take off our armor, we expose ourselves to danger, and when we feel we are in danger, we often tend to lash out and fight back. Dr. Jenkins summarizes this as: “I guarantee you, if you choose to love someone, to be that vulnerable—you will experience some pain!… When you get hurt, that’s the key point where you have to choose, either love or hate.” He says we can “choose love” with three steps: 1) assume the best about the other person instead of the worst, 2) practice humility instead of pride, and 3) use your creative mind to find ways to build other people up instead of hurt them and tear them down. I highly recommend watching his entire video to learn more about this.

At a mystical level, I believe this card is about the direct experience of the Love of God or Source or Kether, which we call “grace.” This divine Love always leads to a greater sense of “wholeness” and “unity,” and is never accusatory or divisive. It does not tell you, “I will love you more if you do this and this and this.” It says, “I love you my child exactly as you are, and there’s nothing you could do to ever stop my love for you.” Dr. Jenkins says that a parent’s job is to love their child “no matter what, and even if.” The Higher Power also loves us no matter what and even if—but at infinitely cosmic and epic proportions.

This card can also be about uniting with that divine influence and allowing it to flow through you, until you and the Source move as one. In The Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley describes Love as something which “recovers unity from dividuality by mutual annihilation.” (PDF p. 179) I believe this idea can be summed up as fulfilling the first three steps of Alcoholics Anonymous—steps which I believe are useful for all human beings, not just alcoholics. Step 1 is, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable.” Step 2 is, “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Step 3 is, “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” In other words, I believe the Two of Cups can represent turning our will entirely over to the Higher Power, allowing us to become voluntary agents of its will. (It must be voluntary because, like any good parent, the Higher Power gave us the ability of free will. It is saying, “I want you to do this, but only if you want to do this.”) Once we give ourselves over to the Higher Power, we receive a foundational satisfaction to all of our emotional needs. We raise our baseline so that we always feel at least a little bit loved, safe, powerful, purposeful. Connection to the Source makes it so that, even in our darkest moments, we do not feel completely empty.

Three of Cups

The Three of Cups is composed of four building blocks:

  • Cups as Water, representing reception and reflection.
  • Three as Binah (Saturn), representing form and restriction.
  • Mercury, representing the logical and linguistic mind.
  • Cancer, representing emotional support and resilience.

While the Love within the Two of Cups is infinitely expansive, I believe the Three of Cups is where the boundaries of our love begins to take shape. While the unity of the inner dimension knows no boundaries, the multiplicity of the outer dimension requires boundaries. The Three of Cups is where we use our intellect (Mercury) to determine what form (Saturn) this relationship ought to take, and we communicate it to the other party if necessary. Cancer is associated with the womb, and although a womb is a perfect example of an environment that unconditionally loves the child it is growing, every womb also has its limits, its boundary, an external edge to its enclosing space. In the heavenly dimension of the universe, the sky goddess Nuit’s womb has no limit; but in our earthly dimension of the universe, every womb has a limit to the nourishment it can provide to its child. This idea can be summed up by Carl Jung’s line in Chapter XVIII of The Red Book: “A well-tended small garden is better than an ill-tended large garden. Both gardens are equally small when faced with the immeasurable, but unequally cared for.” In this card, we are asked to decide the boundary of our garden, of our womb. I once heard Lorenzo Hagerty say that, if you’re in a room full of people all lying on their backs, you can walk around and offer out a hand to every single person and pull them to their feet—but if you let one of those people climb onto your back, you’re going to end up on the floor with them.

Establishing a boundary where it ought to be is the most loving thing you can do, because it helps keep a relationship honest and authentic. The Heart is not capable of lying; only the Head is capable of lying. If your relationship requires a boundary and you refuse to set it, you are steering the relationship with your Head and not your Heart. By doing that, your heart will grow frustrated and resentful against both you and the other person, causing an ongoing sense of stress that physically damages your body, and likely leading to an emotional and often violent eruption from the unconscious. The Three of Cups is about using your Head as an advocate of your Heart, instead of as an adversary of your Heart.

In his video “Help Your Clients Be More Assertive,” Mark Tyrrell gives five tips for establishing boundaries with someone else. The first tip is that, before we can decide whether someone has “crossed the line,” we must first consciously decide where “the line” is. The second tip is to realize that, while some forgiveness is wonderful, perpetual forgiveness of someone who keeps crossing the line can make things worse by enabling their harmful behavior and denying them the opportunity to grow into a decent human being. The third tip is to realize that not asserting ourselves is a form of lying, thus instead of thinking of it as “asserting myself,” think of it as “being honest.” The fourth tip is to recognize that not all people are “mind readers” or “empaths,” so we must communicate our boundary. During this communicative encounter, we can remember the ASSA acronym: “Alert” the person that you want to talk to them about their behavior, “State” what the problem is and why it is a problem, “Sell” the benefits of them behaving better in the future, then ask them to “Agree” to doing things differently in the future. If they ever participate in the poor behavior again, you can remind them of your agreement. The fifth tip is, it’s not just what you say, but how you feel when you say it. If we want someone to take us seriously, we cannot lash out in an emotional outrage, because that allows the other person to dismiss us. Being overly emotional in our interaction gives them the opportunity to think, “They didn’t mean that. They’re just having a bad day.” Instead we must communicate our boundary calmly and collected, which will add credibility to our message.

One last more-spiritual association with this card is the exploration of the depths of the unconscious. In The Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley points out that Mercury “is the guide of the souls of the Dead.” (PDF p. 180) Considering Saturn’s association with death and the “grim reaper” along with Binah’s association with “the Great Sea” of the unconscious, we could say that this card represents the lucid conscious mind journeying deep into the land of the underworld, the land of the dead, the spiritual dimension to which Orpheus travelled and of which Persephone rules in captivity. As I point out in Concept #2 of my M83 article, a true exploration of the unconscious requires the alchemical synthesis of both the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. In this card, we find this combination with Mercury and Saturn.

Four of Cups

The Four of Cups is composed of four building blocks:

  • Cups as Water, representing reception and reflection.
  • Four as Chesed (Jupiter), representing organization and construction.
  • The Moon, representing the imagination and autonomous bodily systems.
  • Cancer, representing emotional support and resilience.

All four building blocks in this card are affiliated with “water.” The suit of Cups is associated with Water, Cancer is a Water sign, the Moon is associated with Water due to its influence of the tides, and Chesed is associated with Water due to its receptive nature which grows the form established in Binah. Thus, I believe one key idea behind this card is the “impermanence” and ever-changing nature of our Emotional Self, which can be thought of as the environment housing our Observing Self. From this, I associate this card with Alexi Pappa’s “Rule of Thirds” which goes like this: When you’re chasing a dream or doing anything hard, you’re meant to feel “good” a third of the time, “okay” a third of the time, and “crappy” a third of the time. She says that, if this ratio is off, chances are you’re either working yourself too hard with too much challenge, or you’re not challenging yourself enough. Thus, the goal of the Four of Cups is not to create an environment free from suffering, but one that both honors and respects the suffering, while recognizing “challenge” as a necessary ingredient to meaningful growth. Once we leave the comfort of our familiar nest, we are guaranteed to experience discomfort and suffering as we explore the world of the unknown, but we also give our True Self the opportunity to soar to heights previously unimaginable.

Beyond emotional impermanence, I believe this card can represent getting involved in an environment that helps you practice being more open and emotionally supportive of both yourself and others. Chesed is the Sephira of collective organization, whether that’s a collection of people forming a “community” or a collection of cells forming “an organism.” The Four of Cups does not say, “Do this on your own.” This card says, by working with others toward a common and inclusive cause, you are retraining the default state of your subconscious to being more receptive and supportive of others. While the Two of Cups is about joining in emotional union with another individual, the Four of Cups is more about joining in emotional union with an organization. This is why church communities are so powerful—at their best, they provide a robust emotional support network for the congregants. As Manly Hall said (I forget which lecture), “Religion is a kind of mechanism by which a great deal of sadness, solitude, and frustration will find some comfort. Not a solution, but a solace. Not an answer to the problem, but a way to carry it a little easier.” Emotional support networks can help us celebrate the ups and endure the downs.

In his TED Talk “How to Start a Movement,” Derek Sivers points out how we often overlook the importance of “followers” in movements. When describing the dancing man video, he says, “So here’s his first follower with a crucial role—he’s going to show everyone else how to follow… [T]he first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. It takes guts to stand out like that. The first follower is what transforms a ‘lone nut’ into a ‘leader.’” He then points out how future followers tend to the other followers more than the leader. Thus, when we pull this card, we can really reflect on the importance of “following”—whether it’s following others or helping others to follow us.

Conclusion

To summarize, Cancer is all about being receptive to the emotional needs of the world, whether it’s other Lifeforms’ needs or our own, and providing a foundation of nurturing wise supportive love. Cancer recognizes that, just as the light of a bonfire reflects across the surface of a lake, our Emotional Self directly reflects whether we are meeting or not meeting our Needs. It also recognizes that the Emotional Self is an unconscious aspect of every person’s nature, like a kind of autonomous biological structure designed to protect us from malnourishment. (“Mama Bear.”) While the vice of Cancer is making our Emotional Self the tyrannical and irrational captain of our ship, the virtue of Cancer is treating it as a respectable and honorable crew member who can provide instinctual and intuitional guidance to the real captain—our Higher Self. An awakened Cancer can recognize that you can feel scared and give a presentation, feel tired and fulfill a promise to someone, feel sad and get out of bed. By modeling this emotional resilience for others, Cancer not only “loves,” but “loves wisely.” The goal of its love is not to help others feel as comfortable as possible, but provide an unshakable loving foundation upon which others can grow into authentic versions of themselves. At a mystical level, Cancer is about “allowing” instead of “striving.” Its power comes not from itself, but from the Higher Power flowing through itself. Because of their hard protective shells, Crabs are said to be creatures that carry their home on their backs. (This is literally true of Hermit Crabs.) When we live up to the highest virtue of Cancer and learn to carry the emotionally-nourishing Divine Love with us wherever we go, then wherever we go feels a little more like home—both for us and for those around us.

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