There’s something unique about Sun in Cancer that I don’t think we talk about enough when we talk about Cancer. Sun in Cancer is in the twelfth house placement from its home of Leo.

In the textbook On the Heavenly Spheres, Avelar and Riberio talk about the Moon in Gemini being an unique placement. It’s in a position where it has to go around something in order to access its own resourcing. The Sun in Cancer is in a similar predicament. It’s a Sun that is used to moving around something in order to arrive at itself.

I think that this is why the way other people see Cancer can be so contrary to how Cancers experience and feel themselves. The Sun in Cancer expresses itself partially and through hiding.

When Cancer sees itself as emotionally vulnerable, other people might see it as intentionally opaque. When Cancer sees itself as quick to give up, other people run into its everyday stubbornness. When Cancer sees itself as evasive and passive, other people feel Cancer to be consuming.

There’s a contradiction in Cancer. We tend to think of Cancer as a sign that needs a lot of closeness. This can be true. There is also the tendency in Cancer to feel intimacy most clearly when it is far away from something. Cancers love to sit at a window and contemplate the rain, thinking of sadder days and enwrapped in a thick layer of blankets and nostalgia. That’s right—I said sadder days. This is a sign that knows how to romanticize not the bright and the true but the soft and the downturned.

The Sun is an expression of direct power. Cancer feels adverse towards direct expressions power. It is too interested in the wilted.

I’m a Moon in Cancer. I used to sit in math class spacing out and telling myself sad stories in order to make myself cry. Every strong Cancer placement I know loves the quiet drama of melancholy to some extent. We find it peaceful. I used to think that there is some kind of perversity with Cancer as our attraction to sad things. Then, I learned that Cancer does this not because we want to make the world sadder but because we are interested in redemption.

Cancer is a sign that goes through a lot of change. It might decline an invitation to a dinner party three times because it is feeling reclusive but then show up unexpectedly at your apartment with a bottle of wine, happily drinking away and staying the night. I think that other people, when approaching Cancer, are often intimidated because they don’t know what they will get. They understand that this is someone who is willing to ask all of the questions that someone might think to ask about their childhood and quake in their shoes a little. This scares people, this quality of Cancer to investigate something thoroughly while only appearing to sit beside someone and meander along in a bedside chat.

Cancers know everything. They are well known for their excellent memories. This is something that Cancers themselves often forget about themselves, that they have an enduring memory. They are known to be people who know other people, people who have the information—people who have their ears to the ground.

I think that Cancers underestimate themselves on the inside. You see, within each strong Cancer placement is a thing that wants care. This thing that wants care feels like a soft wisp of a thing. It is almost broken. It has suffered. It can easily be crushed. This thing that wants care is really a hope towards belonging and love. It is sensitive and inquisitive towards all things relating to affection and touch. It seeks protection and seeks nurture.

This soft wisp of a thing that hopes isn’t always apparent to those who see Cancer from the outside. This is because soft things are so well protected.

Other people don’t see Cancers as delicate. Other people see Cancers and admire the strength. This is someone who knows how to heal themselves. This is someone who takes care of other people and manages the things that are most hard to manage—other people’s emotions. This is someone who always takes on more, someone who keeps the memories alive, and someone who is prone to smothering the people around them with the raw force of their love.

Cancers see themselves as soft little beings. Other people experience Cancer as mysterious and powerful.

There is something that freaks people out about Cancer and this is Cancer’s complete and utter shamelessness about wanting affection. Cancer doesn’t care if it’s corny or demented. When you have a Cancer placement, that placement is perfectly willing to allow you to become a yandere and stalk and ruin another person because it just feels so much desire and curiosity towards the prospect of giving love. A Cancer placement is not held back by personal pride. It is willing to debase itself to entice you to come closer. This is Cancer, the sign of congealed intimacy. Pride has no power here. The threat of humiliation is not feared. The Sun in Cancer is in its twelfth house placement from its home.

Cancer, ruling the stomach, is a hole. It wants to be filled. Cancer is shamelessly horny. It wants what it wants and it doesn’t care about whining for it. It eroticizes whining for it. It finds humiliation hot. It seizes you, filling itself with you, and tries to eat you. “I just want to submit to you!!” it yells at you at the top of its lungs. “Take me now!!!” Cancer demands that you give it a command.

So, other people are often intimidated by Cancer because of its strong and voracious bottom energy. Other people sense that there are expectations and desires evident in the strength of Cancer’s demand for proximity and fear those expectations. This confuses Cancer. Has it not told you that it is perfectly flexible? It is, after all, something that wants to take you in. Of course it is willing to self adjust once you are safely inside of it.

Other people see Cancers as strong. Cancers are quite aghast at this. They do not want to be so strong. They want to be taken care of.

And, yet, Cancers outlast us all. They live very long. They are resilient. Part of why they are so resilient is because they allow themselves to be crybabies and to say all of the shit that everyone else finds too embarrassing to utter out loud. Cancer is a sign that aims for catharsis at all costs. When it tries to shut itself up, it is prone towards leaking.

The other thing that other people notice in Cancer is the funniness. We usually think of humor as deflective but a Cancer’s humor is not very deflective. Cancers are not trying to be witty or carry a persona. A Cancer’s sense of humor is rather probing. It remembers everything about you and it reminds you of that one embarrassing thing you did ten years ago, inviting you to laugh together. Cancer can be quite self deprecating too. Other people find this behavior shocking, barely containing their surprise that someone noticed them so closely, before bringing themselves to laugh. This is because Cancer provokes pride.

If Cancer is very funny then it is unbecomingly funny. They are used to laughing at themselves. They don't care. There is no rigidity of persona here. They don’t care about upholding some kind of image. They will reveal themselves in a brutal way. When they feel unwelcome, they will duck away and hide. They do this because they are incredibly tender and often feel exposed. A Cancer placement feels exposed because it doesn’t think it needs any pride.

God, Cancers are feared. They are feared. They are so powerfully and candidly messy. They demand humiliation, chasing catharsis. They build pleasure in self unraveling. They take themselves apart with an agility that suggests that they will also know how to take you apart. This is true. Cancers are bewilderingly empathetic and empathy is one of the most terrifying things out there simply because it asks so much of us.