Full Moon in Cancer in the 12th House: The Healing Power of Art
It is an important part of my practice to set intentions at the New Moon that I intend to manifest when the moon is full in the same sign six months later.
As I write this, there is a Full Moon in Cancer coming up in a few days. It is my usual practice to reflect on the intention I set at the New Moon and either release it or celebrate how far I've come at the Full Moon.
I'll be honest, there are times when I look at the intentions I set at the New Moon and wonder who wrote them. Learning how to set good intentions is a process, and it is far too easy to write intentions that are vague, outlandish, or just plain nonsensical.
This Full Moon, though, I was delighted to find myself having a mountain top experience looking back at where I was with Cancer six months ago.
Let me share my journey with you.
The Art of the Sign Cancer
One of the under-appreciated sides of Cancer, in my opinion, is the importance of art.
Cancerian art is not what we have been trained to think of as art. Cancer is not a creator of art for art galleries or mystical insight. (Though, people with strong Cancer placements may create art that does both of those things.) It is expressive, but it isn't talking to an audience. It is private and subjective. It is the artist talking to themselves. It has a strong aesthetic sense, but it is not interested in developing more skill, unless the lack of skill is interfering with the ability to say what needs to be said. If a similar effect can be created with washi tape and stickers, Cancer will use washi tape and stickers instead of paint.
The art of Cancer is the art of scrap journals, junk journals, and art journals full of collage and kawaii doodles.
2015: Meeting Cancerian Art for the First Time
I have Leo rising and no natal planets in Cancer, so I didn't have much of a gateway for understanding Cancer until my Mercury and Mars progressed into Cancer in around 2015.
I was nervous, at first, to have planets in the 12th house, but I have since come to realize that the arrival of these planets has been a blessing. I have always had 12th house experiences. Everyone does. When I had no planets in the 12th, I also felt like I had no natural means of coping when difficult 12th house experiences happened. With Mercury and Mars there, I find it easier to think or fight my way out of trouble. My progressed Mercury and Mars have gave me me an avenue for exploring the delightfully creative world of the sign Cancer.
My first Cancer teachers were Susannah Conway and Jamie Ridler. I don't know what their relationships with the sign Cancer are, but their work is very cancerian. Susannah posts pictures of dolls and foxes on Instagram and teaches classes about creative photography and journaling techniques. Jamie also posts pictures of abandoned triplet kittens she adopted on Instagram, and she is a creative coach who uses cancerian art to help you figure out what's important and manifest your dreams.
For years after I discovered their work, I was simultaneously enchanted and frustrated in my attempts to follow their example. When I made the time for their type of creativity, I was happier and mentally healthier, but I found it difficult to fit it into my life.
When I discovered creative journaling, I was in a very 12th house place. I was sick all the time, and I gave myself permission to immerse myself in creative journaling projects whenever I was well.
When I got better, I could no longer justify the long hours I had spent drawing geometric shapes in a notebook. Whenever I found I had a choice between creative art journaling and anything else, I looked longingly at my art supplies and always chose to go back to my responsibilities.
(This crossroads, the choice between work and play, is the intersection where Cancer and Capricorn meet. If you choose play, you have chosen Cancer's road. When you choose work, you have chosen Capricorn's road.)
6 Months Ago: Setting a New Moon in Cancer Intention
About 6 months ago, at the New Moon in Cancer, I decided that I had had enough of this. I was feeling like my life was all work and no play, and I wanted to do something about it.
I had no idea what I would do. (That is one of the "joys" of New Moon intention setting. I usually have no idea how I'm going to get what I want.) I just knew that I desperately wanted there to be a place in my life to play with my art supplies.
New Moon intentions are made in the dark, and I have found that manifesting the desires spoken in the darkness requires moving in darkness for a long time after the moon moves on, making decisions that seem to be entirely unrelated to your goal at first.
Soon after I set that intention, I took a break from my astrology practice to go back to school. I had the idea that I might make a living as a user experience designer at a tech company, so I went through Google's UX certification course, and I spent the fall doing work for an augmented reality gaming startup.
In the process, I found myself inadvertently living in the intersection of Cancer and Capricorn. It was my job to design virtual spaces where people went to have fun. It was my job to play in those spaces and experience the joys and frustrations of our users for myself. I spent hours talking to dungeon masters, learning about how they created play spaces so that my company could create tools to make their jobs easier.
I learned through constant practice that the intersection between Capricorn and Cancer isn't always either/or. There are times when it is both/and. There are times where you must play to do your job well. There are times when choosing the thing that feels good is the right business choice.
I returned to my astrology practice changed by this knowledge. I saw all of the bad design decisions I had made on my website with horror, of course, but I also saw my teaching practice through new eyes. Before, as a teacher, I had been entirely focused on information, as if it was my job to find data about astrology and format it for easiest download.
I began to spend more time thinking about the experiences I was creating for my students. I went as far as completely tearing apart a 9-month course and putting it back together to create a better experience when, previously, I wouldn't have been able to justifying "burning so much time for the sake of aesthetics."
3 Months Ago: Learning the Important Role of the 12th House in the Creative Process
After my experience with UX, I immersed myself in concern with the experience of my students. I wanted them to have fun. I wanted them to feel good. I wanted them to have beautiful experiences, but I wasn't thinking about my experience at all.
Frankly, I was starting to feel a little jealous.
As synchronicity would have it, Susannah Conway offered a course called The Inside Story, which was all about how she runs her business. I applied for a scholarship. In my application, I told her that I wanted to learn how she has managed to create a business that is successful and has so much time for beauty, play, and delight. And she gave me a scholarship.
(That 12th house period I mentioned earlier was really quite bad. It ate seven years of my career.)
I learned so many things from that course it deserves a whole post of its own. (And if you ever read this, Susannah, thank you from the bottom of my heart.) But the most relevant thing I learned was the importance of going slowly and taking the time to make my process as beautiful as the work I am creating for clients.
My usually creative technique was to use all of the technical tools available to me to create things as quickly as possible, but it was a soul-sucking way to work that left me exhausted.
As Susannah showed us how she works, I felt like I was walking behind her through snow, putting my feet in her footprints, until I was ready to I learn how to break a trail for myself.
In the process, I realized that the 12th house represents an entire phase in the creative process. There is a time in the creative process when you have finished a project, and you haven't yet started the next project. You are like an astronaut, floating free in space. Possibilities are open to you. Your work has infinite potential.
I find that when I am in this space, I am usually, also, exhausted and creatively spent and have no idea what to do with myself. This almost inevitably turns into anxiety and depression.
I have learned that this is the time to put the computer and planners away and spend some quality time with things reading books that feed me, doodling and sketching out ideas in my notebooks, and playing with washi tape.
Doing these things isn't just resting. This kind of playful, undirected creativity gives the brain space to make new connections and consider new ideas. Humans cannot be innovative under stress. Innovation is necessarily risky because it requires doing things that haven't been done before. The stressed-out brain is incredibly risk-averse, retreating into its most well-practiced behaviors--fight, flight, freeze, appease--and operates at the level of cognitive ability we share with the dinosaurs. Not the greatest place from which to practice art--or astrology or teaching... or virtually anything else.
Stopping to play helps me realize that the work that was causing me stress is over. It is a way of celebrating while opening myself up to the new ideas that sneak in around the edges while I'm thinking about something else.
Full Moon in Cancer: Looking Back on the Journey So Far
As I write this, we are a few days from a Full Moon in Cancer. Looking back at the intention I set during the New Moon last summer, I smile. When I set that intention, I assumed that making a place for a cancerian artistic practice was just a matter of carving out time in the calendar.
Instead, I discovered that my astrology practice and my creative process needed to be upended so that I would understand the purpose the kind of artistic practice I was craving needed to have in my life.
Before, when I was in a cancerian space, I was working unconsciously. I knew that it felt good, but I didn't know why I was doing it. Because those activities didn't have purpose, I didn't know where those things should fit in my life.
In order to figure out where Cancer fit into my life, I needed a more complete understanding of what it means to be a teacher. I needed to stop thinking of myself as a walking dictionary and start thinking of myself as a creator of educational experiences that delight the senses. I needed to start creating the types of environments for my students that I want to live in myself.
This is still a work in progress. As I write this, my creative space is covered with notebooks and pretty highlighters and washi tape, but I still struggle to believe that being playful is okay during my "work" time. If that is still true at the next New Moon in Cancer, I know what my next intention will be.
If you are interested in learning more about how I use astrology to work with New and Full Moons, I have put together a bundle of of digital goodies that walks you through my process.
