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Ceres in Cancer

the dwarf planet Ceres in tropical Cancer, in modern Western asteroid astrology

What the tradition reads

Cancer is the sign where the modern Ceres reading comes closest to the Moon's older territory, and the sources consulted are careful about the overlap. Bob Marks reads Ceres in Cancer as nurtured around the home, by embraces and even by housework, wanting to be mothered and good at mothering in turn; he notes a low patch as the placement's harder side, a conviction of being uncared for that surfaces when nurture is most wanted. Astrology Club calls this the lunar earth mother, supporting through love, compassion and protectiveness, caring for people and for things as though each were a child, steadied by tradition, loyalty and consistency, and reading the emotional currents of a situation by feeling rather than by argument. Cafe Astrology, which sorts Ceres by element, has the water signs going first to emotional support. Astrology King draws the line between the two bodies plainly: the Moon rules the traditional mothering that stays at home, while Ceres is given the modern kind, working parents, single parents and sole parent fathers among them, so that a Cancer Ceres is read as the modern figure standing on the Moon's own ground.

The story

The Roman cult joined mother and daughter, and Cancer is the placement where that pairing is most to the point. Wikipedia's article on the goddess records that Ceres was originally the central deity of Rome's plebeian or Aventine Triad and was later paired with her daughter Proserpina in what Romans called the Greek rites of Ceres, and that from at least the mid Republican era an official joint cult to the two reinforced Ceres's connection with Roman ideals of female virtue. The Proserpina page adds that Greek priestesses were recruited to serve the two as Mother and Maiden, and that the cult's myths and roles turned on the agricultural cycle, seasonal death and rebirth, dutiful daughterhood and motherly care. Wikipedia also notes days of the mundus that suggest rites to Ceres as guardian deity of seed corn in the founding of cities and as a door warden of the afterlife, co-ruled during the winter months by Proserpina as queen companion to Dis. A household divided between two worlds, and kept as one anyway, is the story behind this sign's reading.

Written from

Corpus key point:Ceres:sign:Cancer.