This is Part II for the Cancer 3 decan. It corresponds to the Four of Cups, Luxury. For anyone new, Part II is just where I ramble about whatever things occurred during the decan period that seemed at all related to the correspondences, or other random stuff.
The picture above is just me being a medieval peasant bragging about the size of my cabbages. Cabbages are Moon-ruled things, and the Cancer 3 decan is doubly Moon as both the sign and the decan itself are ruled by the Moon. Add expansive Jupiter for the Fours, and what do you get? Huge cabbages! The one above has a dime on it to show scale. Granted, it is a variety that is supposed to grow ridiculously huge while still staying tender. This one isn’t done growing, and I most definitely did not give it the 10 feet of space from anything else as recommended. So while it could probably get even bigger, it is still going to be massive.
I read this article about “anhedonia” today, that seems to relate to the sort of languid boredom the RWS Four of Cups portrays.
The Moon is also associated with mothers. My own mum is going through some tough stuff physically and mentally right now, so she has been on my mind. I’ve been trying to think of ways to help elevate her mind state a bit, to be more optimistic than is her nature. I guess that is a Jupiter thing, as well as a sort of theme of the Cancer 3 decan for the 4 of Cups, is that if your world gets too small, you can stagnate.
She is a Cancer person too, though of the prior decan, Cancer 2. I got a nice surprise at the end of the last decan, when someone here told me that another Cancer 2 decan native, Lon Milo Duquette, mentioned me and Telos Tarot of 777 in his YouTube birthday post for his 77th birthday! That was for sure a surprise – and a good one, unlike some surprises. So Lon, if you see this, happy 77th and many happy returns! Live long and prosper!
The third decan of Cancer theme of Luxury is playing out in the garden. So much luxurious produce it is crazy. And in one case, the Four of Cups theme of being a bit “overcrowded-in-the-womb” is playing out in the squash bed. Squashes are lunar, so it fits. I made the mistake of overplanting, and now can barely get in there to find them! But as far as Luxury goes, our pre-dinner snack was some deep fried squash blossoms with a side of cucumbers and salt. Both plants are Moon-ruled. Cannot get a better summer snack than that!
We are almost through this decan now, so I’m starting to think about the next decan, when Leo season starts. Like usual, it seems to start to hint at what is coming ahead of time. We harvested garlic today – around 450 bulbs or thereabout! We grow a ton, enough to have garlic for the entire year plus enough to plant for the next year. Garlic is one of my favorite things to grow because:
- It gets planted in November, when there is a lot less garden stuff happening
- It can take moderate weed pressure, and
- It also tolerates moderate dry spells, and
- It gets no insect problems, ever, at least here, so these things all combine to make it a trouble free plant here
- You get both the bulbs, and the “scapes” to use, and the scapes come right around solstice when the prior years garlic is used up, and tide you over until the next harvest, which is now
- It is something that we use almost every single day in cooking
- most of the garlic in the stores is grown “elsewhere,” like China, under dubious conditions
I considered waiting until the next decan for the Five of Wands, just because Fives are Mars and so is garlic. But last year I waited too long to harvest it, which affects its longevity in storage. And, today I had the time, so, needs must and all that. And while garlic is definitely a Mars thing, those big white bulbs seem somewhat Moon-ish as well.
Speaking of the transition from Cancer, a Moon-ruled sign, to Leo, a Sun-ruled sign, here is a picture that really captures it.
In the foreground are my breadseed opium poppies, that will provide a bunch of poppy seeds for baking. These are Moon plants, that I associate with both Pisces (The Moon major) and Cancer (the Moon-ruled sign). Behind them are sunflowers, obviously Sun-ruled, that will likely bloom in the next decan, Leo 1, when Leo, the only sign ruled by the Sun, begins. The Moon-ruled poppies are almost done blooming at the end of Cancer, right when the Sun-ruled sunflowers are about to begin in Leo.
Notice how many honeybees are in that poppy flower! This is the first time I’ve grown these, and I have noticed the bees go absolutely crazy for them – they almost seem frenzied! I think it is because the flowers only last for less than a day – they come out in the morning and the petals are falling off by the afternoon. But they are loaded with pollen and nectar, so the bees know it is now or never. Every single flower always has like ten frenzied bees in it! The cool thing about that, which relates to this Cancer-to-Leo decan transition, is that bees are both lunar (Cancer) and solar (Leo). Lunar because the hive is mostly female: it has a Queen and all female workers, and only a very limited number of male “drones.” Solar because they come out when it is sunny, gather nectar and pollen when it is sunny, are golden in color, and make golden honey.