They found the dinghy, and went home in it …
When their voices died away, there came cold silence over the lagoon, and then a feeble cry. Help, help! Two small figures were beating against the rock …
You may wonder what a Crab might do with a Virgin—besides snapping on occasion, or perhaps contemplating a firm grip on the Virgin’s tempting bare toe. Just as you may wonder what a Virgin might do with a Crab, other than running swiftly away—or maybe deciding to take the Crab home as a pet.
At first thought, it’s difficult to imagine that a Crab and a Virgin have anything in common—but technical virgins are, after all, said to be somewhat crabby (unfulfilled, or whatever) and real crabs do possess a certain timidity one normally associates with actual virgins—which brings us a little closer to linking these two. One of them is a nocturnal creature of the sea. The other also tends toward the nocturnal Night Forces, although not especially toward the element of water—unless one counts the still and quiet pools into which astrological Virgins gaze to see their Narcissus images reflected to them, sometimes rippling just a bit but, on the whole, clearly defined. Nevertheless, Earth does contain Water—or lacking it, becomes dry and parched. There’s no argument that an association with the Water Sign of Cancer greatly enriches the character and personality of the Earthy Virgo man, woman or child.
Most Virgos are much happier when they’re alone with themselves than when they have to bend their somewhat measured and rather precisely patterned life-styles to those of other sloppy, strange, silly and impulsive humans, which makes them nervous and uncomfortable. Somehow, at least in the beginning, the Virgins don’t feel this sort of discomfort when they pal around with the Crabs. There’s something soothing to Virgo about the Water Element of Cancer. The Cancerian gentleness and mildness of manner often cause the Virgo to feel as though he (or she) is floating on a quiet lake, now and then reaching out, dreamlike, to pluck one of the lovelier lilies, or playfully tease a passing school of mermaids and water babies. Frequently the Virginians feel freer and more relaxed with a Crab, less fearful of being restricted, bossed around, possessed—or of having their own personalities overshadowed to the point of disappearance. (Poor, unsuspecting Virgins.) Also, Virgo is easily enchanted by the Cancerian’s marvelous Looney Bird humor, which is not too loud or clownish, not too sophisticated, nor yet too vulgar either—just the right kind of recognition of the ridiculous that allows Virgos, with their exquisite sense of critique and satire, to join in with some amusing observations of their own.
Isn’t it wonderful? These two have hopped into their pea-green dinghy and sailed down the river of happiness together, just like the famed Owl and the Pussycat, except that they are a Crab and a Virgin. But no matter, because the whole purpose of the sail in the moonlight in a pea-green boat is harmony, whatever the astrological or otherwise identity of the occupants. You can be sure they’ll take along some honey (and honey cakes) for Cancer to nibble on—a small guitar for Virgo to strum while the Crab sings crazy limericks to mournful songs of yesterday—and definitely LOTS OF MONEY—not only to rhyme with honey but also because Cancerians consider a stash of cash—whether wrapped up in a five-pound note, securely tied inside a paper bag, combination-locked in a safe, buried in a bank or in a sandpile in the backyard—an absolute necessity of life, having a slight priority edge over air to breathe, but not necessarily over things to eat and drink. The latter run a neck-and-neck race with money for the attention of typical Crabs during their entire lifetime. Tagging along as a close third are babies and children of assorted ages and sizes.
The Virgo in the pea-green boat won’t mind the mellow mood music. But as for the jars of honey and honey cakes Cancer brings along on any trip these two might decide to risk together, Virgo will probably nag and complain that the space taken by the Crab’s goodies doesn’t leave any room for Virgo’s Vick’s salve, Turns for the tummy, Excedrin and Pepto Bismol—let alone Virgo’s vitamins and wheat germ.
They may also quarrel a bit querulously over Virgo’s grumbles that honey cakes are not as vital a Life Preserver as pure bee pollen, since the latter is good for anything from promoting no cavities to the prevention of baldness, gaining and losing weight (both) and, in general, for keeping fine and fit in every sense. Therefore, the Crab may have to leave a few dozen honey cakes behind, so there’ll be a sizable niche on the dinghy to contain Virgo’s imported pure pollen from the buzzing Wyeth honeycombs of New England. Most Virgo pure pollen freaks know about Wyeth because, when it comes to such serious matters, the Virgins are more than a mite choosy, even downright fussy about where they obtain the P.P. for their P.H. (Perfect Health). They demand the best. They may be stingy about other things, but not when their own personal well-being is concerned. If they should happen to become ill, they might be unable to go to work, for which inexcusable behavior they’d punish themselves with a heavy fine and six months of solitary. Most Virgos have a sense of responsibility toward their jobs that nearly amounts to an obsession (although Crabs are apt to see this fetish as a shining virtue).
However, as already noted, Virgo won’t mind plunking the guitar to harmonize with Cancer’s serene solos under the Full Moon. Also, despite these few possible squabbles over honey cakes versus the pollen, neither will Virgo object to the Crab’s taking along of plenty of money anywhere they may be heading as a team. In fact, the Virgin will quite likely bring along a few duffle bags of the stuff himself (or herself) because the fear of financial ruin—the specter of poverty—is almost perfectly matched in Cancer and Virgo. It’s a toss-up which one of them values money more. Or rather, which one of them values more the assurance that it will never be lacking.
Virgo and Cancer together create a powerful healing vibration. These two, when they join their auras, hands and hearts in any sort of mutual venture, possess the magic cure to many of the mental, emotional and physical ills that plague all Earthlings. Except their own. Alone, both of them are inclined to brood themselves into severe depression or chronic sickness. Together, they can be very helpful by way of preventing and curing in each other such emotional and mental gloominess, as well as all their mutual assorted aches and pains and other complaints.
This is the markedly friendly 3-11 Sun Sign Pattern influence, allowing the Virgin and the Crab, however amusing and odd they may appear to others, to feel perfectly right and natural to themselves, as they stroll along the seashore or through the woods to Grandma’s house (Virgo’s Grandma—then they’ll stop by to chat with Cancer’s Mama). The symbolic image is kind of giggly. Imagine the Crab, slightly waddling (all Crabs have a faint waddle to the walk), crawling first sideways, then backward, then skipping merrily ahead, scattering jokes like little berries on their path. Picture then the slim (usually) and modest Virgin, dressed lightly and unostentatiously, clear-eyed, graceful and lithe, humming a lovely melody ….. while below, the Crab hastens to keep pace, making funny faces, drawing looney pictures in the sand ….. and crankily gripping the Virgin’s ankle or leg when the latter goes too fast and the Crab is weary, wanting to rest for a spell.
When the waning of the Moon causes the Cancer man or woman to weep over haunted memories of the past—or nightmarish fears of the future—the tender Virgin (whether male or female) will be sweetly sympathetic and consoling. Virgo will probably have a nice, clean hanky to hand the tearful Lunar friend, relative, business associate, lover or mate—which will be accepted, between sobs, with touching gratitude.
Both these Sun Signs are noticeably dependable and reliable workers. Barring a severe affliction to their natal Suns, or other negative planetary configurations in their birth charts, Cancer and Virgo take their duties and obligations seriously. They both are more inclined to enjoy work than to look upon it as a burden. Virgo enjoys work because a job well done, to the Virgin, is its own reward. Cancer enjoys work because it provides the means to build a large savings account for protecting against such terrible potential catastrophes as flood, fire, earthquake, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, war, siege, the bubonic plague, a stock market crash, muggers, rapists (even male Crabs get jittery at the thought of rape), vandalism, socialism, communism and famine. Virgo is no slouch in the savings department either. If there is anything in this world Virgo absolutely abhors, it’s the thought of possibly being dependent upon others in some way later on in life. This is why the maternal (or paternal) Cancerian silently projects such comfort to the typical Virgo. The Virgin feels somehow secure within the protective presence of the Crabs, who are so solicitous of Virgo’s welfare, so genuinely concerned and affectionate. Likewise, the Crabs feel comfy-cozy floating around in the cool calmness of Virgo, such a haven from the noisy outside streets, all cobblestoned with people, and demanding. Virgo—so clever, bright and witty, so nicely conventional, who can pack such a neat picnic basket, never forgetting the salt or napkins—always remembering a small surprise, like chilled grapes and Brie.
The main obstacle of mounting tension over which the Crab and the Virgin must leap on their way to the cool pool in the fragrant woods is hinted at in the next to the last sentence of the third paragraph of this chapter. I hoped it might stay there, buried in the sand, but it wants to be remembered, and now it whispers to us that Virgo wilts into yesterday’s lettuce left out of the fridge at the first clutch of possessiveness and restriction. The Crabs can’t separate possessiveness from warm, affectionate caring and friendly concern. Cancerians clam up and won’t even tell you when they last stared at the Full Moon and turned into a frog—yet they’ll pry secrets out of others as if they were human corkscrews. Virgo is not a can and does not like to be pried open, turning into a walking worry-wrinkle when he or she feels restricted, third or fourth degreed. After a time, the Virgo man or woman may view the Crab’s solicitous manner and protectiveness as possession’s prison—and courteously (at first) request parole. This is a signal for the Cancerian to step sideways a while, even backward, allowing Virgo to dance ahead, feeling free and living up to the loner image for an imaginary lifetime, lasting a few weeks or months. Eventually, Virgo will return to gently nag the Moon person once again, sugar-coating criticism with politeness, causing the Crab to snap crankily. Virgo will shed one tiny, perfect tear—Cancer will weep a waterfall, and say I’m sorry. Then Virgo will apologize for the weakness of such sensitivity.
Cancer stimulates Virgo’s imagination, stirs Virgo’s mind into a creamy whip of promises that will be kept perhaps … and Virgo makes Cancer feel that the Crab won’t be left alone on the beach, ignored … to starve and pine away from loneliness. Earthy Virgo knows and understands, will see that friendship is kept polished and not allowed to rust. These two are lyrically linked by the 3-11 Sun Sign Pattern vibrations, karmically insured of a friendly return to harmony with but the slightest effort. Most 3-11 relationships, even after disappearing, have a way of popping up again to be resumed when least expected.
Cancer Woman and Virgo Man
What are you quacking about? Peter answered. Why don’t you let the nest drift as usual?
I … want … you … the bird said, and repeated it all over.
A strong emotional involvement between Virgo and Cancer is multilayered, an experience of many dimensions. We’ll try one on for size. Not fictional, but very real. To protect the innocent (for both players in the drama are indeed innocent of a conscious intent to hurt each other), we’ll change the names, geography and such … retaining only the thread of truth that could link this Moon Maiden and her Virgo man to you and your own female Crab—or you and your own Virgo lover. It’s much stranger than fiction, truth is, because almost always Life wins the race against man’s and woman’s limited imaginations.
His name, the Virgo, is Gerald, make-believing. Her name, the Lunar lass, is Hope, for imagery. They met and first miracled somewhere in Illinois, where they fell in love more than a dozen years ago. They are the parents of five assorted beautiful girls and boys, cherished by both of them. They have not yet married. Somehow, they can’t live together, nor can they live apart. Following the haunted karmic path of the 3-11 Kismet, they walk along, arm-in-arm, for months of empathy and closeness. Then Gerald’s yearning begins, Hope’s sighing starts … they reach that sad, familiar fork in the road and take different directions, waving goodbye wistfully, before the last, abrupt turn—and the slow walk back alone. Time moves on, but destiny lingers. Sooner or later, there’s the memory of her lyrical laugh, her mushroom soup and patchwork quilts of warm affection. His lonely reaches its breaking point just when she’s making her wonted wish on the New Moon, and he appears at her door. Then they swaddle the babies snugly within the blankets of their reunion joy, closing out the world of her disapproving, frowning (but long-suffering) parents, and become a family again. Until it’s time for him to go, leaving, as always, a part of himself behind … to manifest itself nine months later into another living proof of the mutual need that binds them. Five times. Five angels to guide them down that remembered, dreamlike path, through the dark forest of misunderstandings. Next time, it will be six, the number of Venus. It could be different. Venus may have plans to overcome Cancer’s inconstant Moon and Virgo’s restless Mercury.
That’s the way it sometimes is with these two lovers. Especially if the Virgo man is the kind who fears that a deep involvement will cause him to lose his own identity, the common and persistent worry of both technical and astrological Virgins. Especially if the Cancerian woman is the kind who chooses the path of least resistance … motherhood and waiting … counting on the New Moon magic to weave a spell of magnetic memory to lure back the questing Virgo man who is not quite strong enough to stay, yet is unable to escape the pull of her luminous enchantment.. again and again. Typically, some Moon Maidens believe that babies or money can soften any blow of Fate, anesthetize any kind of pain.
There are, naturally, other kinds of Crabs and Virgins. There’s the kind of Virgo man who smoothly adapts to the necessity of adjusting his bachelor-button antipathy to partnership, of pacing his jogging to someone else’s rhythm. He calculates the loss of his privacy against the rewards of companionship, and he remains—asking only for occasional periods of pensive apartness, time in which to wander by himself, to refresh his single-minded goals. As priests and monks are required to make retreats, so are all Virgo men required by their own natures to retreat and meditate alone now and then, returning from their seclusion self-revitalized and freshly sweet. Newly able to innocently believe once more in tomorrow.
The Cancerian woman who understands this need of the Virgo man she loves will take care to walk softly while he’s dreaming, find her own retreat beneath a bristlecone pine that’s maybe waited a century or so for a friend to sit beside it, sharing a silent but eloquent communion. Trees know a lot. They listen sympathetically, and they are kind. If trees could walk, they’d never take a cruel knife and painfully carve their names, within a heart, on the arms or backs of lovers. Trees are wondrous teachers of forgiveness.
If the Moon maid finds her own midsummer night’s dream in which to wander, those times when her Virgo man has disappeared somewhere inside himself to brood or plan—or to heal his worried mind—he’ll stay. They can harmonize themselves this way in perfect tempo, their relationship never jolted by the violent percussion of Goodbye—Come back—What did I say or do?—Don’t go—May I come home?—Forgive me—Please don’t hurt me anymore. It’s a matter of calmly floating with the ebb and flow of the tides between them, not trying to surfboard over waves too high and dangerous.
Then too, there are those female Crabs who are acutely aware of Cancer’s Cardinal charisma, those Lunar-ruled females who patiently reinforce the weak or worn corners of the fabric of a relationship with concentration on a career. Her ambitions then become the vivid colors—and a love affair or marriage that wasn’t quite made in Heaven but was conceived near enough the stars to sometimes sparkle, becomes the pastel background pattern of her life. It works. It adds strength to their love. They separate each morning, and she goes her tenacious way, while he whistles happily, tinkering with engines, practicing his yoga … rewrites the dictionary, draws maps or maybe juggles those odd-shaped objects called numbers, that produce such mysterious results, whether they’re dashed and dotted in checkbooks, surveys, charts or graphs. They become sort of friendly strangers who fall in love each weekend. It satisfies her desire for change and his need for time alone to retain his friendship with himself (the person he relies on most). It allows them to love.
When they love in a physical sense, the Virgo man and his Cancerian woman blend quietly into a deep and absorbing union, in the natural way of earth and water in Nature. When the Moon’s changeable influence over her emotions is beneficent—and when he is his own normal, tranquil self—their lovemaking is a peaceful consummation of desire for both of them. But when her Moon-madness takes over, when her Lunar fluctuations are waning, causing her to be crablike and moody, she can flood his affectionate intentions with excessive emotional behavior and demands. Just as he can bruise the delicacy of her passion when he’s worried himself into irritability during the day and is unable to relax either his mind or his body. Restlessness is a contagious feeling, and they can transfer it to each other without realizing it. Then she may retreat sullenly into her shell, refusing to recognize her attitude as a rejection of his tentative wanting, and he may blame her for a cool response to his own cool advances. This is when his Virgo analytical talents would be very useful, and her Lunar gift of perception would greatly help. Yet, perversely, these periods of sexual frustration may be the very times the two of them neglect to call upon their own best qualities to clarify the breakdown of communication between them.
The Virgo man and his Moon Maiden can walk in sunshine and in rain, and recuperate from the seasonal changes in their love more often than not. They can make Valentines together, cut out cookies in the shape of New Moon Crescents, play anagrams and charades with each other ….. because he loves to meditate on words.. and she loves to make-believe she’s more than one woman, slipping in and out of her moods like a glittering mermaid, hiding her true mother-of-pearl self in midnight silences and the brightness of noontime laughter. If their seeking is intense enough, together, these two can find whole meadows full of gentle camaraderie together … perhaps even dream a vision in the prophet’s field of Ardath … for theirs is the 3-11 sextiled vibration. In astrology, a sextile is an opportunity, and these lovers will always be showered with as many as they need for tightly mending the occasional chips and cracks in their relationship, like a continual light snowfall of little stars around them, a sextile itself being represented by the symbol of a tiny star …
When the female Crab becomes cranky, her Virgo becomes critical and caustic, and they should escape into the woods, lie down together and take a moonbath, which is different from a sunbath. When you are sunbathing, you may be burned, turn all red and stinging. When you go moonbathing, especially when the Moon is phasing from waning to waxing, near its Fullness, you turn pale golden, lavender and iridescent, like a butterfly’s wing. Then, naturally, you can fly.
Another thing Virgo learns slowly but surely from his Looney Bird Moon Maiden. Gazing directly into the Sun can blind the eyes. But gazing directly into Cancer’s shimmering Moon is restful, and sometimes makes the miracle of allowing the Third Eye to see things hidden by midnight’s mystery from the sunlight. After they’ve moonbathed together, they can jump into a dinghy and sail away to the ruins of Babylon. Who knows what they might discover? As the prophet Esdras wrote in the Apocrypha … The angel Uriel came unto me and said: Go into a field of flowers, where no house is builded, and eat only the flowers of the field—taste no flesh, drink no wine, but eat flowers only ………. and then I will come and talk to thee …… so I went my way into the field which is called ARD???.
Cancer Man and Virgo Woman
Presently he noticed as an odd thing that it was undoubtedly out upon the lagoon with some definite purpose, for it was fighting the tide, and sometimes winning; and when it won, Peter, always sympathetic to the weaker side, could not help clapping. It was such a gallant piece of paper.
It was not really a piece of paper. It was the Never bird, making desperate efforts to reach Peter …
He almost hates them. He really does. They’re cruel and unfeeling. The astronauts and the NASA. The whole space program trembled the Crab. But he never said a word to anyone about it. He nursed this awful sense of emptiness secretly, mostly because he didn’t quite know how to explain it to people who could never understand why he felt so strangely lost and lonely after the first Moon landing, his self-confidence smothered within the depths of an indefinable disappointment. The second time was even worse.
He wept. When he was by himself, when no one would see. He carried his silent burden throughout all the months and years, unable to share it, because there was no one he could count on to offer the magnitude of sympathy he needed. Until she came along—the Virgin—and they fell in love.
Gradually, he grew to believe that she wouldn’t ridicule his secret if he shared it with her. She might even be able to help him lose his apprehensions, maybe point out to him a heretofore unsuspected happy ending to his NASA nightmares. After all, she’s so quiet and calm, like a secret herself, he thought. She’s so amazingly intelligent—for a woman. (Male Crabs are tinted with more than a tinge of chauvinism, and there’s no use expecting them to lose it completely until the image of Mother has gone through a complete metamorphosis, which could take more than a few score years.) Besides being so clever, he mused, so mentally quick, she’s tender and gentle, soothingly sympathetic—except for those few times when he has noticed her behaving like, well—a little like a virago. A bit cranky and critical. Detached and aloof. But he decided to overlook these rare moments. After all, isn’t he moody himself? Who can better understand than he that a person doesn’t always mean what a person says when a person is feeling out of sorts? So he gathers up his courage and pours it out into her dainty ears. His sad and scary secret. He confesses his terror, shivers and trembles, waits for consolation. JOY AND WONDER! She does sympathize! She does understand! She didn’t laugh at him; moreover, she does have an answer! And a very logical, sensible, practical answer too, surprisingly interwoven with a trace of the esoteric ….. and mystical truth. He’s overcome with pure pleasure and delight. He made the right decision in telling her.
What it was, you see—he’d been worried and concerned for some time about the Moon landings, for a perfectly rational reason. He’s a Cancerian, ruled by the Moon. Down through the ages, mythology and the ancients, the scribes and prophets and poets—not to mention astrologers and metaphysicians … have always pictured the Moon as the Lady of Mysteries (the biggest one being what the so-called Man in the Moon was doing there), weaving spells, possessing all the magic of Merlin, the very personification of the magnetic and the hypnotic. It filled him with awe and private longings each time he stared at her bursting into Fullness, then waning, becoming New and lemon-sliced, beckoning him with a wistful promise. He used to wish on the New Moon when he was a boy. Then along came nasty NASA and those blasted, nosy, astronauts, determined to shock his dreams, to expose his lovely Lunar ruler’s naked face and body in such a vulgar manner. The magazines were full of their photographed profanity of his Lady of Loveliness. There she was, so pathetically vulnerable, pockmarked with craters, covered by dreary sand and boring rocks, with not a shimmer or a sparkle anywhere to be seen. No magic. No mystery. Just cold masses of dirt, miles of blank nothingness. It shattered his faith in himself, in a way he couldn’t analyze.
His Virgo woman listened quietly, not interrupting as other women might, until he was quite finished. Then he glanced at her from the corner of his eye to see if she was amused. She was not. She understood perfectly. Her clear eyes reflected a full awareness of his feelings, an unmistakably genuine interest. She told him it was only logical for a Cancerian to emotionally resent such a rude and unexpected tarnishing of his image of his own ruler, with such mundane and prosaic descriptions. It was natural, she said, for people to strongly identify themselves with their personal ruling planets and Luminaries. She pointed out that an Aries man might experience the same loss of self-confidence if forced to listen to accounts of astronauts landing on Mars (ruler of Aries) and reporting back that the Fiery Red Star was populated by rows of Sweet Shoppes, quivering jellyfish and marshmallow trees. MARS? The great warrior, the brave and courageous! The fearless! JELLYFISH AND MARSHMALLOWS? (He giggled, feeling much better.)
She told him firmly that her personal opinion happened to be that the stories about the Moon’s magic and mystery are true. The ground walked upon by the astronauts was not reality. Did the rocks and craters make any change in the mystical and still-puzzling-to-scientists power of the Moon to pull the tides in and out, and affect all manner of things on Earth magnetically? No. It did not. And what of Earth? Looking upon this planet from space, she analyzed, one might expect it to be a reasonably sparkling, exciting Star. But when one actually landed on the Earth’s surface and saw all the hot-dog stands, smog, pollution, TV sets, greed, cruelty, war, sugar pushers, the poor and the starving, the crimes and drugs and drunks and donuts and insecticides and billboards—the whole ugly mess of it—wouldn’t one aLSO be disillusioned? (He nodded eagerly, waiting for her happy ending.)
The Moon reflects the Sun, she told him. It is a reflector. It is unlike any other star or planet in the heavens, unique in this solar system. It is still strange and mystical, and possesses exactly the same powers as before. NASA hasn’t explained the Moon’s indisputable control over or synchronization with the movement of all water on Earth and all sealife. Even the opening and closing of oysters is precisely timed to the Lunar phases. The real truth of the Moon, she told him, doesn’t lie upon its surface, to be seen with the naked eye. The real truth can be seen only with the Third Eye and the heart, combined—by observing the Moon to be the absolute Cause of certain Effects. And perhaps the whole truth will be seen later. Then she asked him if he had ever thought that perhaps the Earth, which appears to be such a crazy carnival of noise and nonsense, might not have a strange power itself, which we’ve never guessed.. to change the destinies of entire galaxies? Finally, she ended by quoting to him her favorite truism from her Great Aunt Hester. Believe only half of what you see, warned Aunt Hester. And nothing of what you hear. Tomorrow, the Virgin said … she would give him a copy of St. Exupéry’s The Little Prince, which she promised would clarify it all. (Most Virgos have read and are fond of The Little Prince. They are irresistibly drawn to anything with the word little in it.)
Nearly always, a Virgo woman can somehow manage to make a male Crab feel safe and warm and secure. As though everything is crisp and proper and behaving as it should in the world, and within his own orbit. The way he felt as a child. When his mother told him to hush, it was all right. His nightmares were foolish and unreal. Tomorrow will be morning, and the world will still be spinning. Buckwheats for breakfast … and the newspaper delivered, as usual. The Virgo woman makes him feel cozy and comfy, like his old bathrobe with its soft, sagging pockets, hanging there beside his bed like a loyal friend. He senses her dependability, her sense of duty and her integrity. All very much like his own. The typical Virgin in the average situation, when she really loves her gentle Crab, will seldom if ever do anything to really hurt or alarm him. She’s so reassuringly predictable.
She will wish he would be equally predictable. Rocks, craters and all, the Moon continues to rule this man’s changing moods, laughter, tears, depressions, elations, pouting spells, jokes, compassion, sweetness, crankiness and just plain contrariness. Still, in her practical, common-sense way, the Virgo woman is able to cope rather efficiently with the Cancerian man’s wanderlust, periods of loneliness he can’t explain—the fears that make him occasionally stingy—the tender concern for others that turns him suddenly generous. She doesn’t mind his cautious nature, for she’s cautious herself. She’ll also share his dislike for extravagance and waste—his sense of responsibility—and his delicious enjoyment of home life. She’ll cook for him, most likely, soon perceiving that he associates good food with emotional security, but she may not be too happy about it. (Unless she has a Cancer Moon Sign or Ascendent herself.) A few of their quarrels could spring from his crablike possessiveness. He may frown if she wants to work or pursue a career, unless her desk is next to his, or they go into business together. He’s Cardinal, she’s Mutable, and so she’ll accept with good grace his tendency to want to make most of the rules and to walk a few steps ahead—if he doesn’t overdo it. He’s a leader (even if secretly) and she’s a communicator. Therefore, she feels no overwhelming need to demand a showy kind of independence for herself, but neither will she stand for her personal freedom to be smothered. He can boss her around, gallantly, and with old-fashioned charm (as he does others, male or female), and she won’t be insulted or make a big fuss over it. However, she’ll follow up only on suggestions that please her. If they do not please her, she’ll frankly tell him so, and proceed to do things her own way. Courteously (like him) but quite determinedly.
Sexually, these two are well mated. With the peaceful affinity of Earth and Water Signs, they melt into each other’s arms, hearts and bodies very naturally. To others, the Virgo woman may project a degree of unresponsiveness. But the great sentimentality and sensitivity of the Cancerian man allows him to discover her latent pools of passion. He’s often able to cause her to bloom with her own special kind of sentiment, which is pure and fine, like crystal, lacking the heaviness of extreme emotionalism. She may surprise herself then, with a depth of sensitive feelings she never suspected she possessed. Her basic nature may be cool and reserved (especially with strangers), but that doesn’t mean this woman isn’t more than capable of fulfilling the Lunar man’s strong need for both sensuality and affection in lovemaking. She’ll respond instinctively to the tenderness and gentleness that are inseparable parts of every Cancerian male. They both approach passion with a respect for its deeper implications and potential. Sexual union is not something either of them normally views as casual or frivolous (barring severe planetary afflictions in their individual birth charts).
Despite his emotional vulnerability and sentimentality (which he hides with practiced success beneath his tough, outer shell), the Crab possesses a steady, watchful intelligence. He’s a shrewd business person, and an excellent strategist regarding all forms of human relationships. She’ll make it clear that she admires all these qualities. A Virgin cannot love a man who hasn’t won her respect, and the Crab will probably do this from the beginning. However, should he be one of the insecure Cancerians who babys his groundless fears by turning to drugs, alcohol, daydreaming or procrastination, she’ll be extremely annoyed, and she’ll soon make her displeasure felt in unmistakable small ways. Like nagging. Polite nagging, but nonetheless, nagging. Little reminders. Tiny frowns. Pouting. A martyrlike resignation. Or she’ll just skip off when he least expects it to begin a new life alone, with barely a trace of emotion, once she’s decided to leave. (Virgos don’t look upon excessive emotion as either sensible or practical.) Because of his extreme sensitivity to hurt—and her natural inclination to criticize—there are dangers inherent in this relationship. But none that can’t be overcome by simply being recognized in time, and avoided. He’s perceptive enough to sense them. She’s analytical enough to detect them. So they really have no excuse for allowing things to go too far.
Her eyes (like the eyes of all Virgos and Geminis, thanks to Mercury’s silver gift) are noticeably clear, sparkling with intelligence. Her features, in some indefinable way, are delicate and virginal. Except when her brow is clouded with problems or creased with worry-wrinkles, her expression is sweetly placid. And so.. when she’s bathed in moonlight, lying in his arms, the Crab may, for a moment, imagine her to be his lost Lady of the Mysteries, the misty Moon goddess of his haunted dreams.
Once she feels safe with a man, a Virgo woman is transformed into a symphony of fragile femininity. After all, she was born under a feminine Sun Sign. Her crisp self-containment and faint air of aloofness mask her softness, but it’s there ….. waiting for the patient and persistent devotion of the Cancerian man to warm it into singing. Even should the Virgin and the Crab part company, the strong karmic tug of their 3–11 vibration will nearly always guide them to unexpectedly cross each other’s paths again, in ultimate friendship and forgiveness.
| Cancer | Libra |
| Water—Cardinal—Negative | Air—Cardinal—Positive |
| Ruled by the Moon | Ruled by Venus |
| Symbol: The Crab | Symbol: The Scales |
| Night Forces—Feminine | Day Forces—Masculine |