Cancer is a cardinal water sign, ruled by our moon, which influences our oceans and tides. Cancer is the beginning of summer. Cancer is the symbolic mother of the USA. Our three outermost planets represent the collective psyche. Let’s examine the transits of Pluto and Uranus through Cancer in the 20th Century.
Pluto (god of sex, death, and transformation) transited Cancer from 1913 to 1938. Partisan politics, nationalism, and isolationism transformed the world. World War I became World War II. In 1913, President Wilson pressed a button in the White House and blew up the Gamboa Dike at the Isthmus of Panama, creating a canal between oceans, and transforming travel by sea. Wilson legislated the Carter-Owen Bill that established a Federal Reserve System to transform the strangle hold on the nation’s currency and credit system by banks.
Daylight Saving Time transformed the nation’s clocks. Transcontinental telephone service transformed communications. World infrastructures and atomic energy transformed our physical planet. NBC was the first Nationwide Broadcasting Company. Wall Street prospered from war while soldiers earning $16 per month died in the trenches. President Wilson established a lottery style draft promoting patriotism. Congress passed the Espionage Act fining draft dodgers $10,000 and imposing a twenty-year jail sentence. No child was left behind.
“Do your bit” was an encouragement to buy Liberty Bonds. Wheatless-meatless days were promoted. The end of 1919 marked the end of the Influenza pandemic that caused half a million deaths and a quarter of the nation’s population to be sick. Prohibition banned liquor for all citizens. Black markets and bootlegging industries flourished. Black leader Marcus Garvey organized ‘The Empire of Africa’ with 500,000 followers. He led the largest mass exodus of Blacks with the least sense of brotherhood in U.S. history.
In 1929, doubt, fear, and panic upset a stock market that faced its darkest hour. Foundations and structures of home and family transformed. People born during this period spend much of their lives taking care of family. Parents with overdeveloped senses of responsibility, guilt, and obligation motivated children of this generation to become dropouts and runaways.
Uranus (planet of sudden and unexpected change) last transited the sign of Cancer from 1949 to 1955. Mothers stopped staying at home and went to work. Women began wearing the “bikini”, a fashionable French bathing suit. ‘I Love Lucy’, a comic show about a housewife and her Cuban bandleader husband became the most popular show on TV. Ranch houses and basement playrooms became popular. The subconscious mind was explored in psychology. Born between 1949 and 1955? You’re psyche is someplace between rational and aware and oversensitive and fearful.
We may want to think twice before we elect (or appoint) another Cancer President. Four USA Presidents were born under the sign of Cancer. Our most recent, George W Bush has intuitive hands and an egocentric character to match his Leo rising. George Bush revealed the worst qualities of Cancer and Leo in his behavior, presidential intentions, and actions. Check out the similarities between the four Cancer Presidents.
Like George Bush and Al Gore, John Quincy Adams finished second in popular vote behind General Andrew Jackson. There was no majority. A choice was put before the House of Representatives. The Speaker, Henry Clay, swung the election to Adams. When Adams appointed Clay as Secretary of State, Jackson followers cried, “Corrupt bargain”.
“Of all the men whom it was ever my lot to accost and to waste civilities upon, he was the most doggedly and systematically repulsive. With a vinegar aspect, cotton in his leathern ears, and hatred in his heart, he sat like a bulldog among spaniels”. W.H. Littleton
President Calvin Coolidge, shared a birthday with the Declaration of Independence. He was famous for “holding his tongue”. That earned him the title, “Silent Cal”. Two of his infamous sayings were: “If you don’t say anything, you won’t be called on to repeat it” and “The business of America is business”.
“He was an economic fatalist with a God given inertia. He knew nothing and refused to learn”. William Allen White
The 38th President, Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr., didn’t know he was adopted until he was seventeen. His wife, Betty performed all the domestic chores. Gerry wouldn’t lift a finger around the house. As Speaker of the house, Ford passionately pleaded for escalation of the war in Vietnam. He urged to “unleash devastating air and sea power”. His failed crusade to impeach liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was a favor to his buddy Richard Nixon. Ford granted Nixon a “full complete and absolute pardon” for all crimes relating to Watergate. Ford blamed democrats for a disastrous rate of inflation and warned that electing more would “jeopardize world peace”. He admitted to never reading books, but did find time to watch football on TV.
“I cannot dislike him personally — he’s cordial and gracious, but he’s consistently wrong and consistency is a virtue of small minds. He’s never proposed a constructive solution to anything”. Congressman Robert Drinan
Lyndon Johnson said Ford “had played too much football with his helmet off” ~ “Jerry’s the only man I ever knew who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time”.
“Ford isn’t a bad man, but he’s dumb—dumb. He shouldn’t be dumb either. He went to school just like everybody else”. Reverend Duncan Littlefair
“The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life…
it should be something useful, something good”
The Dalai Lama (Cancer) is “The Reborn Soul of Buddha”. Orpheus, singer, priest, healer, poet, and musician in Greek myth, charmed and enchanted Death into letting him enter the matrix of the collective unconscious to find his beloved Eurydice. A moment of weakness caused Orpheus to look backward after death warned him that he’d lose Eurydice if he did. The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 to live as a “simple monk” in a remote corner of Northern India. Unable to return, he chose to promote world peace and love.