The Magic of Doomed Animal Alliances: A Mytho-Exploration for the New Moon in Cancer
On nibbled toes and dick-measuring contests
One of the reasons I didn’t get into astrology until my late 20s was my disidentification with the Cancer archetype—or rather, stereotype. I may now own my posture as a fully-fledged mommy crab, but that stereotype was completely inaccessible to me for a very long time, to the extent that it stood in the way of my building a relationship with astrological meaning, like a swamp I couldn’t cross alone.
This essay is for those of us who want more nuance and range in how Cancer is delineated. My hope is that it might speak to us and offer some archetypal renewal in this moment of expansive rebirth, provided by today’s New Moon in Cancer conjunct Jupiter. And because Cancer loves to return to an ancient source, we’ll be scuttling through the waves of the Greek fragments on catasterisms, also known as constellation myths, associated with the constellation of Cancer.
The first part of this post addresses the role of the crab in the labors of Herakles, and the second part wanders through the group of stars called ‘The Asses’, which are featured in the constellation of Cancer.
The myth of the Lernaean Crab, or Karkinos
Do you know the story of Herakles and his labors?
A fast and loose distillation of this complex story: the goddess Hera held a grudge against Herakles, because he was the product of her husband Zeus’ philandering with a mortal woman named Alcmene. In an expression of her rage, Hera sent Herakles a fit of madness, which caused him to slay his wife and children without realizing what he’s doing. In most versions of the story, his purification for this act of violence takes the form of twelve labors.
The second labor required Herakles to defeat the Hydra of Lerna, a powerful sea serpent with the power to regrow severed limbs.
In the middle of this labor, Herakles was quite preoccupied playing serpent whackamole (whackasnake? [sorry]), when Hera sent another beast to besiege him: a giant crab who came out of the waters specifically to aid the Hydra by pinching (or ‘biting’) Herakles’ foot.
In the surviving texts describing this moment, Herakles kills the crab almost immediately upon its arrival. Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca states, colorlessly, “Then a giant crab (karkinos) came along to help the Hydra, and bit Herakles on the foot. For this he killed the crab” (2.77-80, translated by Aldrich).
In other words:
The crab arrives. The crab bites in solidarity. The crab is slain.
The only other substantial part of the narrative says that Hera, in gratitude for the Crab’s efforts, catasterized it, or placed it among the stars as a gesture to honor its efforts in the fight against Herakles.
Viewed in one way, this story may seem a bit sad or empty, given how underdeveloped it is.
But this story fills out the Cancerian archetype with bravery, kinship, and pathos, and here’s why:
The Crab emerges as an ally to the Hydra, as an interspecies companion in the fight against the solar hero’s world-taming quest that is predicated upon overpowering the chthonic beasts of the world.
The Crab seems to stand no chance, yet still acts as though it is worthwhile to beleaguer the hero, even if for a moment. The Cancerian purpose therefore seems not to be to win, but rather to express a refusal of the hero’s conquest and violence, in defense of chosen kin. This refusal takes the form of trying to throw off the footing of the upright hero, throwing him off balance, and undermining his stance.
What if we start to read this story more fully into the astrological associations of Cancer, and allow Cancer to be a sign that speaks to the ways we are willing to fight, refuse, and even lose, but bite and pinch in solidarity with our afflicted chosen kin?
The Myth of the Asses
There is a somewhat more comic mythic counterpart to the constellation of Cancer, which is about the two fixed stars known as the Aselli, or the asses, and although their stories are totally separate from Herakles’ labors, they also share themes of animal alliances, defeats, and refusals of dominant power schematics. If you like talking donkeys and hyperphallic humor, stick around for this one.
You may already know that Herakles wasn’t the only bastard of Zeus that Hera sent mad. The god Dionysus (child of Zeus and Semele) also received one of Hera’s maddening spells, which propelled him to Dodona in pursuit of guidance and release from his father Zeus’ oracle there. Dionysus was blocked on his journey by a swamp—a very Cancerian kind of habitat, a wetland that is considered a transition point between earth and water.
Facing the swampy impasse, Dionysus saw two donkeys nearby, caught one of them, and then rode it across the swamp. This allowed him to arrive in Zeus’ temple and have his madness lifted. As a little thank you gift to his donkey escort, Dionysus gave him the gift of speech.
Now what did the donkey do with his speech? He got into a dick-measuring contest with the phallic god Priapos. An unsavvy move, perhaps, but a bold one for sure.
The donkey lost the contest (honorable mention tho?), and the victorious Priapus killed him. This caused Dionysus to catasterize the donkey and place it on the Crab constellation.
Once again we find the constellation of Cancer offering a tale about doomed animal alliances, or animals who come to the aid of someone on the receiving end of violence from a dominating power. The crab makes the hero’s killing work harder and more of a nuisance, while the donkey (perhaps reluctantly) allows the young Dionysus to find healing from Hera’s imposed madness. The crab can find their way right to the battle ground; the donkey can navigate the tricky footing of the swamp. The animal’s affect and attitude toward the support they offer in each story is mysterious, but they always die in the process of lending support to a figure besieged by violence, and they always know how to move and navigate in ways not accessible to the normative movements of two walking feet.
One other tale about the Aselli (the donkey stars) tells that the two donkeys were ridden by Dionysus and Hephaistos in a war between the Olympian gods and the Giants. When Dionysus and Hephaistos approached the Giants, the donkeys panicked and let out some frantic brays. The Giants hadn’t ever heard this sound before, and were so freaked out by it that they fled the scene in terror, which led to the Olympians’ victory.1
(footnote: Robin Hard pp. 66-67).
On this Jupiter-Sun-Moon conjunction in Cancer, we begin a new story around themes of care, interdependence, and surprising multi-species alliances. These alliances might be tinged with doom, with death (hello square from Saturn in Aries), but they end with the consolation of stellar radiance, of shining their light into the night and gaining a starry immortality in recompense.
I put these lesser-discussed aspects of the Cancer constellation out into the world today to help those struggling to understand or identify with their Cancer placements to see new ways of reading the Cancer archetype.
If you have a strong Cancer signature in your chart, maybe you don’t identify strongly with the mother archetype, but what about the doomed crab, the sea creature who emerges from their realm of mystery to aid in a doomed but sacred fight against a violence hero?
Maybe you don’t feel outwardly emotional in the traditional Cancerian mode, but what if you and your acts of service can help someone find their way toward healing? What if your way of moving through the world is what someone else needs to reconnect with the sacred balm they desperately need?
Maybe you don’t see the tough shell meets soft interior associated with Cancer alive in you, but you would find your voice and use your voice to proclaim—proudly, comically, foolishly—your animal/sexual largesse in the face of certain destruction, like a donkey in a dick-measuring contest with the god of big dicks?
Maybe you don’t feel like a crybaby, but you can recall times when your fear and your voicing of that fear turned into a source of power and protection for yourself and your community?
I hope these stories offer new portals for relationality with the sign of Cancer, via concepts of doomed animal alliances that are loaded with bravery, humor, healing, and multispecies kinship.
May these strange stories plant new seeds of relationality between you and the Cancer part of your birth chart.
May the New Moon in Cancer conjunct Jupiter bring a gorgeous new cycle of care, interdependence, and nurturance into your life and the world we all share.
Robin Hard (2015), Eratosthenes and Hyginus: Constellation Myths, Oxford University Press, pp. 66-67.