This is the final series on the four elements of sun signs –fire, earth, air and water. This last series will focus on the water signs – Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. Water signs represent the emotional self, that feeling part of our nature and personality. It also represents a part of us that protects our emotional side from hurt and pain. Therefore, water signs can be quite defensive and self- protective and will go to great lengths to shield themselves from emotional pain. Because water signs live life through their feelings and emotions, they may shy away from intense relationships or personal entanglements for fear of the devastating emotional impact it might have.
As the nature of water signs is one of fluctuating emotions, it may be difficult for water signs to base life decisions via logical and rational means, for their emotional nature deeply colors their life decisions. Yet being a water sign implies a high level of innate intuitiveness and psychic abilities; they can easily tap into emotional wavelengths of others and pick up on good or bad “vibes” regarding an individual or situation.
Cancer – Give me a home
Cancer is the first of the water signs, and also the first of the summer signs. As such, it suggests the whirling eddy in a brook rather than a smoothly flowing river. The youthfulness of spring gives way to the more serious awareness of one’s own destined role in life. Like the whirling brook, you can draw what you want into your own world, and let the rest of the current flow past you. Cancer is ruled by the moon, the planet that defines the personal meaning we give to things. Therefore, Cancer’s influence is the wish to draw things to a deeply personal focus.
If your sun is in Cancer, you tend to see life in terms of personal ownership. Cancer’s innate need for security gravitates toward acquiring home and property –something tangible that you can hold on to and own. Negatively manifested, this can lead to being overly possessive of people and material acquisitions; positively manifested, this same trait can become an unwavering loyalty to family, job, and friends. Cancerians may be timid in dealing with the world, but they more than make up for this by their greater than unusual tenacity on the home front.
There is something of Cancer’s influence in all of us. When we see things in terms of “me and mine” or when we take things too personally, we are acting out the more negative qualities of the sign. Cancer’s spiritual growth comes by expanding their deeply personal vision. By seeing the whole universe as home, you can thus release the need to clutch to anything. Cancerians that have grown spiritually on the path have a very special talent for universal sympathy – a talent which makes them perhaps the most intuitive of the twelve signs.
The magnetism that a Cancerian exerts should be that of divine healing love, not possessive attachment. Through meditation, Cancerians can embrace the rays of purest light flooding his heart, transforming the darkness of selfish desire into divine love. Then he can spread this reality outward- as he fills his body, his home, and the whole universe with that divine light.
Scorpio - Emotional depths
Scorpio is the second of the water signs and the second of the autumn signs. Scorpio’s expression of the water element differs from Cancer’s. Instead of the inward drawing eddies of a mountain brook, Scorpio is like a strong, silently flowing river, moving with quiet purpose through life’s varied scenery.
Because it is an autumn sign, Scorpio suggests a sense of self-assurance in terms of inner identity rather than external identification with the outer world. During these months, leaves fall from trees and cold begins to set in. People are happy to have a warm comfortable home to retreat to. So it is with Scorpio who retreats into the inner depths of himself to find self-affirmation to the deeper realities of life. The key to Scorpio’s influence is hidden power, whether used creatively or destructively.
Scorpio’s energy is essentially inward, focused and controlled. If your sun is in Scorpio, your sense of identity springs from mystical depths. Self-sufficient and a self-starter, Scorpio’s designation as a water sign suggests determined movement toward a deep and deliberate goal. You are intense and passionate about life and relationships. If this intensity is kept sensibly under control, its power for constructive action is enormous.
The spiritual road for Scorpio is through stern self-discipline and self-mastery, learning that their intense passions need to be directed in service to others, not exclusively to their own egoism.
Pisces – Universal Compassion
Pisces is the last sign of the twelve signs. It is also the last of the water signs, and the last of the winter signs. In Pisces we find a withdrawal from winter’s stern focus to reaching out with universal sympathy anticipating the joyous recommitment of spring.
Pisces is said to be ruled both by Jupiter, the planet of expansion, and Neptune , the planet of psychic sensitivity. Pisces represents a wish to spread out like water and enter into a genuine feeling for all people and all of life. The rulership of Neptune also represents profound sensitivity. Pisces relates through their deep empathy. If your sun is in Pisces, you know that you must flow with the tides of life. Your deep empathy for life can draw you into countless situations and send you swimming eagerly after numerous goals that have nothing to do with your own requirements for spiritual growth.
If your sun is in Pisces, your identity lies in your capacity to emotionally connect with others, to immerse yourself in universal sympathy. Born to heal and to serve, you see self-giving and oftentimes self-sacrificing as your role in life. The way you direct your energies is the key to your growth. The two fishes (your symbol) swimming in opposite directions suggest the options open to you. If you encourage your inner energies to flow upward in spirit, your empathy will broaden into cosmic love. If on the other hand you allow them to flow downward, your empathy may express itself through a dreamy and imaginary nature that feeds it dreams on drugs or alcohol.
Like the fish that swims out to sea, the spiritual message of Pisces is one of relinquishing the ego, feeling empathy for all life and empowering his soul to merge forever in the great ocean of spirit.
Gifts of the Water Signs
Water signs trigger the deep emotional components in all of us and allow us to tap into the feelings we often want to rationalize away. Without feelings, emotions and sensitivity that the water signs embody we cannot progress spiritually. Being called a “human being” implies that we relate with others through our feelings and honor the emotional and intuitive side of ourselves. It is the compassion we embrace for others and life that makes us “human” beings, in lieu of going through the motions of life in a cold and robotic manner, possessing no feelings for anything. Life must be felt; it is not enough for us merely to live it on an intellectual level. Water signs give us the gifts of passion, emotion and sensitivity. Isn’t that ultimately what makes us “human beings?”
