Eris in the 10th solar house. Spiral Door aspect, Quaoar and Ixion in the 6th solar house. Pluto working toward the solar 7th house or descendent. Saturn in the 2nd solar house heading for the 3rd. Chiron-Nessus conjunct in the 8th solar house. Mars retrograde in the 1st solar house. Venus retrograde in the 2nd and 3rd solar houses.   Cancer is the relationship house for Capricorn, the career house for Libra, and the home and security house for Aries. This interpretation works for Cancer rising as well.

CANCER is an astrological sign that insinuates emotional dependencies, nurturing and good food on the stove. But for half a decade or so, you've been under the strong influence of Saturn, first moving through Gemini into your sign, then working its way through Cancer and over your Sun, and then into your 2nd solar house, where it is as the year begins, and will be through late summer.
 
Crabs come in a variety of species; some are tough and spiny, and come on claws first. Many, though, tend to be receptive and lack the boundaries that you would normally associate with an invertebrate. Note that a crab is one of two animals in the zodiac that lacks a backbone, the other being a scorpion. The skeleton is on the outside, protecting an extremely soft interior.
 
Invertebrates go through a growth process called molting. They shed one shell and grow a new, larger one. Some such as hermit crabs occupy a shell that was once owned by another creature. Each time Saturn has changed signs has represented a molting process for you, at the beginning of which was an extreme of vulnerability, which was followed by growing into your new size and strength.
 
Saturn and Cancer are not so incompatible as modern astrology often tries to convince us. Both archetypes have strong associations with mother. Both have direct references to structure, in the case of Saturn, the spine and the bones, and Cancer, the exoskeleton. They are compatible in that Cancer thrives under the energy of Saturn, because the emotions need structure, and the needing safety aspect of Cancer benefits from the tangible reality that Saturn offers. Saturn and the Moon are often archetypes for the parents, and in the current world, the roles of parents are entirely interchangeable. To put it simply, I think Saturn is the best friend of all those with strong Cancer signatures in their charts.
 
If Saturn's action in your life has taught you anything in these years, it's been how to be more independent, which has, with any grace at all, assisted you not in distancing yourself from others, but rather in forming more mature dependencies and deeper bonds. Healthy relationships have boundaries, and feelings have limits. To a point, structure liberates energy. As it works out, Saturn is an excellent force for change, movement, growth and clarification of one's ideas, contrary to nearly every description in a commercial astrology book (which is why I am nearly out of answers when asked to recommend such a book). To put it mildly, Saturn has kept you busy the past five years, and though you have not necessarily had an easy trip through life, or had everything you wanted, I am obliged to quote the late Patric Walker: Saturn always gives more than it takes away.
 
But it is, in truth, humans who are in the position of giving to one another, and receiving from one another, and we do this in our relationships. One look at the world or at nature reveals the existence of an interdependent web of life. Whether we are talking about trucks hauling beer from the brewery to the supermarket, or the wind carrying pollen from one flower to another, life is a collaborative process. Those who feel they are autonomous are lying to themselves, and everyone else, or are simply not aware. We have a metaphor for the awareness of one world, which occurred to me today watching a special on BBC about the Amazon Rain Forest. In short, I was considering how people 50 years ago might have responded to the proposition that the rain forest vacuums in carbon were created on California's highways, and that it's directly affected by the climate of the entire planet. Most people would have laughed -- not so today. Today, we get it, and it's almost too late. In a similar way, I feel we need to understand the ecology of our relationships and our communities, and act accordingly. I'll come back to this in a moment, in my discussion of Chiron and Nessus in Aquarius.
 
Let's briefly review the Saturn story. Saturn's role through Gemini, Leo and Cancer (your 12th, 1st and 2nd houses, respectively) has been a gradual toughening up process that is probably a good thing for you. Saturn in Gemini (approximately spring 2001-spring 2003), your solar 12th house, was a kind of closet-cleaning exercise, where you may have been compelled to pull back from people, or when you endured a phase of relative isolation. This is a "deal with your stuff" transit. It was a time of sobriety, dealing with your fears, and also of creating tangible dreams. Dreams are great, but they are a big tease unless you can actually build them, and build on them. Saturn in Gemini also taught you to be of one mind about what you want and need the most. To whatever extent dualism prevented you from making commitments, you took some big steps in this phase.
 
Then came Saturn in your own sign (approximately summer 2003-summer 2005). Saturn in our sign has an odd way of limiting us to one agenda, to which everything else is subordinated, at least for a while. It may be the kind of thing where you say to yourself, "I don't really want to do this, but I know I need to," at the end of which, you realized you gained, grew and matured considerably, and what you were doing was right on time. Saturn in one's own sign (which happens once every three decades) always compels us to come to terms with ourselves in a tangible way. It's a time of burning off the baby fat, clearing space, making some kind of major move, and (as I will develop in the Leo essay), a time of taking over the role of one's parents and one's self-authority. The moral of the story is, the more we are in charge of ourselves, the less others are able to run our lives.
 
Currently, Saturn is in Leo, your 2nd solar house (which began in the summer of 2005 and will go through late summer 2007). This is the money house, as well as covering subjects like one's personal values and resources. Most trashy astrology books tell you money will be tight at this time; but the real meaning of this transit is about getting yourself structured financially. Leo burns with a hot fire, and it benefits from a fireplace or a nice wood stove. Every wood stove needs a woodpile, and the proper tools to handle burning logs, and so on. Basically, the astrology is a good map of what opportunities are available. The archetypes tell us what time it is, in the big sense, and reveal what energies are most readily available. So based on this, it's a good time to take care of creating some kind of economic structure for yourself, whether that means getting a savings account or a retirement plan; engaging an accountant, or filing taxes for the first time. It means taking your financial life more seriously, one degree at a time, whatever that means to you: but Saturn is saying that ultimately, the results must involve structure.
 
With Leo in this solar house as a constant factor, you identify with your values more passionately than most people. Indeed, this is something you share with the other water signs, Scorpio and Pisces. What is important to you is really important for you, and it's nothing you take for granted. Water signs get accused of all sorts of interesting things, but we cannot really be accused of not caring. Saturn's presence is strongly urging you (to put it politely) to materialize what is important to you -- and I trust you've made some actual progress on this particular front. Saturn's form of action typically comes in the form of commitments that we act on gradually, and steadily, and which have lasting benefits.
 
When Saturn changes signs to Virgo, your solar 3rd house, you will have many opportunities to put this structure to work. I can think of few transits that will focus your sense of mission like Saturn in the 3rd house associated with Virgo. Unless you have some serious money issues, you will want to get paid for that focused, excellent work that you do, and one of the best ways to get paid is to create the space and structure for it. The point being, you need to do what is important to you, and you need that to be what sustains you. And, luckily, now is the time.
 
Now, let's go to the opposite house -- the 8th, which for you is Aquarius. The 8th is an extremely interesting house, and you have some planets there that are creating an exciting time of learning for you, in what may seem like another dimension entirely than I've been describing with Saturn.
 
Indeed, this is a true frontier of your life, a comment I can make in part because Aquarius is involved (ever interesting), and in part because two of the more recently discovered planets are involved, Centaur planets Chiron and Nessus. Without going into a huge dissertation on the 8th house, it's the house of shared resources, mutual commitments and sex. It is the house of "other people's money" and the meeting place where we share both resources and ideas about resources.
 
Aquarius occupying your 8th solar house is quite revealing of your nature -- or at least a few possibilities about it. There is the idea, in the fantasy version of your life presented by astrology, that when you consider shared resources, you think of them as group resources. The same holds true for ideas, for knowledge, for community, and if you're not too hung up, for sex and money. The dualism of Aquarius (two wavy lines) is that it can be fascist and it can be revolutionary. It can worship authority and, on another day, strive to overthrow it. Taken as a sexual metaphor in the 8th house, there can be strains of petty tyrant, or of true egalitarian. You will need to fill in that side of the story; I can tell you that you have a choice in the matter; I can tell you that you may be considerably more hung up than you think, that you may be considerably more radical than you think, and that you may be substantially more revolutionary than you think. Both of these probably make you nervous.
 
The fact that you're having Centaur transits here is pushing all of this potential into focus, raising questions and keeping things moving in your relationships. To the extent that you are addressing old questions and dispensing with them, you are succeeding. If the same stuff keeps coming up, slow down and work with it more closely.

While you may not be totally thrilled about what is happening, or how it's happening, actually, plenty about your current state of interrelations with others is working for you, and helping you expand your base of support. Anything you don't particularly like, you can at least put into the "knowledge is power" file, but indeed, addressing things on the spot, internally first, then externally, will be very productive now, and have more or less immediate effects. You can indeed change your relationship patterns at this time, and you can do so effectively and with minimal grief -- as long a you stay out of denial. Chiron is bringing a magnifying glass to the place where your world intersects with the reality of others, and theirs with yours, all in the most practical ways, to wit, money, sex, power, resources, commitments and ideas. This transit is both revealing the dynamics that have long existed in that house, and creating a fertile environment where you can rewrite, reprogram or recreate them.
 
Chiron's basic mode of operation is, if you can be aware of it, you can work with it. However, this transit has a dangerous feeling, as if you are working the edge and in some way defying death. Indeed, death may be a concern of yours, if only as the awareness of your own mortality, and mortality as an issue we all share. You may live constantly with the sense that the only time is now; that you must use every minute with awareness; that any day could indeed be your last day.
 
While you're there, you might want to look at how death is a commodity in your relationships. Death is almost like a silent third partner in many relationships, as many people tend ["unconsciously"] to make bargains that involve death, and yet keep the idea of death and its meaning far from the picture. With an 8th house Chiron transit, this is not exactly on your list of options. What is nice, though, is that you get to come to any revelation, any personal recognition or point of growth, with the comfort of knowing you are not alone.
 
One quality of the 8th house is that it tends to be the place where you can get a lot of information about how power is transacted in our lives. Nor should this be surprising, given that the subject matter of this house all involves the money-sex-death matrix of themes. Typically, more than being the place that most people gain any sense of their power, or actual power, the 8th tends to be the place where they lose their power, or give it up, specifically, in relationships and agreements. Signing contracts that are unfair to us is a typical kind of event. Then we have to live with these agreements, or risk getting sued. But how often do we sign contracts not knowing what they contain? How often do we make agreements with others, not knowing what we're committing to; how often do we assume a commitment on the part of another that is not clearly spoken? These are not rhetorical questions. I suggest you look at the facts.
 
Aquarius on the 8th raises another question that may be coming to light with a Chiron focus on this house. That is, to what extent did group pressure force you to have the values that you do? To what extent, consciously or "unconsciously," do you hold the values of the people who surrounded you when you were little? To what extent to you succumb to the values of others in your relationships, particularly if they involve sex or money? Chiron may be making these factors uncomfortably clear. Yet rather than live in discomfort, I suggest you do your part to raise awareness, and to put your knowledge into action.
 
Aquarius needs a theory, and it needs facts to support or deny it. Chiron, too, calls for accounting and accountability; for the awareness of details and what they add up to. As a Cancerian, you may be inclined to think emotionally, without words, on "intuition" or hunches or to "go with your gut." Chiron is suggesting that you use your excellent mind and actually get a sense of where you stand in the world. To briefly address the presence of Nessus, this adds the focus on accountability, compelling you to know who is responsible for what, and particularly, to take responsibility for what you know you can change, or what (or who) you know you cannot change. The conjunction is saying: come out of denial, or rather, wake up to your denial and then address honestly what you need to address.
 
When the Spiral Door opens in your life, it will open in a distinct angle of your chart where work relationships are experienced as of some of the most intimate of our lives. The world puts great emphasis on marriage, romance and love relationships, and practically ignores the miracles and beauty of work partnerships. Indeed, they are at once some of the most meaningful and under-rated of our human contacts.

Personally for you, they are where you share, cultivate and grow two things vital to a whole life -- service, and faith. If these past 10 years of your life have taught you anything, it is that you must actively live what you hold true. Belief is not enough, and by itself, it is nothing. Many people "believe in God." Your calling is to serve -- perhaps God in some form, or some cosmic presence that you relate to much like alive people connect to nature. But in truth, this is a practical matter, and it involves serving humanity. The Spiral Door represents the full recognition, indeed, the realization, that you exist in this life with a divine purpose and that this purpose involves action with its basis in faith.
 
Yet this state of existence necessitates that you engage with people who have a similar agenda, which includes being willing to ask the important questions; the real ones; and to do the real thinking.


CANCER
For more information about your relationships, please see Capricorn. This will give you an idea what is happening for those closest to you, and how they may experience you. For more information about your career, please see Aries. You can consider this an alternative take on your professional life, as it's an assessment of your 10th house. For more information about the home and security angle of your chart, please see Libra. This will give you greater detail on themes just covered in this horoscope that relate to home and security. For an explanation of the houses, please see this article.