Rewind: Mars in Cancer the Keeper of Memories

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Today we're going to take another look at Mars in the sign of Cancer. I'm going to replay an episode I recorded several years ago when Mars was traveling through Cancer. During that time, I collected a number of very mundane, everyday stories that I observed in the world around me and shared them. Many of these stories were absurd and funny, offering a way to highlight how basic astrological transits can manifest.

Sometimes, when a planet like Mars is retrograde in Cancer, we imagine huge, life-changing events. However, it’s often the small, everyday observations that define a transit. By paying attention to and gathering these small stories, we can bring the mystery and magic of the cosmos into the most ordinary parts of life.

Cancer is a sign ruled by the Moon, which was traditionally seen as the keeper of memory. This association comes from the Moon’s reflective light, akin to how memory reflects an original moment, like a copy. Because of this, the Moon is tied to nostalgia and remembrance—essential aspects of devotion. Devotion often involves keeping something in a constant state of remembrance.

Several years ago, when I spoke about Mars in Cancer, I focused on the little absurd and funny ways Mars can show up in this sign. These observations allow us to create astrological memories and develop a practice of storytelling and observance. By doing this with a transit like Mars in Cancer, we not only understand the big, impactful events but also integrate astrology into our lives through smaller, everyday experiences.

This approach helps astrology permeate our lives beyond just the epic, transformational events, allowing it to enrich the more granular and mundane moments. That’s the purpose of this rewind episode, and I hope you enjoy it.

I’ve mentioned a few times this week that we’re working on returning to our normal production schedule, which should happen next week. In the meantime, enjoy these rewind episodes. We’re also fulfilling all Kickstarter pledges and sending out rewards, so stay tuned for that.

Remember to like, subscribe, and share your thoughts, comments, and reflections as we go. You can find transcripts of these daily talks on the website. If you head to the Live Events page, you’ll see that our webinar series resumes next week on Thursday night, January 16th. I’ll be giving a talk on Saturn conjoining Neptune in Aries. If you can’t make it live, we’ll provide the recording afterward. Check it out and register—I hope to see you there.

I hope you enjoy this fun storytelling episode. It reminds us that, yes, big things are happening, but we shouldn’t overlook the little things. Developing an astrological eye for everyday stories can truly allow astrology to permeate every level of our lives, not just the big, dramatic events.

Okay, enjoy this episode, and we’ll see you again soon. Bye!

Hi everyone. This is Acyuta bhava from Nightlight Astrology, and today I'm making a video to share with you some of my stories from Mars's journey through the sign of cancer. So far. I want to do this because a the stories are really memorable and really illustrate or highlight some of the challenges and some of the blessings of this particular planetary placements. Hopefully you find it useful. But also I want to talk about astrological storytelling in general, why it's really important to document and keep track of your stories as a student of astrology, or even as someone who's just casually learning or learning astrology or taking in astrological content. So we're going to do that first. After that, I want to demonstrate for you a few horary charts from my horary practice. My new horary course is also coming up in June, and I realized I haven't really taken the time to tell people what horary horary is, how it works.

 

And so I'm going to show you two horary charts for my practice today. So first of all, reminder for everybody, Mars is in the sign of cancer, and has been for a while. I'm going to put this up on the real time I'm going to put up the real time clock right now, and just give you a glimpse at this transit. Let's see if I can, if it's going to allow me to pull this up. I'm still getting used to operating with two screens instead of one, so it's just a little tricky sometimes. Okay, here is the real time clock, and you can see Mars in the sign of cancer right here. And if I take this backward just a little bit, not sure how that hold on just a second. Let's make sure that you can see this? Okay? So if I take Mars backward just a little bit, sorry, guys, if my sharing is a little goofy, Mars entered the sign of cancer. What about April? 22 into the 23rd right around then, Mars is in the sign of cancer for a while, all the way into the month of June. So you're looking at a transition for Mars out of the sign of cancer, between the 10th and the 11th. So that's a long period of time that Mars is in the sign of cancer. Mars is in its fall in the sign, which means that there are some challenges or struggles or tensions built into Mars's relationship with the sign of cancer, and mostly, as I've talked about already, those are moon Mars dynamics.

 

Moon Mars dynamics are difficult, primarily because you're looking at a planet or a planetary deity that represents conflict, that represents cutting and severing, and you're looking at the moon that generally represents nurturing and bonding. So, you know, severing and cutting and nurturing and bonding have a tense relationship with one another. There's very interesting ways in which these transits or this these archetypes can work together.

 

For example, when someone has to have emotional courage, or they need to be strong, but they also need to be vulnerable, or they need to be forthcoming or direct about something, but they can't steamroll someone else's feelings. Sometimes Mars and cancer is going to be great at those things. Other times, you're going to have more difficult manifestations of the combination, say, being passive aggressive or being emotionally manipulative, or the idea, almost like the image of boiling water, like a very intense emotional volatility, so psychologically, those are some of the pros and cons of that placement.

 

And you could talk about Mars and cancer for a couple of hours if you wanted to show all kinds of examples of people and the different ways in which Mars and cancer appears in people's lives. The other thing that's difficult is you often see things like domestic violence problems in the family, just that, that sense of, Well, I'm just going to tell you some of my stories so so I've been trying to just, you know every time that there are particular planetary placements that people all talk about, and Oftentimes they get stereotyped in ways that aren't necessarily helpful.

 

I like to take notes of my experiences, both the good and the bad, while the planet is transiting through that sign. I want to tell you my stories and then tell you why I think it's important that you do the same thing, and hopefully maybe you even have some stories that you could share as well, because I'd like to read and see what you guys have been experiencing. But okay, so my stories now, remember last time that Mars was in cancer, I had a family member that almost died in, like a tragic accident.

 

There was a divorce in the family so, and then there were like bee stings on my back. I burnt myself a couple of times, and I literally sliced. I still have a star a scar, which I'm not gonna I will not show you, but the scar is in the shape of a crescent moon that I got from cutting myself with a knife. It's a small scar, but it's a crescent moon shaped scar that I got from cutting myself while cooking. Think about that for a second. So in all of those instances, there were. Hornets that were very like, I don't remember what kind they were, but the kind that are very aggressive, if you come near their nest, and it was outside when we had, you know, little little too, little girls.

 

So in some ways, I felt glad that I got stung and they they didn't, but it was like, I don't, I don't even remember how many times it was. It was like, over 10 stings, 1213, stings, something like that. It was crazy. They were all over my back, and I literally screamed because they it felt like there were like little things stabbing me. Really, really crazy. So that played on so many of the themes, home, safety, protection, violence around the home and so forth.

 

There was one time earlier in my life there was a water pipe that burst, and that was a Mars in Cancer dynamic in we had to have that wasn't our place. It was the landlord had to take care of it. But so, you know, you often will see things like that, where there's this kind of destructive Mars element coming really close to that vulnerable Cancerian space of home or family or body, or the places where we feel a little, you know, a little open, a little too open for Mars, you know. So those were some of the challenging things that I experienced last time.

 

On the other hand, the there were, like, tremendous breakthroughs in family, karma dynamics, when those tragic things happened in my family, the accident, the divorce, this is extended family, and so forth. Those, those experiences, as hard as they were, were, you know, it's kind of like, I don't know when, when it's just like, just rip the band aid off, you know, and it hurt and it was disruptive to the kind of the nucleus of the family unit.

 

But everyone started changing as a result of that. So many people in the surrounding family started making tough choices, but choices that needed to be made, and that largely everyone seems supportive of. So I like to think of Mars and cancer also as this, this emotional dynamism that can be painful but necessary to confront things that are emotionally difficult but necessary. On the other hand, sometimes Mars and cancer, you know, you've probably been in a relationship with someone who feels like they need to take an emotional stand, have a catharsis, a good cry and a good fight, like, every day.

 

And that's where, that's where the Mars and cancer piece can be like, okay, like, maybe you're just addicted to emotional like intensity and drama like that too, you know? So it can be, it could go either way. So recently, these are my experiences of Mars and cancer that I've been jotting down. One of them is that I have, again, just I have a big extended family, so, extended family member that I have that found out that she's pregnant that's exciting, but unexpectedly pregnant. Like, wasn't like, kind of like, whoa, okay, wow, um.

 

And so there's some difficulty, some, you know, like, like that, like, so a pregnancy that carries with it a little bit of drama, but good, not like, bad, but, not necessarily, not like the typical, completely joyful, like, there's a little stress associated with that, a little worry. Okay, so par for the course Mars and cancer. That's, that's a pretty good one. That's, like, a really good example. It popped up pretty quickly after Mars ingress into cancer.

 

Then I had this incident where I was walking with a tray, and we had, like, how we had, like, a little family picnic, which occasionally, like, if you ever have kids that are, like, really, you know, going out of their minds, I guess rainy, they don't know what to do, propose the idea of having a picnic in the most random place in your house, and that just solved everything. Oh, my God, we're gonna, we're gonna go eat on a mat in this random room. Like, that's amazing, you know. So, like, yeah, we've got you. We know you.

 

I believe my wife and I joke that they're cool. We call them ninja moves. We, like, have ways of distracting our kids. So I'm carrying this tray, and the universe got the last laugh on this, this clumsy ninja, because I'm walking with this tray, and I hit my foot on the stairs. And in my defense, this is a new house, so I'm not used to this. I'm not used to the stairs. And I was just walking on them and really kind of thinking that it was my old stairs in the other house that we were in. So I tripped and I fell, and I literally landed on my face with a huge pile of broken glass. And so I was luckily, I was okay, but I, like, really hurt my toe.

 

So I'm like, I don't know if I broke it. I don't think I did, but it was like I was writhing in pain in a pile of glass with a hurt toe. And so I was, it was funny because, you know, I'm riding around in pain in a pile of glass, or I'm gonna make my wife sound so bad, and I don't mean to, because she's the world's greatest person, but she was like, my glass, like, What about your husband? And she's like, No, no, are you okay? You know, it's like, so, anyway, so, so this, so this fool broke some glasses, and that was the that was manifestation number one.

 

Number two, my daughter was brushing her teeth and playing with water. So it was very, you know, Mars in Cancer, I'm frolicking. And she was kind of so absurd, like trying to describe these things she was doing, like a kind of like she was like, head banging or something with her toothbrush and rocking out and having fun with the water in the sink. And she went to spit out her, you know, her toothpaste, or her toothpaste or whatever, and she slammed her head with her so stupid, she slammed her head on the sink like she had a big nod on her head.

 

Was like, Oh my God, so that was Mars and cancer number two, thankfully, these are pretty like, you know, pretty harmless. All right, so the next one, which is pretty bad, yesterday, on the same finger that I got the crescent moon scar, I was trying to adjust something on this new desk that I have, and something was about to fall off my desk, and I had the same finger, like in this little crevice, trying to, like, loosen one of those, whatever they're called, crescent, I don't know what they're called, a little, little allen wrench things that they that, you know, you put it together yourself. So it was, like, one of those little wrenches.

 

And I was, like, in there trying to this. And this thing was about to fall, and I went to, like, grab it, and I got my finger caught in this little hole, and, like, ripped off a big piece of the side of my finger trying to save and protect a piece of my equipment. So I which is So Mars in Cancer, you can try to protect something and get hurt in the process. So, you know, this is like classic where you'll see, I've had so many Mars and cancer people over the course of my life end up being in the role of protector, like they have vulnerable siblings that they grow up with having to protect because maybe one of their parents is ill, or one of their parents is like missing an action. So they end up being like a protector and a defender, but it hurts them in the process.

So it was like this little microcosm of that, where I was trying to protect this little piece of equipment, little fragile, and ended up, like sacrificing my finger. And it happened right on top, like my new scar is, like another little crescent right above the other one. Like, okay, so yeah, it's like a little crescent moon thing anyway.

 

So those are a few of my Mars and cancer stories. The other one is that my daughter was getting into the bathtub and I was warming the water. And you know, my hot is not the same hot as my daughter's hot, if that makes sense. So she got in and she didn't burn herself, like, it wasn't too hot, enough to burn, but she just freaked the F out because the water was, you know, the way that I do it is I like, I'm like, I'm kind of lazy, because I'm like, let's just just put, like, just full jet hot, and then full jet, some cold and it takes half the time.

My wife, you know, it's like, Little House on the Prairie or something. She's like, warming a kettle on the stove, and she'll, she'll take half an hour and do it the right way. I'm just like, so anyway, daughter, uh, freaked out because the water was too hot. It was too hot, but it wasn't, like, scalding, like, she didn't get a burn or anything, or, you know, anything like that.

 

But she freaked out. And then my wife and I got into this big argument about taking your time and being sensitive and not, you know, like not bulldozing the kids with your your impatience about filling the bathtub and and it was one of those, like, stupid fights, like, I don't know if you guys are in relationships, some of you are, I'm sure are. And there's fights that you have where they're like, they're relevant, they're meaningful.

 

There's history, you know, and then there's fights that are just stupid and stubborn and irrelevant, but they're somehow, somehow you feel like they're huge in the moment. So this was one of those, and we got we got over it. We're fine. But that was that was another Mars and cancer moment. There were a few other things that happened that I won't go into, because they're a little too private to share, but some challenging things that came up for my mom, like in her personal life, very Mars in Cancer, and yet in all of. These circumstances.

 

Here's why I think it's so important to document this stuff. And, you know, like, pay attention to it. These are all pretty, you know, I'm sure, in many ways, these are really benign stories compared to what some people are going through out there. So I don't mean to, you know, just have a little woo woo party. And, you know, pretend like people aren't really struggling with real things out there. But I believe that I don't want to live in a universe where cutting my finger couldn't possibly in in the little shape of a crescent moon above another little crescent moon shape brings some kind of joy and laughter and cosmic absurdity into my life, because I just like life better with that. I i It's so nice for me to get out of my stubborn, principled need to win in a fight with my wife about something completely irrelevant, where I really was in the wrong.

 

I was just being impatient. And my ability to get off my need to be right little platform in that fight really came from being able to realize that I was being captured by Mars in Cancer, that the that the gods are, we are the puppets we, as Auden said, and James Hillman liked to quote, We are lived by powers that we pretend to understand. And if I can catch, if I can somehow catch a glimpse of the God that is somehow seizing my consciousness, that I'm like being a channel for on some level, then I make the unconscious conscious, and there, no matter what is unconscious that is being made conscious, the consciousness sees it in the light of eternity, in the light of God.

 

And there's such joy in that there's such wonder and mystery and understanding all at once. How is this even possible? That's the mystery and the awe and reverence. This is amazing. It's beautiful. The understanding. Okay, I got seized. It's all there. So the reason that it's important to tell stories, even if they're like benign and kind of silly. And one of the reasons that people ask me all the time like, why do you you love? You seem to love to tell stories. I did my MFA in Creative non fiction writing, in memoir writing, and wrote my first book as a creative non fiction story. I like telling stories because to me, storytelling is how we capture heaven in the mustard seed. It's usually not the big stories that are the most interesting. It's not the big update on Facebook that I'm usually most interested in.

 

It's the simple little things that they're so human, they're so timeless, and they just they somehow have a way of bringing all of those qualities, all those archetypal, numinous sort of qualities, back into the center of our consciousness. And there's freedom in that, there's joy in that, there's love in that. And so where else would we want to be?

 

You know, where else? So it's fun to forget too. Like forgetting and remembering. It's such a dance like I don't scold myself for forgetting. I'm not here like, you know, furiously scribbling down my notes about the transits because I can't forget. Can't forget the divine. I don't want to be seized by the planets because they're bad. In the bhava Gita Krishna says that, you know, from me come both remembrance and forgetfulness. And so especially when we start yoking this, these observations about our lives, to the need for the eternal in our hearts, then both the remembering and the forgetting become joyful.

 

It's like when you remember, you know you're trying to remember the lyrics to a song. I don't remember who this was. There was someone in my life at some point that told me that, you know, when people confuse lyrics for the longest time, I thought this song set this they thought that. And I don't remember where I heard this. Maybe even saw it in a movie somewhere. I don't know. I swear to God, though, I think someone told me this at our yoga studio, that they thought that the words to hold me closer, Tiny Dancer by Elton John right, were hold me closer. Tony Danza. Just think about that for a second. So ridiculous, so you know, but when you, when you realize that you've been kind of unconscious, and you, you know, and then you, you have this it's like when you realize the correct lyrics to a song, and you, you can laugh at the absurdity of whatever you thought it was when you remember something, or you suddenly realize what you're doing, like, what you're in the process of doing, Like, sometimes, if you're parenting, it's really fun to zoom out, like, you know, just suddenly, as a parent, you get a 20,000 foot view, and you're like, This is crazy. I live in a crazy house full of clowns that are demonic.

 

You just, you're just released from taking it all so seriously. And then somehow the laughter. And the joy comes in, and a crazy, chaotic situation suddenly becomes memorable and fun. So that's what remembering the archetypes do for us. That's why we need to have this practice. So the remembering and the forgetting go along together, and they become a part of a dance. And you know why this is important? Because when we die, we have to remember who we are as we're dying. That's what the Buddhists tell us. That's what our good yogis tell us, that at the moment of death, if what's going on in our mind is like a, I don't know, like a Krispy Kreme jingle or an insurance commercial, you know, slogan or something, who knows what's rolling around in our in our crazy little marble town up here. But the point is that if we are in the practice of remembering the divine, the eternal, if we're always looking for or coming back to this beauty, this wonder, this awe, this recognition of the other in the gods, other souls around us, other powers that are living in and through us, then our consciousness will be ready to evolve beyond this body, consciously. And that doesn't guarantee that we, you know, avoid hell. That guarantees that we continue the so the eternal sojourn of the soul in the same devotional consciousness that we cultivated in this lifetime and that that takes us onward, that starts, that brings us home, right? So at any rate, that's why I think it's important to remember these stories. That's why I like to tell them. That's why I wanted to share with you guys my Mars and cancer stories yesterday, but I forgot. So I'd love to hear your Mars and cancer stories. That would be really cool. Now, I said that I was going to show you guys a couple of horary charts, and I think I'm actually going to make a separate video doing those. So I'm going to, I'm going to do a separate video on the horary charts, and I will, I'll put those up tomorrow, along with actually. So what I'm going to do for you guys tomorrow is I am going to tell you about a couple of horary charts, and then I'm going to show you a chart about predicting, how I predicted that someone would fall in love with someone in another country or from another country, how I saw that and how it ended up being right, because it's kind of a fun chart and, you know, easy predictive technique that you can immediately use. So we'll do that tomorrow, instead of trying to jam it all into one. So I hope you like the Mars and cancer stories today. What are your Mars in Cancer stories? I'd really love to hear them, and what have been the positives and the negatives? I know that there's going to be some, you know, some challenging ones. We know Mars and the Moon are a little challenging together, but let's hear some of the together, but let's hear some of the positive ones too. I can tell you honestly that these emotional breakthroughs that I've, you know, like that I've had, have been really, really helpful, like some of some of these challenges that have come up around family and all this stuff they've been there's, you know, there's obviously fingers and, you know, like that. But it's a beautiful transit as well the way that we're provoked to move and change emotionally with this Mars in Cancer energy. All right, we'll see you guys tomorrow. Bye.