I See That Side of the Moon Which Is Never Seen

Counting from Cancer's start, this is the fourth degree, placing it in the sign's first decan. Its decan is ruled by Venus rather than the Moon, which colors the degree with something Cancer does not supply on its own. The narrower term division belongs to Mars, a still finer layer of rulership laid across the sign and decan. As a cardinal water sign, Cancer initiates through feeling and memory rather than argument or force.

Charubel, the pen name of the Welsh astrologer John Thomas, catalogued an image for every degree in 1898. His entry for this one describes that side of the Moon which is never seen by the inhabitants of this planet. This is one of the 360 degree images that Marc Edmund Jones obtained in 1925 by drawing blank cards, shuffled at random, while the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described her impressions in Balboa Park, San Diego. Jones's own account followed in 1953, but the version generally read today is Dane Rudhyar's, published in 1973 as An Astrological Mandala; that later text is under copyright until 2069 and is withheld from this page rather than quoted. None of this is meant as prophecy; it is a way of describing where, precisely, this degree sits inside Cancer's larger pattern.