What a Sweet Mess - Double-Cancers

One of the most fascinating placements in a chart is when someone is a double-sign. This means that the Sun and Moon are in the same sign. I love this because you get two different perspectives on what the sign entails, only in the same person!

The Sun symbolizes who we are, our ego, our essential selves. It is the creation, the tower. The Moon symbolizes our emotions, our softness, or private worlds. It is the bedrock, the foundation. When these are placed in the same sign, the qualities of the sign are exaggerated, and both the good and bad are heightened in the extreme.

My favorite example of this is double-Cancer, Courtney Love.

See that? If you know her name, you just had a reaction. You either grinned, groaned, or grimaced. She’s just so much, so thoroughly what she is, that she elicits something from everyone.  

As the frontman for Hole, wife of Kurt Cobain, and the general grunge princess of the 90’s, she became a household name with her crass antics and her striking moments of vulnerability. She was an addict. She was a mother. She was a screamer, a crier, a lover, and a raging bitch.

She prayed every night and woke up screaming “Fuck you!”

And how beautifully Cancerian, right? Growing up fragile and sensitive in a world that was made to break her, it’s no surprise that she developed a hard exterior. A crab has to have a shell! Hers was brash, bold, and designed to keep people out. People who reacted with disgust to her messiness, who judged her crudeness, who tried in rein in her wildness were efficiently weeded out. Only people who could see beyond it made it past the defenses.

And as a damaged, powerful woman surrounded by damaged, powerful men, she found herself doing what every Cancer does, which is try to hold things together while personally falling apart. As fame took its toll and sexist fans took their piece of flesh (quite literally), she circled the wagons and made her shows women-only. As addiction took over her life and the lives of everyone around her, she ran a media blitz to try to keep her family intact. And as depression tore her love away from her, she stayed strong and stayed alive.

That tough as nails exterior allowed her to drop the album that would catapult her to critical acclaim and new levels of fame just 4 days after her husband died by suicide. It was already ready to go, so she decided to keep going. She didn’t owe the world a performance of the perfect widow. No one deserved to witness her agony.

But she was also loyal as hell. Like any Cancer, if you were one of her people, she’d take care of you, period. She allowed Billy Corgan (subject of the astrology-related and truly excellent song “Violet”), who had manipulated, dated, dumped, and slandered her, to produce her third album, giving his flagging career new life. And later, when his personal life had fallen apart, she allowed him to live for years in his own wing in her mansion, because that is what Cancers do for people. 

In Courtney Love, you see everything the sign of Cancer has to offer. Softness, sensitivity, kindness, and strength, as well as defensiveness, emotional messiness, addiction, and wild mood swings. And all that came together to create one of the most polarizing figures in pop culture.

Double signs are special, and double-Cancers are another level entirely. Let me know if you’d like examples from other signs!

Know a double sign? Are you one yourself? Consult with me! And remember, until August 21st, you can save 20% off your next custom reading using Promo Code LEO.