where with grace + abundance
Cancer II + 3 of Cups
To begin this little mid-Cancer season field guide, I’d like to offer a quick refresher on what a decan is and why one might decide to follow their themes and images as they progress throughout the year.
Though I’m going to speak on this quickly, an important takeaway is that decans are a very old and very rich timing technique. It’s my understanding that they were created by the Egyptians as a way to “tell time,” not merely in the sense that we mean now (i.e., is it 7 am or 6:12 pm?). Of course such time keeping did not exist back then. Rather, this technique was a way of energetically and naturally telling the time.
If, on the ground, in relationship to nature, ancient peoples were able to track and interpret the seasonal time, then dividing up the sky and creating the decans, and assigning a planetary ruler to each, was their way of telling cosmic time, of relating what happened in the heavens to that which happened on the earth.
As David Abram writes in The Spell of the Sensuous, “The curvature of time in oral cultures is difficult to articulate on the page, for it defies the linearity of the printed line. Yet to fully engage, sensorially, with one’s earthly surroundings is to find oneself in a world of cycles within cycles within cycles. The ancestral stories of an oral culture are recounted again and again—only thus can they be preserved—and this regular, often periodic repetition serves to bind the human community to the ceaseless round dance of the cosmos” (186).
This is why I love the decans and astrology so much. It’s a way to reconnect us to an older, more sensually- (as in the 5 senses) connected way of living and being than we are used to doing in our post-Enlightenment world. These decans are a way to reconnect with the patterns, cycles, and stories that have existed before and beyond memory of when they began.
This second decan of Cancer began on July 1st this year and will end on July 11th at around 8pm Mountain Time. While, at first, I tended to post these missives toward the tail end of a decanic period because I was running late, now I actively choose to do so because it gives me a chance to more adequately reflect on the 10-day interval and make associations to real time occurrences in the world around us.
Given the tarot card associated with Cancer II, I automatically assumed that the themes of this slice of time ruled by Mercury would be a challenge. How possibly will we be able to feel grace and abundance during this particular time? A time within, for instance, something like a “Big Beautiful Bill” gets passed that will actively take away important provisions for people. And not just for a few people. This bill will affect most people and make their daily lives harder, poorer, more tenuous.
Yes, there is much abundance in this world, but at the moment it’s being barred from those who need it and instead siphoned away to those who already have too much. To the rich that hoard. To the people in power who only crave more power. And, of course, power to them means power over others.
Though it shouldn’t fit with words like grace and abundance, this example shows us the dark side of the 3 of Cups,. Like beauty, the beholder decides what is abundant and what is graceful. To people like Trump and his cronies (tech bros, billionaires, authoritarians and the like) stealing from the poor to give to the rich couldn’t make more sense, couldn’t be more of a thing to celebrate.
In fact this had me thinking about the people—the parents—who have taken their kids to pose for a family picture in front of the sign for the new concentration camp that Trump just opened in Florida. Can you imagine? A family of 3, smiling wide, pointing proudly to the entrance sign for a place that will house and torture other human beings? How else to explain this except to suppose that perhaps, for them, such a place is a sign of abundance, is their version of grace?
This is what we have to be careful of when it comes to the 3 of Cups. Who are the people you choose to be part of your community? What communities do you choose to be part of? What are the kinds of things you celebrate?
Fittingly, the 4th of July falls in this decan, a holiday during which most Americans spend the day mirroring the activity in the card above: raising glasses, cheersing and cheering, indulging in a variety of food. However, many of us decided not to participate this year.
Instead, I was most buoyed by the uptick in news of mutual aid, of neighbors rallying to protect neighbors, of spreading information on how to help those at risk of being kidnapped by ICE agents. Of ICE agents beginning to express shame around what they’re participating in. And news of the next flotilla to break the siege in Gaza being announced, this time with union hero Chris Smalls on board.
This was also the time when the California farmworkers announced that they would be going on strike to demand immediate citizenship for farmworkers, an end to raids and deportations, and protections for all undocumented essential workers. They sent out this warning not to scare regular people, but so that people could prepare themselves. The fight after all is not against each other but against those in power who want to disenfranchise all of us.
Though I always love the drawings in the Many Queens tarot, I think my favorite rendition of the 3 of Cups from our participating decks comes from the Carnival at the End of the World.
Though confusing at first, ultimately this drawing speaks to me of the porousness that is required when we truly care for others. Bravery requires vulnerability, a willingness to hurt, a capacity to cry and bleed for others. To be grossly and unapologetically present in all your messy humanness.
In smaller, more local news, it’s been during this decan that I’ve seen more groups of runners in the park. People meeting in teams to encourage one another in their health and exercise goals. Though this isn’t newsworthy, it’s an example of how we can see the themes of the decans represented at many different levels in our lives. I’m curious to know in what ways you noticed abundance and grace showing up in your life and in the portion of the world around you.
The next decan, Cancer III, will close on July 22nd when the sun enters Leo. Which means you’ll be hearing from me again around July 21st. Until then, please take (and give) care to yourself and others.