If you have Black Moon Lilith in Cancer, the struggles you’ve encountered through your Lilith placement have made you adept at dealing with emotion. You learned that feelings can be a powerful tool when wielded properly.
However your Lilith wounds have manifested (which is determined by the house your Black Moon Lilith is located in), you’ve learned that safety is an illusion. Even the places and people around whom you feel most at home can change or be taken from you at any moment, and you never forget it. And yet, safety is what you crave the most. A quote I once read seems very fitting here: “I once mistook the feeling of safety for the condition of safety and I’ve been looking for someone to blame ever since.”
To push back against the great insecurity this placement can bring, you have become an emotional wizard. You are hyper-vigilant, aware of the slightest shift in mood or atmosphere. When something is off, you are quick to nurture, comfort, or otherwise save the day. Allowing painful emotions to fester is anathema to you. You want to fix your loved ones’ problems NOW and get back to the comfort you so deeply desire.
You are also driven to hold things together. It sometimes feels like your life will fly apart into a thousand pieces the moment you let your guard down. You spend so much time trying to keep things together – yourself, your relationships, your family, etc – that you are perpetually ready to crack under the weight. The fear of having everything fall apart is such a powerful force that you are willing to sacrifice almost anything to preserve what you have. By actively managing the emotions of the people around you, you create at least an illusion of security. In this way, you buy safety at the expense of your own inner peace.
Spending so much time managing other people’s emotions creates an unusual relationship with your own. On the one hand, you are loath to assert your needs and emotions, preferring to keep them bottled up to avoid rocking the boat, and only letting them out when you are sure that it is safe and they’ll be received well. But when all else fails, you are willing to weaponize your sensitivity as a last resort. In these rare moments, you’ll plead with all the ferocity your deep emotional well can muster, appealing to the other person’s higher nature or loyalty. The danger, of course, is that such displays leave you vulnerable. And if the other person fails to respond in the way you’d hoped, you’re left feeling horribly betrayed and with no other cards to play.
One of the easiest ways to reduce the risk is to channel Cancer’s opposite sign, Capricorn. Capricorn is just as sensitive as Cancer, but they prioritize differently. While Cancer may react to small changes in feelings, hoping to head any difficulty off at the pass, Capricorn is more concerned with actions. Capricorn says, “So they’re in a bad mood. So what? Did they still take out the trash? Did they still, in ways large and small, show up for me? Then we’re fine until they say we’re not.” Capricorn avoids much of the daily turmoil by ignoring the small ups and downs. Additionally, while Capricorn is also concerned with security, they approach it differently. For Cancer, security comes from the people around them. For Capricorn, security comes from relying on themselves. In that way, Cancer can redefine safety by incorporating self-reliance.
I could easily write a book on this placement alone, but let me end with this: Your uncanny ability to sense emotions and hold space for others’ vulnerability is such a beautiful quality. It’s also your superpower. As you work to build a world of safety and security, your skills will be needed more than ever. Just make sure that you build your own internal sense of safety first. You, too, deserve to be nurtured.
Do you have Black Moon Lilith in Cancer? How has it affected you?
Gosh, wonderful, wonderful post – I can relate to every bit of it. Yes, I have spent my life scanning the undercurrents for ‘off’ signals, and am usually the first around me to know when someone is below par, and do what I can to rally them. Having (hopefully) wised up to how precarious this can leave my own emotional state, I have learned to disengage somewhat, but make sure that door is always open if they need support.
Re Black Moon Lilith in Cancer: That post reads like my life as I experience it, like a full on accurate psychic reading. The times I avoided the pit falls were when I disengaged from the constantly beeping radar and for safety’s sake kept the door ajar just enough the radar beeps were still audible but no longer piercing my psyche, and went on with my life with balancing amounts of self interest. Truly a good tool for doing healing and for everything from sailing the mundanities of life to high or low practical magic.
4th House/Aries Black Moon Lilith here. What an amazingly accurate description of my experience. I am even more impressed by the detail. Dunno where you draw your writing inspiration from but it is refreshing.
It’s really interesting.
I have BML in Capricorn and I read this post about Cancer because I have often found that to balance a sign or house, you must look to the opposite end of the axis…. Which leaves us with Cancer, yes?
My NN/SN is close to BML, with Mars squeezed into the middle between them. He and BML is also square my 8th house Moon. Aaaand… In my Draconian chart my Moon is in Cancer, the same place of my natal NN.
So. That leaves me with a ton of cancer related stuff to work on in this life.
The themes you describe Midara, is so spot on for what I have been craving and experiencing my whole life.
Up until 2017-2019 where I realized that I got to be my own ideal partner/business woman/self reliable partner (Juno in Cap square natal Moon). I got to learn to take my needs and my professional personality seriously. Be dependable and reliable, and take care of my emotional life,as well as establish the structure I myself can rely for good.
My sensitive nature makes this hard though. My feelings can easily overwhelm me. Struggled with it for my whole life. I think the sensitivity far more often is a gift, though I rarely notice myself use it, I often see in my hobbies (NN in 5th house) and with other people’s children. I seem to make them able to be who they are. But at the same I can feel handicapped when tears break loose. It’s a constant developmental focus of mine.
I have BML in Cancer in the 6th (AND a Cancer moon in the 7th); this post is eerily accurate to me! I also have Capricorn rising, something I have always disliked, though I have to admit that using my Saturnian skills to balance things as you suggested sounds like a good idea.
Thankyou
This is beautifully written and astonishingly relatable. Thank you
Lilith in cancer in the 11th house opposite cap sun almost to the minute
Mine is in cancer, 4th house. Ironically, my grandmother, who passed recently, the only authentic biological I had, is Capricorn, even though it’s her sun. I find this so powerful, she’s been guiding me ever since she left. She asked me to leave her son and my mother, on her death bed. And I did. Which has given me the space to tune into all she is showing along the way. I feel crazy that all the crazy makes complete sense. I miss her deeply, but she is my solid, healthy root. I can cut the rest away and plant myself somewhere I define as safe and make that my home. Is it possible to see opportunities where it’d be more supported in finding a place to live? Or is it possible to figure out through my chart if I’m not meant to have a home? I’m 34 and I’ve moved well over 50 times in my life already. Now I sleep in different cities wherever I feel safe in my car. I ask for insight, help, advice, don’t get much, but that doesn’t stop me from trying.