"What are you quacking about?" Peter answered. "Why
don't you let the nest drift as usual?"
"I... want... you . . . " the bird said, and repeated it all
over.
A strong emotional involvement between Virgo and Cancer is multilayered, an experience of many dimensions. We'll try one on for size. Not fictional, but very real. To protect the innocent (for both players in the drama are indeed innocent of a conscious intent to hurt each other), we'll change the names, geography and such . . . retaining only the thread of truth that could link this Moon Maiden and her Virgo man to you and your own girl Crab - or you and your own Virgo lover. It's much stranger than fiction, truth is, because almost always Life wins the race against man's and woman's limited imaginations.
His name, the Virgo, is Gerald, make-believing. Her name, the Lunar lass,is Hope, for imagery. They met and first miracled somewhere in Illinois, where they fell in love more than a dozen years ago. They are the parents of five assorted beautiful girls and boys, cherished by both of them. They have not yet married. Somehow, they can't live together, nor can they live apart. Following the haunted karmic path of the 3-11 Kismet, they walk along, arm-in-arm, for months of empathy and closeness. Then Gerald's yearning begins, Hope's sighing starts . . . they reach that sad, familiar fork in the road and take different directions,waving goodbye wistfully, before the last, abrupt turn - and the slow walk back alone. Time moves on, but destiny lingers. Sooner or later, there's the memory of her lyrical laugh, her mushroom soup and patchwork quilts of warm affection. His lonely reaches its breaking point just when she's making her wonted wish on the New Moon, and he appears at her door. Then they swaddle the babies snugly within the blankets of their reunion joy, closing out the world of her disapproving, frowning (but long-suffering) parents, and become a family again. Until it's time for him to go, leaving, as always, a part of himself behind . . . to manifest itself nine months later into another living proof of the mutual need that binds them. Five times. Five angels to guide them down that remembered, dreamlike path, through the dark forest of misunderstandings.mNext time, it will be six, the number of Venus. It could be different.Venus may have plans to overcome Cancer's inconstant Moon and Virgo's restless Mercury.
That's the way it sometimes is with these two lovers. Especially if the Virgo man is the kind who fears that a deep involvement will cause him to lose his own identity, the common and persistent worry of both technical and astrological Virgins. Especially if the Cancerian woman is the kind who chooses the path of least resistance . . . motherhood and waiting . . . counting on the New Moon magic to weave a spell of magnetic memory to lure back the questing Virgo man who is not quite strong enough to stay, yet is unable to escape the pull of her luminous enchantment.. again and again. Typically, some Moon Maidens believe that babies or money can soften any blow of Fate, anesthetize any kind of pain.
There are, naturally, other kinds of Crabs and Virgins. There's the kind of Virgo man who smoothly adapts to the necessity of adjusting his bachelor-button antipathy to partnership, of pacing his jogging to someone else's rhythm.He calculates the loss of his privacy against the rewards of companionship, and he remains - asking only for occasional periods of pensive apartness, time in which to wander by himself, to refresh his single-minded goals. As priests and monks are required to make "retreats," so are all Virgo men required by their own natures to retreat and meditate alone now and then, returning from their seclusion self-revitalized and freshly sweet. Newly able to innocently believe
once more in tomorrow.
The Cancerian girl who understands this need of the Virgo man she loves will take care to walk softly while he's dreaming, find her own retreat beneath a bristlecone pine that's maybe waited a century or so for a friend to sit beside it,sharing a silent but eloquent communion. Trees know a lot. They listen sympathetically,and they are kind. If trees could walk, they'd never take a cruel knife and painfully carve their names, within a heart, on the arms or backs of lovers.Trees are wondrous teachers of forgiveness.
If the Moon maid finds her own midsummer night's dream in which to wander,those times when her Virgo man has disappeared somewhere inside himself to brood or plan - or to heal his worried mind - he'll stay. They can harmonize themselves this way in perfect tempo, their relationship never jolted by the violent percussion of "Goodbye" - "Come back" - "What did I say or do?" -"Don't go" - "May I come home?" -"Forgive me" - "Please don't hurt me anymore." It's a matter of calmly floating with the ebb and flow of the tides between them, not trying to surfboard over waves too high and dangerous.
Then too, there are those girl Crabs who are acutely aware of Cancer's Cardinal charisma, those Lunar-ruled females who patiently reinforce the weak or worn corners of the fabric of a relationship with concentration on a career. Her ambitions then become the vivid colors - and a love affair or marriage that wasn't quite made in Heaven but was conceived near enough the stars to sometimes sparkle, becomes the pastel background pattern of her life. It works. It adds strength to their love. They separate each morning, and she goes her tenacious way, while he whistles happily, tinkering with engines, practicing his yoga . . . rewrites the dictionary, draws maps or maybe juggles those odd-shaped objects called numbers, that produce such mysterious results, whether they're dashed and dotted in checkbooks, surveys, charts or graphs. They become sort of friendly strangers who fall in love each weekend. It satisfies her desire for change and his need for time alone to retain his friendship with himself (theperson he relies on most). It allows them to love.
When they love in a physical sense, the Virgo man and his Cancerian woman blend quietly into a deep and absorbing union, in the natural way of earth and water in Nature. When the Moon's changeable influence over her emotions is beneficent - and when he is his own normal, tranquil self - their lovemaking
is a peaceful consummation of desire for both of them. But when her Moon madness takes over, when her Lunar fluctuations are waning, causing her to be crablike and moody, she can flood his affectionate intentions with excessive emotional behavior and demands. Just as he can bruise the delicacy of her passion when he's worried himself into irritability during the day and is unable to relax either his mind or his body. Restlessness is a contagious feeling, and they can transfer it to each other without realizing it. Then she may retreat sullenly into her shell, refusing to recognize her attitude as a rejection of his tentative wanting, and he may blame her for a cool response to his own cool advances.This is when his Virgo analytical talents would be very useful, and her Lunar gift of perception would greatly help. Yet, perversely, these periods of sexual frustration may be the very times the two of them neglect to call upon their own best qualities to clarify the breakdown of communication between them.
The Virgo man and his Moon Maiden can walk in sunshine and in rain, and recuperate from the seasonal changes in their love more often than not. They can make Valentines together, cut out cookies in the shape of New Moon Crescents,play anagrams and charades with each other because he loves to meditate on words .. and she loves to make-believe she's more than one woman,
slipping in and out of her moods like a glittering mermaid, hiding her true mother- of-pearl self in midnight silences and the brightness of noontime laughter. If their seeking is intense enough, together, these two can find whole meadows full of gentle camaraderie together . . . perhaps even dream a vision in the prophet's field of Ardath . . . for theirs is the 3-11 sex tiled vibration. In astrology, a sex tile is an opportunity, and these lovers will always be showered with as many as they need for tightly mending the occasional chips and cracks in their relationship, like a continual light snowfall of little stars around them, a sex tile itself being represented by the symbol of a tiny star ...* *
When the girl Crab becomes cranky, her Virgo becomes critical and caustic,and they should escape into the woods, lie down together and take a moon bath,which is different from a sunbath. When you are sunbathing, you may be burned, turn all red and stinging. When you go moon bathing, especially when
the Moon is phasing from waning to waxing, near its Fullness, you turn pale golden, lavender and iridescent, like a butterfly's wing. Then, naturally, you can fly.
Another thing Virgo learns slowly but surely from his Looney Bird Moon Maiden. Gazing directly into the Sun can blind the eyes. But gazing directly into Cancer's shimmering Moon is restful, and sometimes makes the miracle of allowing the Third Eye to see things hidden by midnight's mystery from the sunlight. After they've moonbathed together, they can jump into a dinghy and sail away to the ruins of Babylon. Who knows what they might discover? As the prophet Esdras wrote in the Apocrypha... The angel Uriel came unto me and said:
"Go into a field of flowers, where no house is builded, and eat only
the flowers of the field - taste no flesh, drink no wine, but eat flowers
only and then I will come and talk to thee " so I went my
way into the field which is called ARDATH.
