A Cancerian Postscript; Sealskin, Soulskin

For the last year or so, very slowly and sporadically, I’ve been re-reading Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s Women Who Run with the Wolves. It’s one of those books which has the same effect as a meditation or a tarot reading - it shifts me out of whatever distraction I’m in and brings me back to myself. Which is why I was reading it at 2 am when I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been reading the chapter about coming home, the Selkie story of “Sealskin, Soulskin”. I’ve been pondering as I’ve been reading this chapter over the last few weeks that this is very much a Cancer story. For a start, it takes place in the liminal space between land and sea, when a fisherman entices a seal woman to come home with him by stealing her skin. She stays with him long enough to mother his child - Cancer again - but always longs to return to the sea, to the place she belongs. And of course, this is a story about home, about how home needs to be of our making, our choice. It’s about our soul home as much as it’s about our family and the home we build. Estes talks about needing to come home to ourselves periodically, especially if we tend to give a lot of our energy to what other people expect or us, or seem to expect of us. The habit of self-sacrifice, a feeling that we only have value if sacrifice ourselves for others, is still depressingly familiar for many of us. It can leave us dried out, withering away like the Seal Bride who is out of her element. The story shows us, just as the sign of Cancer shows us, that we need to keep a connection with our soul home, to find that connection if we’ve lost it and then build it into our lives, our daily rhythms. In nature, seals come ashore only to breed, and the Seal Bride can only survive for so long without her soulskin, her sense of self.

And of course, we can look to our natal charts to see what our own soul home looks like, to find ways to build that connection for ourselves. The 4th house and the IC are the areas of the chart which show our origins, our sense of belonging, what our souls need to feel at home as well as the form that home might have taken throughout our lives. I have Taurus on the cusp of the 4th house and for me, being rooted in place is crucial for me to feel grounded and at home. I’m exploring what that means for me this week as my family and I are isolating after my youngest tested positive for Covid last week (he’s fine; we all are). Being at home is not a huge hardship but I’m restless. I’m unsettled without my early morning runs through the park or along the river. I’m missing time exploring outside, moving through the landscape. We were supposed to go on holiday this week, to the town in Derbyshire where my Mum has a static caravan and spends much of her time. We’ve been there a few times before, enough for me to be missing familiar paths, our usual walks, and the view from the hilltop above the town. Aside from the obvious connection with family, grounding myself in that sense of place helps me to feel at home, wherever I am. Whenever we go to a new place, I search for routes to go running or walking, allow me to move through the landscape and find my place in it. Without that, I can’t quite settle.

The IC, opposite the MC where we meet the world, is also an important point of homecoming in the astrological chart. My IC is in Gemini, ruled by Mercury in Pisces. Ideas and connections bring a sense of belonging, ideally with a deeper spiritual or imaginative connection to keep Mercury happy. Hence my 2 am reading - the fiction I’d tried to read earlier just made my mind busier, but reading something which took me deeper, made me think, and then write, meant that once I had finished scribbling (!) I got off to sleep quite easily.

Even a simple awareness of the element on our IC and/or 4th house cusp can help us to come home to ourselves. With air signs, taking time to connect with the breath and the mind can be a simple meditation in the midst of a busy day which brings us back to ourselves. With an earth sign, rooting into place is important as I’ve found. Fire signs on the IC or 4th house cusp mean that we need inspiration and vision to feel at home, even a sense of adventure and movement. We might need to be on the go to feel rooted into ourselves. And water signs need an emotional connection to feel at home so that the people we belong with are more important than where we are or what we are doing. The signs on the IC and the 4th house (I find that I need to honour both) show us our own personal soulskin, the form it takes and the ways we can connect with it - and make sure nobody can take it from us.