My Lot of Fortune | Cancer in 2nd House

I’ve got my lot of fortune in Cancer. In classical interpretations of astrology, Cancer is a metaphor for ‘The Mother’. But when we’re talking about commerce, we’re specifically seeking something tangible. Something that you can hold with your own two hands.

If I was looking at this placement from a classical interpretation, which I’m not–not for the purposes of this article, anyway–then how can we apply these metaphysical principles to the commercial and tangible world of commerce? When it comes to the Lot of Fortune, you’re not using astrology as a tool to do some inner work. Instead, you want to use the stars as guideposts to create a tangible reality.

We don’t want to deal with too much of the intangible. What we want to see are real results that we can utilise to improve our bottom line. We don’t want to hear advise that we cannot utilise to improve our external circumstances.

So Cancer… Cancer represents a body of water and specifically, I interpret it as referring to the ocean. Why the ocean? Why not a river, a lake or a waterfall? Because it’s the first water sign in the zodiac. If you look at the ocean, life has been thriving and flourishing there for millennia. The ocean has been there creating life, creating oxygen, taking care of the ecosystem, but also causing devastation by way of floods, tsunamis as well as capsizing ships with travellers, merchants and mercenaries onboard.

The ocean has been at the nucleus of commercial trade, for what has now been thousands of years.

Cancer, in particular, especially as it pertains to the lot of fortune, speaks to long-distance travel and migration over a body of water. When people go to another city, I don’t see that as embodying the Cancer energy. The Mother Energy asks us to cross the ocean to find her. It is about crossing that ocean and going to another world.

At the same time, when you arrive there–especially if it’s at a port city–you are there for a specific purpose: to trade, to gain employment, to make money and then to move on. Port cities were very different to the inland regions. Usually travellers or short-term residents would not be travelling to the inland regions as they’re not ‘settled’ there and possess no interest to ‘settle’ there.

Over the course of millennia, we’ve always had a group of people who have had this lifestyle. Their descendants may have settled in a particular place, but they, themselves, have constantly been on the move. These days, we refer to this roving population as expatriates. But there do exist less flattering terminology like ‘foreigners’ among many other derogatory names.

Regardless of how the local population comes to view you, it boils down to the idea of not being attached to a land and always allowing yourself to go where the ocean guides you. Through this journey, one can retain some sense of being an outcast.

Most people you meet, they will be born in one place and live almost their whole lives there. They might live a few years abroad here and there, but they won’t immigrate. Most people of the world are not immigrants. They have ancestors who are immigrants. They have someone in the family who did that, but not them.

If someone has successfully immigrated somewhere, they have either gone there with their family and settled there or they have married someone local. Due to the nature of settlement journey, which takes place over the course of a few successive generations, they start to become localised.

It, however, takes even more time for them to be accepted. And that’s even if they’ve been there for a very long time. And many groups never actually gain acceptance. They’re still not a part of so-called ‘conventional society’.

They live out their lives in this way, travelling in between worlds. But the world that they come from, is the world that they left behind. If they go back, even if it is just to visit, they probably won’t feel that sense of kinship to the land anymore as it’s been too long, maybe even generations. And where they are, they still don’t feel that they belong. So the person who is going through this experience thinks, “What’s next?”

And that is exactly what has happened since the dawn of time and generation after generation. There has existed a group of people who have never settled down and all their friends are people who have never settled down.

This is where it gets really interesting as my lot of fortune is in Cancer in the 2nd house.

It refers to an urge to settle down and put down roots. There is a desire to settle down. Looking at it in the context of the rest of the chart, this ability to settle down wasn’t there in the early parts of life. Travel can bring gifts, but it can bring a lot of challenges. You move somewhere and because of what happens, you split up with your family. Or your bond could grow stronger. There is a lot of unpredictability involved when you decide to move.

There’re a lot of people who move somewhere, spend a significant amount of their time there, and for all intents and purposes, that becomes their home. Even if they were born elsewhere and returned to their roots, but by virtue of spending a lot of time in a country, it had become their home. It’s almost like being adopted. You can think of it as process of delayed adoption.

If you were born in a certain place and you go somewhere and you settle there, then you can think of your new land as your adopted mother. It’s not your birth land, but your adopted homeland. When people change their citizenship, that could also change their self-identity.

When I think of Cancer, specifically in the 2nd house, it’s referring to the self-esteem, self-worth and self-value that comes from having a country and a piece of land as forming a part of your identity and it embodying an enduring and stable part of your existence.

But since it’s in Cancer, you can only feel that way when you feel you belong there. As long as that feeling of belonging is not there, then, a lot of the tangible aspects–house, country, passport etc–will not lead to actually feeling like it’s a ‘home’. It’s about having a tangible sense of identity that is anchored to a place.

When I think about this placement, the image that comes to my mind is that of a ship that has, at long last, been anchored. It’s not that you can’t travel anywhere, but it’s more that this ship is not going to move anywhere anymore. You finally drop that anchor. You have arrived at your destination.

This can only happen when everything aligns. You need the right place, the right people, and you actually need to feel that sense of kinship to the land and to the people. Even if it’s not there at the start, it is something that needs to grow over time. The last thing, which is very important to most immigrants, is whether or not you’ll be able to create a better life for yourself and future generations.

When people immigrate, they’re not just thinking ‘Me’. They are always thinking about the unit, the family unit as well as succeeding generations. Expats move for economic opportunities and when that’s done, it’s over. When people immigrate, they’re thinking of generations ahead. They want their descendants to have a good life, too.

While we always maintain some sort of kinship with the Mother Country, we’ve actually been adopted by a new country, as a group of people or even as an ancestral group.

In a nutshell, I know I talked a lot, but Cancer in 2nd house; this is the image I’m getting in a tangible way. This is about a home identity that can be tangibly held onto to shape one’s self-esteem and self-worth. This is physically and tangibly where I am actually home. It refers to a home providing those feelings of self-esteem and self-worth as well as being able to maintain that through the generations.

If we’re thinking about it in the context of immigration, it’s having that ability to adapt. You need to discern what parts of your old Mother Country you actually want to keep. If you’ve left somewhere, we have to acknowledge that we did it because there was something in our previous environment that was not conducive to our growth and to our lives.

I see this whole idea of moving permanently as making a conscious decision to be like, “I’m going to adapt to my new country. And at the same time, there are some aspects of my old way of life that I know I’m going to carry forward. Be it genetic or certain practises.” That’s just how it is.

I’m going to adapt and shape my life to my new environment which is going to be more conducive for my growth and my development. And not just me, but my present family, as well as all the future generations that are actually going to reside and build their lives here. It’s about having a sustainable family plan.

What industry is the family going to go into as unit? Are the kids going to be onboard? If they don’t want to, there’s very little that we can do. But I think that people do tend to follow their parents’ occupation so the likelihood is quite high as long as they are not forced into it; but are encouraged into it.

Based on the environment, what opportunities are available or will be available in the future? I think the whole thing comes down to family planning as it pertains to the immigrant experience.

You need to tell yourself, “This time, when I put down roots, I’m going to have a plan about the home I want to create and have that be a part of my self-esteem and self-worth. And have that last for generations to come.”