I have been meditating on the significance of the 10th House in Astrology. The 10th House represents the teleology of the soul’s incarnation, the fulfilment by dekalog of the 1st House, the 1 that unfolds to the 10 and then returns to the 1, within the whole Neopythagorean and numerological itinerary this implies, also associated with the Kabbalistic Middle Pillar that connects the unity of Kether to its terrestrial manifestation in Malkuth, in a perennial movement between the eternal and the temporal.
And when that 10th happens to be Cancer? Things become particularly interesting. For instance, Numenius of Apamea, like other Neoplatonists and Hermetic thinkers, believed that the soul entered the flesh, the sublunary world, through the Tropic of Cancer, at the summer solstice, and then had to reascend through the Tropic of Capricorn, at the winter solstice, in a movement between the nearest planet, the Moon (translator of light and forms to the sublunary realm, the matricial womb associated with Yesod which receives within itself all the other sefirot in order to pass them onto Malkuth) and the most distant planet, Saturn, who represents the final portal before the soul’s ascent to the Ogdoad.
In the archetypal horoscope symbolised by Adam Kadmon, Cancer corresponds to the womb of the roots of the 4th House and Capricorn to the summit of the zodiacal mountain of the 10th House, the cardinal 4–10 axis. But, when Cancer is in the 10th, an inversion of this movement takes place. The soul that incarnates under this configuration comes to have, paradoxically, its ascent coordinated by the Moon, the planet closest to the Earth. It is also worth recalling that, in the Tarot, the Major Arcana associated with Cancer is The Chariot. But this is not the typical solar chariot found in so many mythologies, crossing the skies while bearing the light of the kingly star. In Tarot of Ceremonial Magick, by Lon Milo DuQuette, we read that one of the spiritual meanings of The Chariot is “The Burden you Carry may be the Holy Grail”. This burden implies a posture of reception, so characteristic of the Moon, which does not emit but cyclically receives.
And what Holy Grail is this? We may then think of the hierogamic relationship between Sun and Moon, the two luminaries that guide the alchemical process of the union of opposites between the Soul, which suffers and rejoices according to its momentary state, just like the Moon, and the spiritual Sun which simply is, which simply radiates, since that is its esse, its substance, its ousía. We may say that whoever has, as astrological telos, the 10th House in Cancer bears the vocation of appeasing the soul, refining it, rendering it as stable as possible so that through it the light of the sun may pass and the marriage between the two principles be effected.
Being lunar, it is an unstable vocation. Unlike the Sun, symbol of enduring stability, the lunar ousía is in itself mutable and cyclical and more difficult to smooth. The Moon, associated with the element Water, with receptivity, with the tides and the oceans, must calm that nocturnal lake so that the Sun may shine upon it calmly in the morning.
Even within Christian symbolism, particularly in the Litany of Loreto, Mary is described as Vas Spirituale. The Virgin also appears in the Apocalypse of John standing upon the Moon. She is the Vessel of the Logos, through whom the original, pristine Form reaches this world of flesh. And not by chance we have just had the Full Moon in Virgo, a sign associated with Mary, through the presence of the star Spica, accompanied by a lunar eclipse upon the Saturnine–Martial Cauda Draconis, the South Node…
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