I used to think that Cancerians had the worst time of handling life because of their emotional nature. Cancer, the leader of all the water signs has to learn to be thicker skinned to survive. Perhaps that shell has been a good thing? We Cancerians learn to develop the shell after many harsh experiences, but that is not the trait I wish to espouse and highlight through this article. My intent is to reveal the valuable gifts that Cancer brings to us all whether we were born with Cancerian traits or not. She influences our lives because she is a part of the entire zodiacal matrix and is in everyone's chart. She is felt every moon cycle change and especially when the moon is full for the most of us. I have learned through the many years of astrological consultations that everyone who comes for counseling is caught in the gripe of Cancerian power, the feeling and emotional nature.

If we start from the beginning of the zodiacal pantheon we begin at spring time and the beginning of life, Aries under the fire and life force influence; Taurus, influenced by the body and its sensory receptors; and Gemini under the wind/air influence that activates the mind and computation. These first three primary archetypal symbolic representations of life and experience place a strong emphasis on instant processing on a daily rudimentary level. Fire, Earth and Air are the elemental rulers.

Cancer emerges as the first and final ingredient to the foundational building structure of our world with her very feminine-other worldly water nature. She changes everything. Not only does she have the wisdom of the ego and will, the world and its pleasures and discomforts; experiences and understanding; she has a memory and because she has full consciousness of her body her memories make her feel and activate stirrings within her. Because these stirrings within her can not be remedied from her past experiences she begins to look outside her own world yet, she is confused because part of her stirrings are from memories she has experienced and feelings that she has not. She uses all the resources she knows: her personal abilities, her connection to the earth and its creatures and her experiences that have served as relationship to her. She wants to know and understand more but she keeps coming back to that feeling within herself.

Cancer's presence comes on strong so that we can look within and in doing so we can learn to begin to meditate and to reach a place that will feel safe and certain. All that she has experienced has shown her that everything always changes and there are no guarantees in life no matter how much we can accumulate or think is in our lives. She turns within herself and she also looks inside all things and begins to understand another world that is not tangible, but is very strong and real to her. The moon when it castes its shadow and shines its own radiance upon her remind her that she is right about her assumptions. The moon reflects onto her the wisdom and the light the universe and the sun possess. She can learn to fathom it if she learns to be still.

Being still is a hard thing for most of us especially in our modern technological world, where things happen tomorrow and we strive so hard to get there yesterday. Cancer's reminder of being still actually can agitate most of us. Instead, we decide to make something or plan a party or go on a trip just so that we don't have to be still and feel so much. Her stirrings can make one ache inside because she desperately wants us to listen. If we learn to accept the ache and face the fear of the possible change we can learn to understand and trust.

Trusting is the hardest attribute for a Cancerian experience because she's wanted to learn it so very badly. She's tried desperately to believe in the world and things around her but her experiences continue to repeat themselves i.e. change and more change until she decides to accept that everything changes as well herself. When she decides to grow up and maturely transform this fear of change into the unknown adventure of love she will then surrender into its all consuming fire of forgetfulness which her brother Leo brings. Love. To really love is to forget completely yourself and your own personality and needs and wants and fears.

I will always feel that ceremony and ritual are important to life. I also feel that for Cancers in general, but also for the benefit of humanity it is essential to honor the significance of all changes and to highly respect the growth it brings.

Most importantly I find that ceremony and ritual helps to create a space which allows the mind and body to dive into the feeling and the stirrings within. Such a space activates an arena of security and nurture that allows trust to reside.

The reason why so many people find it hard to meditate or even be still around uncomfortable situations is because they are not comfortable with how they feel and how they will deal with their feelings. Making space to ensure that we can activate that feeling place is vitally important to the evolutionary process in humanity's maturity.

Greg Braden, popular new age author in our modern times says (I'm paraphrasing this) that God's divine presence is within us and our feelings are his/her/its prompting's in his book The God Code. I find his words refreshing and a truth. Yet there are others that speak of our feelings as well. Paul Leon Masters has said that the Catholic Church believes in the baptismal ritual of washing away 'sins' as a significant reminder that we have lived many lives and those memories/feelings are with us when we are born. The esoteric significance of the ritual is to not be tied to those memories that will get in our way of growth, yet when needed we can recall what is important for our present road in life.

I recall a time when my daughter was gradating from high school. It was a very difficult time for us all since her dad and I decided to go through a divorce and he had moved out of the area. She refused to have anyone come to her graduation. She refused to invite anyone even me. I was so confused I did not know what to do. I felt her graduation was too significant to ignore. I shared this with a dear Sagittarian friend at the time and she said, "Heck we'll just crash that graduation, you have to go!" That is exactly what I did. I let my daughter know I would not be there and she seemed at ease. After she had left for the ceremonies, my friend came by with her daughter and we left together to be as inconspicuous as possible. My daughter was as cool as a cucumber the entire ceremony, but at the end I couldn't help but find her to congratulate her and when she saw me she burst into tears. I realized she was trying so hard not to feel what had just happened the last four years of her life which she did in its entirety that very moment. My daughter, a Leo with a very big heart, (already a step beyond our Cancer initiations) knows just how powerful her heart holds the capacity to feel and love... and she does.

Money was never a major factor for celebration in the ancient world. First, because the priests and priestesses of the Temples, (who accrued high revenue) facilitated the ceremonies and put out the initial costs and efforts which in turn incited the populace to join in with what they could contribute. Such is the same to day with indigenous peoples.

I was recently invited when I was in South Dakota as a guest of a friend to attend a grave blessing. Even at a somber gathering the family came and brought food to celebrate together. They came together on the mother's would-be birthday to celebrate the lives of the deceased (in which 6 died in a years time). Ironically the ceremony was facilitated by a Catholic priest and nuns who had devoted their lives to living and supporting this small community. Nothing was elaborate, just a coming together to honor and celebrate. No fancy speeches or elaborate pomp and ceremony. The priest and nuns initiated the songs sung in Dakota and afterwards brought food as well to the reception. Teenagers brought their cars and cranked up the music to listen to it in the open plains fields. Some folks played horse shoe and the rest gently visited. This was on reservation land with very simple folk. I have to compare to some of our privileged and educated youngsters with all the comforts of pleasure and leisure, i.e., game boy and electronic diversions, yet have no social skills what so ever. I find few have any sense on how to be and enjoy someone else's company. and to freely express who they are from within.

As my friend Manulani Alulai Meyers PhD. has quoted from her book, Ho'oulu: Our Time of Becoming: Collected Early Writings: "There is no guarantee the person who has memorized the proper spelling of 30,000 words knows how to speak lovingly to his/her mother."

I would think that when we come together we come together to learn to love and to perhaps connect to the spirit of another human being. What would be any more valuable?

A well known coming together originated by the plains Native Americans is the Pow Wow. This can be held any time of the year but predominately it took/takes place in the summer months. Pow wow derives from the Narragansett (original peoples of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, who spoke the Algonquin language) word powwow, meaning shaman (holy man/priest). It has since come to be used to describe any gathering of Native Americans of any tribe. The word has also been used to refer to any meeting, though this meeting can be for mediation, a celebration, or for governmental purposes.

Children in my Story Telling Teepee Hilo, HI

Aloha is our intelligence. Manulani Aluli Meyer

Primarily it was facilitated by a holy man with a long period of preparation prior to the gathering. Today the powwow is a central event for tribes to honor and celebrate their culture and traditions. The floor plan of the powwow is maintained within 4 circles. The central circle for the dancers. The circle outside the central circle is for the MC, the drum group and the sitting area for the dancers and their families. The third circle is for an area for spectators and visitors, while the farthest circle comprises of booths for supplies (in the past these were items that could be traded or sold), food and arts and crafts. In the early days travelers camped and stayed for the duration of the event.

Today the powwow has a committee, staff, arena director, master of ceremonies, along with the traditional head dancers and drum groups. Now the drum groups drum and dancers dance for prize monies and best of costume etc. The dancers, singers and drummers that participate have competed to be included in the powwow. They keep arduous schedules traveling in the competition circuit to audition or be invited into the powwows. Originally the songs and dances were all dreamed for the purpose of healing and power.

Most importantly today the powwow is open for everyone and there is an interval in the dance arena where all 'tribes' people (anyone) can dance with the drum. If you get a chance to attend a powwow it would be a nice experience to get to know the local indigenous peoples in your area and the gifts and beauty they have brought from their lives and culture.

For me to attend and participate in a powwow is to hear the drum and feel it vibrate within my heart. It is to meet the wonderful aunties and folks from far way that travel the circuit. At a powwow it is a time when all Native Peoples can come together in harmony to share and gather. I have never felt ostracized when I've been at a powwow. Usually I am always far away from the land of my Miwok people in California so I don't find any members there, but I seem to feel like family at powwows. The drum beat is the one constant that holds us all together.

Unfortunately like all of us humans there is the 'in' crowd and the politics and the segregation of outside peoples. Just because you may be a Native American doesn't necessarily mean you are accepted as one in another's territory. There are a lot of dues and initiatory processes one must take in order to be accepted into a clan or tribe. So take advantage of attending a powwow a free open event to get a glimpse of a culture.

The Gathering of Nations is the largest "Gathering" of Indian tribes in North America; they gather for the purpose of social and competitive singing and dancing. It is an event celebrating culture and traditional pride. Singers, dancers and crafters representing over three hundred tribes come from throughout the United States and Canada to participate. They travel great distances and converge on Albuquerque, at the University of New Mexico Arena.

Traveling to sacred places on the planet has been a thrill for many of us. But as the Australian original peoples say that all the sacred places on earth no longer have their sacred power because they are being trampled by visitors that don't know why they are there other than to say they were there.. Honoring space is the first step to being on sacred ground and seeing something as a tourist is not this experience.

For most indigenous folk, sacred space is always in the center, the heart. When the drummers drum at a powwow or gatherings they all sit around the drum in a circle. The center of the circle is the contained focus and power to hold for the rest that follow i.e. the concentric circles that follow each other in a powwow. There is no race or creature that represents that center, it is the heart center of spirit, sort of like the sun and the planets evolving around it for life and sustenance. A cosmological theme is that the universe is comprised of multiple planes linked to a World Tree with the natural world being in the middle sphere.This tree's roots go far underground and reach upwards into the sky. The Sacred Hoop symbolizes the Circle of Life and the power of the circle matrix that is the creative spiritual foundation of the universe.

When we come to this sacred center we carve out a space for us to enter a portal to the universe and timelessness. That is why ceremonies can take 5 hours to weeks depending on the quality and intentions of the folks that come to the center. This place becomes sacred as well as the presence and hearts of those who participate.

As far as our planet goes, perhaps the old spots don't have the 'power' anymore as the Australian original people seem to know because the spiritual ceremonies and gatherings do not take place there anymore. They are usually gated off and paths paved and roped for folks to pay for admission. That does not by any means say that they are insignificant. They are symbols reminding us of our rich and powerful ancestors and that we must not forget them. It is up to us in our Cancerian intuitive awareness to come to the center (open ourselves to sacredness and its intent). In doing so we can create the power upon the earth once again all new and fresh and alive.

In honor of our innate innocence, Cancer and her valuable gifts of intuition and maturing childlike acceptance opens the door to honoring our authenticity here upon our home, Mother Earth.