Mercury in Cancer

Lilly 1659 files Cancer among the mute signs, those of slow voice, and adds that the effect grows if Mercury is there joined to Saturn by conjunction, square or opposition. The remark concerns speech, and it is one of the few places his text speaks to Mercury in a particular sign.

Raphael's Guide of 1877 calls this placement changeable and uncertain and goes on to accuse it of petty theft, an accusation reported here only as his. Ptolemy (Ashmand's 1822 translation) lists Cancer as tropical, and his tropical list leans inquisitive and inventive, with a taste for public affairs.

The sign is the Moon's house, so reasoning and feeling, which Ptolemy assigns to Mercury and the Moon respectively, meet in a single seat. Lilly grants Mercury a face from the eleventh to the twentieth degree and a term from the fourteenth to the twentieth. Alan Leo 1899 credits the sign with an exceptional memory, and modern writers usually connect that to this Mercury.