Moon in Cancer square Neptune: Robert Frost
In a natal horoscope, the Moon reveals the deepest emotional need and the greatest ego struggle of the individual. Lunar symbolism helps us to understand the feminine side, the relationship to mother, and the instinctive self, wired for survival. It illuminates the truth that hides in the shadow, those places that are necessarily dark. Think of the rich black soil where a seed takes root, the womb in which young life grows, or night sky holding bright stars.
Studying the position of the natal Moon makes it possible to understand the native’s emotional nature and orientation. When in hard aspect to other planets, we witness powerful forces impacting the person’s approach to life. To see this, let’s look at Robert Frost’s life and poetry. This is one of his most famous poems:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Notice the effect of reading this poem. Feel the lilting fragility to the whole piece, the deep longing it conjures, and notice where you feel this in your body. Pause.
Depression, Grief, and Poetry
Robert Frost dealt with a large share grief. As a young lad, he lost his father to tuberculosis. He was forced to shut away his younger sister in an asylum. Four out of six of his children died before him, including one in childbirth, and one from suicide. He himself suffered from depression. Nature inspired him to write poems from this well of sorrow, and he often wrote in the early morning light. He won the Pulitzer four times, becoming one of the most well known poets of our time.
The Water Element
Astrologers look for repeating patterns. Robert Frost’s natal Moon is in the cardinal water sign of Cancer, squared by oceanic Neptune, and trine to Mercury in Pisces. Neptune signifies states of consciousness. Like tuned keys on a piano, these states range from drugged ecstasy to delusion, daydreaming, imagination, and spiritual enlightenment. Frost’s Cancer Moon suggests a life lesson regarding healing and nurturing through expressing his gift to the world (Moon in 5th House), through the eloquent communication (trine Mercury) of poetry (Pisces). The Neptune square implies the difficulty of swimming to the surface of family circumstance. We also note the possibility of magnified prominence (Moon sextile Pluto & Jupiter).
This paints a picture of a man partially submerged in the ocean, close enough to the surface to speak yet dangerously subject to the tides. He may have easily drowned in all that grief. Instead he wrote poetry.
