4th House

Even though not fatal, crabs has always been one of the more terrifying STDs I can think of.

Cancer, the disease, was so named because back when they were naming things like that, they couldn't very well see inside the body. They could see tumors on the outside though, melanoma, mutated dying colonies that spread, ate up the skin, harvesting the delicate cells of the epidermis like acres of king crabs migrating across the ocean floor. So Hippocrates called it carcinoma, supposedly describing the claw like projections of the disease. But we should give him more credit. Maybe he looked at it's despicable, stealthy onslaught on the body, and compared it to the beach crabs, stalking their prey on the sand, scuttling and snapping, but never giving up. Did you know that they used to treat breast cancer in Egypt with something called a "fire drill"?

One fights the causes of cancer by eating better, exercising, not smoking, not drinking, getting lots of sleep, not using a fork on the Teflon pan, not using aluminum deodorant, moving away from the steel mill. Keeping away from excess. In medical astrology however, Cancer the astrological sign governs the stomach and breasts. People born under this sign want things larger, they want more of whatever it is. They are unstable, devious, clinging. They are also generous, romantic, highly sentimental. They are most compatible with Fish that can't stand still, Scorpions that compulsively sting, and Bulls, that most stable of animals which always wants to be in the china shop.

The Chinese equivalent of a Cancer is someone born a Sheep, beautiful social people with a lack of control, very little interest in self-denial, Yin.
In the Babylonian calendar, it is Arax Du'uzu, dedicated to Dumuzi, or Tammuz, the shepherd god. He is also another Persephone, dead for six months of the year, locked up in the underworld every summer solstice as Ishtar's replacement corpse.

The Tropic of Cancer is the most north you can go and still have the sun directly above you at high noon, at Summer Solstice. When it was named, the sun was in the constellation of Cancer. Now the sun is in the constellation of Taurus. The Tropic passes through Abu Dhabi and some miles of desolate ocean between a few islands of Hawaii. When you fly around the world, you have to go at least as many miles as the Tropic or it doesn't count.

In the constellation of Cancer, there exists a binary star system called 55 Cancri. The first star is small and yellow and 5 planets orbit it. The second star is a cold red dwarf, the dead siamese twin, tethered to the breathing body of its celestial brother. On July 6th 2003, a radio signal message was sent to 55 Cancri, and it will arrive May 2044, which is the month of Taurus. This is coincidentally the year the world will end, with a 1 in 500,000 chance that asteroid 1999 AN10 will hit the Earth on August 6th 2044.

2044 is the year I turn 65 and receive a Buckeye Card in the mail.