Cancer, Mediumship and Child Prodigy Akiane

"I was with God again, and He told me to pray continually. He showed me, where He lived. I was climbing transparent stairs; underneath I saw gushing waterfalls, and as I was approaching Him, His body was pure and intense light. What impressed me the most was His hands -- they were gigantic! I saw no bones, or veins, no skin or blood, but maps and events. Then He told me to memorize thousands upon thousands of wisdom words on a scroll that did not look like paper, but more like intense light. And in a few seconds I got somehow filled up. From now on I will get up early to paint. I hope one day I'd be able to paint what I was shown." - Akiane.

The Planted Eyes (Age 8)

God’s love is my painting
Silent mountains suffer in pride
As wild spring blends the time
My breath searches heavenly mind.

Blue wind surrounds the sleepy lilacs
Each sound is a sacrifice
I can hear God’s whitest whisper
Thorns have cut my planted eyes. (Age 7)

Watery Cancer is one of the most sensitive signs of the zodiac. Esoterically Neptune, the God of the Waters, rules Cancer, indicating the wide ocean of consciousness inhabited by the Crab. As water is a symbol of the emotional or astral body, this is the medium that Cancer knows well and receives its impressions through.

Like another water sign, Pisces (co-ruled by Neptune), Cancer can be very mediumistic, in fact the combination of both signs can make for the best mediums. [1] As a feminine sign Cancer has an impressibility and receptivity that allows it to tap into the currents of the personal soul or mass consciousness – or both.

Both Cancer and Neptune are symbols of mass consciousness, hence a soul sufficiently advanced and aligned can have mass appeal. Examples in history are the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Alexander the Great - from one sphere, politics and nation-building. These qualities of Cancer can of course manifest in any department of human endeavour, and in the example to follow it is the area of the arts.

Akiane, is a child prodigy artist, poet and visionary (July 9, 1994. 5 am. Mount Morris, Il, USA. [2] ).  Akiane is a ‘triple Cancer’, i.e. Sun, Moon and Ascendant all in Cancer. She was born on the new moon phase, indicating a new phase of activity where the expression of many lifetimes seem to be reaching their glorious effloresence.

Classically, this watery Cancerian was born underwater to very Cancerian-sounding parents: A homemaker mother and a cooking instructor father. "Her name (A-ki-ane) is a free phonetic rendering of the Russian (and maybe also Lithuanian?) word for "ocean" = OKEAH (pronounced "ah-kee-ahn"--accent on 3rd syllable".(Thanks to Pete)

Akiane’s chart has a potent expression across the Cancer-Capricorn axis, with Uranus and Neptune opposing her Sun and Moon, most closely the latter. The Moon is the personality ruler of Cancer and opposes Cancer soul ruler Neptune very closely - by only one degree; this creates a strong alignment between soul and personality and is a ‘mystic’ signature in terms of Akiane’s ‘gift’ – expressed through harvesting the fruits of other lives.

As Neptune is in the seventh house of relationships, we can see this relationship is esoterically with the soul or ‘God’. Neptune is both the esoteric and hierarchical ruler of her Cancer ascendant, relating to soul and spirit - that which she is unfolding on a higher turn of the evolutionary spiral in this incarnation – as opposed to the lunar personality ruler expression.

One is reminded of the horoscope of Joan of Arc and a not dissimilar aspect of Mercury in Capricorn opposite Neptune in Cancer – this was her sensitivity in ‘listening to God’ and being guided to her destiny on behalf of the French people.

The more refined, ethereal and otherworldly vibration of Neptune expresses in Akiane's art and the sublimely celestial sounds she hears. The musician Debussey (Moon in Cancer) comes to mind here, particularly his dreamy, watery ethereal compositions like ‘La Mer’ (The Sea) and those that explore the world of fairies, sylphs and angels.

The lower vibration of Neptune on the unredeemed personality, particularly the astral body, is being a slave to one’s desire nature, resulting in confusion and addiction. It takes an older soul to overcome these lower expressions and to sound Neptune’s trident-tuning fork in a clear and undistorted manner.

The Hourglass (Age 10)

The dolphins represent five different
groups of people responding to truth.
One group runs away from the truth.
Another group is searching
for the truth in
the wrong
place.
The
third
group is
distracting
others from truth.
 The next group is getting
distracted and now watching
the false source of happiness.
And the last group of dolphins
are directly reaching for the truth.

The Cancer-Capricorn axis is intimately related to manifestation. Cancer the mother and birthing process, yet the key here is the birthing of impressions and ideas emanated from the soul, the spiritual midwife to ideas from the mind of God – from that ‘raincloud of knowable things’.

Uranus’s close conjunction to Neptune is another guarantee of manifestation. Uranus rules the seventh ray and is one of the most powerful rays pouring through Capricorn (and Cancer) – giving this sign its power of organisation and mental prowess. Yet Uranus is also about occult or hidden knowledge and wisdom - demonstrated from the very early age of four. [3]

One recalls other advanced souls such as Mozart who started composing around the same age. The training and disciplines from other lives, but more importantly, the memory of that work has been preserved by the quality of the antahkarana (rainbow bridge) built by these individuals; it allows for continuity of consciousness and the ability to pick up from a very early age the past threads of those endeavours.

Akiane’s versatility and intelligence in two arts ('the only known child
binary genius, in both realist painting and poetry') are reflected by the position of Mercury in Gemini sextiling Venus in Leo, giving a vivid expression of beauty. Mercury is the major planet of communications and in the last very potent degree of Gemini it may come as no surprise that Akiane (now 11) speaks four languages: Lithuanian, Russian, English and Sign Language.

Cancer is a very tactile sign and Akiane used to insist on touching people’s clothing, and ‘feeling the different textures of skin, paying extraordinarily close attention to textures, fabrics, movements and facial expressions’. [4] The motive of course being translation into her art medium. Akiane could be called an ‘artist-medium’ although I am sure she would probably cringe at such labels, including ‘prodigy’ and ‘child genius’.

When Akiane was four she began sharing her visions of the divine that were occuring weekly and daily:

“She started describing details about life in heaven and the future of the earth. The family knew she was not exaggerating or imagining such events, because she did not like to fantasize like other children her age … the smallest details, the prophetic speech and the sense that she spent more time away in the spiritual world than with her family were hard to ignore or to be taken lightly.
… Sometimes she sounded like an older woman--not so much because of her voice, but because of her total sincerity, her strangely compelling comments and her vocabulary … Around the same time as the visions began, Akiane suddenly began showing an intense interest in drawing … sketches of angels, family, her friends, and faces that she dreamed about.” [5]

Akiane’s early awakening was also paralelled by her converting the whole family to Christianity at the age of four. Neptune as soul ruler of Cancer comes into focus again. The Christ is known esoterically as Neptune in the West and the Master Jesus is Chohan of the sixth ray of Idealism and Devotion – co-ruled by Neptune. Akiane’s deep devotion to God and her ardent wish that “that everyone would love God and one another" shows in some profoundly powerful paintings of her version of Jesus:

Prince of Peace (Age 8)

In astrology Neptune rules visual media, from painting to film-making. Neptune also rules music, particularly the very ethereal type described as ‘music of the spheres’ or ‘angelic music’:

“There were few things harder to understand than Akiane's love of music. For her first five years, she would start to cry or complain every time any kind of music was played. No one had the slightest clue why. One evening as her confused mother was sobbing, Akiane apologized, "Mommy, please, don't cry. I'm sorry I act this way, but the music that I hear in heaven is better than here. This music hurts my ears and my head really bad, but heavenly music is always gentle and wonderful.” Only when she grew older she felt more and more comfortable with melodies she heard around her.” [6]

Although the term 'mediumisitc' may be a misnomer in Akiane's case, this side of Neptune discussed earlier is revealed in the following:

“…. she now began to handwrite or dictate poetry, often effortlessly creating a poem within mere seconds–one that needed no editing. Each poem seemed as dynamic and flawless as the next, although there was no trance and no automatic writing involved.” [7]

This passage is most important as it demonstrates Akiane’s spiritual maturity and the fact that she is not the mediumistic type who tends to trance-out or be subject to spirit possession. She is a ‘medium’ for her higher self and even a ‘cosmic amanuensis’ [8] for the Divine. The fully conceived poems are indicative of a fully engaged abstract mind that is able to easily translate and bridge (via the antahkarana) to the lower mind.

“Seeming to receive her instruction from some higher guidance, Akiane paid little attention to anyone else's comments or criticism. She worked with an authority far beyond her years, and quickly progressed to larger and larger canvases, painting allegorical scenes, images of nature, and portraits from imagination, study, observation, models and reference materials. She experimented with different style–expressionistic, symbolical, rapid sketches, and with different media, including oils.
Almost every painting now was accompanied by a poem. But how Akiane arrived at her matches mystified everyone. These poems would relate strikingly to precise visual or emotional elements of her paintings, even though she never focused on any deliberate parallels.” [9]

Mercury in Gemini again - placed in the twelfth house of the unconscious and subtle worlds is truly the ‘messenger of the gods’ here - the medium who is more of a conscious mediator between two worlds, whose energy is quicksilver and effortless.

Akiane’s communication to the world via her arts has evoked and stirred many souls: “Much of the correspondence is from people who started to be interested in spirituality for the first time after seeing Akiane's art and poetry.” [10]

This mass effect was alluded to earlier when discussing Cancer and mass consciousness: the eternal truths from the universal ocean of consciousness - communicated into mass human consciousness. Akiane’s humble and completely ‘normal’, unaffected attitude to her early fame has endeared her to many, as does the beauty and example of her life lived thus far.

She has been compared to other artistic greats such as Picasso, Miro and Chagall. Interestingly Chagall had Sun and Saturn in Cancer. (It is also his Saturn return now) Similarly another master painter of note is Rubens, with Sun and Neptune in Cancer and Moon and Saturn in Capricorn – sharing the same axis as Akiane. Likewise the American artist Eleanour Parker has Sun, Moon and Pluto all in Cancer.

The following painting and poem here may have some bearing upon the Cancer keynote: “I build a lighted house and therein dwell”. The swan may represent the soul or indeed, the legendary (Hindu) Kala Hamsa – the swan of eternity.

The Evening Swan (Age 8)

You need to cleanse
and silence your eyes
For dizzy prayer
bounces off a wall
All of your smile
lands on a silent swan
You need her love
to catch you when you fall

Brassy visions
count each and every stone
There are so many lives
in this lonely womb
When feelings are hungry -
mirrors show different faces
The only evening the swan lands -
she looks for you