Personal Life / Personality

Those born under the Cervus constellation between Gemini and Cancer tend to have an aura of wilderness about them. They have the youthfulness of a Gemini and the sensitivity of a Cancer. They can be downright wild and compulsive at some times and serenely calm at others. They dynamically capture both the chaos and the tranquility of nature. 

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As children, their apparent bipolarity may cause undue stress on their caretakers, who might not know how to modulate between their dual natures. Like any child, Cervus signs require both freedom and comfort from their caretakers to develop healthy attachments. But these two values are magnified in a Gemini and Cancer, respectively, making Cervus signs a great case study for attachment theory. They want total freedom and total comfort. Ultimately, they must learn how to balance out their attachments in an organized and secure rather than disorganized and insecure fashion.

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When they are free to practice art and use their imagination, they often find comfort there from their mood swings. Usually, whatever they focus on has something to do with satisfying their attachment to loved ones, life itself, and the world they live in. They may the cutest of all signs.

Interpersonal Life / Relationships

The inner vitality of Cervus signs often inspires them to pursue relations with living beings as a priority in their lives. Even when they have difficult attachment histories, they tend to seek healthy attachment with others. They derive great pleasure out of service to others.

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Because they so prioritize their attachment figures, they are at grave risk of becoming codependent, servile, sycophantic, or “try-hard,” if they are not very careful and self-aware. Even in friendship, their desire to be liked and to stay friends at any cost may drive them to become performative, fake, superficial, and fickle. Trying too hard to impress one’s friends often backfires, leading those friends to feign interest and reserve their honest thoughts and feelings for others, all of whom may abandon the “try-hard” at any moment. This is the same dilemma as the anxious insecure attachment style, whereby one’s excessive preoccupation with attachment leads other people to avoid attachment with them, further exacerbating their anxiety and fear of abandonment.

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Cervus signs tend to be quite hypersensitive at mind and heart, leading them to occasionally overthink and be hijacked by social situations. They have a noble desire to protect and give to others.

Their sensitivity also helps them to empathize with others, but if that empathy is untrained, they may project emotions onto people and make assumptions rather than seek mutual understanding. 

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Part of mitigating anxiety in socialization is learning to pick up on more subtle social cues, practicing empathy, communicating needs more clearly, and having healthy boundaries to secure oneself against intrusive thoughts and self-sabotaging behavior. For a Cervus, learning independence comes quite naturally, from their Gemini half, at least in hindsight. They must be careful, though, not to simply swing their attachment pendulum too far, into avoidance, only for it to ultimately swing back with a vengeance later. Overall, their dynamic nature at least prevents them from spending too much time in any one mood. If they can transform their self-consciousness into self-awareness, they may be able to transcend their dual nature.

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In intimate relationships, an anxious fear of abandonment can lead to borderline personality disorder, basically a form of reflexive narcissism where one partner’s anxieties are constantly projected onto the other, requiring the other to regulate their anxieties for them. Everyone deserves to be comfortable in a relationship, but if that comfort comes at the cost of the other partner’s freedom, then its probably the anxieties, not the freedoms, that ought to go away. At the same time, it’s also not fair to make one partner repress their need for comfort for the sake of the other’s desire for freedom. Cervus signs, like all of us, must avoid both extremes and strike a balance between them. For that, honest communication and empathy is key. 

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On balance, Cervus signs are energizing, uplifting, and rousing to be around. Their casual sensuality and affection make them adorable to many. Even their inconsistency tends to boost their value in the love market. They’re almost like elves of the wild woods, or like Orpheus playing his flute in the woods, gathering many animals around him for a time, only to disappear after one enchanting song.

Social Life / Society

In social life, Cervus signs are delightful, often lightening a situation with humor, cuteness, or naivety. They are not always as naive or even gullible as they seem, however. They like to get caught up in the moment, especially where others whom they admire are present. Thus, they make excellent assistants, aides, and servers. 

Being so excitable, altruistic, and lively, they also make excellent entertainers, hosts, actors, musicians, and performers. They are perhaps some of the best natural-born stars, since, ideally, they’re able to safely separate their social persona from their authentic selves, avoiding the pitfalls of narcissism and egotism that fame and stage life often breed. Out of balance, they may become the prototypical star-studded mess: gullible, dumb, oblivious, shallow, basic, and sacrificial. To avoid such pitfalls, they must cultivate a deeper and more humanistic perspective, integrating their natures with that of wider nature.

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Armed with purpose, a Cervus becomes inspirational, dynamic, and profound. If they commit to an enlightened worldview, overcoming their flakey, indecisive, unreliable tendencies, they may provide one of the greatest services that one might give to humankind: faith in humanity.

Archetypal Story of Cervus

School of Rock: Dewey is a musician in crisis. He has just been voted out of his band because he takes things too far. Willfully ignorant about his relationship with music and denouncing anyone who criticizes him as a ‘poser’, this obliviousness extends to every other aspect of his life and he expects everyone to support him unconditionally. When his roommate's girlfriend puts her foot down and gives him the ultimatum to pay his rent which is due or relocated, he attempts to sell off equipment to cover the cost. Serendipity strikes in the form of a phone call meant for his substitute teacher roommate which he intercepts, and impersonates ‘Mr. Schneebly’ to take up the job offer. He lies his way through the gig, and manages to fool the adults. But the children are much more perceptive and he will need to earn his keep after all. Since paying his dues is the thing he sucks most at and what started this whole charade, he naturally attempts to avoid that by inserting his own selfish motives instead!

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He hatches a scheme to get revenge on his former band by creating a new band out of the class he is subbing, calling it the ‘School of Rock.’ Through their coordinated efforts, the kids manage to keep the project under wraps, and participate enthusiastically as any kid would given an alternative to boring school work. Through their practice, however, Dewey uncovers many hidden talents and interests in the students which are actively being repressed by the will of their parents. His naive beliefs which border on religious zealotry about rock music being the way to strike back at ‘the man’ come to be both empowering and problematic, as the kids start pushing back against their oppressors and risk blowing their cover. Believing they are on a crusade of self-expression, they enter the Battle of the Bands and manipulate their way into having it signed off on as a ‘field trip’. But what began as his selfish quest for vengeance grew into something more, with their combined passion becoming something greater than the sum of the parts, and managed to not only win but make a statement to their elders that their interests are worth pursuing. 

Dewey engages in unethical, deceptive, illegal behavior, and doesn’t necessarily come away being properly punished for it. He argues that the system is flawed, the parents are abusive, and what he has done actually right some great wrong regardless of the underhanded way he achieved it.

 

He goes on to legitimize the whole endeavor as an after school program, offering an outlet for the students to pursue music in addition to their regular schooling. The children seem to each make their own peace with their parents as they take some time to actually communicate, and Dewey does come to encourage this once he finally comes off his ideological high horse. He learns some responsibility after endangering the children. He catches them with other rock musicians and finally realizes they might not be the best examples to set, what with all the drugs, alcohol and risky behavior. Even though those are parts he treasures about the culture initially, bringing children into the mix forces him to confront the value this outlet really has and what problems it causes. 

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From the Geminian side this Cervus learns to integrate the naivety of childhood with the responsitrillitrance of being an adult. Through interacting with the children, he uncovers the true meaning of rock music beyond the shallow, superficial fluff which had previously been taken in by. It was this performative inauthenticity which people had been picking up on the whole time and held him back from being successful in his other band projects. Instead of owning this and trying to improve, he blamed the others and became vindictive, doubling down on his obnoxious compulsion. Ned actually harbored hope throughout his glow up that Dewey would learn these things on his own, though initially he was too enabling his quiet support (and employment credentials) made a huge difference in allowing Dewey to make his own mistakes. The humbling experience allowed his quality of Tenderness to shine through in the individual care he gives each child by listening deeply and validating them. They enjoy a vibe of Learning in the end, as Ned is freed of the dominating influence of his girlfriend and finds that growing up doesn’t mean giving up on all of your dreams. And he finds a way to integrate that with his love of teaching.