Image: Kurt Russel as “Snake Plissken” in Escape from New York, available via Amazon

Pair the protective nature of a Cancer Sun with the clandestine instincts of a Scorpio Moon and you get a Sun/Moon pairing that is private and instinctual, mysterious and intriguing, dramatic and passionate, extremely cunning and nearly impossible to read. Other Cancers stay close to the seashore, this one swims with the sharks. To illustrate: using its release date as its date of birth, the 1981 cult classic film Escape from New York is a Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon. (Chart) Astrologer Jefferson Andersen refers to Cancer/Scorpio as the pairing of “The Cobra” who is “not the timid, insecure, and introverted Cancer one so often reads about”. (Source) Amazingly, the name of Kurt Russell’s anti-hero protagonist in Escape from New York is “Snake Plissken”. He even has a tattoo of a cobra on his stomach:

This pairing is profoundly tuned in to deeply hidden undercurrents and is thus rarely wrong about the true direction of any human endeavor, whether on the political stage or in one’s private life. Cancer/Scorpio may not be psychic but it’s certainly prescient. The plot for Escape from New York is a great, if disturbing example of just how well-calibrated Cancer/Scorpio prescience can be. Written by director John Carpenter nearly 30 years before the events of 9/11, the film’s opening scene depicts terrorists hijacking an airliner and then flying it into a New York City skyscraper. In the film’s 1996 sequel a right wing Christian fanatic seizes the U.S. presidency, launches a global war against Muslims, outlaws gay marriage, and turns the homeland into a police state. (Sound familiar?) Astrologer Jacqueline Bigar says this pairing often “knows what is coming before it does”. (Source) Yeah, I’d say so:

Cancer is the sign most attuned to family, clan, and country while Scorpio is the sign most attuned to matters of a secretive nature. The combination is one of the few which is willing to probe those family (Cancer) secrets (Scorpio) that one simply does not talk about. In Escape, Mr. Plissken is tasked with retrieving the U.S. nuclear launch codes, which are the national version of unspeakable family secrets.

Astrologers Charles and Suzi Harvey describe the Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon pairing as resonating with souls trapped within “psychotic underworlds”. (Source) You’ll be hard pressed to find a better example of people trapped in a “psychotic underworld” than this scene from Escape from New York:

According to Kurt Russell’s commentary on a special edition DVD version of Escape from New York, that scene set the emotional tone for the entire film. I’d say it gives you an extreme but fundamentally accurate idea of the type of situations that a Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon person tends to find themselves in.

This is arguably the Sun/Moon pairing par-excellence for emotional courage. According to the Harveys, its fearless pursuit of what lays in the shadows makes it an excellent psychologist, shaman, or (financial) witchdoctor:

That’s a pretty good approximation of the Snake Plissken character. His disposition is certainly of the “brooding” persuasion and he definitely grapples with the dark side of life, both the dark side that is the police state government and the dark side that is life on the island of New York. He isn’t given a search warrant to look inside a troubled mind but he does get marching orders to go inside the deeply troubled recesses of a society gone mad.

Being so tuned to the darker dimensions of life, Cancer/Scorpio often possesses a darkly wry if under-appreciated sense of humor:

Both signs are also masters at navigating (subtly manipulating?) the unspoken currents of human psychology. It’s thus fitting that we’re left in the dark over how Kurt Russell’s character lost his left eye. Allowing the viewer’s imagination to conjure up what the back story of that eye patch might be results in a malevolently heroic shadow around Russell’s character that no amount of special effects could have generated.

Speaking of “malevolently heroic” types . . . Wikileaks mastermind Julian Assange is a Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon whose real life biography bears an uncanny resemblance to the fictional biography of the Snake Plissken character. (Chart) Plissken’s mission in Escape entails the procurement of “leaked” state secrets not unlike what Assange’s job with Wikileaks entails. Assange’s icy disdain for the establishment is a close cousin of Plissken’s snarlingly contempt for it. Plissken is wanted for “moral crimes against the United States” while Assange may become one of the most wanted men in U.S. history should the Department of Justice get its way. Swap Plissken’s eye patch and gun-slinging prowess for Assange’s laptop and computer hacking skills and the two are near mirror images of each other.

Using its establishment date as its date of birth, the United States Secret Service is also a Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon. (Chart) Cancer is the homebody of the zodiac known for their attachment to home, family, klan, and country while Scorpio Moons are emotionally nourished by situations where the line between life and death is a thin one. The Secret Service is essentially an agency of highly protective homebodies (Cancer) tasked with going on secret operations (Scorpio). Like the Snake Plissken character we meet in the Escape films, two of their primary missions include protecting the president and securing the U.S. nuclear launch codes.

Unknown to most of the public, the Service is tasked with far more than just their protective duties. Originally organized under the Department of the Treasury, the bulk of the work the Service does involves the suppression of counterfeiting, money laundering, identity theft, and other financial crimes. (Source) Recall that the Harveys write of the Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon individual, “You truly come alive when you have been given a search warrant to look inside a troubled mind (or bank account).” (Source) That’s about as good a one-sentence summary of the Service’s law enforcement duties as is reasonably possible. It’s also a good summary of Assange’s duties at Wikileaks as he didn’t “truly came alive” until he begun taking on the “troubled minds” running some of the world’s most powerful banks. Even the Snake Plissken character got his start in psychological underworld that is the banking industry as the opening scene in original, uncut version of Escape has him robbing the Atlanta branch of the Federal Reserve, an institution that is almost certainly run by some very “troubled minds”.

While they’re obviously on opposite sides of the law, Assange and the Secret Service both spend a lot of time navigating the darkest geographies of the human experience. Strangely enough, Assange’s first high-profile target at Wikileaks was the dark geography that is the Church of Scientology while the Secret Service’s first high profile target back in the 1860s was the dark geography of the Ku Klux Klan. (Source) Both organizations have been characterized by former members as psychotic underworlds loaded with unspeakable family secrets. Other Sun/Moon pairings may “go where no man has ever gone before” but, as the trailer for Escape from New York so aptly puts it, only Cancer/Scorpio has the emotional courage to “go in where nobody has ever gotten out.”

About the Author: Matt Savinar is a California licensed attorney (State Bar #228957), voluntarily inactive as of June 2013. He can be reached for questions, comments, or consults at his contact page.