Solstice actually occurs over in Gemini, up and to the right (radiating golden light), but Cancer is the subject, here. Praesepe, the Beehive Cluster, is the jewell of Cancer. In dark, dark skies, it is a barely noticeable, but distinct, fuzzy spot. It has been known since antiquity, always just out of sight, unknowable until telescopes brought it closer.
It has associations with mysticism and mystery. I painted a dozen or so of the stars in the cluster, but there are perhaps 1000 gravitationally bound stars within it. It is framed by the two Ass Stars (I am not making this up), and is sometimes called the trough from which the Sun-drenched asses drink, or (by Greeks and Romans) the manger that is housing them.
In times of antiquity, procession (the way the Earth slowly wobbles over a 28,800 year cycle means the whole sky slowly shifts) put the Summer Solstice in Cancer, so on Solstice the Sun is right there and Praesepe stands glowing to mark it through the Winter sky. Naturally, if the Sun is in Cancer during Summer Solstice, it is hight in the Sky during the Winter Solstice, a little beacon of Sumer Tidings. Some have suggested that Praesepe may have been associated with Jesus, as it would have been visible during the Christmas Celebrations, and the presence of the Ass and Manger may very well be happenstance, but I like to imagine something more.
Finally, Ptolemy called Praesepe a “nebulous mass in the breast of Cancer,” and I cannot let go of my conspiracy theory that this fuzzy, nebulous mass has something to do with the deep etymology of the disease, cancer. Entymologists will cite that it is believed that cancer refers to the way a tumor resembles the lips of a crab, but, again, I like to imagine there’s more to it than that.