Where the Sun sits on this date
Measured at noon in each year from 1930 to 2035, the Sun on this date ran from about six and four fifths to eight and a fifth degrees of Cancer. Seven and a half is the working figure, and the entire century fits inside a band under a degree and a half wide.
The leap year cycle is what keeps it there. The calendar rounds the orbital year down and repays the quarter day with an extra February, so a given date keeps returning the Sun to nearly the same longitude instead of sliding through the zodiac.
What cardinal means
The twelve signs divide into four cardinal, four fixed and four mutable. The cardinal signs open each season, and Cancer opens the one that begins at the June solstice. The tradition reads them as the initiating group, the ones that set a direction rather than sustain or adapt it.
That is a structural fact about the position in the year, and the reading built on it is an interpretation. Cancer opening a season is checkable. Cancer therefore being the sort to start things is a convention practitioners apply, and it should be labelled that way.
The other two modalities fill out the pattern. Fixed signs hold the middle of a season and are read as sustaining, while mutable signs close one and are read as adapting into the next. Each element appears once in each modality, which is how the twelve signs come out as twelve distinct combinations rather than repeats.
What water means, and who else holds it
The elements sort the signs into four groups of three. Water covers Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, and it is read as the element of feeling, attachment and memory, in contrast to air's abstraction and earth's practicality. Each element also has a modality per sign, which is why no two signs repeat the same pair.
Cancer is the only cardinal water sign, and the Moon rules it. Those three attributions, the modality, the element and the domicile ruler, are the whole traditional basis for what gets written about the sign, and they belong equally to every birthday in the month.
The part that belongs to this date alone
A Sun near seven and a half degrees puts the position in the first face of Cancer, the band from zero to ten, given to Venus in the Chaldean order and to the Moon in the triplicity scheme. That is the layer separating one Cancer birthday from another, and it is the layer most pages skip.
Beyond it the date stops. The Moon may hold either of two signs depending on the hour, and the ascendant may be any of the twelve. The widget above resolves your degree from your year, hour and birthplace and reports your distance from the nearest sign boundary.
Faces are usually called decans in modern writing. Their ancestry runs back to Egyptian star groups that rose at fixed intervals through the night, and the ten degree divisions took the name when the scheme was fitted to the zodiac. Thirty six of them cover the circle, each with a ruler.
Questions people ask about this
What sign is 29 June?
Cancer, at noon in every year from 1930 to 2035. The Sun sits around seven and a half degrees along, a week clear of the boundary behind it.
What does it mean that Cancer is cardinal?
Cardinal signs open each of the four seasons, and Cancer opens the one starting at the June solstice. The tradition reads that group as the initiating one, which is an interpretation layered on a structural fact.
Which other signs are water?
Scorpio and Pisces. The element is read as the domain of feeling, attachment and memory, and each of the three carries a different modality, so they are not read as interchangeable.
Does the element say anything about compatibility?
The tradition treats signs of the same element as easily aspected, since they sit at a hundred and twenty degrees from each other. That is a geometric relationship, and reading it as compatibility is interpretation.
What decan is this birthday in?
The first decan of Cancer, zero to ten degrees, ruled by Venus in the Chaldean face order and by the Moon in the triplicity scheme.
How much does the degree vary by year?
Under a degree and a half across the sampled century, from roughly six and four fifths to eight and a fifth. Leap years pull the figure back and common years push it forward.