The Sun Part 1 - Introduction
If there is one widely misunderstood placement in astrology, I believe it must be that of the Sun.
Back in the mid-1960s of my rural youth, it was unusual for anyone to know what their Sun sign was. That my eight-year-old self managed it is surprising - but, I always had to be reading something, anything, and my grand-aunts’ yearly Rexall almanacs were the source of this information. The descriptions (and the whole concept) intrigued me, but (again) I was eight years old, in a rural area, in the 1960s. About all I could do with that information was to think, “No wonder I’m smarter than everybody else, I’m a Gemini.” (Blushes with shame!)
When we first discover astrology, we’re generally delighted to learn that we are more than “just” our Sun sign. If we’re comfortable with the basic information we’ve managed to find about our Suns, we’re predisposed to thinking/believing that the rest of it “works;” if we’re uncomfortable about being a Gemini or whatever, we can think, “Oh, well, no wonder: I have an Aries Moon, that explains why I throw books across the room if I don’t like how the plot is going.”
We can and do get very arrogant about our new knowledge - “I’m not just a Gemini, I have a Scorpio Ascendant!” Because we’re human beings, we revel in our “superior” knowledge. We enjoy the belief that we’re more “enlightened” than everybody else. (Fucking John Calvin again.)
And we go further and further down the rabbit hole, learning more and more, perhaps immersing ourselves into some of the many things astrologers like to fight over (like house division). There is literally so much out there! Asteroids, Centaurs, Trans-Neptunian Objects; mean or true Lunar Nodes; Arabian parts; three kinds of Lilith; tropical versus sidereal versus heliocentric….
And then, my loves, we get to be my age - 11 days shy of 60 years old, as I type this - we take a step back from all the details, and we think, “Nah, I’m just a Gemini. That explains everything.”
There are plenty of astronomical arguments to justify particular focus on the Sun. Its mass - the measure of how much “stuff” it has - makes up 99.8% of the entire solar system’s mass. It’s also the center of the solar system. Everything revolves around it, not around Venus or Jupiter or asteroid Eros in Scorpio.
In fact, without the Sun’s rays of light we couldn’t even see Venus or Jupiter or Eros, or anything else. They reflect the Sun’s light, and that’s the only reason why we know they’re out there at all. What this means is that everything in your chart has to be taken in the context of your Sun’s sign and house position. You may have a wild and crazy Mars in Aquarius, but that’s going to work out very differently for the different Sun signs. How appalled is a Taurus going to feel about all that experimentation? A Virgo might be down with some of it, but won’t want to risk anything. A Sagittarius would be in its own knight-errant heaven.
The house cusps are also based on where the Sun happens to be at sunrise (Ascendant), zenith or high noon (MC), sunset (Descendant), and nadir or low midnight (IC). We aren’t necessarily going to see how/where (say) Mercury rises and culminates and sets every day - most of the time it is (bluntly) outshone, as is anything else in the sky except La Luna.
We can and do mark the Sun’s progress, though. It is “the greater light to rule the day,” as the Book of Genesis put it. In their “Only Way To Learn Astrology” series, March and McEvers stated that the Sun’s position “is the life and heart of the chart. Here is where you want to shine.” And that reminds us of the gospel song “This Little Light of Mine” - here’s Etta James singing it:
Longtime followers know that I take every opportunity to recommend the primer Astrology for Yourself by Douglas Bloch and Demetra George. From their section on the Sun, I’ve culled and combined several of their main points about what the Sun represents:
My basic identity; my individuality
My psychological and spiritual center; my source
My will, my power, my vitality and life force
My potential for creative self-expression; my ability to focus my talents and to realize a conscious life purpose
The divine spark residing within each of us
I plan to look at each of those in turn over the next days and weeks.
Probably the best, most thorough book on this topic is Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs. I’d be surprised if it weren’t on the shelves of your local library, it’s become mainstream. The material is a little dated, of course - only people as ancient as I am would recognize most of the names in her “Famous (Sign) Personalities.” And the book will be 50 years old this September! It was also the first astrology book to hit The New York Times bestseller list.
There’s also a chapter in the first volume of Measuring the Night - a series of lectures delivered by Steven Forrest and Jeffrey Wolf Green - in which Forrest devotes considerable time to “just” the Sun sign (and gives a hat tip to Linda Goodman while he’s at it). This book is also easily available, thanks to the wonders of the internet.
Will get to part two in a few days, my migraines permitting. I have a “baby” one today and have just enough will to get this posted like I promised. The topic will by “My basic identity, my individuality.” Thank you for reading! XOXOXO
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I first posted this a couple of years ago - late May 2018 to be exact - and after reading this post from yesterday (LINK) I decided that a really good use of the coronavirus social distancing would be to resurrect the posts I made. I’ve been able to find only three, though, and I’m thinking I never got around to finishing the series. Which is definitely a Gemini thing to do. However, two years older and wiser, why not dig it up and try to finish it? Warning, though - I’m going to pace myself. Today you get the introduction; Sunday or Monday, you get Part 2. (And when I’m finally all done with all of it, I’ll put links in a blog post which I’ll schedule for monthly reblogs.)
