The Sun

What the Sun is in you

The Sun is the centre. In the sky everything in the solar system turns around it, and in a chart everything else is read against it. I describe it as who you are becoming: the self you grow into over a lifetime, the part of you that wants to shine at something and be seen doing it. The Moon is what you feel. The Rising sign is how you come across. The Sun is what you are for.

That is why the Sun sign fits some people perfectly and others hardly at all. If your Moon and your Rising sign are both in a different element from your Sun, the Sun's qualities can take years to show. People in their fifties will tell you their Sun sign never fitted, then describe their life's work and realise it fitted exactly. The Sun is a direction more than a description.

The Sun also stands for vitality, for the father or whoever carried that role, and for the ego in the plain sense of the word: the "I" that gets up in the morning and decides what the day is for. A well supported Sun gives a person a steady sense of who they are. A Sun under pressure from Saturn or Pluto can produce someone who spends half a life proving it, and that pressure is a piece of work rather than a sentence. Some of the most accomplished people I know have exactly that chart.

The Sun's cycle

The Sun moves through the whole zodiac in a year, about a degree a day, and spends about a month in each sign. The dates on the sign pages are approximate for that reason. The boundary moves by a day either way depending on the year and where you were born, and if you were born within a day of a boundary you should check your actual chart rather than a magazine.

The Sun never retrogrades, and neither does the Moon. Retrograde is an effect of Earth and another planet moving at different speeds, and the Sun's motion through the signs is our own orbit seen from here, so there is nothing to overtake. Your Sun sign is the one placement nobody argues about.

The Sun entering a new sign is called an ingress. Four of them mark the seasons: Aries and Libra at the equinoxes, Cancer and Capricorn at the solstices. I write about each one as it arrives, and the posts The spring equinox and The winter solstice show you how. The posts also carry the season openings, such as The season of Leo begins and The season of Virgo begins.

Leo and the Sun

The Sun rules Leo. Leo is its home, the sign where it does its job without effort: warmth, presence, creativity, loyalty, and the need to be seen that every Leo carries whether they admit it or not. The Sun in Leo is the Sun at full strength.

The Sun in Aquarius, the sign opposite, is said to be in its detriment, which means it has to work harder to do what it does. In my experience Aquarian Suns shine perfectly well. They just refuse to do it on anyone's timetable but their own. Please do not read detriment as a defect. It is a description of effort, and effort is where character gets made.

The Sun through the signs

Each of the twelve Sun signs has its own page in The Signs, and I would rather send you there than repeat them here. One line on each, in zodiac order, so you know which door to open.

In Aries, the Sun arrives first and wants to begin; the Aries page.

In Taurus, the Sun builds slowly and keeps what it builds; the Taurus page.

In Gemini, the Sun is curious about everything and bored by nothing new; the Gemini page.

In Cancer, the Sun leads through care and needs a home to come back to; the Cancer page.

In Leo, the Sun is at home and knows it; the Leo page.

In Virgo, the Sun notices what is wrong and quietly fixes it; the Virgo page.

In Libra, the Sun weighs both sides and wants the room at peace; the Libra page.

In Scorpio, the Sun goes to the bottom of things and does not come up until it has the truth; the Scorpio page.

In Sagittarius, the Sun needs a horizon and a reason; the Sagittarius page.

In Capricorn, the Sun climbs patiently and means to arrive; the Capricorn page.

In Aquarius, the Sun thinks in systems and belongs to no tribe but its own; the Aquarius page.

In Pisces, the Sun feels the whole room and dreams on its behalf; the Pisces page.

Reading your Sun properly

Three things change how a Sun reads: its house, its aspects and its company.

The house tells you where in life the Sun wants to shine. A Sun in the tenth house wants to be seen at work and in public. A Sun in the twelfth would rather do its best work quietly, and often does. The house needs a birth time to within about fifteen minutes. "About 2 am" is not good enough, and a chart built on a guessed time is a different chart. Your Sun sign, on the other hand, needs no time at all unless you were born close to a boundary.

The aspects tell you who the Sun is in conversation with. A Sun in a tight square to Saturn reads very differently from a Sun in a trine to Jupiter, even in the same sign. The Aspects page explains the five I use and the orbs I allow.

The company is the planets sharing the Sun's sign. Mercury and Venus never travel far from the Sun, so one or both are often in the same sign, and three or more planets in one sign or house is called a stellium. A stellium around the Sun makes that sign loud in a person. It is often why one Leo seems twice as Leo as the next.

The Sun is one word in the sentence of a chart. The Birth Chart page shows you the rest of the sentence, and the Learning Astrology page shows you where to begin.

Across the traditions

In the tarot the Sun belongs to The Sun, card 19 of the Major Arcana, the child on the horse under a sky with nothing hidden in it. The sign it rules, Leo, belongs to Strength. Each card has its own page in The 78 Cards, and the links beside this page take you to them. The Vedic Astrology section, when it opens, will give the sidereal view, where most people find their Sun sits one sign earlier than it does here.

What have you been quietly becoming while you were busy being your Sun sign?

If you would like your own chart read, my readings are here.

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