Sun and Moon
Principles
I have always had a certain interest in this
primal duality, those two basic orbs that are the same size when viewed from
Earth, yet so different in their meanings and symbolism. For such a basic
polarity, however, there still seems to be a great deal of controversy about
what they should symbolise in our lives and within our psyches. I believe there
are still many 'problems' within Astrology with the way these two planets are
interpreted, the underlying assumptions made about what they represent and what
this may mean for any individual receiving any reading based on these
assumptions.
Astrology may be a map or an ’algebra of
life,’ or a language, but interpreting this map often involves applying some
kind of a philosophy or value-system and therefore, certain value judgements
about what this algebra in relation to planetary symbolism is about. One of my
main bones of contention with Astrology is that - along with Judith Bennett,
who wrote her blended list of zodiac portraits for women - I believe that
Sun-sign astrology is applied in far too rigid and zealous a manner. Judith
Bennett wanted her readers to be able to 'break away from any kind of
potentially harmful stereotype' and 'did not want any woman to be burdened by a
negative image of herself.' I liked her for that.
She suggested that in addition to the moon
and ascendant, the fact that we also have important progressions and transits
all the time may mean that we may temporarily 'become' more like another 'sign'
and that therefore Sign-typology should allow for this.
Maybe Judith Bennett went too far in this
direction. Probably for most people, the main constants in their natal chart are pretty well constant and it
would be difficult to 'swap' your sign for one you happen to like better, if
this 'new' sign is conspicuously absent within your natal chart. As an
anecdotal aside, however, Stephen Arroyo certainly points out that a powerful
Saturn transit once had everyone 'taking' him for a Capricorn (the sign ruled
by Saturn), made him 'feel' like a Capricorn whilst it was operating, though he
did not have any personal natal planets or angles in that sign.
I think that excessive generalising of any
kind is always potentially harmful and my own less than edifying experiences
with sun-sign enthusiasts did nothing to make me feel validated as a unique human being - this often by people who had a whole
chart of nine other planets, angles, midpoints and whatever to go by. Perhaps I
simply met the wrong kind of astrologer. At one time anyway, I certainly seemed
to meet more than my fair share of people who seemed less interested in getting
to know me, but in enjoying the sense of power and control that categorising
and labelling others can bring. This is where it did seemed to me that
Astrology was not being used in any way as a sacred science, but simply as a
magical system and therefore - in the way that anthropologists and
psychologists mean the term - applied in a more negative sense, controlling maybe, through typologising. At least in practice, all too often there still seems to be less tolerance and understanding of the differences betweenother human beings where this form of astrology is
being used, just yet another way to find a good reason to divide the world
between ’us’ and ’them.’ Whatever the case, this kind of generalising can be – at least according to my experience – diminishing, to say the least. Even where the intentions may certainly
have been well-meaning, I did also occasionally have the sense that sun-sign
astrology was being presented in a totally evangelical format to me, in the way that Jehovah's Witnesses
also may hard-sell their message to non-believers.
It might be worth emphasising at this point
that this article has not been written to decry any helpful understanding of
self or others and enjoyment or pleasure many people might take from reading
about their star signs. As a ’party piece’ it is easy to see why sun-sign
typology might ’work’ as something rather fun – people getting to know their
individual quirks and those of loved ones. At this level, it is difficult to
see how this kind of typing might not differ from, for example, Chinese
astrology. I am still, however, not prepared to ignore the ways in which
applying this basic form of astrology may be less than beneficial for those who
may have had less pleasant experiences through it.
I once had a client, a double Taurus; that is, she had the Sun and Ascendant
in Taurus. She came to me in a very upset state, it seems that other
astrologers had judged that she was not in touch with these Taurean qualities
nearly enough (the sun in this case, incidentally, was not actually that close
to her Ascendant). She did not ‘want’ to have to become this nasty, grasping
entity that she felt, or had been told, Taurus must necessarily be; she balked
in horror at the idea of having to undergo the treacherous process of realising
it.
My solution in this case was to point out
that with a whole stellium of Taurean planets in the 12th House, she was
probably experiencing 12th-House problems with weak ego boundaries and all that
goes with this. I suggested to her that she needed to see herself more as a
'12th House' type and that therefore, her Taurean qualities were bound to
'behave' in a far more evasive and chameleonesque way than would otherwise be
expected. She seemed to be happy with this interpretation, admitting that the
whole thing had been ’really getting to her.’
Quite. Whilst
familiar with the philosophical idea that the birthchart is like the apple seed
which will hopefully realise itself in the full potential of an apple tree, the
over-zealous application of it clearly was not helping in this case. There was
at the very least some myopia involved, if the astrologer my client had seen
had not recognised how house position might affect the self-expression of the
sun. It perhaps should also never be forgotten that in addition to house
placements, hard aspects from planets such as Saturn or Pluto could have
dampened the ebullience of any fiery sun-sign.
Popular anti-psychiatrist Dorothy Rowe
quotes a case-study in which one of her clients had an astrologer mother who
opined in just such a rigid and stereotypical way about who her daughter
'really' was, as a Sun Leo. The daughter came to Dorothy Rowe complaining that
far from being enlightened about the nature of her 'true' self, she was
(perhaps ironically) completely in the dark about who she was supposed to be.
In the absence of a cosy, or what Dorothy
Rowe rather scathingly defines as a 'just world' with everything OK and God
looking over all of us, maybe it is more than understandable why so many people
have taken the Gnostic approach of searching for the Divine Within. In this light (no pun intended), the sun is
certainly the closest thing to any symbol that promises to be in any way
god-like. This is why I believe that
sun-sign generalising has developed this rigid and fanatical edge. I hope I
have illustrated from the Dorothy Rowe quote that in extreme cases, far from
putting people in touch with any kind of ego or god-like Self, this
over-strenuous approach may actually be completely counter-productive. I
believe there are also reservations within the astrological community about the
potential that may abound for ego-inflation that may abound if it is only
assumed that God can be found within, rather than without. A similarly related
criticism is one I came across in Mike Harding and Charles Harvey's book, where
James Hillman's chart was discussed. The latter was quoted as having suggests
that we do not 'have' souls, or Selves, but rather are souls. He was quoted
as having believed that the current preoccupation in depth psychology with
subordinating and controllong the contents of our souls is an unhealthy
preoocupation with 'the stultifying tyranny of self and ego,' and was ultimately
'depersonalising.'
There would never have been the huge market
for 'Sun-Sign' books if it was not something that could be easily related to.
Linda Goodman's popular best-seller on the one hand, 'How to spot a b******d by
his Sun sign', by Adele Lang and Suzi Rajah on the other. Recognisable human
types, recognisable human behaviour. I do not think by and
large that the sun sign is at all mysteriously hidden by the Ascendant for
example - like the Sun itself in the sky, it is usually (but not invariably)
plain and obvious enough in many people's characters, and often modified rather
than 'masked.' Along, incidentally with the foibles and limitations of each
Sign, as is surely evidenced by the 'How to spot a 'b******d' I have quoted
here.
It is perhaps worth remembering that
sun-sign columns are relatively new and only came into being in the earlier
part of the 20th Century, when a newspaper asked an astrologer to come up with
readings that did not involve any mathematical working out – something that
extrapolations that both the Ascendant and the Moon sign require. Sun signs are
simple, as all that is needed is a birthdate, unless someone was born at the
’cusp,’ that is, either at the very beginning or ending of a sign. Alan Oken
was the first writer I came across to make this following point in discussing
the Hindu system, and a Hindu student I once had also remarked on this: in
Hindu Astrology, it is the Moon, not the Sun, which is considered as the main
significator (as it was in ancient Roman times). In Vedic astrology, it seems
that it was also relatively easy to work out the Nakasatra, the smaller
constellation where the moon could be found. This, in comparison, allowed for a
relatively simple way of classifying natives in cases where the time of birth –
needed for the Ascendant – was not known. Other Vedic astrologers seem to
stress the importance of the Ascendant, though the lunar asterisms are
certainly something not found in the West. Oken suggests that this may be
because of the greater bias we have in the West for expressing our
individuality and personal image (Sun, Ascendant) rather than fitting in with
the social collective and status within that collective (Moon and MC). He is
careful not to suggest that there is anything 'wrong' with either the Western
or the traditional Indian approach here.
The problem is that it tends to be applied
so rigidly and I suspect it is because of the spiritual importance assigned to
the sun sign, where it is referred to as the God Within, or our essence. The
ideas which have contributed to this underlying thinking will be explored
later. For now, I would suggest that is is precisely
this tendency to affirm this factor in each individual’s make-up that can give the whole thing the evangelical edge I have alluded to earlier. It perhaps also tends to awaken a little too much in terms of self-obsession and narcissism – as other astrologers have noted - but perhaps this is inescapable where what often can behave as a thoroughly all-too-human ego is then elevated to the status of a divine Self. Either way, I would suggest that instead of recognising the essence of each human being as essentially a mystery, as unique as the unique snowflake combination of planets, stars and angles that each individual possesses with their exact moment of birth, this essence is instead labelled and ’packaged’ into a one-size-fits-all set of shallow generalisations through popular astrology nowadays. It is perhaps ironic that a system of thought that is designed to waken the average person on the street to the truth of their destiny - as a unique 'star' - can also blind, through the trivialising generalisations of the newspaper astrology columns..
Ean Begg may perhaps be less surprised, where he assigns the Sun to the chief of the seven planetary Gnostic icons, calling it te ego complex (from Myth and Today's Consciousness). Neither, perhaps, may Patrick Curry and Roy willis, who in their co-authored book 'Astrology, Science and Culture,' likewise note the way the Sun 'has been allowed to swell into unprecedented importance.' They assign the reasons for this on the one hand to a 'tacit valuing of monotheism over polytheism and integration/unity over diffusion/multiplicity' and reflective of the 'atomised individualism' of urban life where even the self becomes a commodity, on the other.
This is not to decry the necessity for each person to engage on the quest which will allow them to operate in the workld as a 'free and independent source of power in their own right.' Robert Hand, whose quote this is from Horoscope Symbols, does not suggest that the Sun is
the Self in the most spiritual sense, but he does point out that that it will
depict the 'heroic' 'yang' part of the personality. As he notes, this is 'not
just poetry.' In the heroic journey, there are always the themes of making way
into an uncertain world, slaying a few dragons on the way and getting the girl.
Life itself is usually messier than this, we
all know that the good guy does not always win and frequently makes mistakes,
but I would not argue that the Sun isn’t where most individuals have the
opportunity meet the world and experience their strength and autonomy
head-on. In the individual birthchart it
is generally agreed that its function is to 'act' as an integrating focus for
all the planetary energies, just as the leadership of any country is always
traditionally solar. For anyone who feels that they have less of a sense of
personal autonomy and power than they would like and who complains about it
when seeing the astrologer, then this is where it would certainly be most
valuable to go through what the sun is 'doing' in that person's chart with them
and how they might better get in touch with it.
I would still, however, have problems
equating the Sun with the Self in the most spiritual or mystical sense of the
term. If the sun did not describe an all-too-human ego with limitations, there
would be no need for books like 'How to spot a
b*******d by his Sun sign.' To be sure, there must be higher 'levels' in which
the chart along with its sun can operate as a whole. Perhaps, ultimately this
theological question on where the Self is to be located is something for each
person to decide - or experience - for themselves. The earlier Gnostics, if, as Ean Begg is right, probably saw the Sun as Yaoldobaoth, the lower ego, at least in theearlier stages of its development. One mediocre star claiming to be the 'lord'of an entire glalaxy. It might then left to the Divine Feminine to 'quicken'the growth of the individual Self within the ego - unbeknown to it.
In practice, then, the ego (here, using the
word to depict how each individual would define themselves) does seem to be a
little more fluid; it can 'lodge' or 'identify' with the Sun or not, depending
on the culture in which you were born, or your own particular
biological/psychological bias. The other luminary then, is more likely either
to be projected, or work 'behind the scenes' as it were.
The Moon has until recently been described
as the 'feminine' principle, but in practice, most women nowadays would prefer
to hold onto the autonomy and strength they now have through having the luxury
of being able to get a decent crack of the solar whip. Most men, however, as it
has doubtless already been noted, are less inclined to 'own' their lunar
polarity but rather to ‘dump’ it onto any suitably caring figure: their
support systems, as Bill Tierney calls it. It may be, however, that the said
support system may grow rather tired of being taken for granted in some cases,
if the male remains at an immature level of emotional development.
There are astrologers who have pointed out
that there are Sun Goddesses and Moon gods. In the German language, the Moon is
masculine, the Sun feminine - as noted before, life is frequently a whole lot
messier and less cut-and-dried than could be desired at times.
In one important respect, however,
there is still a lot to be said for making seeing the Moon as the more
'feminine' significator - it is women who have the more delicate body/mind
system, who menstruate, who purportedly have neurologies too which are more
'set' to relate to others than are the neurologies of men. This latter factor especially has been dubbed the Mars/Venus
dilemma by non-astrologers, and I would be as concerned as any other
post-feminist that that knowledge should not be used to send us all back to
Kinder, Kirche and Küche.
I emphasise the points made above not
necessarily as a card-carrying 'earth mother' kind of feminist, not really
possessing that kind of temperament. On one level, however, it is truly not far
short of offensive to continually read within astrological literature about a
planetary body that is constantly referred to as a 'she' - and to find that this
'she' - like planet is referred to as something inherently inferior. I have
never had much patience for conforming to sterotypical views about what women
are supposed to be like, but at the same time have been less than happy about
the way certain areas of feminine experience tend to be disparaged within the
astrological world.
Many New Agers, however, have certainly lit
upon the recognition that with the lunar menstrual cycle, there is to each
woman a ready-made opportunity to access deeper, more Shamanistic states of
awareness. It is a deeply instinctual bodily process - and yet, one that goes beyond
instinct: in Peter Redgrove and Penelope Shuttle's book The Wise Wound,
for example, they suggest that this is an evolutionary gate that takes humanity
beyond the instinctual to something more. This is what Redgrove and Shuttle
suggest is the real significance of the Gnostic Snake. In this context, to say
that the moon is about 'instincts' is a little simplistic - it may well be
rooted in instinct, but as so many words linked to 'mentality' have a root
connected to the word 'moon' it can be seen to bridge anything from instincts
to thoughts, and inspiration and magic. In this context, it may be seen that
the moon possesses within itself an impulse towards constant self-renewal and
self-transmutation. It might also be noted that the Wiccan path tends not just
to recognise, but to honour the ’dark’ or waning side of the moon - an area of
life as much concerned with the need to transmute redundant habits and emotions
– as the ’waxing’ phase is to do with growth and promotion of nurture and
connection with others.
As with the sun, or any of the planets,
therefore, the moon is not a ’given’ which automatically prescribes anything,
but a process, which may or may not be lived out, ’stuck’ in a groove, or
repressed or not.
I certainly do suspect that those
spiritually-minded astrologers who claim that the moon is either exclusively
regressive or actively 'bad' could actually preclude any potential for growth
in this area at all. A natal moon square Saturn for example may certainly
manifest as repeated hurt and disappointment in any situation that requires
intimacy, but the work of many astrologers surely shows that such issues can be
worked through, both planets eventually working together as a tower of
strength, once the hard-earned greater emotional maturity has been acquired.
Here too is an answer to the concern that too much attachment to astrology can
lead most people into a sense of powerlessness, of being controlled like cosmic
puppets from above – ie the planets. It can then be easy to forfeit the sense
that there is any real control over our lives, though the Hermetic, or the
Gnostic promise, is always that the archons are the doors to greater freedom as
much as cosmic gaolors.
The Moon also comes with its two nodes, the
North Node and the South Node, and I would suggest that it is all too possible
to confuse the symbolism of each. It is generally agreed by the more
'spiritually' minded astrologer, who treats his or her craft more like a
mystical religion than either a magical system or a science, that the South
Node is supposedly a kind of a psychic dustbin of old and frequently outworn
and detrimental karmic patterns. These patterns then need to be reworked
through the agency of the forward-looking North Node – or even discarded
altogether in the interests of developing the cutting-edge spiritual potentials
of the latter. Yet in reading many more
esoterically-minded texts, it seems that the natal moon and the South Node
together are treated as one and the same. It is to be hoped that the planet,
as opposed to its nodes, has 'North Node' possibilities within it too, and is
therefore not necessarily the spiritual impediment that many astrological
textbooks suggest. This is the point I have made earlier in suggesting that
there is also an impulse towards self-transmutation along with all the habit
patterns and reflexes that come along with the moon. Noel Tyl calls the moon the 'reigning need'
of the horoscope, by which he wishes to emphasise that the horoscope as a whole
is a process, rather than a fixed entity: needs, he tells us, are what 'makes
things happen.'
The term 'reigning need' all sounds a little
too oral, perhaps a little too American, but as Donna Cunningham points out,
the UK has a Cancer Sun and therefore does seem to be rather ’oral’ in the
Reichian sense, where consumerism and overeating seem to be the reigning
national vices. (Margaret Thatcher, when she was in power, spoke with great
disdain against having the UK become a similarly oral nanny-state. Wilhelm
Reich may no doubt be wincing in his grave at the way his ideas are being
applied here, but his term seems appropriate when looking at Thatcher’s chart:
she had the Moon on one of her angles, but the powerfully self-denying Saturn
on the other). This ’oral’ point has been picked up by one of Tyl's followers,
who then applies a theosophical dimension to this needful orality: the idea
that the hungry, lifeless moon 'craves' the life that is to be seen to near and
so far on earth. Therefore the moon creates this serendipitous lack or
emptiness that must be filled up, in the Tyl view.
Way before Donna Cunningham posed the
question 'How do you know if you are a lunar type?' I have been pondering this
issue ever since she put the question as a rhetorical one. The question may
well emerge again if a lecture on what you 'should' be like according to your
Sun sign leaves you feeling short-changed, as it always has for me. My actual
experience of how the sun/moon polarity in my own life is a whole lot closer to
how 'followers' of the Grant Lewi school might describe it. Here, the Sun then
describes the 'lighted' part which others can so easily pick up on, whilst the
Moon describes the inner 'soul' nature - it certainly always seemed to describe
mine - with all its most intimate and idiosyncratic hopes and longings.
It is amazing how invalidating it can be if
certain aspirations and ways of being are not treated with respect because they
are deemed a trivial and peripheral little lunar foible and therefore of no
importance because they are not coming from your 'true' solar self. It can be
distressing to find that much of what is important to you, how you truly see
yourself is somehow discounted as not valid, because of the low opinion within
much of Western Astrology of the lunar principle - and, that you are actually
supposed to rise beyond it and kill it off so that you can realise your 'true'
Self.
Views like these seem to come in the main
from the Theosophical movement as first put forward through its leader Madame
Blavatsky's Theosophical movement, based on her mediumistically received tomes
'The Secret Doctrine' and 'Isis Unveiled.' This was followed by the esoteric
school of thoughts, with its philosophy culled from a similarly channelled
source, who worked through Alice Bailey. It is these two writers who suggest
that the lunar principle is ’source of all sexual misery and evil’, or ’the one
failed experiment in evolution,’ or ’a dead and decaying entity.’
No wonder most people within the
astrological or New Age community are not anxious to suggest that they may in
any way identify in any way with their moon sign. It certainly seems to raise a
whole can of schizoid conundrums for many women within the world of astrology.
I have met those who glorify the menstrual cycle on the one hand, whilst still
viewing the natal moon as a bundle of undesirable habits and defenses that must
be overcome on the other. Liz Greene as a Jungian clearly battled with her
dislike of how she perceived the naturally regressive feminine bias of her body
with what the great Guru of analytical psychology had to say of ’real’ women,
but it seems that later on, she reverted to the spiritual convictions she had
already picked up from the Theosophists.
I have never read Blavatsky’s opuses, nor
those of Bailey. Something about their general turgidity has somehow, always
repelled, although I have read extracts from them. It is certainly difficult to argue
against a mediumistically channelled text, there is no way to validate or puts
its claims to the test scientifically, yet it such texts can claim the same
kind of unimpeachable spiritual authority as what was imparted to Moses on his
stone tablets from on high. Whilst acknowledging that immersion
in such tomes may indeed open the doors of some kind of genuine intuitions in
some cases and a greater undestanding of spiritual realities otherwise normally
inccaccessible via other means, it also remains true that the individuals who channel
such books are surely, inevitably, always going to be people of their times.
They must surely possess the prejudices and hangups of those times, and there is no guarantee either that the channelled intelligence
behind them is necessarily entirely free of prejudices of some kind.
There are thinkers who would suggest that
the whole spiritual movement around nowadays has devolved into two polarities -
the ’pagan’ and the ’gnostic’. The gnostic offshoot is the New Age one, where
we all create our own reality, should move beyond the entropic forces of Nature
and each have a Divine Self beyond the encumbrances of our treacherous emotions
and so on. (This is returning a little again to the points made by Hillman, as
quoted in Mike Harding and Charles Harvey's book, where he is said to have
called the 'controlling of the rich inner diversity through the development of
will and intellect….as all too often…..'desouling').
The Pagan on the other hand, is nature worshipping, respects its rhythms and is
more Goddess-orientated, and certainly more aware of the need to operate in
harmony with the planet earth - here books on the Gaia hypothesis would
certainly make essential reading. Theodore Roszak suggests in many of his
books, written mainly in the 1970's-80's how the Cartesian body-mind split can
be seen to responsible for the thinking to do with 'overcoming nature' that has
created so much of the ecological evils being faced on the planet right now.
(Again, Hillman is also quoted in the same source mentioned earlier as making
an attack on the Cartesian division of the universe into living subjects and
dead obects). As a Christian, Roszak felt that the Platonic - or Gnostic -
approach to the body and nature is unbalanced, though he was certainly
sensitive to the dilemma created for a species facing an awareness of its
mortality. If there is a hope that some part of us is immortal, then it is
understandable that the search for it within the psyche has become paramount.
How this can ever, truly be reconciled with the recognition that our bodies and
psyches are very much mortal without devaluing what esotericists are pleased to
call the ’personality’ is a moot point. R D Laing brings forth a memorable case
study in his first book ’The Divided Self’ about an astrologer and theosophist
who clearly did not find the answer in creating such an irreconciable split
between his ’personality’ and his ’self.’ Or for that matter, between a
beleagured ’Nature’ that has to be conquered and controlled by ’Man.’
These two ways of thinking do tend to
overlap, but there are schisms within each way of thinking. It can be
noticeable, however, once the minefields of these schisms have been walked on.
One book which explores these issues, where synthesis may simply mean a rather
slippery talent for glossing over where these schisms are not picked up on, is
Monica Sjöö's ’Armageddon’, in which she criticises New Age thought from a
marxist/feminist perspective. She is less well acquainted with astrological
thought, however, criticising Blavatsky and Bailey more for what she sees as
the right-wing patriarchal imperialism of both, quoting them in their more
racist excesses – also, incidentally, reminding us that for many Nazis, The
Secret Doctrine was greatly admired.
Sjöö emphasises the more anti-life
extremism inherent in Bailey especially where she – or at least her channelled
Master - appears to praise the making of the Bomb as a herald for the
advancement of spiritual growth and where her followers suggest that after the
Holocaust, whilst those of us who are unevolved and mired in our lower
personalities will perish, the ’true’ believers will inherent new and solarised
bodies of Light that will cope with all the radiation.
It is to be hoped that most esoteric
followers nowadays are more balanced than that in their thinking, but there is
still the tendency to divide human experience too much into ’lower’ and higher’
if current thinking on the subject as seen on the Net is anything to go by.
Whilst it could be possible to be skeptical
that there was ever a Golden Age of peaceful matriarchal rule, the ruins of
Catal Huyuk notwithstanding, there is still the problematical question of the
meaning of the menstrual taboos, which the barest of glance of Frazer's The
Golden Bough must bring to conscious awareness. But back to the earlier
question of the purported pagan/gnostic split within current alternative
spirituality.
Although it may seem that such thinking
respects the unfolding rhythms of life, esotericism and theosophy may actually
as dualistic as any Christian apologist may hope to find, in seeking out
anti-Gnostic literature, where spirit and matter are antagonists with no hope
of reconciliation, and so on. Actually, Theosophists are rather more balanced
that what we have been led to believe was the case with the Gnostics, who
assure us that the 'fall' into Matter and Evolution are actually a Great
Learning Experience for the incarnated soul rather than a trap or a tomb. This
generosity of thought does not, however as we have seen, extend to the
traditional symbolism for the ’yin’ or ’soul’ nature within us.
Other Astrologers take a more Taoist view of
things. Stephen Arroyo, for example, suggests that the sun and moon, the basic
male/female, yin/yang polarity, being of apparent equal size in the heavens,
should therefore have 'equal' significance in our charts. Any 'outer' marriage
we may therefore make may depend a lot on how well our individual suns and
moons 'marry' within our individual psyches, although his thinking is still rather
too encumbered with notions of ’karmic’ factors in various places, for my
liking.
Robert Hand suggests that it is not so much
a question of sexes, but of yin and yang polarities. What he sees as an
imbalance in society is not so much one of the sexes, but one of getting more
in touch with the Yin, that is, the lunar, principle. Therefore, the whole
Sun/Moon issue transcends gender roles, as such and the conflict between they
each represent relevant to men as well as women. Robert Hand, however, that as primal
ying and yang polarities the luminaries transcend even genders. In this sense,
therefore, the sun ’belongs’ to women as much as it does to men and certainly,
most women I meet are as capable as men of exhibiting solar personalities. This
may be good news for those who may have taken any of Jung’s more sexist notions
about ’animus-possessed’ women to heart.
Robert Hand also suggests that the moon acts
as a kind of 'interpreter' for Earth, that is, its 'modulator,' The Earth is so
much a subjective part of us that it does not appear in the chart, so the Moon
has to take on much of the Earth's symbolism.
This is not a new idea either, I understand
that the concept of the 'sublunar' world of the Medieval astrologers had
similar ideas in mind. Dane Rudhyar certainly draws attention to the idea in
referring to the whole earth-moon system as a kind of matrix in which Life on
earth is tended to within a ’protective electromagnetic envelope’, in the way a
mother tends to the needs of her helpless baby.
Jules Holland, however, who has researched
lunar mythology from many sources, is critical of this the implications of this
concept of the sublunary realm. She first traces the idea from Cicero, who
wrote a myth about what is called the dream of Scipio. In this, Aristotle is
quoted as saying: ’Below the Moon there is nothing but what is mortal and
doomed to decay, except the souls given to men by the bounty of the gods,
whereas above the Moon all is eternal.’
Holland then suggests that ’a
division had arisen in the universe which had once been embraced as a living
whole – one which she sees as contributing to the growing sense of a split
between incorruptible ’spirit’ and entropic ’nature.’ Everything ’beneath the
moon’ is then seen as the place where ’the elements are mixed together, where
uncertainty and doubt prevail and here nothing stays the same for long’ and
definitely of a lower order altogether.
Possibly there do indeed exist higher
realities in other dimensions but as someone who grew up with Narnia and H G
Well’s Time Machine, where suns are depicted in their dying days as
degenerating eventually into bloated red giants, it was less easy for me to
perceive change and entropy as belonging exclusively to the the sublunary
world.
However the concept of a sublunary is
interpreted in terms of what this implies for most mortals, it can still be
seen that the moon may well ’earth’ us, without which it could be easy to lose
touch with reality, to say nothing of body and instincts. However much most
modern-day New Age Icarusses might wish to leave their 'lower' selves behind,
it might in the end, not be that practicable, as Tracy Marks reminds us in her
book 'The Astrology of Self-Discovery.'
Tract Marks uses Assagioli's
Psychosynsthesis method for following the path of self-integration. Whilst
there may be too much of Assagioli's tendency to categorise aspects of the
psyche into 'higher' and ’lower,’ Marks seems to have come to terms with her
demons and T-Squares in a way that is more genuinely integrative than schizoid.
There is less, therefore, of the disembodied Self on high here, totally
detached from our false egos and personalities, but rather a Russian Doll
version of the ego and Self, where each part of the personality, however lowly,
in encompassed into more and more inclusive levels of being. 'The needs of the
personality,' she tells us, 'must be respected before they can be transcended,
or it will otherwise lead to deception of the self or for others.' It is
probably a much saner way of looking at the whole process of individuation, if
you must be esoteric about it.
Recently, Peter Gandy and Timothy Freke, in
their attempts to 'rehabilitate' Gnosticism looked at the Simon Magus myth in
great depth. It might now be worth following them a little way, as the hero and
heroine of the myth are frequently described as being the sun and the moon.
In the myth of Simon Magus, the First
Thought, Ennoia (Or Selena,) 'created' the planets, then somehow 'forgot' that
she had, and became enslaved by them. She 'forgot’ that she was the Divine
Feminine and reduced to something little better than a common prostitute, until
her divine partner Jesus, the Solar principle, comes to rescue her.
They marry and find divine peace. However,
they also would like most other people to enjoy the same sense of unity as they
have discovered, so they spend a great deal of time on earth, preaching the
message. Simon, however, goes blind, and relies upon Selena to do his 'seeing'
for him. Hence, whilst Selena most certainly 'needed' to be rescued, Jesus
obviously cannot do without Selena - the divine marriage is clearly where each is integral to the other - a point that is missed, incidentally, in Freke and Gandy's
retelling of the tale.
The Simonian sect was said to be somewhat
libertine or Tantric in its practises, no doubt taking the need to marry soma
and psyche literally rather than figuratively. No doubt, they also wanted to
demonstrate the well-known Gnostic opposition to slavishly following the petty
'rules' of society, which are always seen as a tyranny by them. Shuttle and
Redgrove equate this particularly lunar vulnerability to slavishly following
these petty rules with what they call the extroverted 'ovulatory' phase of the
women's cycle, as opposed to the inward-looking menstrual one. In this context,
the moon or Selena is then the soul imprisoned rather than the prison. Perhaps,
however, the lunar psyche possesses within itself the ability to transcend this
conditioning, in order to be the 'gateway to the soul' and to the outer planets.
This is certainly what Tracy Marks for example, suggests. Dane Rudhyar hints on
this in his chapter on the Moon symbol in one of his books, Astrology and the
Modern Psyche. He too, however, was very much Alice Bailey's disciple and as
such ultimately appears to view the rhythms of life as something entropic to be
overcome and discarded in the fullness of time.
It might be worth emphasising that none of
this has been written to promote any kind of gnostic or New Age or Anti-New Age
manifesto, except possibly in a poetic or artistic sense. There is no desire to expound any kind of objective set of
’truths.’ No doubt, there are others who have discovered many more mystical
realities through these ideas, but certain Zen writers at least suggested that
the map should not be confused with these realities, the finger is only the
pointer to the moon. Without at least some understanding that there is some
kind of ’soul’ life that has less to do with selling it to the world of
corporate conformity, however, life could otherwise seem altogether too
two-dimensional without hearing some kind of a ’gnostic’ call, even if this
simply remains at a poetic level. However, it is still possible the ’pagan’
approach to spirituality can offer a greater sense of resolution to the problem
of soul and spirit than other more eupsychian approaches to the Soul might.
I hope it is still clear with this article
that I am not saying that women 'should' identify with their moon signs, or men
for that matter, any more than we should have a lunar-based astrology. Perhaps,
however, it should be recognised that the way the basic factors in the chart
are interpreted cannot be so done in quite as cut and dried a manner. If,
however, you suspect you may be more of a lunar type, or you should ever come
across someone when giving a reading who says that they are, I would suggest
that it may not necessarily be helpful to assume that this is simply a case of
arrested development. It may certainly be less than
helpful to dismiss the perceptions of such a client, which could imply a
certain lack of respect. It may be possible that there is a powerful midpoint
or aspect pattern that makes it that much more imperative to express your lunar
qualities in some vocational way, especially if it is connected with the
Midheaven. Or there are certain skills and gifts that are better channelled
through a receptive planet. Alan Oken in his book ’Astrology – Evolution and
Revolution’ cites the case of a well-known transexual, who underwent operations
to become a woman. Oken points out that in this subject’s case, the moon had
far more powerful aspects than did the sun natally and that this perhaps was
why the subject felt compelled to change her gender. This, however, is
something of an extreme case.
More likely, it is simply a case of equal
yin and yang principles at work within everyone to some degree, so then the
question can only ever be one of balance. There surely has to be a time and a
place for everything, including the sun and moon principles in each and every
human being, whether or not in chairing a meeting or confronting challenges
with the former or in cooking supper or writing a poem with the latter.
As already suggested, it is possible that
all the 'ego' planets 'act' as integral components far more than is generally
realised, so that singling out the Sun, Moon or any other point in isolation
and calling it the Self or the Lower Ego may be far simplistic. Putting aside
now the evolution of the soul on some of the more arcane levels looked at earlier,
there is much newer astrological research that the idea that sun and moon can
and should be more like marriage partners than adversaries. Michael Harding and
Charles Harvey, for example, remind us just how crucial is the sun/moon midpoint
in the chart. Here, they tell us, is where we really 'come together,' body and
soul. Mind and spirit. Herein is the 'mysterium conjunctionis', the Bridal
Chamber of Spirit and Soul of the Opposites so beloved by Jung, though it is
probable that he had something rather more mystical in mind within his own
schema of things, along with the esotericists. The Ebertin school of
cosmo-biology certainly places great importance not just on the sun-moon
midpoint, but on the midpoint between the MC and the Ascendant too – the Big 4 within
this particular branch of astrology. Ebertin certainly did not want to be
connected with any kind of system that could be recognised as 'magical' and his
dispensing of Signs and Houses is refreshing.
Michael Harding and Charles Harvey, however,
also remind us that this 'divine marriage' is not necessarily all that divine
in practise - there is still the level of awareness that cannot be shown on the
birthchart to be considered. An individual with mystical, dreamy Neptune on
their Sun-Moon midpoint natally may be an artist, a mystic or a gangster or drug
trafficker.
John Michell writes extensively on the
opposing powers of Sun and Moon principles in City of Revelation, writing not
just from the perspective of the individual Mysterium Conjunctionis written
about so extensively by Jung on an individual level, but on the social level
too - the main macrocosm of this in human socieety of course, being the City.
Jerusalem, Babylon, Troy and Stonehenge all make their appearances here, as he
talks of Sun and Moon principles in terms of sacred mathematics and Gematria,
drawing extensively on Plato's Timaeus, and on the sacred numerology of the
Valentinian Gnostics. All quite fascinating stuff, but it is difficult to know
how authentic his gematrian and Pythagorean sources really are.
The basic premise of City of Revelation is
that the Sun and Moon principles - or their sacred numbers, 666 and 1080 - have
to be balanced not just within the individual, but within the whole structure
of the City too. There has to be an imperial palace, but there has to be the
fountain, too. Too much 666, Michell
tells us, can lead to totalitarianism and fantasies of material power, too much
1080, of individual and political stagnation. Actually, Mike Harding and
Charles Harvey also touched upon 'body politic' dimensions of the basic
Sun-Moon polarity in Astrology, but not in relation to the City. Charles Harvey
suggests that in any kind of Parliament where for true Democracy to work, there
has to be an effective Opposition. Sounds like a great idea, shame it often
doesn't seem to work.
In this article then, no doubt I have done
nothing to reconcile certain divisions and conflicts that still seem to exist
within astrology, but I hope I have drawn attention to what my still be important
question marks about the way the sun and moon are viewed in Astrology. I would
certainly, still like to see an astrology that applies basic sun/moon
interpretations with more respect to the whole person than what I have
frequently seen to date.
© 2006 Lynda Stevens
Some links to other sites:
Just a nice site with various articles and
interesting facts and figures. Useful stuff on eclipses and lunations
GarryPhillipson at work, currently engaged on his PHD on
Astrology. Seems to be a fair-minded guy. A lot of what I have written here is
in answer to one or two things quoted by one or two of his interviewees.
http://www.zanestein.com/AstrologyFAQs.html
Lots of helpful information written by Zane for beginners. Also
returning the favour for the the link Zane put up for me.
http://www.scispirit.com/wok/baring.htm
Anne Baring is a Jungian who has apparently written several
books on the need to reconnect with Soul as much as Spirit and here, her
article has much that is pertinent to my argument here. Jules Cashford’s webite
is also accessible through here.
Jules Cashford on her book ’The Moon, myth and image’, along
with other publications
http://www.khaldea.com/rudhyar/astroarticles/moonnodesatbirth.php
Dane Rudhyar is never going to be my cup of tea, though
undoubtedly there will be many others who will disagree with me. This link will
take you to the article where I have quoted him here.
http://www.cosmosandpsyche.com//pdf/RevisionRiteofPassage.pdf
Richard Tarnas writing
about Sun Moon principles in relation to his theories on cosmos and psyche.
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