The Sun in Astrology

Think of the moments when you feel most like yourself. Not the best behaved version, not the one others expect, but the one that feels lit from inside. You lose track of time, you have energy to spare, and people around you seem to warm up. That is the Sun in your chart: the part of you that is here to shine, to grow, and to become.

The Sun sits at the centre of the solar system, and it sits at the centre of the chart. Every other planet orbits it, and in a sense every other part of a chart orbits your sense of who you are.

What the Sun stands for

The Sun represents:

• Identity: the self you recognise as "me" when you are at your best.
• Vitality: your life force, health and energy, what recharges you.
• Purpose: what you are growing into over a lifetime.
• Will: your capacity to choose, decide and direct your life.

In traditional astrology the Sun is one of the two luminaries, the lights, with the Moon. It moves about a degree a day and takes a year to travel round the whole zodiac, so it spends about a month in each sign. That is why your Sun sign is the one part of your chart you can know from a birth date alone.

Sun-sign astrology is younger than you think

Here is something most horoscope pages never mention. For most of its history, astrology was not about Sun signs. Astrologers read whole charts: the rising sign, the Moon, the planets, the houses. The idea of describing a person by their Sun sign alone took off in 1930, when a British newspaper ran a column about the birth chart of a newborn princess. Its success led to regular Sun-sign columns, and within a few years they were in newspapers everywhere.

That is why so many people know their sign and so little else. Your Sun sign is real and important. It is also the beginning of the story, not the end.

Where is this planet in your chart?

Its sign says how it works, its house says where. See both, with the aspects that shape it.

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