The Sun and the Origin of Planetary Rulers

“You know the day destroys the night,

Night divides the day” – Jim Morrison, from “Break on Through”

I bet your first exposure to astrology was through your sun sign. Mine sure was. I was born on May 22nd and my mom used to introduce me as a Gemini/Taurus cusp. Yuck. Later, you probably came to realize you had a whole chart, loaded with objects, and the sun suddenly became less important. As an intermediate astrologer, I militated against what I considered to be sun sign reductionism, which is a necessary stage in everyone’s astrological development. However, the more one learns about traditional or ancient astrology, the more one realizes how the sun was very much still the center of our lives, even in our ancestors’ geocentric cosmology. In other words, the sun is still, and always has been, a big deal.

The sun bequeaths to us the force of life. It is our source of light, warmth, and it reveals the glory and the beauty of the day at its zenith. In fact, without its light, we would see nothing. Therefore, the sun rules the organs of perception, especially the eyes. Vettius Valens tells us below, among his other significations for the sun:

“In a nativity the all-seeing sun, nature’s fire and intellectual light, the organ of mental perception, indicates kingship, rule, intellect, intelligence, beauty, motion, loftiness of fortune, the ordinance of the gods, judgement, public reputation, action, authority over the masses, the father, the master, friendship, noble personages, honors consisting of pictures, statues, and garlands, high priesthoods, one’s country other places. Of the parts of the body, the sun rules the head; of the sense organs, it rules the right eye; of the trunk, it rules the heart; of the spiritual (i.e. the perceptive) faculties, the nerves. Of materials, it rules gold; of fruits, it rules wheat and barley. It is of the day sect, yellowish, bitter in taste.”

-Vettius Valens, Anthologies Book I

In the western tradition, the early Bronze Age cultures of Ancient Mesopotamia considered the sun to be one of their primary deities. In their Pantheon, he was first Utu and later Shamash, the all-seeing sun god. Due to his station high in the sky, his vision was thought to be far reaching and therefore he became both the dispenser of Justice and the ruler of all methods of divination. According to Demetra George, ancient astrologers during the Hellenistic period considered a ninth house sun conjunct Mercury to be an indicator of a great prophet. The sun was said to “rejoice” in the ninth house, likely because the sun was “God” and the ninth house was “The Place of God.” In modern astrology, Saturn is often considered to be the father, however, for the Hellenistic astrologers, the sun was the father in a day chart and Saturn symbolized the father in night chart.

In Egypt, Ra or Re was the original sun god and the ancient Egyptians were particularly interested in the daily rising and culminating of celestial objects across the horizon. They divided the sky up into “decans,” each one ruled by a planet, and Egyptian priests would make predictions based on how those rulers moved relative to each other. They believed Ra would chariot the sun across the sky till he disappeared or “died” and entered the underworld, where he would battle the primordial serpent god of chaos, Apep, and be reborn again in the east at dawn after his victory. Ra, as the sun, represented Ma’at, that is, order or truth, being bearer of light and the revealer of all. Hence, Apep was the enemy of light and Lord of Chaos, which is quite similar to the later Hellenistic relationship between the sun and Saturn, who was his greatest enemy, being the furthest visible planet and therefore also the enemy of light. In fact, images of the serpent god have been found on clay pots dating as far back as 4000 BCE and more recently in 2nd Century CE Greek depictions of Saturn (Wikipedia).

In the Indian tradition, the sun god was known as Surya and, like Ra, would chariot the golden disc of the sun across the sky. He was the primary creator of the universe and source of the life force, like other contemporary cultures. Surya was also associated with the organs of perception, again especially the eyes, since they receive the light allowing sight. Surya first appeared in Vedas, written between 1500 – 1000 BCE (Wikipedia). Both Hellenistic and Vedic astrologers considered the sun to represent the father and one’s reputation, or standing in society, which a child inherited from the father if he considered it his own. We see “the father” among Valens’ significations as well.

Moreover, one of Surya’s children is Yama, the Lord of Death, who is said “to be of Saturn” in the Matsya Purana. This is interesting because Yama’s character seems quite like the Hellenistic view of Saturn during the 2nd Century CE as we’ll see later. In that system, the sun god was pitted in an eternal struggle with Saturn, just like Ra and Apep in the Egyptian pantheon. The 15th Century Indian poet, Kabir Das, described Yama, Lord of Time and Death, as a sort of demiurge, who was also pitted in a struggle against his father, the creator of the universe. You may recognize Time and Death as themes both connected with Saturn. Greek depictions of Saturn, or Cronos, often show him holding a serpent, alluding to both time and the Egypitan god of chaos, Apep, as we stated above. There was considerable cultural exchange between Greece, Egypt, and India, following the conquest of Alexander the Great, but we’ll get back to Saturn in a bit.

Remarkably, many of the sun’s astrological significations remained relatively consistent for thousands of years, event between cultures. Vettius Valens wrote his Anthologies around 150 BCE and the most famous of the medieval astrologers, Abu Ma’shar, had very similar ones in his own work, The Great Introduction, written about 700 years later! Let’s take a look:

“The nature of the Sun is hot, dry. He signifies the life-giving soul, and light and splendor, reason and intellect and knowledge and middle age. He even signifies the king and princes and generals, nobles and magnates, and the assembling of men. Strength, too, and victory and fame, beauty and greatness and the loftiness of the mind, and pride and good commendations, and the appetite for a kingdom and assets, and the greatness of esteem for gold. And he signifies a multitude of speaking and the valuing of cleanliness. And he impedes beyond measure one who is conjoined to him or approaches him. For he who was closer to him in place will be fuller of labor than all men, and by how much more one will be elongated from him, he will be [that much] more fortunate. For he who is approaching [the Sun] will leave no memory, nor will a trace of him appear. He puts in order and destroys, profits and impedes, makes fortunate and unfortunate, sometimes raises up, sometimes puts down. And he signifies the matter of religion and the hereafter, also judges and the wise, fathers and middle brothers, and the crowd, and yellow bile: he is joined to men and [also] criticizes them, he provides everything that [someone] asks for, is strong for revenge, punishing rebels and evildoers.”

- Abu Ma’shar, “The Great Introduction to the Science of the Judgements of the Stars”

We see the common significations of father, ruler, king, and justice. In addition, Abu Ma’shar describes the sun as having obtained its rulership of Leo because that is the middle of the summer, the time of year in the northern hemisphere where the light and heat of the sun are the most intense. Leo season is also the time of year associated with the heliacal rising of the fixed star Sirius, who appears to precede the sun as the morning star during what are called the “Dog Days of Summer.”

In fact, the sun doesn’t just determine its own rulership or domicile (home), but also those of all the other traditional planets too. You see ancient astrologers got the planetary domicile and exaltation scheme from the Thema Mundi, the hypothetical birth chart of the world. How planets were assigned had to do with the increase and decrease of light. The two luminaries came first, the sun and the moon, since they were our sources of light, they were assigned to the two hottest and brightest months in the northern hemisphere, Leo and Cancer. Now here’s where Saturn returns to the story. As we said above, Hellenistic astrologers thought Saturn to be embroiled in an eternal struggle with the luminaries or Lords of light, while he himself was the furthest visible planet and hence became associated with darkness and cold. It was only natural that Saturn came to rule the two coldest months in the northern hemisphere, Capricorn and Aquarius.

Thema Mundi (credit: The Astrology Podcast)

The hypothetical chart of the birth of the world had Cancer rising with the moon in the first house and then the sun in Leo in the second. Opposite the moon is Saturn in the seventh house in Capricorn. From there, the rest of the planets are assigned to the subsequent signs between Cancer and Capricorn according to their speeds and distance from the sun. Mercury comes after the sun, ruling Virgo in the third house, then Venus ruling Libra in the fourth house, then Mars ruling Scorpio in the fifth house, and finally Jupiter ruling Sagittarius in the sixth. The domicile scheme is then mirrored for the planets between Aquarius and Cancer, going the other way, but of course they don’t appear on the chart below since we don’t have two of each planet. After Capricorn, Saturn rules Aquarius again, then Jupiter goes to Pisces, Mars to Aries, Venus to Taurus, and Mercury to Gemini, before we get back to the moon. Does this make sense? See chart above.

So earlier when I said the sun was a big deal, I wasn’t exaggerating. The sun determines the rest of the planetary domicile scheme. Moreover, the exaltation scheme is derived from this increase and decrease in light concept as well. The sun reaches its highest point of the year in the northern hemisphere at the summer solstice, right around the beginning of his domicile month. The sun is said to be exalted in Aries though, which is the time of the vernal equinox when the sun’s light is beginning to wax and is increasing. Conversely, the sun is said to fall in Libra, which is when the light of the sun begins to wane as we approach the colder winter months. It’s interesting that we call the season “fall” and it is astrologically the sun’s fall. One could think of the sun in domicile in Leo as the exaltation of one’s sense of self and selfishness while the opposite sign of detriment, Aquarius, often has to do with groups of people and community needs. In addition, one could think of the exaltation in Aries as implicating a need to take initiative and promote one’s own interests, as opposed to the fall in Libra where one would need to take the interests of others into consideration.

This increase and decrease of the sun’s light throughout the cycle of a year was symbolic of the process of initiation for ancient cultures and was related to the symbolic heroes Journey of the sun god through his annual cycle of death and rebirth. Initiation comes from the Latin roots to “enter into” something. For ancient cultures, it was a new mode of awareness or an expanded perception of oneself and their relationship to their environment. The ancient practices of initiation were supplanted by Christian rites, but they entered back into western culture with the rise of occultism in the 19th Century.

So, we saw the sun was still a big deal in traditional or ancient astrology, but did that translate to modern astrology? In 1875, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, along with her metaphysical partner in crime, Col. Henry Steele Olcott, founded the Theosophical Society. In many ways, Theosophy gave birth to modern astrology through the influence of its two primary exponents, Dane Rudyar and Alan Leo. Both were Theosophists and any baby boomer astrologer who was alive in the 1960’s will tell you those were the two authors everyone read. Rudyar and Leo were themselves very influenced by Blavatsky’s writings.

In her book, The Secret Doctrine, she posits that the sun god as a trinity was universal, and that all temples in antiquity were oriented towards the rising sun in the east. Blavatsky also claims that Socrates was really executed because he divulged the solar secret, that of the heliocentric solar system, apparently one of the secrets of initiation. The centrality of the sun, though, according to Demetra George, was a common concept for ancient astrologers. Of course, Heliocentrism proper was only widely accepted later during the Scientific Revolution and this same approach, the seemingly scientific one, would be applied to the occult and to astrology. The central science that came to inform modern astrology was the budding discipline of psychology and its partner therapeutic technique of psychoanalysis, promoted by both Sigmund Freud and his protégé, Carl Gustav Jung in the 1890’s, just after the Theosophical Society was founded.

In the 1930’s, Theosophist and occult author, Alice A. Bailey wrote many books on esoteric philosophy including Esoteric Psychology and Esoteric Astrology which brought in a mixture of Vedic, Hermetic, Christian, and Tibetan Buddhist ideas along with astrological ones. Her writings influenced a whole generation of astrologers in the 1960’s and 70’s like Allen Oken and Liz Greene, and perhaps even Jeffrey Wolf Green. Bailey seemed to be reintroducing the world esoteric themes through a modern scientific lens. Her Book, Esoteric Astrology, did reassert some concepts from traditional astrology, however, it also presented a whole new system. The rising sign was relegated to the periphery in modern astrology and Alice Bailey brought it back to the forefront. She describes the sun as more indicative of one’s outer personality and presentation. See below:

“2. That the Sun sign, as it is called, indicates the nature of the man, physical, mental and spiritual. It holds the secret of the personality ray and of the man's responsiveness or lack of responsiveness to the Soul, the real man. It indicates also the integration already achieved and the present point of unfoldment of the soul qualities, of the present available equipment, of the present life quality and of the immediately possible group relations. It indicates, from the angle of the Ageless Wisdom, nothing more. This is a reversal of the usual astrological position.”

- Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Astrology

We can see some of the similar significations relating to the self and the principle of centrality, however, they decidedly departed from material existence and are primarily concerned with more subjective or psychological realities. The primary cognitive device Bailey extolls is what occultists call the “Law of Correspondence,” or the “Law of Analogy,” and under that law, “just as the sun is the center of his system, so is a reproduction of his light said to reside in our center as the inner ruler immortal,” and this links all beings by a doctrine of emanations. That is, the sun, the physical flaming ball of fusion reactions, is merely the body of a greater being Bailey refers to as the “Solar Logos,” a being so great that the being whose body is the earth, the “Planetary Logos,” and who for all intents and purposes is “God” for us, is merely a servant in his court.

Indeed, the crux of the system Bailey presented is that all things are interrelated by a common source of divine origin and that source was the first cause, the absolute and expresses in the Universe as Life, communicates through quality, and manifests as appearance. The sun then, according to Bailey, was a great being in whom we lived and moved and had our own being, but that the sun or rather, the Solar Logos, in turn derived his existence from a still greater being. This again was to illustrate that all things were analogically related by this web of emanation, leading ultimately back to the source. This same doctrine is often found in Vajrayana and Tibetan Buddhism, that beings are emanations from still greater beings. We see then, modern occultism observing and analyzing natural phenomena in this way, that is, as symbols for the spectrum for human experience.

Whether or not that bears out in reality is another matter, but Bailey’s work on symbolism and subjectivity gave 20th Century astrologers a new psychological perspective and one that related planetary movements and aspects back to interior parts of oneself. The sun could then be thought of as that conscious entity who revealed dark and hidden in ourselves things with his light. What is that light? It’s your own attention! Carl Jung famously said that “when something remains unconscious, it manifests outwardly as fate.” Darkness is unconscious. Consciousness is light. When you put your attention on something, you are consciously engaging. It’s a powerful act. Where we put our attention, there follows your energy as well.

Remember, the sun is the source of light and therefore was the great revealer for ancient people. The sun represented our perceptive faculties and it was by the light of realization that we became aware, or at least more aware, of the nature of our relationship to reality. The sun also was very much the center of our ancient world and not just our modern one. It determined the subsequent domicile and exaltation scheme and it was by tracking the sun’s movements across the ecliptic that we got the prototypes for houses in the Egyptian decans. Even King Solomon’s name is the sun in three different languages, that is, Sol in Latin, Om in Sanskrit, and On in Egyptian once again showing us how important the sun was even in antiquity. So as much as we learn, we keep finding out that old adage of King Solomon is eternally true, that, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

[Sources: Wikipedia, Demetra George, Brittanica, Alice Bailey, Helena Blavatsky, Abu Ma’shar, and Vettius Valens]