Behind the Horoscope: How the Placement of the Sun & Moon Tells a Story About You

References

Part One

This is a book about the astrological houses. There are many books that describe the meanings of the houses. Every comprehensive text on astrology has a section devoted to the houses, and there are books that deal specifically with the subject. What makes this book unique?

Most books on the astrological houses begin with the premise that every house placement has the same level of importance. That is simply not the case. The house placement of a planet—let’s say Venus, Mercury, or Pluto—is part of a story that is also dependent on the sign, relative strength, and aspects of that planet. Other factors, such as the house that planet rules, add to that story. Depending on how that story fits into the totality of the horoscope, the planet’s house position might be a major factor in the reading of the horoscope or might be pushed to the background. This will vary from chart to chart.

The house placement of the Sun is different. It too is part of a larger story that contains all of the factors I previously listed, but the Sun is also the primary arbiter of our identity, our vitality, and our sense of self. Its influence sets the stage for everything else that is happening in the horoscope. We know this to be true of the sign occupied by the Sun. It is no less the case with the house. Just as the sign occupied by the Sun in your horoscope is your sign, the house occupied by the Sun is your house. It is the place where you were meant to shine. Understanding the house placement of your Sun answers the question of what you were really meant to do in this life. It describes your mission.

Part One of this book is devoted to describing the house positions of the Sun. I don’t just recite the traditional symbolism assigned to each house; I’ve studied the lives of people who actually had those house placements of the Sun. In many cases, those life stories confirm what we’ve always known, but in others they have led me in a very different direction and to a different understanding of what that house placement means.

By looking at the house placements of the Sun in this way, I move past simplistic notions of good or bad houses. Each house has its own function. Each describes a different mission. Some of those missions might seem to be more glamorous or desirable than others, but all of them are necessary and, if we’re willing to do the kind of work that house requires, each can provide us with a path to success.

Of course, just because your horoscope designates this or that area of life as your mission, that doesn’t mean you have to accept that mission. You have a choice. You can go in a different direction. In many instances, the events and circumstances of your life will keep calling you back to the mission designated by the house position of your Sun, but the choice is always yours.

House Systems

Astrologers don’t agree about a lot of things, and one of their favorite things to disagree about is the way we divide the horoscope up into houses. One reason that the house position of the Sun is not always given the importance it deserves is that it often changes depending on which house system the astrologer uses. There are over thirty different systems of determining the cusps of the houses, and each one has a band of loyal practitioners.

I have no argument with any one of these systems. My argument is with all of them. It is my contention that they are all arbitrary and that none of them is right in every case. The best we can hope from any house system is an approximation of the cusps of the twelve houses. More precise judgments can only be made when we know something about the realities of a person’s life and how those placements fit within the overall context of the horoscope.

This is the criteria I used when looking at the over seven hundred timed charts that I studied in the course of writing this book. In doing that research, I focused on three of the most popular house systems: Koch, Placidus, and Equal. All the examples cited in Part One have the Sun in that house in all three of these systems.

The Moon

If the house occupied by the Sun is where you shine, the Moon’s house is your refuge. It is the place in which your emotionality, intuition, and instinct reside. It is also the place where you hide your vulnerabilities and weaknesses. The house occupied by the Moon shows us the area of life in which you feel most secure. It is the place to which you retreat when you encounter difficulties in other areas of your life. It is also the area of life in which you are most likely to be ruled by irrational fears and deep emotional needs.

In most cases, the influence of the house occupied by the Sun is easier to see than that of the house occupied by the Moon. The Moon’s function in our lives is more personal and more likely to be hidden. However, the house position of the Sun cannot be completely understood until you see how that placement interacts with the house position of the Moon. That’s why, in the second section of this book, I have written about the house positions of the Sun and Moon in combination. I have more to say about how the Sun and Moon work together in the introduction to Part Two.

Using This Book

The first thing you need to do in order to use this book is get a horoscope charted for your date, time, and place of birth. The time and place are important because the entire layout of the houses is determined by what degree of what sign was on the eastern horizon at the moment of your birth. There are various places on the internet where you can have a free horoscope charted from this information. Astrolabe (alabe.com) is one of the most popular. You can also send a request to goodgollyastrology.com with your information and I will send you a free chart.

Once you have your chart, look at nine o’clock on the dial. That is the Ascendant, and the section following the Ascendant is your First House. The houses are numbered in a counter-clockwise direction from that point.

If you get your chart from Astrolabe it will be charted in the Placidus system. If you get the chart from me it will be in the Koch system (unless you request something else). There are other sources that will give a chart done in the Equal House system. If your Sun or Moon is placed in first or last few degrees of a house and you don’t think that that house interpretation applies to you, my advice is that you look at the readings for the house before or after, respectively. As I said, I don’t have complete confidence in any house system, and the system that best suits what you know about yourself may well be the best for your chart.

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Chapter One

The Sun

in the First House

Everybody loves a sunrise, that fantastic light show the Sun gives us as it approaches the eastern horizon every morning. The milky grey of the dawn is slowly transformed into a natural masterpiece of pink, violet, and gold. There is great hope in a sunrise, and that hope is at the bottom of every interpretation of the Sun in the First House.

The identification of the First House as a place of power within the horoscope has been with us since ancient times. The First House is an angular house. Its starting point is one of the most important points in the chart: the Ascendant. The linking of the Sun, the ultimate source of life, to this crucial angle has to promise great things.

So it is that people born at or a couple of hours before dawn seem to have won the astrological lottery. Just read what the texts have to say about the placement of the Sun in the First House. Some of the authors seem positively giddy, rolling out phrases like strong will, abundant vitality, and intense self-awareness or great initiative and powers of leadership. ¹

Leadership

People with the Sun in the First House don’t necessarily seek positions of leadership. They are not typically driven by extraordinary ambition or a need for power. In fact, commanding other people may be the farthest thing from their minds. And yet, leadership is often thrust upon Sun in the First people because of the power of their personalities.

There is nothing exotic about the source of this power. It comes from knowing exactly what they want and expecting, regardless of what other people may think or say, to get it. This gives people with this placement a certainty that other people often read as confidence, vision, and leadership. We follow people with the Sun in the First because they seem to know where they are going. This is not always the case, nor do their goals necessarily align with ours, but we follow them just the same.

Ego

Because of this certainty and their determination to have things their way, people with the Sun in the First might at times be called egotistic. However, there is nothing inherently wrong with a bit of egotism. It is through our ego that we get things done and make the world aware of our presence. In most cases, people with the Sun in the First House aren’t any more egotistic than anyone else. They are just more comfortable with the needs of their ego. The ego says, You see it. You want it. Go get it. For people with this placement, this is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a natural process.

Of course, a lot depends on how that egotism is expressed. When it is a natural process, when it is a simple expression of what the person feels or thinks (depending on the Sun sign and the sign on the Ascendant), then the person with the Sun in the First typically gets his or her way without causing a fuss or distressing others. However, when it is not a natural process, when the person with this placement feels compelled to push, to demand, or to bully, then we have a situation in which the expression of that First House ego can become toxic.

More often than not, however, we forgive people with the Sun in the First even when they get pushy. They have a star quality, an innate faith in themselves, that makes it easy to overlook such lapses. A more prevalent challenge for these people is a tendency toward complacency. They become so used to everything falling into place for them, to getting their way, that they forget that it’s sometimes necessary to push, or demand, or work to accomplish their goals. All that strain seems unnatural to them, and they wonder why life, and other people, don’t automatically accommodate their desires.

Having It Your Way

There are other people with this placement, however, who do not hesitate to push forth their own agenda. They might not do it in a toxic way, but they are willing to do whatever they have to do in order to achieve their desires. These people with the Sun in the First can appear amazingly oblivious to criticism or public censure. They see what they do as a product of the natural order. What someone else has to say about it hardly matters. They are going to have it their way.

Of course, there is often a price to be paid for having things your way. There is a tendency to overindulge and overdo with this placement. It is sometimes difficult for people with the Sun in the First to recognize that what they want might not, in the long run, be good for them. It is also sometimes difficult for these Sun in the First people to hear the advice and heartfelt warnings coming from the people who love them. It’s not that they reject this advice—it’s just that it never seems to sink in.

There are also those instances in which the natural order of things seems to be broken, and instead of having things their way, people with this placement find themselves utterly blocked. This can be a difficult situation. The world can seem like a very bleak place when the ego of a Sun in the First person is stymied. In some cases this can result in dark periods of self-doubt, but these periods seldom last long. These people have the optimism of the sunrise on their side, and, sooner or later, they know that the natural order will be restored.

Your Mission

The house position of the Sun shows us the purpose toward which your solar energy should be directed. If you have the Sun in the First House, your mission has two parts. The first part is to understand the power that this placement of the Sun conveys. People are inclined to follow you. In some cases, they will be inspired by you. In other instances, they will be shocked at what you can get away with. Your good behavior seems to get a little more attention and praise while your bad behavior is somewhat more likely to spark outrage. You just seem to take up more room in terms of your ego and your sense of self than people with the Sun in the Second or the Third House.

The second part of your mission with the Sun in the First is to find something useful to do with this power. It is easy for people with the Sun in the First House to waste their advantage on things that only aggrandize their self-esteem. You have to understand the difference between having it your way and selfishness. You are here to lead, to be an example of what the ego can do when it is not limited by self-doubt and social inhibitions. When you use the power of this placement in this way, it becomes an asset—not just for you, but for everyone around you, too.

You also have to find ways to harness your powerful ego. You have to give it structure and purpose. For this reason, people with this placement often do best when they submit their ego to some sort of discipline. Two excellent examples of this are Bruce Lee and the Dalai Lama. One submitted himself to a physical discipline, the other to a spiritual discipline. In both cases, that discipline allowed that person to focus the power of the Sun in the First House ego and reach out to the world.

Obviously, most of us have neither the means nor the inborn talent to take on the extraordinary levels of discipline exhibited by Lee or the Dalai Lama, but there are other ways of getting the most out of the Sun in the First House. Sports, science, the arts, and religious or spiritual regimes can provide you with this necessary structure. Your structure could also be a cause or crusade. For example, Abraham Lincoln applied his Sun in the First House ego to keep the United States united. Lyndon B. Johnson applied his ego to getting the Civil Rights Act and Medicare passed. (The precise birth time of both these men is unknown, but Astro-Databank gives us credible testimony that both were born at dawn.)

Submitting your ego to this kind of discipline doesn’t mean that you can’t do things your way. It just means that your way is defined—not by your transient desires, but by strong principles or a higher purpose. The placement of the Sun in the First House can provide all the wonderful qualities listed at the beginning of this chapter. It can make you a leader or a star. But, like so many things in astrology, much depends on how you use it.

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1. Frances Sakoian and Louis S. Acker, The Astrologer’s Handbook (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 97.

Chapter Two

The Sun

in the Second House

With the Second House, we enter the realm of possessions, money, and personal resources. There’s not a whole lot of mystery about the Second House, nor much romance. It is a practical place where the ego that shines bright in the First House has to return to the earth and face the mundane necessity of making a living.

All the astrological texts—from the Hellenistic period to modern times—seem to concur with this notion that the Second House is the natural home of the material girls and material boys of this world. It would seem then that having the Sun placed here would be like having a moneymaking machine in your living room. After all, with the Sun in the Second, your energy, vitality, and conception of self are all directed toward achieving material well-being. What could go wrong?

There are cautionary hints in some texts (such as The Astrologer’s Handbook) about excessive generosity and overspending, particularly on luxury items and possessions that feed the ego. Still, in most cases, you would think that the power of the Sun could withstand a few unwise investments and expensive toys. The Sun has to shine, and if that shine is the shine of a platinum bracelet or the hood of a hot new sports car, that’s just the way it is in the Second House, baby.

The Moneymaker

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Having the Sun in the Second House is not a guarantee of wealth. People with this placement typically have to work just as hard as the rest of us to earn their daily bread. What typically sets them apart is a greater awareness of material necessities and a pronounced concern for finding, nurturing, and exploiting the special talents, skills, and resources that allow them to make their way in the world.

It is sometimes said that we all have a special talent. Johnny can draw. Sally can sing. Cloe made a whole ten dollars selling lemonade in front of her apartment complex. That’s a nice sentiment for most of us, but for people with the Sun in