|
Page 1 of 2 How the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant
Interact
(Tips For The Novice
Astrologer)
by Donna
Cunningham
 The three most influential
factors in a horoscope are generally the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant. Thus they are
a good place to begin analyzing a chart. While their weights may be nearly
identical in terms of their influence, their functions are
different.
The Ascendant, Sun, and Moon tend
to work well together when the signs involved are harmonious. An exact aspect
makes them work even more smoothly. Signs that are trine fall within the same
element ---- earth to water,
or fire to air. water to water, air to air, fire to fire, or earth to earth.
Signs that are sextile involve complementary elements
The much more difficult
combinations are the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant placed within the same sign type or
modality -- cardinal to cardinal, fixed to fixed, or mutable to mutable.
When in the same modality, they either square or oppose one another and thus
tend to work at cross purposes.
Separating Out Their
Functions
People with a given Sun, Moon, or
rising sign may behave similarly, though the motivation is different. Thus, a
Capricorn rising, Capricorn Moon, and Capricorn Sun may all strive for success,
but the reasons are different. The Capricorn Moon strives for success in order
to make the world a safe place -- literally to ensure a roof over his or
her head, and probably Mom's as well, as she grows older. The Capricorn rising
may strive for success because of being cast in the role of family hero, the one
who will distinguish or legitimize the family through worldly accomplishments.
For the Capricorn Sun, success is a requirement for self-worth and its
prerequisite -- Dad's approval, however fleeting it may be. (Here, the
father's demands for achievement tend to escalate. Where once a single "A" on
the report card received a "Well done", the Dean's List soon became a minimum
requirement.)
The Sun is the core self, with its
functions encompassing most of the words that begin with self -- the
sense of self, self-expression, self-confidence, self-esteem, self-worth,
self-development, self-sabotage, self-centeredness, and plain old selfishness.
The Sun's sign, house, and aspects give us a sense of who we are and are not,
and what we are capable of -- in brief, it is our identity. You'd
probably be listing your Sun's qualities if you were describing yourself as "I'm
the kind of person who...." You may recall the popular song by John Lennon that
goes "life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." The
part that makes those other plans is the Sun.
Most often, it is the father or
his equivalents who lend the sense of self and of confidence described by the
Sun. In old-time astrology, the Sun represented men, and the Moon, women. In
today's world, where more women are developing and expressing their Sun
qualities through work and creative pursuits, this is no longer as true.
Moreover, I would say women have more freedom and validation to express their
solar qualities than men have to express their lunar ones. However, we are in
transitional generations where women still have not had maternal career role
models often enough, so the rule about the Sun showing the father's influence is
still likely to be true.
The Moon is more often than not
the imprint of our mothers or mother surrogates. However, with many men now
taking over a substantial part of child care, it would be interesting to see how
the child's chart reflects that. The Moon represents a part of us that begins to
develop in infancy, in our mother's arms, long before we have any verbal
capacity. At that age, we do not understand who we are (the Sun) or how we fit
into the family (the Ascendant); we only know what we feel -- hunger,
heat, cold, dampness, rage, fear, or need. The Moon is our sense of comfort and
safety, or the lack thereof. The Sun develops later and is more conscious and
verbal. One has to have a sense of self as separate from caretakers before a
self-concept can develop.
It is difficult to summarize in a
paragraph or two all that the Moon represents -- I've written not one but
two entire tomes on the subject.1 We learn much of what the Moon encompasses from our
mothers and their equivalents. The programming includes which emotions we are
comfortable expressing, what we do to make ourselves feel secure, our model for
nurturing ourselves and others, and what kinds of women we surround ourselves
with or strive to be.
For instance, a child with a
Moon-Saturn aspect or Moon in Capricorn is often born to a mother with one or
more of the following characteristics: older, anxious, depressed, overwhelmed
with responsibilities, strongly career-oriented. The offspring of women who
experience deep postpartum depressions often have placements like these. If the
mother is chronically depressed, the infant soaks it up by osmosis, and
depression can become an emotional keynote in the child's life well into
adulthood. If the mother perpetually worries about financial security and
experiences hardship, the child may come to view the world as unsafe and act
accordingly.
How the Moon & Ascendant
Relate
The observer may have some
difficulty separating out the Ascendant from the Moon. Both are imprinted by the
family, albeit at slightly different stages of development. The Moon --
the maternal imprint -- happens before the child has enough mental
development to know there is a role to be played (the Ascendant), or even before
it is entirely clear that the child and mother are two separate beings (the
Sun). Before we have words for it, we learn whether the world is a safe place or
not. We also soak up our mother's most typical emotions, and they become a
predominant theme in our own emotional repertory.
I've spoken of the Ascendant as
the role we were trained to play in the family dynamics, showing how we needed
to behave in order to survive our early environment. A Gemini-rising individual,
for example, might be the family clown, while Pisces rising might be the lost
child, and Aquarius can be the rebel.
It seems to me that the Moon and
Sun occur earlier in the development of the child than does the Ascendant. In
order to grasp the role that family members are training us to play, we need at
least a rudimentary social sense. (Bottom line, we first need a sense of
ourselves as separate, which is the Sun's domain.) We need to know that each
person in the family network has a part to play, and we need some degree of
awareness of what our own role is expected to be within that family economy.
Although the part we play ultimately becomes more knee-jerk and automatic, this
role takes much of our childhood to perfect. The Ascendant, then, is social
conditioning and generally conscious, whereas the Moon is much less accessible
to the conscious mind.
When the Ascendant and Moon signs
are complementary, they can collude to protect us from showing too much lunar
vulnerability, such as being too insecure and needy or too openly emotional.
Such patterns strengthen the defensive armor -- a vital element for
surviving well in the world, not necessarily a drawback. However, when our true
feelings and needs are covered over too rigidly, our relationships are less than
authentic, and we can risk psychosomatic illness -- another reason the
Ascendant and 1st-house planets show our physical
vulnerabilities.
Even in mismatched signs, the
Ascendant can aid and abet the Moon in avoiding feelings. Imagine the
combination of "tough it out" Aries rising and "I'll work until I drop" Virgo
Moon. Though these signs are quincunx, neither cuts the person any slack. The
result can be a driven individual who is on the go until pole-axed by illness or
exhaustion.
When too rigidly applied, an
Ascendant-Moon collusion can keep us from authentic relationships. The Ascendant
shows how we either cover up our lunar needs or seduce others into meeting them.
When the two signs are in harmony, the chances of having one's needs met without
a great deal of striving are enhanced.
Take a person with Cancer Moon and
Pisces rising -- two signs that are trine. Cancer Moon often has a strong
residue of dependency, however strongly it may be hidden by compulsive
nurturing. Add to that a Pisces Ascendant, and the person may assume a confused
and spacey facade that entices others (notably Virgos) to take over. The trine
can be a greased slide, so in the absence of a nurturing environment, this
combination can resort to addictions to soothe the emotions.
When two factions are in
disharmony -- such as Cancer Moon paired with a ruggedly independent
Aquarius Ascendant then the facade works against having dependency and security
needs fulfilled. In such cases, conscious effort is required to express and meet
our needs.
<< Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>
|
