How the Sun
& Ascendant Differ
by Donna Cunningham
 Our field has many fine
articles, books, and talks about the myriad facets of the chart and endless
techniques, but students who are saturated with details often struggle to put
the pieces together. When synthesizing a chart, I begin by considering the
relationships between the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant.
It is tempting to consider the
three approximately equal (leaving out for the moment the planetary aspects and
house positions) -- that a person with Virgo Sun, Libra Moon, and Sagittarius
rising is an amalgam of one-third Virgo, one-third Libra, and one-third Sag. That
temptation is reinforced by the fact that people with the Sun, Moon, or
Ascendant in any given sign may behave similarly. However similar the outer
BEHAVIOR may be, the inner MOTIVATION is quite different. Thus, the impact on
one's life path, health, and relationships is also different.
For instance, a Virgo Sun, a
Virgo Moon, and a Virgo Ascendant may each overwork and tend toward
psychosomatic illnesses. But WHY they overwork, and why they get sick, is
another matter. A Virgo Sun may overwork because self-esteem depends on
productivity and doing it more perfectly than the other person. A Virgo Moon may
overwork because a job well-done makes them feel secure in a world that they
perceive as demanding perfection in order to remain safe. Plus, staying busy
keeps unwelcome emotions at bay. Some Virgo Ascendants overwork because the
family cast them as the serving wench, the Cinderella who was left at home while
the lazy undeserving step-sisters went to the ball. (This description is oversimplified,
but a full delineation, with all those particulars that Virgos love, would be an
article in itself!)
A useful concept in
understanding the Ascendant is that of "role." Our families tend to
assign each member a role, and to train and continually pressure us to perform
according to role expectations. This concept is well-known in the literature on
dysfunctional families, with offspring filling such roles as the lost soul, the
family hero, and the clown. Though less cast in concrete, the same is true of
most families. One child may be designated the popular one; another gets labeled
the troubled one; and another -- often the middle child -- may be the prodigal son
or daughter. Could you characterize your role in your own family in a short
phrase?
These family roles are not
necessarily easy to fulfill. In fact, they are often performed at great personal
cost. However, even when suffering is involved, such as the role of family
scapegoat, the role itself creates a certain comfort zone. It is familiar, the
script is basically written, and we don't have to keep recreating our social
selves. Such roles grease the social wheels and help us know what to expect of
each other, so they aren't inherently negative. They are white lies we tell to
get along, though not all Ascendants are equally polite -- the Aquarian Ascendant
is often downright rude!
We need the Ascendant. That
disguise protects our easily bruised self-esteem against the assaults of a world
that is too often judgmental and unkind. Otherwise, at a certain level, we'd all
be nudists; and, frankly, the majority of us need our clothes except in intimate
situations. We need the Ascendant's protective covering,
especially before maturity, just as the pea needs the pod so it can ripen.
We practice the assigned role in
our milieu growing up and learn it so well that we take it on the road,
replicating it in our adult lives. The rising sign is a disguise -- a uniform we
wear when we're out in the world -- that we hopefully get to take off in private.
It is not the true self, for that is the Sun. But it is often what we lead
people to expect of us. The difficulty arises when a person becomes what I call
"stuck in the Ascendant," and the core self is buried in non-authentic
posturing.
The contrast between the role
and the real self is clearest in actors who take on the part of a character in a
television or movie series. Successful ones assume the qualities associated with
their character so consistently that it becomes second nature, and they are in
danger of being typecast. Sometimes actors play their parts so convincingly that
the public confuses them with the role -- Leonard Nimoy became so identified with
Star Trek's Spock that he titled his autobiography
I Am Not Spock.
We less famous folks can become
overly identified with our roles, too, often to our detriment. We may become
typecast, so people expect us to respond in ways that may or may not represent
our true selves, needs, or feelings. This is especially true when the Sun and
rising sign are at odds. They may be square, like outlaw Aquarius with
conservative Taurus or modest Virgo with immodest Sag. Even more ill-fitting is
the quincunx, a.ka. the inconjunct, which occurs five signs or 150? away from each other. This
aspect of incongruity pairs "let it all hang out" Gemini with "it
ain't none of your business" Scorpio, or "dot every i" Virgo with
"just do it" Aries.
Under difficult aspects such as
these, the role assigned to us (the Ascendant) doesn't fit the inner or true
self (the Sun). The Sun is the heart, the core, and when we are referring to
that core, we tell others, "At heart, I'm ...."
Given an Aries Ascendant, a
sensitive Pisces man who is a poet at heart might feel hard-pressed to keep up
the macho facade his family and peers thrust on him. To avoid disapproval or
even ostracism, he may mask the Piscean core by even more stereotyped, macho,
rough-and-ready acts -- maybe bolstering his confidence through an addiction or
two. Discrepancy between the core self and the facade -- and sacrifice of the
true self to the assigned role -- is the typical dilemma of a 12th-house Sun when
the subsequent sign is rising. It is part of why a 12th-house Sun is
characterized as difficult.
The rising sign also determines
the Descendant -- the Descendant being opposite in sign and degree to the
Ascendant. The Descendant shows whom we attract while we're playing the roles
learned in childhood. As a consequence of our way of presenting ourselves (the
Ascendant), we draw to ourselves others who fill complementary roles (the
Descendant). Thus, the person who projects a Virgo Ascendant -- "Let me fix
this mess you've gotten yourself into" -- is quite likely, time and again,
to draw as a partner a "Where on Earth did I park the car?" Piscean or
Neptunian type. We may even use the Ascendant to avoid intimacy. By engaging in
stereotypical behavior of that rising sign, we may fend off others, so they
don't see who we really are.
Any planets in the 1st house,
especially those within 10? of the Ascendant, profoundly modify the qualities
of the rising sign. The Baby Boomer with Leo rising, but with Pluto near the
Ascendant, would project more Scorpio than Leo. Those born with Saturn near the
Ascendant are more Saturnian than any Capricorn rising. Many with Venus rising
are Venusian to a fault, extremely concerned with appearance and often quite
attractive. Any planet near the Ascendant is powerfully projected, so the
energies of that planet are what people see first. This is important to consider
in chart interpretation.
The rising sign and any
1st-house planets have much to do with how others see us. On the other hand, the
Sun is how we see ourselves. If you are a "double" born around
sunrise, with the Sun and rising sign the same -- your projection of self is likely
to be more true to form, and people see you more or less as you are. When the
Sun and rising sign are at odds with each other, we tend to feel misunderstood
or misinterpreted by the outside world.
An example of a clash between
the Sun and the Ascendant is in the chart of the comedienne,
Roseanne. Her birth data was given in Lois Rodden's Data News #29, from the
birth certificate, as November 3, 1952; 1:21 p.m. MST; Salt Lake City, UT;
111?W53', 40?N45'. She has Sun in Scorpio, Aquarius rising, and Moon in
Gemini. Not only are her Aquarius Ascendant and Scorpio Sun square by sign, but
her Sun is four degrees from the square to her Ascendant as well. A square
between the Sun and Ascendant often shows a person with a great need to be
noticed, who then compulsively projects the self through an image that
is at odds with the essential nature, tweaking society's sensibilities by
shocking or outrageous behavior. Consider the time she and Tom Arnold mooned
reporters, or when she grabbed her crotch and spat after singing the national
anthem. That's all very entertaining for her Aquarius, but how does it sit with
that self-protective Scorpio? How appalled is her private, even secretive,
Scorpio when she calls still another press conference and tells the entire world
the latest bombshell about her unconventional relationships?
Talk about mixed messages --
Scorpio has a need to control, while Aquarius rebels at the slightest hint of
control and espouses freedom-loving principles. So, one week she's announcing
that she and Tom Arnold are both marrying his sexy young assistant, and the
next, she's firing the secretary and divorcing Tom because Tom and the assistant
are having an affair. It all makes for fabulous press coverage, but personal
happiness? I think not.
What accounts for Roseanne's
enduring popularity? Why has she not been pilloried for daring to be an
iconoclast? She gets away with it in part because of her humor, verbal skills,
and intelligence -- the Aquarius Ascendant trines her Gemini Moon and sextiles Mercury. With
trines to the Ascendant by the Sun or Moon, we get away with showing substantial
parts of ourselves to the world at large -- we find acceptable and even likable
ways to reveal our true selves (Sun) or our feelings and needs (Moon).
Another way of understanding the
contrast between the Sun and Ascendant is to observe what happens when they are
transited by the outer planets -- Saturn, Chiron, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto.
Transits to either position coincide with major changes, but what facet of the
individual is altered depends on whether the Sun or Ascendant is involved.
When an outer planet transits
the Ascendant, we tend to get sick of our roles and decide to break out of them. It is especially when a planet
has been transiting the 12th house for some time and crosses the Ascendant that
we see a major change in our ways of interacting with significant others. The
outer change is the culmination of an underground inner process (12th house)
that resulted in an unwillingness and even an inability to continue in that old
role.
By contrast to these transits to
the Ascendant, transits to the Sun coincide with identity crises where we
reconsider who we are. Sometimes we are
chastened -- as when we have to face up to the fact that we aren't living up to
our standards and ideals. Sometimes, however, we are pleasantly surprised to
find we've been downplaying our strengths and abilities and are capable of much,
much more than we thought. Sometimes in the process of a two-year or longer
outer-planet transit to the Sun, we discover both of the above.
As the transit proceeds, an
outgrown and outmoded self-concept is discarded in favor of one that reflects
who we have become in the course of our personal evolution -- or devolution. This
is often the case with Saturn transits to the Sun, when we may face challenging
situations and opportunities that stretch us and make us live up to our
potentials.
I frequently observe people
having Pluto transits to the Sun. I watch them shed the less
desirable or evolved qualities of their Sun signs and transform to the sign's
higher level of evolution. The ego may be assaulted, only to be seen as a false
self-concept. The dross is purified through obsessive self-examination, and at
the end of the process, there is an empowerment of the true or core self, with
richer self-expression.
Much more could be said about
the contrasts between the Sun and Ascendant and the ways they work together,
happily or not. I'd love to be able to give more examples, sign by sign, and
more charts, but that's a book, not an article. Hopefully, you will at least
have gained a clearer picture of the principles involved.
?1996 Donna Cunningham, MSW -
all rights reserved
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