The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope

237 Pages·1992·3.54 MB·English

by  Liz Greene

First published in 1992 by Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
P. O. Box 612
York Beach, ME 03910-0612

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Copyright © 1992 Liz Greene & Howard Sasportas All rights reserved. No part
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greene, Liz.
The Luminaries / Liz Greene & Howard Sasportas p. cm. -(Seminars in
psychological astrology: v.3) 1. Astrology. 2. Moon-Miscellanea. 3. Sun-
Miscellanea I, Sasportas, Howard. II. Title. III. Series.
BF1723.G74 1992
133.5'3—dc20
91-43968

ISBN 0-87728-750-3
TCP

Cover illustration copyright © 1992 Liz Greene
Typeset in 10 point Palatino
Printed in Canada

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992(R1997).
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CONTENTS
Introduction

Part One: THE MOON
Mothers and Matriarchy: The Mythology and Psychology of the Moon
by Liz Greene
First Love: The Moon as a Significator of Relationship
by Howard Sasportas

Part Two: THE SUN
The Hero with a Thousand Faces: The Sun and the Development of
Consciousness
by Liz Greene
Sun, Father, and the Emergence of the Ego: The Father's Role in Individual
Development
by Howard Sasportas

Part Three: THE CONIUNCTIO
The Sun and Moon in the Horoscope: A Discussion Using Example Horoscopes
by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas
The Rhythm of Life: A Discussion of the Lunation Cycle
by Liz Greene

About the Centre for Psychological Astrology
To Alois and Elisabeth
and to their twin daughters, Artemis and Lilith, who were conceived at the time
this seminar was given
INTRODUCTION
The word luminary, according to the Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary,
means, very simply, a source of light. It also describes “one who illustrates any
subject or instructs mankind.” Thus a luminary in the world of literature or the
theatre is someone with a great talent—an actor like Laurence Olivier or a
writer like Thomas Mann—who through his or her excellence defines the
standard toward which we aspire. A luminary is one who sets an example,
embodying the best of what might be achieved.
In an earlier and more poetic astrology, the Sun and Moon were called the
Luminaries—or, alternatively, the Lights. What are these luminaries, these
exemplary “instructors” within us which define in their separate domains the
internal standard toward which we aspire as individuals? In the past, astrology
has interpreted planetary placements as a kind of immovable given—the way
we are made. The Sun and Moon are therefore said to represent essential
characteristics which irrevocably define the individual personality. But any
astrological factor is also a process, for when the human being is seen through
the lens of psychological insight, he or she is not static, but moves through life
in an unending process of change and development. An astrological placement
describes an arrow which points somewhere, a creative energy which gradually
layers flesh onto the bare bones of archetypal patterning, an intelligent
movement which, over time, fills in the stark black-and-white outlines of the
essential life-myth with the subtle colours of experience and individual choice.
The luminaries in the horoscope are truly instructors, reflecting what we could
one day become, portraying in symbolic form the best of what might be
achieved.
Human beings are born unfinished. Compared to other animal species, we
come into the world prematurely, depending for many years on others who can
ensure our physical and psychological survival. A baby crocodile, newly
emerged from the egg, has teeth which can bite, a fully coordinated body which
can run and swim, and a rampant aggressive instinct which allows it to hunt for
food and which protects it from other predators. But we, the magnum
miraculum of nature, whom Shakespeare described as “mewling and puking in
the nurse's arms”—toothless, weak, uncoordinated and incapable of feeding
ourselves—are born potential victims; for unless there is someone out there
who can look after us, we will die. Cast from the Eden of the womb without
those basic essentials of our own car, our own flat and our own American
Express card, we need a mother or a mother-surrogate upon whom we can
depend, and this immediate and absolute physical dependency gives rise to a
profound and binding emotional attachment to the primal life-source which is
counterbalanced only by our later struggles to separate from her. And because,
in the beginning, mother is our whole world, we begin to perceive the world in
the light of our earliest experience of her, and learn to mother ourselves
according to the example given. If mother is a safe container who can
sufficiently meet our basic needs —Winicott's “good enough mother” — then
we become adults who trust life and believe that the world is essentially a kind
and supportive place because we have learned by example how to be kind and
supportive to ourselves. But if our needs are denigrated, manipulated or simply
denied, then we grow into adults who believe that the world is full of predators
of superhuman strength and cunning, and that life itself does not favour our
survival, for we do not favour it ourselves. Mother gives us our first concrete
model of the Moon's instructive self-nurturing—our earliest example of what
might be achieved. But the Moon, the luminary which teaches us how to care
for ourselves according to our own unique needs, is ultimately within us, and
can show us—if our early containment was not “good enough”—how to heal
the wounds, so that life can be trusted after all.
Differentiating ourselves as entities in our own right, related to but not the
same as mother, heralds our psychological birth. There is something within us
which struggles against the utter dependency and fusion of infancy, and which
propels us on the long and thorny road toward becoming independent beings
with power over our own lives. This is not merely a matter of growing teeth and
learning to bite other crocodiles. The Sun, the luminary which instructs us in
the rites and rituals of separation, beckons us on with the great mystery of “I,”
the shimmering promise of a distinct and authentic personality which is
different from others and which possesses not only the wit to survive, but also
the capacity to fill life with meaning, purpose and joy. The passage from
dependency on mother to independent existence, inner and outer, is, as the
archetypal hero's journey portrays, fraught with fear and danger. Oneness with
mother is bliss—the timeless and eternal cocoon of the Paradise Garden where
there is no conflict, no loneliness, no pain and no death. But autonomy and
authenticity are lonely, for what if no one loves us? And what is the point of all
the struggle and anxiety if one day, like all living creatures, we must die? Our
inner instructors, like the Babylonian fire-god Marduk and his oceanic mother
Tiamat, appear to be locked in nothing less than mortal combat. Or, in the
words of the poet Richard Wilbur, “The plant would like to grow/ And yet be
embryo,/ Increase and yet escape/ The doom of taking shape …”1
It has been said that history is the story of the unfolding of consciousness.
Just as our personal history begins with the emergence of the infant out of the
waters of the womb, so too does the mythological history of the universe begin
with the solar god or hero emerging triumphant out of the body of the primal
Great Mother. The hero's battle with the mother-dragon and eventual apotheosis
in the arms of his divine father is not, of course, the end of the story; for he
must ultimately return from the Olympian heights and unite as a human being
with his feminine counterpart, transformed through the hero's struggles from
dragon into beloved. But the solar hero within us, embattled for a time (and
sometimes a lifetime), is that inner luminary which guides the emancipation of
the ego from the blind instinctual compulsions of nature into the initially lonely
but truly indestructible light of “me.”
The Sun and Moon symbolise two very basic but very different
psychological processes which operate within all of us. The lunar light which
lures us back toward regressive fusion with mother and the safety of the
uroboric container is also the light which teaches us how to relate, to care for
ourselves and others, to belong, to feel compassion. The solar light which leads
us into anxiety, danger and loneliness is also the light which instructs us in our
hidden divinity and—as Pico della Mirandola put it in the 15th century—our
right to be proud co-creators of God's universe. To find a viable balance
between these two, an alchemical coniunctio which honours both, is the work of
a lifetime. The differentiation of the self from fusion with the world of mother,
nature and collective allows us to develop reason, will, power and choice—and
in historical terms, this has generated the remarkable social and technological
advances of our 20th century Western culture. We may glamourise the distant
past of the more “natural” matriarchal world, but when we consider what was
then on offer—an average life-span of 25 years, a total helplessness in the face
of disease and the forces of nature, and an utter disregard for the value of an
individual life —we might better appreciate what kind of gift our solar
instructor has given us during the long sweep of our evolution out of the
mother-cave. Yet perhaps we have gone too far, at the expense of heart and
instinct; and our blind brutalisation of mother earth has led us to the brink of an
ecological abyss. With our eyes on the brilliance of the solar light, we have
mythically dissociated, rather than differentiated from, mother; and where we
were once at her mercy, now she is at ours—and so too are our bodies and our
planet. In our personal lives, too, it seems that we are still struggling toward
that rhythmic balance reflected by the cyclical dance of the Sun and Moon in
the heavens. Jung said that if there is something wrong with society, there is
something wrong with the individual; and if there is something wrong with the
individual, there is something wrong with me. “Me” is both Sun and Moon—
two inner instructors which, because of their unique placements in every birth
chart, provide us with our personal standards of excellence in body, heart and
mind, and our personal models of the best that might be achieved for the
unfoldment of the spirit and the soul. However powerful the heavier planets
might be in the birth chart, it is ultimately the Sun and Moon which must
channel and embody these energies and fashion them into individual experience
and expression. Understanding the Sun and Moon as descriptions of character
traits is only the beginning of understanding astrology; yet developing what the
luminaries symbolise so that we are fitting vessels for what lies within us may
be the most challenging and the best of what we can achieve in an individual
life.
Note: The lectures in this volume form the first part of a week-long seminar
called The Inner Planets, which was given in Zürich in June, 1990. The
remaining lectures from this seminar, on Mercury, Venus and Mars, will appear
in a subsequent volume.

Liz Greene
Howard Sasportas
London, November, 1991
1Richard Wilbur, “Seed Leaves,” from The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 3rd
edition, Alexander W. Allison et al. eds. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986) pp.
1201–1202.