The Sun and the Moon are termed the "Luminaries" in Astrology. They are the lights and arguably the most important planets. This is a risky statement because every planet is important in regards to a human being living a complete, fulfilled life...any part of us that is cut off or repressed wreaks havoc in our lives.

The Sun and Moon are powerfully central to the personality and emotional nature of the individual, as they are the most visibly obvious bodies in the sky. The Sun belongs to the daytime and the conscious nature of the individual.

The Moon belongs to the night, reflecting the light of the Sun and has to do with deeper, more unconscious realms. They are opposites yet partners, as with day/night, masculine/feminine, light/dark, active/receptive, yin/yang. They are different yet vital to one another.

In an individual’s horoscope, the relationship between the Sun and Moon will tell a great deal about how balanced they feel around wants versus needs, exterior versus interior experience and masculine versus feminine nature. The symbol for the Sun is a perfect circle with a single dot in the middle. The circle signifies completeness… no beginning and no end. It symbolizes Spirit, the ‘masculine’ energy. The dot in the middle represents the divine spark, that tiny piece of God that each of us contain. From that spark we hold the potential to be fully alive enlightened souls.

The Moon

The symbol for the Moon is the half crescent. This signifies receptivity and Soul, the feminine, the container that needs and nurtures relationship. To quote Darby Costello, ‘ we imagine our destiny through the Sun, but experience our destiny through the Moon’. It has no light of it’s own and reflects the light of the Sun. It is the closest planet to earth and is a satellite of the earth. The Moon in a sense wraps and polishes the earth in its cycle of motion. Ancient people believed that we incarnated through the planets picking up the archetypal/astrological qualities of the planets on this journey.

The Moon as the closest body to earth was seen as the womb, the mother, and the vessel for life. It speaks of how we feel nurtured and fed, quite literally our relationship to our mother, and to women in general. The Moon shows how we take care of our own needs, and how comfortable (or not!) we are with this. It is our emotional nature, our primal need for sustenance, nurturing and to belong. It connects us to family, our roots and to the past. The Moon takes us into relationships through this need to belong. The Sun takes into the future and to what we WANT in order to individuate. The Moon anchors us to the past and speaks of our needs and emotions.

The Sun

The Sun in our birth chart is like the Sun in our solar system. It is the source of light and life, without it we would not be here, it provides 99.9% of our energy. People who know a little astrology generally know their Sun sign, and more often than not relate to the characteristics ascribed to that sign. We often don’t come into full expression of our Sun until later in life, and some people sadly never reach that goal.

To fully express ourselves we often have to stand alone, and the first half of life is typically spent trying to belong and fit in. This does not mean that we need to be alone, but we need to be courageous enough to follow the beat and rhythm of our hearts and spirits, even in the face of differences or adversity.

Unless we do we are far more likely to express the negative rather than positive characteristics of our Sun sign, because what we repress becomes shadow-like and unconscious. The Sun literally represents the HEART of who we are. This does not lessen the significance of the other planets; they all represent vital forces essential to life. The Sun is central, as the physical heart is.