Ditto Margherita - I wouldn't want to be in a group of astrologers who all agree anyway (no doubt they would all be following someone else's opinion and not thinking for themselves! And you may not have noticed that when I disagreed with you last time, I later admitted that you were right, I was wrong).

But to be clear, I would never suggest that the Sun cannot act like a malefic or that a planet under the Sun's beams is not in a bad state; or that the opposition of the Sun and Moon is not loaded with negative associations. It will be a good thing when I can point you to my article so you can understand the points I make in a clearer form - hopefully it will be available within a few weeks).

Deb wrote: It will be a good thing when I can point you to my article so you can understand the points I make in a clearer form - hopefully it will be available within a few weeks).

I really look forward to read it as for all your articles.

Nice to see you back here Margherita. I always enjoy your input.

Deb wrote:

I wouldn't want to be in a group of astrologers who all agree anyway

Rest assured Deb , you have nothing to fear. My take on the astrological community...
Mark

Mark wrote:

Rest assured Deb , you have nothing to fear. My take on the astrological community...

Sad, but so very true.... Astrology is so very broad that it needs each of us to be a spokesman for the puzzle piece that speaks to us. Maybe some day we'll all come together, and the puzzle pieces will form a beautiful and complete mandala. (All right....maybe not in my lifetime...)

Thanks, Deb-- on both counts.

Therese and Margherita, thanks for your useful information.

One point that might be worth teasing out from some of the sun definitions (breath, soul, intellectual light) is the distinction between the sun as the ball of fire moving predictably around the ecliptic; and the sun as "the universal god manifested in the sun." (Campion, Astrol. & Cosmol. 89-90.)

Sometimes in Antiquity we get the concept of light as existing prior to and independently of the sun, and it is this light that is intended in the primary esoteric spiritual sense. (Wright, Cosmol. in Antiquity 110-113,cf. Genesis 1-2, John 1 in the Bible.) The "ether" (aither, aether) existed above the near-earth atmosphere, and was the home of the gods, the source of religious beliefs. It was particularly associated with the air (intellect) and fire (animation) elements when it wasn't given its own status as the fifth element.

Similarly, to a lot of ancient people, the seat of life itself was in the breath (Genesis 2 again) which is probably why our words "inspire", "spiritual", and "respiration" have the same root. This belief predates the Greek idea that that the ether was the source of divine "breath" given to animate humanity.

Jupiter, incidentally, as the fertile, supreme, philosophical, all-father god of Greece and Rome, was originally a weather god. He brought the crucial autumn rains, but also thunder and lightning. Possibly this made him a less suitable astrological candidate than his son Apollo or his earlier prototype: the Titan Helios. Apollo was already the god of prophecy (i. e., communicating the gods' will) prior to becoming associated with the sun.

The astronomical sun of daily life, time-keeping, astrology, and weather could be either beneficial or harmful. But the esoteric light and air qualities, associated with the gods and a supernatural heavenly sphere, could be only beneficial. But how to import these etheral qualities into astrology?

Of the planets, the astrological sun, alone or in combination, was the most logical choice. And so far, so good. We know about the sun as the source of life from science class. The ancients would have understood how plants respond to light and die when kept in persistent darkness, as well. So a literal and esoteric meaning could be conjoined, although not without some slippage between different meanings attributed to the sun prior to the codification of its attributes.

Hi
The Sun represents our ideals as these illuminate the soul,our assumptions,conscious or not.
We all have a set of general assumptions and motivations.The traveller scratches his head at the idea of becoming a Monk,the business man cannot grasp what motivates the junkie.
We are a big mess of contradictions,it is the Sun that brings them together to bring some coherence in life,just like the physical Sun uses gravity to pull other planets.
If the ASC sign is weak,like the dispersive gemini or pisces,it won`t be easy to realize the Sun`s nature,especially if it is a demanding Sun,like Leo,with its heroic ideals
my 2 cents

One possibility that I dont think has been raised here yet concerns whether the view of the sun in the ancient astrology may at times have reflected heliocentric pagan religious thinking in ancient culture. Certain pagan beliefs were heavily focused on sun worship such as the cult of Sol Invictus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus

The Mithras cult also seems to have been centred on a Sun God. Thus even without an explicit adoption of a heliocentric cosmology in mystical spiritual terms the sun often had special associations.

Some sources go even further though. An excellent example of such heliocentric thinking comes from Emperor Julian (aka Julian the Apostate). Julian lived in the 4th century (331/332CE ?363CE). Julian sought to reverse the advance of Christianity in the Empire and attempted a synthesis of various pagan traditions (neo-Platonism, Stoic asceticism, Goddess worship etc), with a particular emphasis on a universal solar cult.

Like the Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius before him Julian was a scholar and cultivated person, an emperor who was also a philosopher and an author.

From a passage in his texts he even appears as a forerunner of Copernicus more than eleven centuries earlier! He believed that the planets revolve around the Sun, following circular orbits in well-defined distances. This passage (from the Hymn to King Helios) reads:

?For the planets round about him (the Sun), as though he were their king, lead on their dance, at appointed distances from him pursue their orbits with the utmost harmony; they make, as it were, pauses; they move backwards and forwards (terms by which those skilled in Astronomy denote these properties of the stars)?

Emperor Julian was destined to be the last and greatest champion of the ancient Pagan faiths. Julian's death in battle in his early 30's leading his armies in Persia finally closed down the option of an ongoing pagan Roman Empire.

From the death of Julian onwards the position of those holding pagan beliefs in the empire gradually deteriorated. The emperors who came after Julian were Christian, they made the Church supreme, dismantled pagan religious traditions and eventually persecuted those still upholding pagan beliefs in the Empire.

Mark

Interesting points, Mark.

I will have to check on my sources when I get home (currently checking email from a coffee house in the Four Corners area) but I would suggest that the sun is a more important **early** god in places without a dependence upon unpredictable rainfall for their agriculture; whereas the supreme god is more likely to be a god of rainfall, thunder, and lightning in places dependent upon Mediterranean winter rains. Examples of the former would be Egypt; the latter would be the early Greeks with Zeus (aka Jove) and Israelites with the God whose unspeakable name (Hebrew yod-hey-vav-hey) came out as Jehovah. One has to wonder how the planet Jupiter became associated with the "All-Father" given the obvious pre-eminence of the sun in the sky. I think it was because of the significance of rainfall to the non-riverine Mediterranean societes.

By late Antiquity, there was so much syncretism that we begin to lose these early meanings and connections.

Waybread wrote:

I will have to check on my sources when I get home (currently checking email from a coffee house in the Four Corners area) but I would suggest that the sun is a more important **early** god in places without a dependence upon unpredictable rainfall for their agriculture; whereas the supreme god is more likely to be a god of rainfall, thunder, and lightning in places dependent upon Mediterranean winter rains. Examples of the former would be Egypt; the latter would be the early Greeks with Zeus (aka Jove) and Israelites with the God whose unspeakable name (Hebrew yod-hey-vav-hey) came out as Jehovah. One has to wonder how the planet Jupiter became associated with the "All-Father" given the obvious pre-eminence of the sun in the sky. I think it was because of the significance of rainfall to the non-riverine Mediterranean societes.

Hello Waybread,

I'm sorry but I am not really clear what practical implication you think any of this has for the nature of the Sun that has passed down to us in hellenistic astrology?

Mark

Mark wrote: Apr 12, 2014 10:55 am

One possibility that I dont think has been raised here yet concerns whether the view of the sun in the ancient astrology may at times have reflected heliocentric pagan religious thinking in ancient culture. Certain pagan beliefs were heavily focused on sun worship such as the cult of Sol Invictus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus

The Mithras cult also seems to have been centred on a Sun God. Thus even without an explicit adoption of a heliocentric cosmology in mystical spiritual terms the sun often had special associations.

In fact, Giordano Bruno's strong support for the Copernican heliocentric system was directly based on the Sun's prominent role in ancient Hermetic Gnosis (see Frances A. Yates: Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition).

Hi Mark-- just another fly-by message as I check my email from a public library while traveling. I was trying to suggest that today it seems very natural for us to situate the sun at the metaphorical center of astrology, even with our geocentric model. I am not sure that the founders of ancient astrology always did this. Their supreme god-king and All-Fathers were generally more like Jupiter, with the signal exception of the Egyptians. The Babylonian sky god Marduk (I believe) evolved into Zeus and thus Roman Jupiter: both as a planet and as a god who thundered and gave or withheld rain. (Cf. the Hebrew concepts of God in the OT.) One would think that if the sun were all-supreme, to the ancient Hellenists, as it was in Egypt, that the god Zeus would have been the sun god, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

waybread wrote: I was trying to suggest that today it seems very natural for us to situate the sun at the metaphorical center of astrology, even with our geocentric model. I am not sure that the founders of ancient astrology always did this.

Hi waybread,

Just as well! I get annoyed no end when I see western astrologers downplaying the sheer power of the Sun as symbolised in astrological charts. Glad to see the importance of the Sun as the creator of life and thus existence... period! No sun = No life, its a no brainer..
The founders of ancient astrology had limited perception of reality of existence as we now know it today. How could they have it any other way? They only did what they could at the time.

All of there philosophies, concepts and any other views about life and existence will always be limited by what they observed in their part of the world, in their time and the way they compared human behavior characteristics in their populations with physically observed astrological phenomenon.

Remember, these are civilizations that thought the earth was flat!