Solar Astrology

 

Solar Astrology. The presumption that the Solar Horoscope is of value only as a make-shift when an exact hour of birth is unobtainable, is rapidly giving way to a realization of its genuine merits. Strictly speaking, it is not an hour-scope but a day-scope; yet it is the same cycle of hour-to-hour dally experiences through a rising series of sensitive points, whether it begins with an ascendant degree or with the omnipotent Sun degree.

 

When the Arabians devised their system of Parts, it evidenced a realization of the importance of the relationship between a planet's position and the Sun's position. The Part of Fortune merely locates in a Rising Sign Figure the position the Moon occupies in a Solar chart. Similarly the Part of Commerce or Understanding is the Solar house position of Mercury: the Part of Love, that of Venus; of Passion, that of Mars; of Increase, that of Jupiter; of Fatality, that of Saturn; to which the moderns have added the Part of Catastrophe, that of the Uranus position; of Treachery, that of Neptune; and of Organization, that of Pluto.

 

The Sign positions of the planets are an important clement in any horoscopic analysis and these are the same in a Solar chart as in a chart based upon an ascending degree. Likewise the birth aspects, and even the aspects of transitory planets to birth sensitivities, remain the same. Thus the entire daily cycle of sensitive points is identical, except for those of or based upon the ascendant and Midheaven.

 

To appraise the relative importance of Ascending degree and the Sun's degree as a point of beginning, consider the first return of the Ascendant degree on the second day of life: With the Sun advanced to a new position, one senses the incompleteness of the sidereal cycle, and the added four minutes necessary to complete a solar day. One must either advance the Ascendant by one degree, or retard the Sun four minutes. The next day and each succeeding day repeats the process. A year later the Ascendant has gained a day, but while one can revise the memory of a Rising degree, one cannot order the Sun to stand still.

 

In a few years the unvarying regularity of the Sun's return begins to exercise a rapidly augmented potency. Since life is lived by the Sun - the Giver of Life in a keenly actual sense - it is no make-shift that one gradually finds he reacts less and less to the reiterations of the advancing Ascendant cycle, and more and more to the eternally unchanging cycle of Solar returns.

 

This helps to explain why the Rising Sign influence is so largely physical, pertaining to bodily growth during the first plastic weeks and months of life, and why individuality and character take on the quality of the Sun Sign as we approach adulthood. It also explains why some young people undergo such radical changes of individuality on their approach to the age at which they are said to have attained their majority, for when an Aquarian Sun takes command over a Pisces-rising boy, it is a shock to his family, his friends and himself; while the transition from a Gemini-rising boy to one with the Sun in Libra is so imperceptible as hardly to occasion comment.

 

The Solar chart is in reality only an assumption that to the native of each Sun Sign the independent absorption of life-giving energy begins with its first sunrise. The cycle of sensitivities which daily passes over the horizon is a vital experience, but the cycle is the same cycle whether one begins with the Sun, or with an annually-advanced ascendant. That you eventually count your laps on the daily and annual course by the Sun instead of the Ascendant, makes less difference than at first appears - otherwise a removal to another time zone would create a far greater condition of pandemonium, and entail a tar greater degree of readjustment than seems proven by experience. The Solar House cusps have added significance in the fact that each cusp represents an aspect to the Sun, in a series that is unalterable and unvarying

 

Secondary progressions can even be applied to the Solar chart, and despite the lack of enthusiasm with which some astrologers contemplate the Solar chart, it is doubtful if a tenth-of-one-percent of them compute primary directions. To what extent the Table of Houses is fallacious, which system of cusp division is the more nearly correct, whether to employ the Latitude of birth or of domicile, and doubt concerning the authenticity of the birth moment, are only a few of the embarrassing questions obviated by its use. The Arabian astrologers discovered the importance of the solar houses, as demonstrated in their system of Arabian Points (q.v.).

 

As Astrology evolves out of the realm of prestidigitation, wherein it seeks only to impress by the predicting of specific events, into that of a psychological diagnosis of predispositions, wherein it defineates reactions to cosmic stimuli in terms of traits, trends and tendencies, the Solar chart wig become increasingly acceptable as a true cycle of adult experience, and a reliable index to the character development of the matured individuality.