Evolving with each planet starting with the Sun

Photo by Patricia Herlevi, Seattle, 2009

When I lived in Seattle, I knew an astrologer with the theory that we must master each of the planets to reach enlightenment and most people never get past Mars.  If  a person made it as far as mastering Saturn, they slowed down at Chiron or Uranus.  Needless to say, if we choose to learn the lessons of the planets we need to know what lessons each planet represents.  In addition, we also need to feel friendly towards the energies of those planets and stop all dualistic thinking in the guise of benefic and malific planets.  I fall prey to these beliefs too.  We have thousands of years of thinking in this regard behind us. Remember those medieval fortune tellers or even more closer to our time, the gypsy fortune tellers?  When the dark of the moon arrives, you will meet a tall stranger with ill intent because Saturn moves into your 8th house.

Not many people jump up and down with joy when they find out that transiting Mars and transiting Uranus are conjunct and squaring one's natal Saturn or natal Pluto. Yikes!  Yikes! Yikes!  You'll also hear a lot of "Oh, my gawd!"  However, if your soul's purpose is to evolve past a reactive state to proactive wisdom and grace, then you'll need to master those energies.  But of course, we never start with Pluto, Neptune or Uranus, we start with the natal Sun.

Photo by Patricia Herlevi, Mount Vernon, WA, 2010

Many people, not educated in astrology, think that all they have to do is read their daily horoscope in the newspaper to get a grasp of their Sun Sign.  Wrong!  You could not get more general and bland than to read the same horoscope that fits millions of people around the world who share your sign.  Your natal chart is what makes you an individual.  It represents your soul's signature in the world for your current life and even gives us some signs of your previous lives.  Everything about you appears somewhere in your natal chart, from your parenting and upbringing, your past loves, your state of health and state of mind.  Everything appears in those strange symbols that reside in that pie-like chart.  It's actually magical watching it all unfold and seeing a person from a place of love and admiration because you see the person's struggles, victories, right and wrong decisions, and their frailties and vulnerabilities.  It's all there.

So we start with the natal Sun as it appears in your chart, aspected by other planets and in a specific house and sign.  You ask yourself, what does the sun mean to me? What does my sun sign mean to me? And what about this house where it resides? What type of energy does my natal sun bring to my life and what are the lessons it teaches me?

Let me give you an example.  The Sun represents our personal identity and along with the Rising Sign shows how we present ourselves to the world through our strengths or weaknesses.  The Sun is consciousness and is how we choose to shine our light upon the world and the sign the Sun is in, represents what style we shine this light.  So let's look at an Aquarius Sun (excluding any aspects to other planets which either enhance or dilute the Sun's effect in our charts).

Wikipedia

The Aquarius Sun with planet Uranus (Aquarius rules Uranus) strives for individuality and looks for ways to present it's uniqueness and genius in the world.  A weak Aquarius Sun hides behind the mad professor routine, is absent minded and acts different for the sake of difference or stands on the fringe thinking he is superior to others.  This Sun might profess himself a genius or an enlightened one on a field of sheep.  A strong Aquarius Sun starts a grassroots movement, brings inventions to humankind to help us live more sanely in the world or leads a peaceful rebellion that brings equality to everyone.

It's not enough to know the role of the sun in a chart, we need to live out the energies of the particular sun, flavored by its aspects to other planets.  An unaspected Sun proves a challenge to the person trying to understand the natal sun energies and how do you master something you don't understand? Reminds me of when I took high school algebra.  How do you master something that eludes you, which an unaspected planet does?

You can learn the basics from an astrology written "cookbook style," which usually has phrases, "if you have an Aquarius Sun, you are..." Or you can delve deeply into the actual sun's roles.  What does the Sun do? It gives us unconditional love and compassion in the form of warmth and light.  The Sun does not judge us and deny us light if we are "bad".  The sun brings growth to the planet, but can also scorch us and leave us dying of thirst or hunger.  On a good day, the sun nourishes us with vitamins from its light and in the form of actual plant foods.  The sun prevents us from freezing to death or does the opposite and bakes us.



Wikipedia

So now, relate all of that information to the sun in your chart flavored by a specific sign.  Play around with the energies.  That's your job, and not the job of the astrologer to tell you how to do this.  You could spend your entire life mastering the sun in your chart or you could do it quickly then move onto Mercury, Venus, Mars...This all depends on the discipline in your chart presented by Saturn and your spiritual leanings presented by Neptune.  It depends on you awakening your consciousness too.

Briefly I will list qualities and energies of the remaining orbs and planets:

• The Moon represents emotions, intuition, unconscious mind and urges, mothering, nurturing and how we deal with our shadows and projection
• Mercury represents our communication style, how our minds work, logic, thinking, planning, learning, grasping concepts, and how we broadcast ourselves to the world
• Venus represents our feminine side (so does the moon), sex appeal, how we attract to ourselves, and manifestation, the earth, ecology, womanhood, or for men, the type of women he attracts
• Mars represents assertiveness or aggression, war, ambition, childhood, ego, creativity, leadership, and gives us the energy to wake up every morning and face the day.  For women, Mars represents the type of man she attracts

• Jupiter represents enthusiasm, generosity, idealism, religion, foreign travel, culture (so does Venus), exuberance, fortune, expansiveness, and higher education
• Saturn represents structure, discipline, authority, leadership, teachers, life lessons, karma, ambition, career, father figures, bosses, life lessons that bring us grace and wisdom, aging, and sages, past lives
• Uranus represents rebellion, humanity, humanitarian, socialism, activism, breaking old structure, creating something original, inventions, computer technology...
• Neptune represents spirituality, transcendence, escapism, addiction, cinema, music, monks, nuns, meditation, yoga, dreams,
• Pluto represents the Dark Night of the Soul, underworld or Hades, descent so we can ascend, shadows, psychology, sex, death, rebirth, transformation...

My list of planetary attributes are incomplete and you will need to fill in the blanks.  However, I hope this article gets you started in your evolution as defined by your planets.