The Sun- Male or Female?

According to all astrologers (or all that I have read) the Sun represents “the masculine principle”. Jeff Mayo calls it ‘spirit, mind, the living being’; Ebertin describes it as the will to live, the urge to rule, decisiveness. In a chart it represents the subject’s basic drives, and the sign it is in shows the nature of them.

All this is based, not unreasonably, on the Sun’s obvious importance to us, on its central place in our system, or what we are taught about it. … The worst error made by astrologers is their description of the Sun as ‘the masculine principle’. The Moon is certainly feminine, all feminine, and in a number of ways it exercises a greater force upon the Earth than does the Sun.

Is this not to assert that what gives life to all on Earth is purely masculine? That is a grotesque, indeed an evil notion. For astrologers, myself excepted, the Sun is actually more important than the Moon.

Can we say that the male is more important than the female – we, who are born of women? How could the life-giving sun be purely male? We know now for certain that in the absence of another factor, any baby will be born female; female is the ‘natural’ sex. This is almost a biological truism – or would be if more biologists were female.

I do not wish to state that the sun itself is female, nor to make the unhelpful assertion that it is a hybrid. I merely point out that it is as female as it is male.

Martin Seymour-Smith

Last updated on November 5, 2016 at 6:02 pm. Word Count: 266