First look at a South Indian chart
First look at a South Indian chart
In my last essay, I shared how the Sun sign is not the starting point for analyzing the birth chart. The incarnated being you experience yourself as, is indicated by the rising sign. The Sun is the ruler of the soul, and its placement in the chart shows where you express your power. Today, I’d like to demonstrate how this shows up in an actual reading.
Here is a chart of one of my earliest clients. She was a woman in her 50s who grew up with a mild interest in astrology, but never understood why she didn’t resonate with the themes of her Sun sign. As you can see, the Sun is in Cancer, and this client who followed mainstream Western astrology tried to understand her life through that lens. But in Vedic astrology we start the reading from the Ascendant.
All placements are based on the sidereal zodiac.
The Ascendant is in Aquarius. This sign is where Saturn expresses its masculine side, and it does so in a fixed, airy way. So the client is an embodiment of Saturn, and a major lesson Saturn has to teach us is the importance of humility. One of the greatest assets of Aquarians is that they can show the world how to evolve Saturn by committing to experiences where ideas have staying power—higher education, religion, and political causes. Saturn also rules the 12th house from Aquarius, the house of loss. Aquarians often feel most like themselves when they can get lost among the crowd. This client cared deeply about doing something for humanity.
Saturn is in the 2nd house and the sign of Pisces, which shows a commitment to building security, self-esteem, and a value system. Aquarians are most comfortable building their values when they get to detach from emotional drama and merge with something transcendent. Saturn is retrograde in the chart, causing her to often hesitate and doubt how to move forward with her long term plans. And this causes delays not only in building wealth and safety, but also in the pursuit of self-knowledge, being comfortable with solitude and getting clarity in what she can really control.
There’s much more I could have said, but this is just a demonstration. After establishing the themes of the rising sign and its ruler, this is the time during the reading I would move onto other planets. The Moon must be detailed because of its rulership over the psyche. This client also has a three-planet stellium in Gemini that’s screaming to be read. But for the sake of this essay’s topic we’ll talk about the Sun.
For an Aquarius-born, the Sun rules the 7th house. (If you’re new to astrology, the Sun always rules the sign of Leo. So count the number of signs to Leo starting from the ascendant.) The 7th house is our least-integrated quality. It’s even more absurd for an Aquarius than anyone else to start the reading from the Sun sign—but that’s not all! Life has a way of making up for those difficult integrations, by bringing us in contact with the people who display our opposites. The 7th house is also the house of other people, especially marriage partners. The themes of power and dominance that come from the Sun, Aquarians have to learn from their partners. They’re magnets for authoritative, larger-than-life personalities. The client got excited when I told her this. She told me everyone she’d ever shared a romance with was a clone of her dad!
Cancer is the 6th house for Aquarius. It’s the house of hard work enemies, and problems. The client had a difficult marriage that caused her a lot of despair when it ended. So the big great Sun which we’re conditioned to think is so optimistic, was one of the greatest obstacles to the client getting in touch with herself. This is the point I’ve been saying all along—the Sun is not the self you think you are, it’s the planet that burns up that small identity.
The Sun’s burning has a purpose. After burning away the bad husband, the client was ready to express higher themes of Cancer were ready to. She had an excellent relationship with her children. Eventually the children grew up and started lives of their own. Did my client spend too much time doting on them? I can’t say. At the time of the reading, she was much more preoccupied with the themes of Saturn and Aquarius. Saturn was transiting the 12th house, and she was feeling like she had lost her sense of purpose. I validated her desire to work towards a humanitarian goal, and her natal Sun would empower her ability to work towards that.
Regardless of where the Sun is, Aquarius ascendants learn about power from other people owing to the fact that the Sun rules the 7th house. They’re great negotiators and compromisers, but other people can drive them to compete for authority and attention, and this is really opposite their nature. They’ll only grow into themselves by connecting their need to serve to something in the world that will outlast them*, and the identity often fades into the background as a result.
What I’ve described here is a microcosm of how all the signs express themselves. The qualities of your rising sign are based on which planets rule which houses relative to that position, and that’s prior to the actual placements in the chart. The Sun as a house ruler shows where you get your soul power from, and its location in the chart is the outcome you tend to apply that power towards. The filter through which you experience everything, and which forms the basis of your self-identification, is the rising sign. Astrology can help show you how to harmonize that embodied identity with its power source in the soul. Until then, we must be patient in learning to express that power the best way possible.
*This would be epitomized by the ruler of the first being exalted. Saturn is exalted in Libra, which is the 9th house from Aquarius. The 9th house is where we evolve our principles and beliefs, and connect to authoritative institutions like churches and governments.
