← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 37/235
The luminaries
Listen to this article
What they are
The luminaries — "the lights" — are the Sun and the Moon. Astrologers count them among the planets for convenience, but have always set them apart: they are the two bodies that visibly light the world, one ruling the day and one the night. Neither is a planet in the astronomer's sense, and deVore notes that the Moon's light is only borrowed from the Sun, yet the old distinction has held for two thousand years because of what they do in a chart.
Why they are set apart
- They are the brightest and the most obvious. Every season follows the Sun, and every month follows the Moon. Ptolemy builds his account of the planets' powers on them first: the Sun chiefly heating, the Moon chiefly moistening.
- They never turn retrograde and never make a station. They move only forwards, the Sun steadily at about a degree a day, the Moon fast and variable at roughly twelve to fifteen degrees a day.
- They make eclipses. A New Moon and a Full Moon are meetings and oppositions of the two lights, and an eclipse is one that falls close enough to the lunar nodes to darken one of them.
- They are given wider orbs. Lilly allowed the Sun about 15° and the Moon about 12°, much more than any planet, and most modern astrologers still give the lights a little extra room.
How they are read
In a birth chart the luminaries are usually read as a pair: the Sun as the central purpose, vitality and sense of self; the Moon as the body, the feelings, habits and what a person needs in order to feel safe. The relationship between them — their signs, the aspect between them, the phase of the Moon at birth — is often taken as a first sketch of how someone's will and needs get along.
Traditional astrology adds sect. In a day chart (Sun above the horizon) the Sun is the light of the sect and leads the chart; in a night chart the Moon does. Cardano calls the light of the time the "giver of light and strength". The light of the sect was used for many judgements, from the general standing of the life to the choice of a "giver of life" in length-of-life techniques that modern astrologers mostly leave alone.
Several other tools are built on the lights:
- The Part of Fortune is measured from the Sun to the Moon and projected from the Ascendant.
- Returns of the Sun and Moon to their birth places give the solar return and the lunar return.
- The lunation cycle — the changing angle between the two lights — gives the Moon's phases.
- A planet very close to the Sun is combust or cazimi: the Sun's light either drowns it or crowns it.
Modern and traditional views
Modern Western astrology tends to put the Sun first in every chart (the "star sign" is the Sun sign) and the Moon second. The tradition is more even-handed: which light leads depends on whether the birth was by day or by night. Vedic astrology, for its part, gives the Moon a central place, reading the Moon's sign and nakshatra as closely as the rising sign. None of these is "right"; they weigh the same two lights differently.