Free Weekly Astrology Lesson: Understanding Sun Signs – Part 1

This is Part 1 of a 2-part post.

The Sun is like a spotlight on a Hollywood film set. It singles you out for attention. It exposes you, at least in terms of the life department (horoscope house) which belongs to your particular Sun Sign. This is where you are at your most publicly impressive or prominently disappointing. It may also accurately describe why you are afraid to stand out; why you shun the idea of shining. In a perfect world, if you work your Sun Sign, you glow in the dark and everyone lines up to watch you.

However – when it’s hard to shine, you can understand why many people do not relate to their Sun Sign at all. Anything from a lack of confidence, a fear of envy from others – or even depression or other illnesses – can prevent you from shining as astrology says you should.

The most popular feature on my website is the daily horoscope based on your Sun Sign. Sun Signs are usually the very first step anyone takes towards astrology. My first steps were taken before the age of nine, as I carefully wrote down the birthdates of myself and family members on a visit to my grandparents’ house in Kent. From that, I figured out everybody’s Sun Sign. Later on, at school, I began reading the forecasts for Leo, my own Sun Sign, in my mother’s copy of The Australian Women’s Weekly, written by Richard Sterling in the Seventies.

I am sure you have your own Sun Sign story to tell. It is usually the gateway to all astrology. It’s time to look at your Sun. Once you take this step, the rest of your horoscope can follow. Sun Sign astrology is the most used and misused aspect of our work. It’s also misunderstood. Ignored at conferences, left out of teaching courses and consequently written badly – or even made up – the vast creature known as Sun Sign astrology, remains the elephant in the room, the popular mainstay of our profession, which will not go away.

Why, then, is the loved/hated Sun Sign column only growing in popularity, as the internet expands its audience? Perhaps, because, if you go back to the truth about Sun Signs and Sun Sign prediction, you find a great truth about the world. The story of the Sun Sign column is the story of how women started out without a vote and eventually became heroines – if they wanted it. After centuries of discrimination, by 1930, it turned out they wanted it very much. It is no coincidence that Sun Signs soared in popularity within 10 years of women getting the vote. They have kept step with feminism ever since, through two female British Prime Ministers.

Birth of the Heroine

The Sun has always been associated with men, heroes and fathers in astrology. The most popular Sun Sign columnist in the world, Susan Miller, is an appropriate person to turn to, when defining the Sun. She writes, at her website Astrology Zone:

“An essentially masculine force, the Sun also wields influence over the significant men in your life, especially those in positions of authority. This may be your father, your current boyfriend or your husband, a guy-friend, or a male boss or client.”

This is in line with the Sun as described by William Lilly in the 17th century, although his spelling would never pass the test on Susan’s website!

Lilly thought that Sun types inspired “A kind of itching desire to Rule and Sway where he comes: Prudent, and of incomparable. Judgment; of great Majesty and Statelinesse, Industrious to acquire Honour and a large Patrimony, yet as willingly departing therewith again; the Solar man usually speaks deliberately, but not many words, and those with great confidence and command of his own affection; full of Thought, Secret, Trusty, speaks deliberately, and notwithstanding his great Heart, yet is he Affable, Tractable, and very humane to all people, one loving Sumptuousnesse and Magnificence, and whatever is honourable; no sordid thoughts can enter his heart.”

How on earth did the Sun become the center of a woman’s day, then? Literally a Woman’s Day, in the case of the Australian and American magazines of the same names. For this, you have to turn to the rise of the heroine in the Thirties, when the unstoppable boom in Sun Sign astrology began.

In the decade before 1930, the stage was being set for women to shine, as they had never shone before. British women gained from the Education Act of 1918 and The Sex Disqualification Act of 1919. In Australia, by 1923, most women in the country had the right to stand for parliament.

In America, the famous Nineteenth Amendment gave women the vote in 1920. These smoking, voting, working flappers who loved jazz were more than ready for a part of their favourite magazine or newspaper which would be all about them by 1930.

Astrology is based on the synchronicity between what astronomers tell us, and what we observe in people’s lives.

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. In the media, full of stars, from celebrities on the front page to famous footballers on the back page, you will always have a space where you are the star of the solar chart – the Sun Sign column.

The rise of feminism in the decade preceding the arrival of Sun Sign astrology allowed women to take on ‘masculine’ roles so nobody should be surprised by the stunning popularity of the Sun as a horoscope signature.

William Lilly was no doubt revolving in his grave, but two things happened when Sun Signs came rushing in. Firstly, women could read a horoscope column, written by a man, for both men and women, as if it applied equally to both sexes. This was subversive stuff in 1930.

Secondly, the brilliant reworking of astrology, once the privilege of Kings and Queens, made it accessible to working people. Naylor’s beautifully simple reduction of the horoscope ultimately made everybody special – everybody the center of attention – everybody the recipient of a stargazer’s advice. Sun Sign columns made women and men equal in a single stroke and made every woman the Queen of her kingdom or the star of her show, if she wanted it. And that might be all of us.

A New World for Heroines

Sun Sign astrology was born last century because of a woman – Princess Margaret, who Sunday Express editor John Gordon realised would make great copy. The great Cheiro’s assistant, Richard Naylor, obliged. He wrote, on 24th August 1930, the first general forecast prediction, wrapped around a horoscope predicting the infant Princess Margaret’s future.

Australian women fell in love with Sun Sign astrology in the Thirties along with the British and Americans. Journalist Jean Hull hosted a radio show called The Personal Service Bureau in 1931 on 2UW. June Marsden was my predecessor at The Australian Women’s Weekly with her column Written in the Stars from 1935.

Greene’s ideas about the Sun are at Astrodienst online, thus: “When we glimpse an inner design or destiny, it gives our lives meaning and gives us something to live for; and we can get insight into that design if we look at the placement of the Sun in the birth chart by house, sign and aspect.”

She continues, “Depression, loss of the will to live, feeling dominated by inner compulsions, too great a dependency on others, identification with the collective resulting in a sense of not being real unless others are there to provide a mirror – all these experiences may result if we do not express the Sun in the horoscope.”

This reminds me of the famous Marianne Williamson quote, below. From an astrologer’s point of view, everything here (light, brilliance, shining) is about the Sun. The Sun Sign.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

Which Kind of Heroine Can You Be?

The concept of the Hero’s Journey was introduced by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The story goes something like this, and you will see it in many films, books and television series:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

I am sure you have heard about elements of the journey. The call to adventure. George Lucas told the world he used it on Star Wars. What follows describes the film set where you can play your part, under the spotlight. Doing so makes you the heroine of your own film. When do you become most aware of the film? On your birthday. That is your Solar Return when the Sun returns to the same sign and degree he occupied when they cut your umbilical cord.

You size up your progress near your birthday. Where are you in life? Not ‘doing’ our Sun Sign house in a way that meets with our own approval results in feeling life or other people are harsh, or we are being harsh on ourselves. The Sun can shine a harsh spotlight.

Sometimes you congratulate yourself and sometimes you can be self-critical. This makes you shine brighter or wince at the scrutiny you are giving yourself or receive from others.

And that is what your Sun Sign is. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s your special attraction, or it should be, if you work it. A point of pride.

The Sun in Your Sign

Sun in Aries

Your film set is yourself. It is not selfish nor narcissistic to be utterly self-aware and to use your title, image and even your appearance to lead the way. Your persona does the work for you. Sometimes you don’t even have to show up, as the ‘advance party’ is your own reputation. Aries is associated with the First House and Mars in astrology. The ram is your animal. We link your sign with pushing, fighting, thrusting, attacking, defending, going headfirst into situations, heading off opponents and rivals, butting heads, kicking heads and being at the head of the action. This is just one part you play but if you want to be a heroine, that’s the role you have to fulfil.

Sun in Taurus

Your film set is a bank, perhaps, or a busy market. It may be the office of a charity or the inner sanctum of Wall Street. We associate Taurus with Venus and the Second House in astrology. The financial or material aspects of a marriage or love affair are where you show what your values are. Who and what are you happy to sell your soul for? Who and what do you absolutely refuse to sell your soul for, not at any price? Communism and Capitalism are associated with Taurus. So is shopping, investing and collecting. You shine on your own Rich List. You dazzle us when you give it away or fundraise millions for others. You glow in the dark when you drop out of shopping culture and live an alternative lifestyle. What’s your preference, Taurus?

Sun in Gemini

You receive rave reviews when you use your way with words, ideas and images. If school has made you shy about using the internet, writing, public speaking or even singing, give yourself time to go back and learn. You star when you are online, most of all. At your best, you gather news, gossip, knowledge and information, then deliver it expertly. You shine when you are the messenger, who nobody can resist reading, watching or hearing. You genuinely connect. You are the pigeon in the last war, the heroine of many a dangerous mission who carried the crucial information that saved lives. You dazzle us when you turn to the world of social media, diaries, letters, postcards, books, magazines, newspapers, radio, television, film, debating, public speaking, codes, computers and the rest, to get your message across.

Sun in Cancer

Your film set is your house or apartment – probably the one you live in now, maybe the one you once loved – or the home you want next. You are the heroine of your own film when the set is the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, the sitting room, the garden – and you fill it with the colours and textures you love. At your best you are the proud owner of a dazzling home. When I see Cancerian readers who are feeling low, because they cannot afford their rent, or have been evicted, I urge them to ‘own’ a part of their neighbourhood, village, city or town instead. Become part of Neighbourhood Watch. Save a threatened heritage building. Volunteer to pick up rubbish in ‘your’ park. Your family tree, with current or past branches, is also where you will have your most impressive, if challenging, adventures. Remember the heroine’s call!

Sun in Leo

You don’t just ‘have’ children you lead them, set an example for them and rule them. This also applies to paid or unpaid work involving younger people. We would not have Peter Rabbit, nor Harry Potter, without the Sun in Leo heroines Potter and Rowling. You shine when you mentor youth with an invisible crown on your head. If you bypass parenthood, you will find another way to leave the dazzling legacy of your personality to younger people. You were made for courtship. If your bedroom isn’t a royal bedchamber, then it’s not the film set you deserve. You can and should be the heroine of your own courtship rituals. Godchildren, grandchildren, nieces or nephews are your dynasty. Children and young adults are your audience, or collaborators.

Sun in Virgo

You cannot separate your body from the rest of you, and in fact your experiences with food, doctors, drugs, drink, fitness, healing or surgery will change your life. The journey you take with your own body is often heroic because of the challenges you overcome, be they in terms of mental or physical illness. Your physical condition and state defines who you are and what you do – at home or in your career. Thus, the film set where you play a leading role under the spotlight is usually the gym, the doctor’s waiting room, the yoga class, the hospital, the health food shop or surgery. You dazzle as a creature of daily routine which gives you the most from your eight equal hours of sleep, work and play. Your other great area of achievement is work, housework and unpaid work, which is where you can rise to tremendous heights. This brings us back to your body again which has to serve you, as meticulously as you serve others – or could.

Sun in Libra

Your self-confidence depends on your relationships with former, current or potential partners. Closure after a break-up defines you just as much as a happy marriage. People admire you when you can stay friends with an ex. Or – just get married and stay married. You shine when you are in a number of duets over the course of your lifetime, and you dazzle when you achieve the difficult task of remaining friends with your former partners. You get rave reviews for your clever alliances and partnerships – like Thatcher with Reagan, or French with Saunders. You are most admired when you balance the see-saw with another or walk the tightrope towards him/her and balance in the middle. You also shine in a feud, contest, conflict or fight. This is true heroism. It inevitably means that you will also have an enemy, but if you conduct yourself heroically enough, even your enemies will have to admit you are a dazzling opponent.

Sun in Scorpio

You get the most respect and high-five admiration from the world, when you get into powerful, close financial relationships. They may involve partners or relatives, but they involve intense property, business or money achievements with tight bonds. These bonds are sexually intimate or deadly serious, and you shine when you make them work. Your film set might be the insurance office, the legal headquarters, the bank, the corporate foyer or the charity accounts department. Your ego loves knowing that you can leave a powerful last will and testament. Your legacy is way more than just money on paper. It is a statement about intimacy, trust and passion which only two lovers, or married partners, could understand. This also applies to others who are close to you. Your last will and testament is a dazzling statement about these powerful alliances. You take ‘til death do us part’ very seriously if you are a truly Scorpio heroine for our times. The politics with family members, lovers and partners using your business or property as the parliament of your heart, makes you well-known.

Sun in Sagittarius

Your outstanding qualities are those of an explorer. You excel when you travel, not just as a tourist, but as a visitor and student of life. You can do this around your own country or the world, and the role of explorer/heroine suits you very well. You also shine brightest when you find a belief system that you can run your life by. It may be religion. It may be astrology. It may be theoretical physics. It may take a long time to discover who/what you have faith in, but if you have the courage to pursue it, you can make a dazzling impact. We associate Sagittarius with Jupiter and the Ninth House in astrology, so the film set where you pick up the most flattering spotlight may involve a library, publisher, university, college, school, publishing house, airport, car hire firm, train station, bus station, church, or other place of worship – like an atheists’ club.

Sun in Capricorn

Capricorn climbs to the top, like the mountain goat. If you avoid doing this, you never really shine or gain the applause you deserve. Even though it can take tremendous patience, it is better for you to try and get to the top – whatever that means for you. Once you figure out the top of your Everest, try to make it. Slow and steady helps you get what you want and your heroic climb to the top is much admired, no matter if you are scaling the dizzy heights of society, the class system or your own corporation. The rock-solid trooper in any successful family, business or charity who makes the system work by patiently working the system, is the most admired Capricorn type. Your respect for that system means you know that obvious social climbing or corporate crawling is disliked by people at all levels, so typically, you steer clear of it, preferring to follow the rules and steadily ascent the heights in a way that others can applaud, not criticize.

Sun in Aquarius

At your very best you are a friend to everyone who does not care about ulterior motives like success, sex, money or social status and respects friendship for its own sake. You can be a dazzling friend to all and a heroine within your social media network or in the community as a whole. You shine in all group situations, like bands, clubs, teams, panels or ensembles. Societies, associations, political parties, charities and more formal networks are where you set up your film set and play your part. The spotlight turns on you and picks up your airy, breezy approach to people and your capacity for playing a special part in all people power endeavors. You gain the most respect, admiration and even envy, when you are part of a group which works on pure people power and achieves great things. You realise that the person who has no identity of her own (like that cynical line from The Life of Brian – ‘You are all individuals!’) is not actually admired by the group much at all, so rather than sell your soul by trying to be popular with the gang, you remain within the network, yet true to your own ideas and principles.

Sun in Pisces

At your best, you are unfathomable, and nobody can truly understand what goes on below the surface. You are the most unusual Sun Sign of all as you shine brightest when we can’t actually detect you, or even remotely begin to fathom where you are, and who you are. This invisible side of you, helps you stand out from the rest. You shine when you are hard to guess or know and frankly, only you have the faintest idea what you are actually up to, when you are undercover or fully submerged. You inhabit your own reality. It is not what most of us would call the ordinary, everyday world. It may involve Christianity or quantum physics. This is the film set where you shine in life, and it is a place where your inner vision rules supreme. You simply do not see or experience ‘reality’ in the same way as other people and that may be for all kinds of reasons. You are well-known for lacking boundaries. Like fish, you are everywhere, all the time, and often all over the place. This can make you open to everything and everybody, which also makes you stand out. Actually, it can be a heroic act to put yourself in other people’s shoes and walk a mile in them. It is true that you excel in matters psychic, psychological, top secret, scientific or creative, yet you also shine brightest when compassionate – when their pain is your pain.

Those Sun Sign Columns

Those Sun Sign columns! Gah! Actually, you can read your future using only your Sun Sign. It shows you the headlines of your life, like a quick grab story on the front page of the New York Times. They were invented for the media, by the media, and the medium they were created for, faithfully reflects their style, nature and content. This rule goes right through astrology. There are many different kinds of astrology and they all mirror their makers.

Let’s get the technical part out of the way first, for all you people who think Sun Sign Columns aren’t real (makes quotation marks with fingers) astrology. Sun Sign columns are just about another technique. It involves as much hard work as any other system, and if it’s not ‘real’ then could someone please wake me up? My deadline for Marie Claire is all too real.

Here is how most media astrologers use the Sun Sign house system. You put the Sun Sign on the cusp of the First House and use equal houses and exact transiting mundane aspects between all the horoscope factors. Let’s say we have a Jupiter-Sun conjunction at 5 Virgo 16 next week. Look! It will fall in a different house (life department) for each of the 12 zodiac signs and show a brilliant opportunity. If you’re a Scorpio, it’s about your group. If you’re a Virgo it’s about your title. The best astrologers will reference those aspects when they write for you. Our industry attracts fakes and frauds (and also, more commonly, flakes) so make sure that what you have in front of you is an astrologer actually citing astrology, in the prediction you read.

Would you believe a weather forecaster who waved her hands around, made sweeping predictions and had no actual map to show you from the Weather Bureau? Well, exactly.

Patric Walker was not frightened of mentioning Saturn oppositions and he began a tradition, still used by Sun Sign astrologers today, of dropping aspects and planets into his copy, along with forecasts.

Sun Sign columns can use vague language and be wide open to interpretation. Some people prefer the prediction to be ambiguous. Others want specific detail and want to know dates.

Today, I predict the future for personal clients using the Sun Sign House horoscope, alongside the Natural House horoscope. One shows your public life. One shows your private life. They work well together. You can try this at home. Solar Fire software can show you both ways of seeing yourself and your destiny if you select the two different house systems and use them together.

Bad Astrology

Bad astrology thinks it’s a science (it’s not) and then bad critics scoff at astrology and call it pseudo-science. There is an even worse kind, which basically consists of invented Sun Sign content, based on the deep desire to get rich quick, rather than any deep commitment to 2000+ years of astrology.

When people heard that Linda Goodman had been paid a record $2.3 million advance for her book Love Signs, out came the star-sign coffee mugs and dubious tea-towels. In came dumbed-down non-astrology for twerps.

Old clichés get copied and churned out, year after year, so that we end up believing that everyone born with the Sun in Libra is peace-loving. Yeah, right. Like that massive hippy Margaret Thatcher, last seen rolling around at Glastonbury with flowers in her hair.

Great Sun Sign Columns

If you scan a number of great Sun Sign columns, the combined effect is rather like having the comfort of a range of views, from a row of Harley Street experts. Second opinions.

What do the stars foretell for August 24th, 1930 when English astrologer R.H. Naylor became the midwife for the Sun Sign horoscope? The horoscope set for 00.00am in London on 24th August 1930 when the printers were pouring the ink for his newspaper, describes the pros and cons of the modern Sun Sign column. The chart talks.

Sun Sign columns have a Sun Sign. It’s Virgo. The sign we associate with hard work, service and duty and daily routine. Columns are daily, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The people who write them have to work hard. There are 12 signs and a typical daily horoscope is 1200 words long. Multiply 1200 words by 365 days and you can see why the business is Virgoan in nature. Duty calls!

People read their morning stars on the way to work, on the bus or train. That is also part of the Sun Sign column’s Sun in Virgo signature. It’s associated with the tea break at work. More Virgo.

There are many Neptune and Salacia complications in the ‘birth’ chart for the Sun Sign column. These two horoscope symbols, King and Queen of the ocean, can leave people feeling all at sea, floundering without a leg to stand on. When you look at the actual practicalities of the Sun Sign column, you can see why.

Cusps!

Many of my Cosmopolitan readers had their Sun Signs wrong if they were born on the cusp (the changeover date for each zodiac sign). I had to ask my agent at William Morris to stipulate a link to the website astro.com in my contract, so people could enter their time, place and date of birth and get their Sun right, once and for all.

It’s an industry-wide issue. A percentage of readers are looking at the wrong zodiac sign and thus feeling ‘all at sea’ about who they really are – as we would expect of Salacia and Neptune.

Here is another issue with the ‘birth’ horoscope we have, for the sun sign horoscope: Sun Sign dates are averaged by magazines and newspapers, because of world time zone changes. Somewhere in between the readership in Auckland and the readership in Los Angeles, the start and end date of your sign will shift. That’s why Leo used to start on July 23rd in the magazines I wrote for, yet this week, we will be posting the Leo annual birthday horoscope on my website on July 22nd, because the Sun moves there earlier this year.

Luckily, these days you can go to many websites and find the exact local time that the Sun enters or leaves a zodiac sign in your city.

Sun Sign astrology has also been plagued by writers who just make it up, as I’ve mentioned before. This is why Patric Walker’s insistence on referencing aspects is important. Sun Signs can be a fishy business in the media, worthy of all that Neptune and Salacia in the chart. (Neptune himself rules Pisces the fishes in astrology).

My esteemed colleague Bernard Fitzwalter (aka Bernard Eccles) remembers being hired by one magazine to replace the tea girl as the official stargazer. Awful but true.

Sun Sign astrologers often use pseudonyms. This also leaves the readers all at sea. I began my career as Emily Leo and wore a bad wig on television which came off halfway through the interview, under my leopard skin hat. Why do writers use false names? It is often because they come from ‘straight’ journalism and cannot have their astrological work mixed up with their regular interviews. I was a music magazine editor and an astrologer simultaneously.

I am sure everybody remembers the world-famous astrologer Athena Starwoman (surprisingly, not her real name) and then there is the interesting case of the Sunday Telegraph astrologer, Madame Mimm in Britain, who turned out to be Victoria Glendinning, the author and Trollope biographer. It’s all very Neptunian. Despite this, there is enough good Virgo stuff in that 24th August 1930 chart for the birth of the Sun Sign column, to make it a reliable guide. Whenever I think of that chart signature, I think of Susan Miller. She is the most successful Sun Sign columnist of the 21st century.

Susan recently got in touch with me, about a photo shoot she had lined up for us in New York. This was in addition to the many thousands of words she writes for her devoted audience and her booming business elsewhere. Susan used the internet to pioneer the long-form horoscope, running for several thousand words. She worked harder than any other Sun Sign astrologer to serve her readers and thus, faithfully carried out the Virgo nature of the Sun Sign column. People are addicted.

Shelley von Strunckel shed some light on the technique of the Sun Sign column, as used by Patric Walker who named her as his heir in The Evening Standard.

Mr. Walker would look for specific aspects during the month or, in daily stars, on the day. “He used solar houses. If there were no specific aspects on a day, he’d refer to the influence of the slow- moving planets in the solar houses of that sign’s chart. In the daily stars, with the exception of the Full and New Moon and eclipses, he ignored lunar aspects – as he said they didn’t last long enough to be recognisable in the readers’ experience.”

Patric Walker was once voted by Harper’s and Queen magazine readers as one of the most influential people in Britain. Here’s what Patric Walker wrote for Scorpio (24th October to 22nd November) in the June 1981 edition of the magazine. If only Scorpio Prince Charles had followed his advice. It was one month before his ill-fated wedding to Lady Diana Spencer. (Oh, for a pre-nup!)

“Both personal finances and joint undertakings will demand the utmost care this month, since the great Sun will be opposed by Neptune in those angles of your solar horoscope. Try to cut down on your expenses and above all take no chances, regardless of the opinions of others. You may now appear to be experiencing many dramatic changes in your personal life…Now you may have to take your problems to someone more capable of handling matters of a legal nature.”

Julia Parker, herself something of a legend in stargazing circles, once told me that Patric Walker had admitted to her he only worked with Sun Sign astrology – natal charts were not his thing. Frankly, though, with that level of accuracy, who needs a natal chart anyway? Mr. Walker wrote his columns by hand, starting at 5.30am every day. His birth chart shows Mercury the Messenger in Virgo. But then, you could have predicted that.

Taking Sun Signs Seriously

Sun Sign columns were once taken so seriously by ministers in Winston Churchill’s War Cabinet that they considered banning them in case they affected morale. We found out when declassified government documents from 7th January 1942 were finally published.

Then, as now, the astrologers were working in the Sunday newspapers. Xavier Petulengro (Gypsy Petulengro) was a Gemini who also appeared on BBC radio. Richard Harold Naylor was at the Sunday Express. Edward Lyndoe was with The People (and unfortunately, like Naylor, denied there would be a war).

In Predictions magazine, Naylor even gave people advice on air raids, based on their Sun Signs. People born in November were advised, they were safer sheltering in the open.

As you can read in a fascinating chapter on astrology in Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe 1940-1945 (Bloomsbury), the Ministry of Home Security (Intelligence Branch) set up an investigation – particularly when it was discovered that people were making decisions about evacuating their children, based on their horoscope columns.

Sun Cycles in your Solar Chart

The cycles of the Sun itself through the twelve houses of the Solar Chart, based on your Sun Sign (not your time, place and date of birth) are a very good example of the nature of media forecasting. The Sun illuminates everything, so the cycles are easily observed in the lives of well- known people, whom we only know through their Sun Sign (the majority of famous names seldom offer up their verified birth time).

The New York satirical magazine Spy used to run a column called Celestial Hindsight Spy’s Horoscope for Skeptics – where the horoscopes of famous people were examined on momentous days of their lives. It was supposed to be a send-up, but it shows how Sun Cycles work.

Leo Princess Anne’s private love letters to Commander Timothy Laurence were published just as astrologer Joyce Jillson in Daily News advised Leo readers “You get a second chance to snare the love of your life.” Bingo. Who said this wasn’t real astrology? Laurence became her second husband.

What Sun Cycles Show

You can see your choices and issues with brilliant clarity, when the Sun travels through your chart. It shows you people, projects, places, organisations and situations in detail. It’s like having a spotlight or microscope turned on one area of yourself and your life.

What is just a normal part of your life, or yourself, will be inspected, examined, discussed and may even be photographed or filmed, so get ready. Sun cycles (also known as solar transits) are useful. They show you where you’re at. How you’re doing. What needs to change – or what to repeat.

In next week’s lesson – Part 2, you can see when (and how) the Sun lights up a particular sign in your chart. It will also bring your attention to a specific department of your life.

Extracted from 2020 Astrology: Your Five-Year Horoscope Guide by Jessica Adams. Available on Amazon.com.

All images courtesy of Unsplash.