Things fall apart, the center cannot hold - in search of a stronger sun
Most folks first interact with astrology in the context of their sun signs – “I’m a Capricorn,” “she’s a Virgo,” “they’re probably a Pisces.” Given that your sun sign is probably the first astrology thing you encounter, if the descriptions you find of your sun sign resonate with you, you’ll probably be more favorably inclined toward astrology going forward.
Sometimes, though, your sun sign doesn’t describe you so well.
There are actually a lot of reasons why this could be, including but not limited to:
Your sun is on the cusp of its sign, meaning that the next sign is also relevant to how your sun does its work in your life.
The rest of your chart simply outweighs your sun – maybe your sun is in a Fire sign, but everything else in your chart is in Water signs.
Something else in your chart aspects your sun in a way that affects how you express it – maybe your moon opposes your sun and you’re constantly having to figure out how to do both at once, which can be really challenging.
Your sun is in a place in your chart that you have reasons to keep quiet or under wraps.
You’ve been teased (or worse, abused) for living your sun fully (hi there, Cancer men who grew up in families where dudes weren’t allowed to have feelings).
You’re living someone else’s life - like, you’re a Leo sun in a relationship/family/culture that wants you to keep your light under a bushel because doing otherwise is deemed narcissistic/impolite/unbecoming/inappropriate/etc., so you conform to what the other humans want because that’s the easiest thing, and over time you forget that you have this part of you.
Your birth date isn’t your real birth date (this can happen! Usually, our clue here is that nothing in the chart sounds at all like you).
It’s important to remember that you’re more than just your sun sign, but even so, rejecting or ignoring or hiding the parts of yourself that are your sun sign can make you, well, a little crazy. Planets are archetypes, and human personalities contain multitudes. Your full self needs those multitudes, or they wouldn’t be there.
The sun is our core, our animating spark. We may show up in the world more like our ascendant, for example, but if we lose touch with our core, we’re likely to feel sort of hollow.
Have you heard that line from Yeats – “things fall apart, the centre cannot hold”? (The amazing thing is that he wrote this poem after WWI and, uh, here we are again, still…)
Without a strong – or at least, a conscious – response to our suns, things fall apart, the center cannot hold. We are brittle, and over time, that brittleness wears on us. I can feel it when my Sagittarius sun has gone out: if I lose the thread on my knowledge quest; if I get cynical; if I am starting to give up; if I think that no one gives a shit what I have to say; I feel myself dimming, and it gets hard to move forward. There are ways to address this: maybe I have to lean on my Taurus moon, which trines that Sagittarius sun, to support and reinvigorate it (or…maybe eventually I will get braver and push on my Pluto in Libra, which sextiles my sun, for support (no it’s so hard) (but I have to) (gah why is everything)).
