In The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope, Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas team up to discuss the mythology and psychology of the Moon, the importance of relationships, the role of the father in individual development, how the mother affects the individual, and how we blend the energy of the Sun and Moon as we develop during a lifetime.
Author’s Note:
The word luminary, according to the Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary, means, very simply, a source of light. It also describes “one who illustrates any subject or instructs mankind.” Thus a luminary in the world of literature or the theatre is someone with a great talent—an actor like Laurence Olivier or a writer like Thomas Mann—who through his or her excellence defines the standard toward which we aspire. A luminary is one who sets an example, embodying the best of what might be achieved.
In an earlier and more poetic astrology, the Sun and Moon were called the Luminaries—or, alternatively, the Lights. What are these luminaries, these exemplary “instructors” within us which define in their separate domains the internal standard toward which we aspire as individuals? In the past, astrology has interpreted planetary placements as a kind of immovable given—the way we are made. The Sun and Moon are therefore said to represent essential characteristics which irrevocably define the individual personality. But any astrological factor is also a process, for when the human being is seen through the lens of psychological insight, he or she is not static, but moves through life in an unending process of change and development. An astrological placement describes an arrow which points somewhere, a creative energy which gradually layers flesh onto the bare bones of archetypal patterning, an intelligent movement which, over time, fills in the stark black-and-white outlines of the essential life-myth with the subtle colours of experience and individual choice. The luminaries in the horoscope are truly instructors, reflecting what we could one day become, portraying in symbolic form the best of what might be achieved.
Human beings are born unfinished. Compared to other animal species, we come into the world prematurely, depending for many years on others who can ensure our physical and psychological survival. A baby crocodile, newly emerged from the egg, has teeth which can bite, a fully coordinated body which can run and swim, and a rampant aggressive instinct which allows it to hunt for food and which protects it from other predators. But we, the magnum miraculum of nature, whom Shakespeare described as “mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms”—toothless, weak, uncoordinated and incapable of feeding ourselves—are born potential victims; for unless there is someone out there who can look after us, we will die.
Cast from the Eden of the womb without those basic essentials of our own car, our own flat and our own American Express card, we need a mother or a mother-surrogate upon whom we can depend, and this immediate and absolute physical dependency gives rise to a profound and binding emotional attachment to the primal life-source which is counterbalanced only by our later struggles to separate from her. And because, in the beginning, mother is our whole world, we begin to perceive the world in the light of our earliest experience of her, and learn to mother ourselves according to the example given. If mother is a safe container who can sufficiently meet our basic needs —Winicott’s “good enough mother” — then we become adults who trust life and believe that the world is essentially a kind and supportive place because we have learned by example how to be kind and supportive to ourselves.
But if our needs are denigrated, manipulated or simply denied, then we grow into adults who believe that the world is full of predators of superhuman strength and cunning, and that life itself does not favour our survival, for we do not favour it ourselves. Mother gives us our first concrete model of the Moon’s instructive self-nurturing—our earliest example of what might be achieved. But the Moon, the luminary which teaches us how to care for ourselves according to our own unique needs, is ultimately within us, and can show us—if our early containment was not “good enough”—how to heal the wounds, so that life can be trusted after all.
Contents:
- Mothers and Matriarchy: The Mythology and Psychology of the Moon
- First Love: The Moon as a Significator of Relationship
- First Love: The Moon as a Significator of Relationship
- Sun, Father, and the Emergence of the Ego: The Father’s Role in Individual Development
- The Sun and Moon in the Horoscope: A Discussion Using Example Horoscopes
- The Rhythm of Life: A Discussion of the Lunation Cycle
The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope By Liz Greene, Howard Sasportas pdf
