Sun Sign, Moon Sign: Discover the personality secrets of the 144 sun-moon combinations. Charles Harvey
constantly reflect the contrasting dark, passionate approach of Scorpio with its fascination with the problem of evil, and the gentle, imaginative, lyrical qualities of Pisces. This contrast is most explicit in the split personality who is both the dedicated Dr Jekyll and the murderous Mr Hyde. People who are strong Water types are very much in touch with their dream life, so it is fascinating to note that the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde came to Stevenson in a nightmare. He spent the next three days in a state of feverish creativity, writing down this 30,000-word story that so captures the essence of the Scorpio – Pisces split between passion and compassion, and between savagery and civilization. This incident is also a classic expression of the creative power of the inner connection of Sun and Moon, which can come about between sleeping and waking.
This same splitting and marrying of tough and tender is present in Stevenson’s kindly, caring, yet utterly villainous Long John Silver in the romantic thriller Treasure Island. For all his wickedness (Scorpio), he still evokes our compassion (Pisces). Likewise we can contrast Stevenson’s wild Scorpionic study in evil of The Master of Ballantrae with his superbly Piscean recollections of childhood of his Child’s Garden of Verse.
William Cullen Bryant
The majestic writings of this poet and lawyer speak volumes of the power of Scorpio combined with the lyric sensitivity of Pisces. His dedicated anti-slavery campaigning is typical of the resolute commitment and compassion of this type.
Alexander Alekhine
Chess is a classic Scorpio – Pisces war game. It involves Pisces strategy and Scorpio plotting, Pisces subterfuge and Scorpio unexpected attack. Alekhine was not only one of the greatest of all chess players, he was passionately addicted to the game and its strategies, just as he also became passionately addicted to alcohol. When his drinking lost him his world title he, like Bela Lugosi, picked himself up from his addiction and made an astonishing comeback from his self-destructive drinking (Pisces) through his sheer determination and applied willpower (Scorpio).
Marie Curie
In the area of science, few life stories appeal to the imagination as much as that of Nobel Prize-winning Marie Curie. Her research against fearful odds into the secrets of radioactivity and its application in radiology, carried out with her husband Pierre, was typically Scorpionic in its intensity and dedication. At the same time her classic Pisces concern for the suffering of others led her, during the first world war, to equip ambulances with X-ray equipment and then personally drive them to the front so that she could help diagnose and care for wounded soldiers. So it was that one of the world’s great scientists also became head of the radiology services for the Red Cross, a superb creative synthesis of these two different impulses.
Summary
From the above you can see how these lives illustrate the range of expression of this combination which, whilst often very different in terms of their occupation and detail, still reflect the underlying principles of these signs. If you want to obtain further pointers to your own inner dynamic, we would encourage you to study the lives of those born with your own combination.
If you come up with additional observations and insights about any of the types, we would be happy to hear from you. All material used will be acknowledged in future editions of this book and/or our further publications.
OTHER ASTROLOGICAL FACTORS
The sign position of your Sun and Moon are of great importance in understanding your central psychology. When it comes to refining your understanding of your Sun and Moon, your Ascendant sign and the position of your Sun and Moon in the 12 ‘houses’ of the chart are also very significant. Interpretation of these is outside the scope of this book. The Ascendant and the houses are determined by the time of birth. Each house focuses on a different area of life and has qualities not unlike the signs. Regardless of your Sun sign, if you were born at sunrise, with Sun in the first house, you will have some of the self-centred qualities of Aries. On the other hand, if you were born in the hour or so after sunset, your Sun will have some of the Virgo qualities of the desire to be of service and to develop special skills.
The other important factors that will modify the basic interpretations given in these pages are the aspects made to the Sun and Moon by the planets. If you have your Sun or Moon in close aspect to Saturn, it adds a Capricorn overtone. Likewise, if one of the lights aspects Jupiter it will add jovial qualities, and so on.
For your further exploration of these and other factors, a short list of recommended astrology books is given on page 567. Of these, Grant Lewi’s Heaven Knows What contains the classic pioneering texts on Sun – Moon combinations, whilst Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas’ The Luminaries is an invaluable study of the deeper psychologies of the Sun and Moon, and is especially recommended for those who want to obtain an in-depth understanding of these life principles.
Chapter Two SUN AND MOON: THE LIGHTS OF OUR LIFE
As different as night and day.
The greater your understanding of what the Sun and Moon represent within you, the more valuable and interesting you will find the Sun – Moon profiles given in this book. This chapter looks in more detail at the significance of each of these ‘lights’ or luminaries, as astrologers call them.
We all have different sides to our personality. These different aspects of ourselves are not always in agreement with one another. The two most central and important parts of our nature are represented astrologically by the Sun and the Moon. We can think of these as rather like our masculine and feminine approaches to life that we learned from our father and mother (or those who acted as our parents). For to an astrologer, regardless of our sex, we all have both male and female dimensions to our nature. The central purpose of this book is to show something of the main issues involved with each of the different types of Sun and Moon zodiacal combinations. Equally, it is to show what can happen when we really become aware of these two sides and begin to work – and live – more wholeheartedly with them.
BUT WHY SUN AND MOON?
When we talk about the Sun we are essentially referring to our conscious, focused, ‘thinking’ level which we use to make decisions and move about purposefully in the world. By contrast, when we talk about the Moon we refer to our spontaneous, natural, receptive, ‘feeling’ level, and the way we seek and give nourishment and comfort to ourselves and to others. So far so good. But what, we may ask, have the Sun and Moon out there got to do with what is going on within us down here?
The ancient wisdom, of which astrology is an important part, had no problem with this question. The ancients saw no real separation between man and the cosmos. Their central dictum was ‘As Above, So Below’. In other words, they saw that all things are the product and reflection of the same Creator, that ‘all things are made in the image of the One’. This idea may at first sound very strange to modern ears, but, as those who have seen the film Jurassic Park will know, this idea is still central to contemporary scientific thought. For we now know that the instructions for making the whole body are given in the DNA of every body cell.
Just as one cell can tell us about the whole body, so likewise the ancients argued that what we see Above, in the heavens, will be reflected down here, Below, on Earth. Or, put another way, what we see in the macrocosm, the larger whole, will be reflected in the microcosm, the smaller whole. Science is increasingly corroborating this premise through discoveries about the ‘inter-connectedness of all life’, which has given rise to the now universally accepted idea that the ecological balance in nature, when disturbed by man’s greedy interferences, threatens our survival.