02/10/2026
If you want to be a jerk, ask a child:
‘Who do you prefer, your Mum or your Dad?’
Children can feel very embarrassed, especially Libra ones. An A***n could tell straightforwardly: ‘My Mum!’ and realise they may have hurt Daddy’s feelings only afterwards.
All small children prefer their Mum. Mums are the world to them. After nine months within her body, there will still be years living within her energetic envelopes.
Astrologically, Moon is mother and Sun is father. For a small child, the father is the world beyond mother. Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas explain this very well in their seminars of psychological astrology. Father is the one who will contribute, by his presence, to the progressive separation of mother and child, so that the young one develops an independent sense of self and engages with the wider world.
Instead of a fusional mother-child dyad, there will be a triangle, with the oedipal complications we know.
(You go sleep in your own bed now, this place is mine!)
((And there is nothing sexual in a grown-up way to the closeness the child wants. The other way round, the closeness mature sexuality involves has roots in childlike intimacy.))
We are children of Heaven and Earth. Where is the Earth in the horoscope? It’s the Moon.
Mother Earth, Moon mother. Our roots are ruled by the Moon.
God is usually believed to be in Heaven.
Fathers are like the sky. Astrologically and psychologically (ask a child to draw a picture for a psychologist) fathers are symbolised by the Sun.
Putting all this together, we’re not far from landing with an awkwardly patriarchal view: father is God, or at least he is his representative on Earth, as kings were believed to be for their people over the centuries.
Mother… like Earth, is below.
As above, Earth follows.
Is our astrology inseparable from a patriarchal worldview?
Let’s juggle the symbols differently.
When there is only one Being, a One Absolute Spiritual Source, its symbol is the Sun.
It is not the case in all cultures that have ever been. The Sumerians called the Moon ‘Nanna’ and Babylonians ‘Sin’, they saw in it the original God, and it was… male. It was a bull. The Moon crescent was its horns. We don’t have time for this rabbit hole.
When we read astrological charts we read the Sun, at times as meaning the Self, and at times as meaning the father.
According to Jung, the Self is the central archetype of psychic wholeness and the ultimate image of God within the human psyche.
Whether what Jung says is valid only in the context of Western culture or is universal, I don’t know. Western is the culture we are immersed in, along with our astrology.
So there is no way around it, for here are now, the Sun is the One.
When this One and Only One divides into a fundamental duality, it becomes Sun and Moon. Masculine and Feminine. Heaven and Earth. Yin and Yang.
So we have the Sun at two levels. All alone, or in a relationship with the Moon.
Symbols are not logical categories.
Symbols are like fingers. The same finger can point at the infinite sky beyond the horizon, or at a particular mountain on the horizon, or at an electrical post ten feet away, or even show nothing but its own tip.
As a duality, Sun and Moon are opposed like the two sides of the same coin, equal in value, playing opposite roles.
They are One.
We are children of the Sun and the Moon.
Like children, we prefer the Moon. Would you like to go to Heaven or keep being alive this weekend?
This material world is our maternal world. We are very attached to it.
Like children, sometimes we push the Moon away, when we feel safe enough to try and conquer some independence from her. We rebel against the flesh, because we’re so immersed in it!
Sometimes men decide that women should be veiled and crushed. It’s a dark phase for the Moon. They’d better free the Sun within!
Astrology doesn’t imply a sexist worldview.
As above, so below, as below so above, as there is only one thing.
