Reflection Questions
In what ways is your personality in service of your life’s purpose?
Are you someone who gets recognition for what you do and who you are (even if it’s uncomfortable to you)?
Do you feel conflict or ease when being witnessed in the world?
SUN IN THE 2ND HOUSE
The 2nd House represents our possessions, our money, our worth, and our property. If you have the Sun in the 2nd House, income, financial resources, property, self-worth, and work are critical to your self-development. With this placement, you’ll need to find work that allows you to shine, take up space, and come into your potential. Your identity is an asset that helps you to support yourself. One of the greatest challenges most of us face is finding ways to make an income that doesn’t cause greater harm to our world or ourselves. Capitalism flourishes when others and the earth are exploited. Understanding your identity through how you choose to engage, disrupt, or re-invent the exchange of labor and goods may be a central theme in your life. The kind of work you do will depend, in part, on the sign your Sun is in, but no matter the sign, developing yourself through how and where you make a living is critical. This doesn’t mean you do or don’t make a lot of money. It doesn’t mean you do or don’t have an easy time supporting yourself. It only points to the area of life where you must learn to take up space in your own way and in doing so understand who you are and what your potential is.
Reflection Questions
Where in your work life do you feel capable, confident, and purposeful?
Which of your own sign’s qualities do you most want to express in how you make a living?
How is a part of your life’s purpose lived out and expressed via your relationship to your assets, talents, and resources?
SUN IN THE 3RD HOUSE
The 3rd House represents communication, daily rituals, neighborhood, siblings, extended family, and good friends. In motion, we are less stable and more available to the influences of the world. If your Sun is in the 3rd House, you’ll most likely thrive in transit and in transitional spaces. Here, your Sun shines while going about your day. With Sun in the 3rd House, you’ll need to spend your energy communicating, exchanging, and dispersing ideas, and will generally have a lot going on at all times. Relationships with siblings, cousins, extended family, and close friends will play a key role in the development of your life’s purpose. That’s not to say these relationships are easy, but the issues that come up within them can become defining for you. Because this is also the house of ritual, and traditionally known as the Temple of the Goddess, having your Sun in the 3rd House could mean that you have a natural affinity for spiritual ritual, Goddess cultures, mythologies, and religions, or that spirituality is an essential part of your identity.
Reflection Questions
How much of your day is spent in motion, physically or mentally?
Do you feel more alive with a variety of things to do every day?
How much of your day is spent reading, writing, or speaking to others?
How have your relationships to siblings, extended family, or others defined your sense of self?
SUN IN THE 4TH HOUSE
The 4th House is known as the beginning and ending of all things. This is where we find our roots and traditions. It is the house of parents, grandparents, and ancestry.
With your Sun in the 4th House, you’ll have to grapple with an identity that is deeply embedded in your family story—whether that be a positive one or a challenging one. That isn’t to say that you’ll feel a part of your family of origin or that those relationships are easy for you, but there is a strong connection between your personal development and the family system that you come from. You may work with your family, work at home, or work with other families. With Sun in the 4th House, it becomes important for you to seek out and understand your roots and ancestry. It may also be necessary for you to create and build your own foundation and home.
Reflection Questions
In what ways do you, or did you in the past, feel comfort or a sense of identity and rootedness from being a member of your family?
What issues in your family make it hard for you to find your own sense of self?
What have you learned about detaching from your roots enough to establish your own identity? Is it especially hard for you to do so?
SUN IN THE 5TH HOUSE
The 5th House is a place of pleasure, joy, self-expression, creative projects, children, sex, sexuality, erotic energy, and romance. If your Sun is in the 5th House, you need to find ways to shine in these areas. Having your Sun in the place known for having a good time can also lead to spending a significant amount of your energy seeking pleasure. Others may depend on you to lighten the mood, have fun, and be the life of the party. Some of your life energy may end up distracted by romantic endeavors, games, and whatever entertains you, but what looks like distraction to the outside world might just be your way of working.
Reflection Questions
What outlets do you have for your creative energy?
Does a significant amount of your energy go toward making life better for children? Are you a parent or caregiver to a child or children, and, if so, is that one of the more defining roles you have taken on?
What do you learn about yourself through spending time developing creative projects or having fun and enjoying life?
SUN IN THE 6TH HOUSE
The 6th House is the house of health and health issues, work, employees, and the problems that arise when our work environments aren’t fairly set up. Having your Sun in the 6th House does not mean that you will necessarily encounter health issues or that, if you do, it will be a lifelong situation. You may simply be adept at addressing pain and suffering.
If you have the Sun in this house, you’ll need to learn how to find work environments where you can fully shine. You are likely to be highly proficient at what you do and how you do it, so finding the places and people you most want to align with will be key. The Sun is a vital life force, and the 6th House is sometimes a place that makes it a little harder for the light of your Sun to shine. Part of discovering your vitality and life’s purpose may have to do with facing, interrupting, and addressing what is systemically oppressive, especially in regard to labor, human trafficking, the legacy and history of slavery, and economic inequity.
Reflection Questions
What part of your life’s purpose is tied to movements for liberation, justice, and equality?
Do you often find yourself in a supporting role at work? When is this empowering? When is this disempowering? Do you often overwork?
What do you appreciate about your body? What frustrates you most about it? How are you healing your relationship to it?
SUN IN THE 7TH HOUSE
The 7th House is the place of marriage, committed partnerships, and business relationships. To have your Sun here means that some part of your purpose needs to be lived out in a relationship or in regard to partnerships. You may find that no matter how independent you are, being with others is a main path toward the realization of your potential. Usually with the Sun in the 7th House, life is flooded with committed partnerships of all kinds. This can look fun from the outside, but often it is difficult to realize your dreams on your own.
Reflection Questions
What partnerships have been important in the unfolding of your life’s purpose?
What feedback do you often get from others you are in partnership with?
Is partnership difficult for you but something you know you need to realize in this life?
SUN IN THE 8TH HOUSE
The 8th House is the house of death, inheritance, mental anguish, other people’s resources, and sharing our energy, time, talent, and assets with others. Having your Sun in the house that deals with the psychological pain that comes from loss can make you acutely aware of suffering, both your own and that of others. Therapists, trauma specialists, healers, death doulas, bereavement counselors, medi
ums, and those who help others cross the waters of our most difficult emotional states often have something significant in this house.
With the Sun in the 8th House, you might have had very substantial losses in your life, near-death experiences, dealings with mental illness, or you might have survived many life events that brought you to the edge of life’s limits. These events will tend to shape and reveal the nature of your destiny, drive, and purpose.
On a more practical level, with your Sun in the 8th House, you might find that you are adept at working with the assets, resources, and talents of others with a profitable end for all.
Reflection Questions
Do you have a talent for taking someone else’s skill or resource and molding it into something that they couldn’t do on their own?
Do you feel especially close to the suffering, pain, and loss of others?
Is a main part of your life’s purpose to help hold and create spaces for trauma-informed healing practices?
SUN IN THE 9TH HOUSE
The 9th House is known in traditional astrology as the House of God. Since the Sun was seen as God (and the Moon as Goddess, which is why the 3rd House is the place of the Moon’s joy), the 9th House is the house of the Sun’s joy. Having your Sun here gives it a special quality and strength. The 9th House is the house of spirituality, religion, philosophy, higher education, publishing, long-distance travel, and long-term plans.
With your Sun in the 9th House, you might need to find ways to express yourself through exploring the world. Any work that takes you on international adventures or into contact with other cultures and geographies is a natural fit. That said, it’s a mistake to think that the Sun here yearns only for physical exploration. It also seeks to travel far and wide philosophically. You might have the qualities (if not title) of spiritual guide, educator, leader, or publisher.
Reflection Questions
Does traveling reenergize you? Does it help to connect you to your purpose?
Was religion or spirituality a major part of your formative years? What negative experiences have you had in organized religion? What positive experiences have you had in churches, temples, mosques, or other places of worship?
Do people often marvel at your ability to synthesize knowledge? If so, what are you teaching or learning when you feel most aligned with your life’s calling?
SUN IN THE 10TH HOUSE
The 10th House is the place of career, public roles, prominence, and reputation. The Sun in the 10th House must manifest itself out in the world. With your Sun here, you must shed your light in places and spaces where it will be seen. There is nowhere to hide in the 10th House. Here everything is public, and either your personality is used as a vehicle for your profession or your identity is tied to roles that you occupy in the world. You may or may not be comfortable in the spotlight, but with the Sun in the 10th House, you must make peace with it at some point, as you’ll either be thrust into it or feel a sense of unlived potential for refusing it.
Reflection Questions
What public roles do you occupy that help you feel a sense of purpose?
Does public praise seduce you? Do you ever seek it out at a cost to your sense of integrity?
Do you often find yourself in professional roles where your personality is just as important as the work that you are doing?
SUN IN THE 11TH HOUSE
The 11th House is traditionally known as the house of good spirits and is associated with the fortune that comes from connecting with others. The 11th House is the place of friends, groups, associations, allies, community, and those who share the same hopes and dreams as you. With your Sun in this house, you’ll get where you’re going in life through those whom you know. Friends, groups, and social events are very important for you. The more you place yourself in the company of like-minded people, the faster your trajectory and discovery of your life’s purpose. Having the Sun in the 11th House tells you that there are beneficial connections for you to make. The more you seek out common goals with others, the more you’ll notice that those who can help you get there are ready and willing to do so.
Reflection Questions
Do you feel that your life’s purpose is, in part, lived out by your connections to communities, friends, and patrons? How have you “lucked out” by knowing the right people or being in the right place at the right time?
Do you feel energized by being connected to others who share the same visions for the future as you do?
Do you have difficulty in groups but find that you are always placed in them or that they are important to achieving your life’s purpose?
SUN IN THE 12TH HOUSE
The 12th House is the house of sorrows, self-undoing, loss, incarceration, institutionalization, the collective unconscious, hidden life, secrets, behind-the-scenes work, and the deep well of creative energy that is available only when we are engaged in healing our deepest wounds.
Here, your Sun may want you to work with those who are or have been incarcerated or who are struggling with any kind of mental, emotional, spiritual, or physical illness. With the Sun in the 12th House, it’s important to spend time understanding how pain and suffering work. Studying what keeps humanity bound in sorrows will also lead you toward what unlocks our creative potential. The Sun in the 12th House can develop a deep respect for the human condition and how we might ultimately get to our own liberation. There are no quick fixes here, only a deep process of transforming lead into gold in the cauldrons of our soul. This is also a place in the chart that can’t be seen, so with your Sun here, you may need to spend a lot of time in solitude, in secret, or in the darkrooms of creation.
Reflection Questions
Do you tend to shine in dark rooms, studios, creative incubators, or meditative spaces? Do you need time in such environments on your own to recharge and tap into your creative energy?
Has mental illness, loss, incarceration, and the suffering of others been an important part of your work in the world?
Do you tend to have a knack for picking up on what others need, what will be relevant, or what will be popular?
Relationships With Other Planets
Who Is Impacting Your Ability to Shine?
Which Planets Are in Aspect to Your Sun?
In astrology, as in life, everything is influenced by relationships. Aspects are relationships between planets. Some aspects will encourage your Sun to flourish with ease (the sextile and trine—the “gifts”), while others will set up significant obstacles on the path to self-realization and self-acceptance (squares and oppositions—the “challenges”). Sometimes it all depends on which planet is involved (as is the case with conjunctions—the “mergers”).
In many astrological texts, aspects are called “witnessing,” as in one planet bearing witness to another. If someone witnesses us, they can tell others about us—for better and for worse. What might it mean for our Sun to be witnessed by its astrological nemesis? Saturn will scrutinize us, Venus will see our best, Mars will notice our weaknesses, and Neptune will fantasize about who we could be.
Planets conjunct the Sun make themselves known through the personality. They demand to be merged with one’s identity. The Sun, the self, cannot be expressed without the significations of any planets that conjunct the Sun. Conjunctions can be helpful or challenging depending on the nature of the planet. Mars and Saturn will challenge, Venus and Jupiter will help, Mercury is usually neutral, and Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are a mixed bag.
Staying with Dr. Angelou’s chart, we see that her Sun is conjunct both Jupiter, planet of optimism, abundance, and prosperity, and Uranus, planet of innovation, rebellion, disruption, and change.
Further evidence that Dr. Angelou’s chart has an astrological mark of success is found when examining her Sun exalted in the place of its joy and conjunct Jupiter, a planet that has the ability to offer the blessings and protection of exuberance, optimism, wisdom, and generosity. When I see a planet in a chart that has this many advantages, I t
ake note. It was of course up to Dr. Angelou to shape this successful signature into something that would be meaningful for her, as is the same for all of us. However, we can see that from birth, she had direct access to the gifts that she was meant to give forth. Rather than become embittered by life’s circumstances, which would have been completely understandable, Dr. Angelou became an artist, activist, and educator whose work held a mirror up to white supremacy, reflecting back the origin of the problem to itself. Jupiter’s significations of overcoming hardship through faith in one’s ability to be bigger than cruel-hearted, oppressive forces is perhaps best encapsulated in Dr. Angelou’s famous poem, Still I Rise, an ode to her work as both an artist and an activist.
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