What is a weak Sun? How is it defined? What effects does it have? In a nutshell, what does it mean?
Many people who saw the title of my article in Sirius, some months in advance, will have asked themselves these sorts of questions. I know this first hand since a few could not resist the temptation to call me in the hope of obtaining some advance clarification. Naturally, I refused, not only because of my aversion to impromptu conversations, but also because I could already imagine, rather cruelly, the doubts and palpitations that had induced them to ask me: “Perhaps I have a weak Sun, but I can redeem it…. perhaps I can’t get men to love me because I have a weak sun, but with the correct advice I can put everything to rights…”
I could give many more examples, but the outcome would be the same: whoever asks about their Sun does not have a weak Sun. It’s one of those certain truths that help us to trace back from the effect to the cause, pursuing a process of enlightenment that is, perhaps, not practised often enough in the astrological field.
The constant preoccupation with the Self is dictated, without a shadow of a doubt, by a complicated solar positioning: sometimes tormented, with hints of anguish and raving, sometimes in the pink, with hints of aggressive ambition. In no case can one define as weak a Sun that is severely afflicted on one side and lavishly redeemed on another, rather as if negativity and positivity rebalance themselves in a sort of harmonious self-fertilisation. On the contrary, the two-sided birth influences threaten to unleash incurable conflict that will last throughout life. On the other hand, we must not allow ourselves to be blinded by a Sun in an excellent position, sustained by conjunctions or trigons. To clear up any doubts, I think it is a good idea to focus on the meaning of the adjective “strong”. The notion of praise that often is attributed to the word certainly has a Mars-masculine root. If we were to proceed further to the association of ideas, we would probably evoke, according to our cultural extraction, a picture of a warrior, an athlete, a captain of industry, a man or woman of success, since the concept of force is almost always tied to the capacity to win or overcome difficulties, arriving thereby at a position of supremacy.
Inversely, the weak person is someone who loses, who endures, who is incapable of reacting.
I respect the lexical validity of these definitions but I contest the possibility of transferring them without adjustment to the astrological level, ascribing them to positions or to aspects of the Sun, especially if we can manage to formulate an accurate distinction between the various symbolic interpretations of the luminaries, drawing out of a dazzling mixture of events and practical activities the heart of the secret Self. Our way of seeing and judging the lives of others is so simplified that we are almost always content with appearances and we do not hesitate to define as happy a powerful man or a woman whose generous husband showers her with jewels and furs. The distribution of wealth or happiness that destiny or rather the Zodiac bestows upon us is unstable, random and haphazard. We are often envied for things that are of no interest to us and we envy others for things they consider insignificant. To resort to the trite proverb “the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill” would again be to over-simplify and be rather foolish. Jealousy is a recurring phenomenon in inter-personal relationships and it is not by chance that is corresponds symbolically to Gemini, but that doesn’t explain everything. Here, the reasoning becomes complex and partially hypothetical because the consistent help that astrology can offer to psychology has not yet been fully exploited. Let’s first agree that every one of us has in our minds a scale of values corresponding to happiness: values, let’s be honest, that are more or less dictated by convention and fashion, many of them banal and stereotypical: wealth, power, professional success and success in love. Who aspires to achieve such ends, or looks with anguished admiration at those who have achieved them, imposes the feeling of happiness itself onto a series of states that often bring only anguish. In a nutshell, we join in the inappropriate translation of two terms that are often meaningless, but at the same time we take a step forward in the definition of weakness and strength. Who is strong? Someone who has amassed a lot of money and crushed his rivals, or someone who is content and enjoying life? What price must be paid for triumph and, conversely, how much does peace and quiet cost? In the majority of cases, let it be said to put everyone’s mind at rest, the two tendencies balance each other out and the great mass of humanity receives reasonable doses of satisfaction, frustration, dreams and fears. Things become complicated, however, when dreams and fears are out of kilter with the actual way of behaving and above all do not manage to fit into the prevailing reality because the subject acts or thinks under the tremendous weight of an unsatisfied, insatiable and sometimes disturbed Self. Astrological experience tells us that in the birth charts of these people there appear, with notable frequency, trigons or conjunctions between the Sun and Pluto, two aspects that we tend to immediately interpret as representing winning force, individual ambition and success. This hypothesis, theoretically legitimate if we take into consideration the symbolism of the two celestial bodies, is so often negated by experience that we are obliged to ask ourselves the reason. As far as I’m concerned, I have arrived at the following conclusion: an extremely positive relationship between the Sun and Pluto can be excessive, it causes a swelling of the ego that can no longer perceive anything but itself. In a nutshell, this mixture, which on the face of it should lead to the heights of conquering activity, translated into a bizarre sort of active introversion: either the subject withdraws into his own torments, reducing communication with the outside world, or, on the contrary, tries obsessively to make his way in the world but fails because the centrifugal force of his ego prevents him from seeing, even in outline, the essential reality. Usually, subjects of this type, especially women, are so devoted to their own bodies and above all their faces that it becomes a form of mysticism. They visit the hairdresser or the beauty parlour as if they were on a pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostella; they buy dresses in a frenzy and gaze at themselves in the mirror for hours. All of this serves to reinforce the magic, or diabolic, ring, which circles their private world, causing an enormous and futile waste of energy. The courage and confidence from Sun-Pluto, instead of being stimuli, are lost for want of an objective on which to focus since, I repeat, these people are unable to face reality. Instead, with tremendous, frustrating efforts, they try to shape reality around the delirium of their own dreams. It is important here not to be ambiguous: since Pluto almost always ensures the attainment of ambition, there are subjects whose existence can appear triumphal from the outside but, as I have already mentioned, these would-be objective judgements are very far from the truth.

A LADY

Let’s examine this chart, which is a good example. This is a very beautiful woman who is forever running into rich or very rich men, ready to grant her every wish, regardless of expense, who treat her like a princess. Those who know her superficially would assume that she could ask no more of destiny. Those who know her well know that her life is a hell of anguish and terror. The key to understanding her chart was probably a very afflicted Uranus, which denied the Sun the possibility of leading her towards realistic and satisfying activities, and channelled all her energy into the Plutonic cult of the ego. Torn between the two impulses of warm, Sagittarian generosity and an absurd terror of poverty, she rejected every chance of serenity that daily life offered in order to pursue a fairy tale fantasy that one day in the future would turn into reality, without any effort on her part. Evermore enclosed in this vicious circle of introversion, she suffered from claustrophobia, not realising she had become her own jailer, so that the only way out was her tragic end. Recently, a chart came to my attention, which because of professional ethics I cannot show here, that presents extraordinary similarities to the one we are examining: Sun in Sagittarius, Moon quadrature to Mars, and Venus and Saturn on exactly the same degrees of Scorpio and Cancer. But a Sun afflicted in the fourth house helped diminish the egocentric symbolism of the luminaries and instead brought back the male symbolism to the fore. The lady in question in fact had two unsatisfying marriages; she had externalised her problems through those marriages. The question thus arises: can we consider as weak a Sun afflicted beyond recovery? In part, yes, but much depends on the planets that afflict it, a quadrature or an opposition by the usual suspect, Pluto, will again bring problems of egomania, and at times paranoia that is difficult to control; however, the behaviour this brings is quite different from that caused by Sun-Pluto conjunction or trigon: the subject, rather than closing themselves off in an unreal world, continuously confronts the prevailing reality with an aggression that in many cases is perverse. The mirror is no longer the unit of measurement of the ego; they need concrete proof of their own power. The weapons of seduction and violence are used with indifference and often in rapid succession, all towards the same objective, and life runs along the twin tracks of challenge and risk of every type, from throwing money around to making themselves disliked by everyone. Their ambitions are almost always unattainable, or are endlessly modified in order to gain the greatest number of successes possible. Apart from the disastrous case described to me, this incessant, intense activity translates into a feverish anxiety that, in my opinion, is less dangerous than the inflexible and deeply embedded anxiety of those who have the Sun in conjunction with or trigon to Pluto. We must also make a slight distinction between female and male subjects. The latter, with outstanding relations between the Sun and Pluto, live out the cult of the ego in a less narcissistic and more externalised way, substituting the hairdresser and the beauty salon with the world of work, which they consider as a sort of measuring mirror, ready to reflect the prestige of their personal successes, more important that the real benefit of any financial enterprise, with the attendant risks for their business fortunes. One of my acquaintances with the Sun in Aries trigon to Pluto and quadrature to Jupiter, beyond launching himself into business affairs that prove perennially difficulty but that he has “set up in Italy for the first time”, is terrified of looking bad, of being caught by others in undignified situations. If, instead, the Sun is afflicted by Pluto, it has to be said that the reaction of a male subject is worse than that of a female and, perhaps because it strikes at the heart of his virility, he becomes paranoid more readily. I hope I haven’t caused despair among those who have Sun-Pluto aspects in their birth charts because I have been speaking here about extremes, or near extremes, because in everyday reality there are plenty of exceptions. A very dynamic birth chart, with a fine Uranus, often succeeds in directing the subject’s energy towards concrete actions that a swollen ego would wish to interalise, and a very rational birth chart, with a fine Saturn, often bestows such a facility for rising to a powerful position that the swollen ego no longer has the time to object. In my opinion, though they still have a good dose of personal problems, these people can be considered to have strong Suns. And the main reason is that these Suns have good relations, excluding Pluto, with the already cited Uranus and Saturn, or with euphoric Jupiter. Nevertheless, viewed through the prism of the thesis that I propose here, the importance that a strong Sun puts on the ego always remains an insidious influence on behaviour, a secret worm in the soul, perhaps exciting but ready to weigh heavily on the decisive choices in life, allowing vanity to prevail over common senses. In the major television programmes that show us the world’s politicians, errors due to histrionic exhibitionism are beyond number, on the contrary, they seem to multiply, notwithstanding the catastrophic results. We must therefore conclude that an irresistible and uncontrollable force drives these conspicuous personalities to sacrifice their careers on the altar of their own imaginations. Errors of this type would hardly ever be permitted by a weak Sun. It is not a severely afflicted Sun, and therefore a solicitous one, as we have already seen, but one whose fortunes are subject to other factors. Above all, the position in the non-solar signs, like Libra and Aquarius, the latter being rather trapped, in the case of a male subject, by the lucidity of Pluto. Then by the positions of the houses, of which only two offer auspicious dwelling places: the fourth, with its placid horizons of domestic serenity, and above all, the eleventh, with its radical anti-paternalism and anti-machismo. Finally, modest aspects (sextile, semi-sextile) with planets that are not provocative and possibly linked to feminine areas. At the extreme, total isolation should not at all be disdained. The bearers of these Suns certainly behave in an odd way, even if this is not obvious to observers because we’re dealing above all with mental anomalies, a way of thinking that rarely translates into identifiable attitudes. The weak Sun, in fact, actually flees from such posturing. It is inherently anti-exhibitionist. That does not imply any lack of dignity or pride, but it shies away from undignified situations such as public boasting and continuously talking about itself. What it loses in ephemeral appreciation it gains in an interior peace that is probably sustained by the wise preservation of inner moral strength. Astrological experience and reading the daily newspapers show us that an enormous quantity of energy is wasted every day by those who worry ceaselessly about their egos, weighing up their own often inexistent potential and above all asking themselves how other people are judging them. This endless wear and tear generates moral toxins that little by little dim the mind, leading to mistaken decisions and depressive neuroses, or delusions of grandeur and power, always manifestations of neurosis. The price that the weak Son must pay for its advantages is to feel itself cut off from the masses, numerically crushed, from displays of victory, from that rather imbecilic egomania that is ready for anything and therefore praised by popular applause. If this does not produce neurosis, it sometimes produces melancholy. The principal weapon of these fake losers is patience, faith in Time as the infallible settler of accounts. And if the birth chart, while marginalising the Sun, offers the shining support of efficiency and intelligence, the outcome is marvellous. I will close with a comforting example: Giulio Andreotti, who actually holds the record for length of time in office, has a completely isolated Sun, which does not represent the exception to the rule, but the proof of it. Andreotti, in fact, doesn’t show off, he makes his public appearances are marked by a detached and ironic tone, and he is very scathing about his own image. It is my firm opinion that his political immortality depends in great part on the extreme lucidity granted to whoever proceeds according to the logic of the facts, not allowing themselves to be fettered by the concerns of the ego. Certainly, the example is illustrious and difficult to imitate. In addition, as we have seen, the conditions of the Zodiac required to produce a weak Sun are much less prevalent than those which produce egomaniacal Suns. This undoubtedly has anthropological value and corresponds to the over-riding need to survive. But because the individual has more room for manoeuvre than the masses, I would to invite those who are constantly pre-occupied with themselves, in order to reduce their anxieties, to ask themselves every now and again if they don’t feel ridiculous. Perhaps they will feel a little less important but they will, however, prevent impeding neuroses.