Luminaries

The Luminaries. The Sun and the Moon are known as the luminaries, the two great lights of the chart. They are not planets in the literal sense, but astrology treats them as the most important bodies of all, because together they form the core of who a person is. The Sun is the conscious self, the will, and the identity a person is growing toward. The Moon is the emotional self, the instincts and needs that operate beneath the surface. One is the light of day and the other the light of night, and a whole personality lives in the balance between them. A person may have a confident, fiery Sun and a quiet, watery Moon, and feel the tension and richness of holding both. In any chart these two are read first. The Sun sign and Moon sign, and the relationship between them, give the quickest sense of a person's character, what they aim for and what they feel. Everything else in the chart fills in the detail around this central pair of lights.