The simple answer to this question is – you are not your Sun sign. The centrality of the Sun sign is a myth. It is alarming that many people make choices in life such as hiring someone, dating someone based on the Sun sign. It is time we get rid of this pernicious astrological thinking.
It was when I was in Grade 7 that I came to learn that My sign to look for in the English newspapers was Taurus. It did seem like the description for that sign matched my personality. And add to that, my close friend in childhood years was a “Scorpio”, the supposed opposite of Taurus. It felt like our dynamics reflected the chemistry they described between these two signs.
Later during my undergraduate years in the States, a few of my closest friends who were much more intuitive than I am were into Sun sign very much and regularly related some of my traits with that of a Taurus- stubborn, good assessment of material worth, straight-forward, dependable, devoted, etc. With this feedback, I certainly came to identify with the sign. Thankfully, at least one of them knew more and introduced me to natal charts. I came to know that my ascendant was Virgo and that my Mars was in Leo, and so on.
When I actually started learning astrology seriously, one of the first things that I realized was that the exclusive centrality of the Sun sign is a big Myth, a joke. First of all, by simple logic, given that 11,550,000 people who are born every month share the same Sun sign (besides others born in other years), it indicates that the Sun sign is not as “specific to you” as you might have thought.
Secondly, few other factors described in the Jyotish treatises that we use at Samyak Astrology Services to describe your personality are other grahas (planets), aspects, a special system called Lajjitādi Avastha, and strengths (shadbala). Hence, a Sun sign doesn’t count much.
Thirdly, in Jyotish, it is grahas that are technically directly related to personality rather than the signs. Signs are space/environment around the ecliptic with certain characteristics. It is the grahas that are sentient with specific personalities. It is grahas that relate to aspects of your personality. A better way to work with your Sun sign would be to contemplate on how the Sun functions as a graha in Libra, for example. Does the Sun (in Libra) deliver his natural qualities of radiance, consistency, and initiative? More on this later.
For several reasons, therefore, the centrality of Sun sign is a myth. Given that it misrepresents and distorts the wisdom of Jyotish (astrology), you might wonder why we give so much emphasis to the Sun sign? Well the popularity of the Sun signs is merely a popular phenomenon that was invented in the Western world as a means to improve readership of newspapers. It was invented by the British Astrologer R.H. Taylor in 1930s after he was asked by the-then editor of the Sunday Express to come up with regular astrology column that appeal to masses. In other words, it was primarily meant for consumption of masses. Astronomers like to condemn astrology by saying “One-twelfth of the world’s population cannot be having the same kind of day.” I accept this very positively.
This kind of centrality of Sun sign is not grounded in astrological principles. I wrote earlier about why your Moon sign is more reflective of you karma than the Sun sign I had written about why the Moon sign is more reflective of your karma and behavior than the Sun sign. But it is important to know that identifying with one particular sign based on one planetary placement is not astrologically accurate.
In the next post, we shall discuss why a specific sign sometimes describes a person very well. But the important question based on our discussion today is: Can you really confine your multi-dimensional personality to one thing?