Conversely, Hellenistic astrologers also noticed that the Sun’s close rays could
hide other planets and keep them from exerting their powers in an obvious way. This
dual nature of the Sun is described in Ariel Guttman and Kenneth Johnson’s Mythic
Astrologyin terms of the Greek myth involving the other solar deity, Apollo. While
Helios personified the physical Sun, driving his chariot across the sky and ordering
the days and the seasons, Apollo represented the Soul of the Sun. After Apollo was
born of Leto and Zeus on Delos, he searched for a place where he could build his
shrine. He came across a site that was guarded by a giant python, on what became
known as Delphi. Apollo slew the serpent and set up his shrine, which became the
oracle of Delphi where messages received by a prophetess known as the Pythoness
were thought to be direct messages from the sun-god himself. Two admonitions writ-
ten on the temple gates read: “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess.” According to
Guttman and Johnson, the myth and the messages depict Apollo and the Sun as the
“reconciler of opposites,” the power of the masculine directive principle to unite with
the more mystical feminine principle lying beneath directed consciousness. These two
polarities are born out in the activities governed by Apollo requiring focused con-
sciousness: mathematics, science, archery; and those requiring a deeper mystical con-
sciousness—prophecy, dreams, oracles. As god of music and healing, Apollo depicts
this ability to create order out of the numinous. Similarly, Shamash is often depicted
as rising between two mountains, which to Guttman and Johnson represent the
boundaries of the world—the polarities of human consciousness.
In Robert Schmidt’s reconstruction of Hellenistic astrology, he distills the
basic nature of the Sun as one involving the principles of selection and preference. In
concrete terms these can be translated into significations of kings, leaders, the father,
the head, the heart, friendship, honors, important people, gold, statues, judgment,
reputation, rank, etc. Modern psychological astrology interprets the position of the
Sun in the natal chart as indicative of one’s ego, self-confidence, will, and intention.
An exaggeration of these functions can lead to exaggerated pride, conceit, arrogance,
and egocentrism. In both conceptualizations, the idea of choice and the elevation of a
particular thing over another is fundamental. Glenn Perry describes the role of the
Sun as the “decider subsystem” of the psyche. “The Sun is responsible for expressing or
suppressing the various functions that the planets symbolize.... The Sun has to regu-
late the expression of everyplanet.” Thus, as in the Apollo myth, the Sun is responsi-
ble for reconciling the extreme expressions of the human psyche, much in the same
way that its central astronomical position regulates and balances the planets within its
gravitational sphere. In a more ancient vernacular, Vettius Valens similarly says: “The
all-seeing Sun, existent in a fire-like manner and as the light of the mind, the organ of
perception of the soul.”
While one may see in Vettius Valen’s allusions to the Sun as soul, modern con-
cepts inherent in transpersonal psychology, Schmidt states that this particular text
“seems to imply that the Sun has this role in the cosmos as a whole, not in the native.”
The Hellenistic form of astrology which Valens practiced was rooted in a Neoplatonic
conceptualization of the universe as a cosmic animal with intelligence and language. In
Plato’s Republic, the highest God was called “the Good” and the Sun was envisioned as
its archetype or “the son of the Good.” Therefore the Good was considered a “trans-
THEASTROLOGYBOOK [633]
Sun