Charles Harvey - Sun Sign, Moon Sign - Discover the personality secrets of the 144 sun-moon combinations

This paragraph gives a very brief summary of some of the main issues of the combination, starting with the element combination of the Sun and Moon. The first element given is the Sun’s; the second element that of the Moon. To avoid constant repetition and to save space, we have given further details about each of the 10 element combinations, including some observations about compatibility with other types, in Chapter 3.

This main essay identifies and discusses what we have found to be the main issues for the combination. We have resisted the temptation to break this text up into formal sections. Each combination is usually presented in a somewhat different way as dictated by the combination itself and by the material we have available. We have usually given suggestions about the types of work which are likely to be especially congenial to the combination, though, as we have noted elsewhere, we do not see these combinations as a clear indication to vocation, but much more as indications of the approach and attitudes that the type will bring to what they do. The one area we have separated out is Relationships, as these are so central to what the Sun and Moon combination in the chart is all about.

This is a summary of what seem from our research to be some of the more creative possibilities of the combination. Other factors in your full birth chart will suggest other strengths and creative potential, so you should not be dismayed if your favourite virtue is not mentioned!

Here we pull no punches. This section attempts to identify some of the greatest defects and life problems the combination can produce. We are not saying you are like this (though others may agree!), but these are issues that you would do well to note. As with your virtues, your chart as a whole may suggest more obvious blemishes to your otherwise perfect self!

These may not obviously hit you between the eyes the first time you read them. They are intended to be reflected upon. Sometimes we have given just one image, more often two, and sometimes more when the very different possibilities of a particular combination seem to require it. These images are intended to evoke what we see to be some of the essential issues of the combination in question, and to get you thinking. If an image does not speak to you, put it to the back of your mind. One day when you are wrestling with some problem or theme that repeats itself in your life, the penny could drop.

Since this is a book rather than a video we have usually given these images as ‘word pictures’. But we could equally well have used pictures, cartoons, sculptures, music, landscapes and other symbolic expressions of these ideas. Occasionally, where works of art and music are very well known or especially appropriate, we have used these. Under Sagittarius – Cancer, for example, you will find Jimi Hendrix’s legendary Woodstock version of The Star Spangled Banner. Its mixture of emotional patriotism (Cancer) and raw, fiery, exuberant energy and brilliance (Sagittarius) as he imitates the ‘rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air’ on his guitar, speak volumes about this combination. In a different vein, under Gemini – Libra you will find Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The composer dedicated it ‘to my friends within’. Not only does Elgar’s very concept evoke the synthesis of these signs, but if you listen to the sheer range of musical experience Elgar derives from his one simple theme you will arrive at a deeper, inner, understanding of this combination. Likewise under Scorpio-Sagittarius we have Picasso’s painting Guernica. To view its tortured images conveys to us a moral statement (Sagittarius) about the destruction and iniquities of war (negative Scorpio) which goes to the heart of the preoccupations of this Sun – Moon combination.

This book grew from our study of peoples’ lives. You will find that one of the most fruitful ways of finding out more about the subtleties, dilemmas and creative possibilities of a specific Sun – Moon combination is to study the biographies and autobiographies of famous individuals who have that combination. The list of celebrities that are given at the end of each entry is a selection of some of the better-known contemporary and historical individuals whom we have recorded as being born with that particular Sun – Moon pairing.

We have made every effort to check on the accuracy of the charts we have used for these individuals, but inevitably some errors may have crept in. If you have reason to suppose that any of the people given under a combination are there under false pretences, we would be pleased to hear from you.

While the Sun – Moon combination can give some clues and indications as to career choice, it will be found more useful to consider the famous people listed in terms of the kind of approach they had to their particular work, the ideas and themes which have engaged them, and the general flavour of their lives. So, for example, to understand the acute paradox of the combination of clinical detachment and intense passion of those born with Sun in Aquarius and Moon in Scorpio, one can learn volumes by looking at the output of the writer Alex Comfort. The very titles of Comfort’s best sellers – Sex in Society and The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet’s Guide to Love Making – encapsulate a creative synthesis of these very different approaches to life. His many other books, plays, poetry, essays and novels draw upon similar themes, with the clash between freedom and possessiveness, between intellect and emotions, between personal liberty and social obligations. His work is often expressed in a pungent blend of Aquarian-Scorpio humour as in Come out to Play, his satirical fantasy about a biologist deeply learned in the knowledge of human mating habits.

It would be wrong to conclude from this example that all Aquarius-Scorpios will be writers, or that they will all be preoccupied with understanding their relationship to sex (though many will be!). But what we can conclude from Comfort’s life, and many other cases, it that the creative pivot around which this Sun – Moon combination revolves is the conflict between mind and emotion. By attempting to reconcile the fundamental tension between a need to see the world through a strongly developed rational intellect and the irrational intensity of their emotional life, this type finds their own unique creativity.

If you take some time out to study the lives, accomplishments and aspirations of those people we have listed, you can gradually build up a picture of how other people have used your own particular combination creatively, how they have reconciled conflicting pressures, and indeed where their dilemmas have tripped them up. To illustrate this further, let us take a brief look at the different lives of all the people listed under Sun Scorpio – Moon Pisces.

Scorpio and Pisces are both Water signs. Water is the element ( here) that emphasizes the feelings and emotions and a general sensitivity to, and understanding of, other people’s needs and experience. Hence such types often have a strong attraction towards the caring professions and other occupations that demand emotional sensitivity, such as the theatre and creative writing. Even though all Water signs are theoretically highly compatible, the intense, self-controlled, purposeful and ambitious Scorpio is a very different kettle of crustaceans from the free-flowing, adaptable, often self-sacrificing and addictive sign of the fishes, and this combination of signs can experience as much inner conflict as any other. A consideration of our list reveals the wide variations of expression possible from this one combination, yet the common themes they tend to share.