Hear ye, hear ye, I thought today I’d share the notes I made to create my double page spread in my grimoire about the occultism of the Sun.

The Sun: Science, Symbolism, and the Stories We Tell About Our Star

At the centre of our solar system burns the source of all life on Earth. The Sun gives us warmth, light, energy, and the changing rhythm of the seasons. Without it, our planet would be a cold and lifeless world drifting through the darkness of space.

But humanity has never viewed the Sun as simply a ball of burning plasma in the sky. For thousands of years, people have looked towards the Sun with wonder, gratitude, and reverence. It has been worshipped as a god, used to mark the passage of time, woven into myths of creation and destruction, and seen as a symbol of power, knowledge, transformation, and enlightenment. From ancient temples aligned with the solstices to modern magical practices, the Sun has remained one of the most powerful symbols in human history.

The Scientific Facts

Before we talk about the folklore, magic, and symbolism of the Sun, it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate just how extraordinary it really is.

At the centre of our solar system burns a vast sphere of superheated plasma. Deep within its core, nuclear fusion reactions release unimaginable amounts of energy, which travel across space as warmth and light. Every sunrise, every growing plant, every changing season, and every living thing on Earth depends on this ancient star.

For thousands of years, people have looked up at the Sun with a mixture of awe, gratitude, and reverence. Long before telescopes and modern astronomy, cultures around the world honoured it as a divine force, a life-giver, and a symbol of power and renewal. Today, scientists study it as the star that makes life on our planet possible.

The more we learn about the Sun, the more remarkable it becomes. Whether viewed through the lens of science or folklore, it remains one of the most powerful forces shaping our world.

The Sun is ancient beyond comprehension. At around 4.5 billion years old, it has burned for longer than complex life has existed on Earth, illuminating our world from roughly 93 million miles away. Scientists classify it as a yellow dwarf star - a vast, glowing sphere of hydrogen and helium whose energy makes life on our planet possible. The study of the Sun and its influence throughout the solar system is known as heliophysics, a term we’ll come back to later when we explore the significance of the word helio.

The Sun is full of contradictions. At its centre lies the core, where temperatures soar to an astonishing 15 million °C. By comparison, the surface of the Sun - known as the photosphere - is a comparatively modest 5,500 °C.

You might assume that temperatures would continue to drop as you move farther away from the Sun, after all, that’s how heat usually works, but the Sun has other ideas. One of the greatest mysteries in solar science lies in its outer atmosphere, the corona. Instead of becoming cooler as it stretches away from the surface, the corona becomes dramatically hotter, reaching temperatures of up to 2 million °C. Scientists are still working to fully understand why this happens. Even our nearest star, the light we see every day, continues to keep some of its secrets.

The Sun - and therefore all of us - is tucked away in the Orion Spur, a small spiral arm of the Milky Way that branches off the larger Sagittarius Arm. This is not information you’re likely to need in your day-to-day life. However, if you’re ever abducted by aliens and need to navigate your way home, it’s probably a good place to start.

Our solar system is absolutely hurtling through the universe, with an average velocity of 450,000 miles per hour, but even at this speed, it takes about 230 million years for the Sun to make one complete trip around the Milky Way. That time span would encompass there would be roughly 8.5 million to 11.5 million human generations.

Here’s a fact that completely changed the way I think about our place in the universe: Earth exists inside the Sun’s atmosphere. Not the fiery surface of the Sun, thankfully, but within an enormous region known as the heliosphere. This vast magnetic bubble is created by the solar wind - a constant stream of charged particles that escapes the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, at supersonic speeds. The heliosphere stretches far beyond the orbit of all the planets, enveloping the entire solar system in the Sun’s influence. Only once you pass beyond this immense boundary do you truly enter interstellar space.

As if that weren’t impressive enough, the Sun’s rotation twists its magnetic field into a giant spiral shape known as the Parker Spiral (see below). Imagine a rotating garden sprinkler spraying water outward: as the sprinkler turns, the streams curve into spirals. The Sun does something remarkably similar, except instead of water, it’s shaping magnetic fields and solar wind across billions of miles of space.

It’s strange to think that even here on Earth, we are not simply orbiting the Sun - we are living within a corner of its vast atmospheric domain.

Around every 11 years, the Sun’s geographic poles change their magnetic polarity – that is, the north and south magnetic poles swap. During this cycle, the Sun’s photosphere, chromosphere, and corona change from quiet and calm to violently active. The most recent switch was in late 2024, with the next one due around 2035 - 2036.

The Carrington Event
The strongest geomagnetic storm on record is the Carrington Event, named for British astronomer Richard Carrington who observed the September 1st 1859 solar flare that triggered the event. Telegraph systems worldwide went haywire - spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set their telegraph paper on fire. Just before dawn the next day, skies all over Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras – the result of energy and particles from the Sun interacting with Earth’s atmosphere. Reportedly, the auroras were so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily at night as in daylight. The auroras, or Northern Lights, were visible as far south as Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii. Oh to be a Victorian Spiritualist witnessing the strongest geomagnetic storm ever recorded.

Ideas about planetary influences on solar cycles have a surprisingly long history! Galileo was among the first to suggest that the movements of planets might be linked in some way to changes in the Sun, and this line of thinking was explored by various researchers through the 19th and early 20th centuries. While these ideas are not part of mainstream solar physics today, they remain part of the historical development of how we’ve tried to understand the Sun’s behaviour. By the mid-20th century, attention had firmly shifted toward observable effects of solar activity. In particular, scientists and engineers working in radio communications began to notice something very concrete: strong solar events could disrupt radio signals on the side of Earth facing the Sun, offering clear evidence of the Sun’s direct influence on our technology and daily life. I think it’s a shame that mainstream science turns it’s nose up to folkore and occult ideas, there is lot to be learnt on the things we know so intrinsically we’ve been telling different versions of the same stories for millennia, even if it’s not ‘observable’.

Despite my research, I can’t find any astrological information about the effects of solar cycles, but I can imagine that this would have an interesting influence on us! Another interesting rabbit hole that I’ve stumbled into in my research is that solar storms have a strange influence on UFOs and ultraterrestrial contact, but that’s a whole other essay there.

Astrology

In astrology, the Sun is often seen as the centre of the self. Just as the physical Sun sustains life in our solar system, the astrological Sun symbolises the core of our identity - our vitality, sense of purpose, and the unique qualities that make us who we are.

It is associated with our conscious mind and the part of ourselves that acts with intention rather than instinct. The Sun reflects our capacity to make decisions, express our creativity, and pursue a meaningful path through life. Many astrologers also view it as representing our mature self: the inner guide that weighs our choices, learns from experience, and helps shape the person we become. Because of this, the Sun is often described as the guiding force within a birth chart. Its zodiac sign reveals how we naturally express ourselves, while the house it occupies highlights where in life those qualities are most likely to flourish. These areas often become places where we seek fulfilment, cultivate confidence, and develop a stronger sense of self.

For many practitioners, understanding the Sun’s placement is one of the first steps towards understanding the wider story that a birth chart has to tell.

Mythology

Long before telescopes, satellites, or even written language, people looked to the Sun to understand the world around them.

It’s journey across the sky marked the passing of the day, while its changing position throughout the year signalled the arrival of the seasons. The warmth of the Sun determined when crops could be planted, when animals would migrate, and whether communities would thrive or struggle through the winter. In many ways, survival depended on understanding its rhythms. Perhaps that’s why so many cultures came to see the Sun as far more than a bright object in the sky. Across continents and throughout history, it became a symbol of life, power, wisdom, justice, and divine order. It was the light that revealed the world, the force that sustained it, and the constant presence that watched over it.

In ancient Egypt, the Sun was personified as Ra, the falcon-headed creator god who was believed to sail across the heavens in his solar barque each day before journeying through the underworld each night.

The ancient Greeks imagined the Sun crossing the sky in a radiant chariot, first driven by the Titan Helios and later closely associated with Apollo, while the Romans honoured the celestial siblings Sol and Luna, the Sun and Moon.

Yet Sun worship was by no means confined to Europe or North Africa. Across the world, cultures developed their own solar deities and traditions. The Aztecs revered Huitzilopochtli, a powerful Sun god associated with war and sacrifice, while ancient civilisations from China to the Inca Empire also placed the Sun at the heart of their spiritual beliefs.

These shared beliefs were often reflected in the landscape itself. Stone circles, pyramids, and great megalithic monuments across the world were carefully aligned with the rising or setting Sun during the summer and winter solstices or the spring and autumn equinoxes. Thousands of years later, many of these sites still mark the changing seasons with astonishing precision.

Although separated by oceans, languages, and thousands of years, these civilisations reached remarkably similar conclusions. They all recognised the same truth: without the Sun, there would be no harvests, no warmth, and no life. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that one of humanity’s oldest acts of worship was simply looking up.

Although we simply call it “the Sun” today, this star has been known by many names throughout history, and traces of those names still appear in the language we use every day. The Latin word for Sun is sol, which gives us the adjective solar and appears in countless scientific and astronomical terms. Meanwhile, the ancient Greek Sun god Helios lends his name to words such as heliosphere - the vast bubble of the Sun’s influence that surrounds our solar system - and helioseismology, the study of vibrations within the Sun itself.

Once you know where these words come from, you’ll begin to notice them everywhere. Ancient mythology continues to echo through modern science, preserving names that have survived for thousands of years.

A fun example of this appears in Dimension 20: Fantasy High, where the Sun god is named Sol and the corn god Helio - a playful nod to the Latin and Greek names that have become so deeply entwined with our understanding of the Sun.

Witchcraft and Archetypal Imagery

Throughout many magical traditions, the Sun is associated with vitality, confidence, illumination, and the life-giving force that sustains all living things. It is the energy of growth, action, and creation - the spark that transforms ideas into reality.

Many modern traditions also associate the Sun with masculine or active energy. This isn’t a reference to gender, but rather to an archetypal principle. Just as the Moon is often linked with reflection, intuition, and receptivity, the Sun represents outward expression, conscious thought, vitality, and purposeful action. Together, these two celestial bodies are often viewed as complementary forces that bring balance to one another.

Because of these associations, the Sun frequently appears in magical workings centred on confidence, success, leadership, creativity, courage, personal growth, and self-discovery. It is often invoked when seeking clarity after a period of uncertainty or when gathering the strength to step fully into one’s own path.

In the tarot, The Sun is one of the most joyful and optimistic cards in the deck. It represents truth revealed, obstacles overcome, and the confidence that comes from seeing a situation clearly. When it appears in a reading, it often suggests success, happiness, renewed energy, or a period where things finally begin to make sense. Like the Sun itself, the card illuminates what was previously hidden, encouraging us to move forward with optimism and authenticity.

The medieval grimoire Picatrix also gives the Sun a place of honour in astrological magic. It recommends petitioning the Sun when seeking favour from rulers, employers, or other people in positions of authority. Solar workings were believed to strengthen one’s reputation, attract recognition, improve public standing, and encourage respect from others. More broadly, they were thought to cultivate the qualities traditionally associated with the Sun itself: dignity, confidence, generosity, and honour.

Phew, lemme tell you I spent an age on this research and I have to really condense it to fit on 2 A5 sheets of paper, and then condense even more for a snappy 1 minute voiceover for social media. I find it so interesting to explore the why of modern beliefs, as it always leads to some fascinating rabbit holes.

I think the grimoire page turned out beautifully and I will list the products below (all drawn and made by me) if you want to make your own astrological grimoire.