New Moon in Leo: The heart, the brain, and the Sun

Aug 4th was a New Moon in Leo

(I meant to post earlier, but I’ve been traveling, and then I got sick, so I apologize that this New Moon post is a couple days late!)

Warm, generous Leo is ruled by the Sun, so a New Moon in this sign brings a focus on solar qualities!

The Sun in Medical Astrology

Over the past 2,000 years, the Sun’s rulership over the physical body has undergone a shift. In our earliest known medical texts, the Sun was said to rule the brain. Over time, Mercury gradually took over that job, and the Sun moved solely to focus on the heart.

Here’s a chart showing the gradual shift of rulership of the Brain from the Sun to Mercury over the centuries. I’ve highlighted the word, so you can see visually how it moves. Notice that for several hundred years, the Sun and Mercury co-ruled the brain.

*These are incomplete lists. I’m only focusing on the parts relevant to this article. I also present these in the order they appear in the texts, to show relative priority. For example, Ptolemy lists the Brain before the Heart, whereas Ramsey lists the Heart before the Brain. This indicates that the Sun’s rulership of the brain slips in importance, before disappearing altogether.

** I deduced the rulerships in Sibley from his descriptions of diseases caused by each planet.

Separate… Or Not?

The brain and heart, of course, are separate organs with very distinct roles. The brain rules the nervous system and our cognitive functions. The heart rules the circulatory system. Figuratively, they are often set against each other; for example, “My heart wants to go out partying, but my brain knows it’s bad for me.” There is an entire comic series dedicated to this concept!

So why did the ancients originally put both of these organs under the same rulership? Was it “just because,” with the understanding that there are more body parts than planets, so each planet needs to rule multiple things? Did it represent a poor understanding of anatomy? Or was there something else going on? Something deeper and more intelligent than we generally give our ancestors credit for?

I recently ran across an article that made me remember this interesting astrological connection between the Sun, the heart, and the brain. It’s called “What’s Good for the Heart is Good for the Brain.” According to studies, all the lifestyle patterns that support heart health also support brain health. Cardiovascular health directly correlates to cognitive health. Getting heart disease dramatically increases your chances of cognitive decline, whereas improving your heart health also improves your cognitive functions.

Isn’t that interesting?!

There is a long, wonderful history around the topic of where our ancestors believed the seat of the soul to exist. The brain and the heart are each contenders for the seat of experience and thought. Plato divided the soul into 3 parts, giving the intellectual and rational part of the soul to the brain, the emotional part to the heart, and the “appetitive” (what was later called “vegetative”) part of the soul to the liver. (Nowadays we don’t think about our livers nearly as much as our ancestors did. But that’s a post for another time!). All three parts of the soul worked in harmony and ensured our connection to the divine nature.

But the fact that the Sun was originally believed to rule both the heart and the brain makes sense, from that perspective. The Sun is the light around which all other planets revolve. The heart and the brain are each, respectively, centers of Soul. They are each seats of activity and controllers of behavior, both literally and figuratively.

I love considering how interconnected our bodies, souls, minds, and lives are. And it’s exciting to learn when anything health related has a wide impact— it makes life that much easier! It’s like getting two for the price of one.

Here are the top lifestyle habits proven to help the heart, and thereby also help the brain as well!

1. Exercise regularly (at least 20 minutes of mild exercise per day).

2. Eat a healthy diet.

3. Don’t smoke.

4. Keep blood pressure in a normal range.

5. Keep cholesterol under control.

6. Keep blood sugar levels within a healthy range.

I would add another consideration. This isn’t necessarily proved by science quite in the same way, but it makes sense to extend the logic to the emotional realm as well. Finding ways to keep stress under control is important for your heart. It is just common sense that this would help the brain as well. We all know that when we are stressed out, it affects our whole body, as well as making it difficult to think, remember things, make decisions, and all the other functions of cognitive health.

All of the above are easier said than done, of course. (And they all deserve quite a bit of nuanced consideration…) But staying at the big picture level for now— these are good general goals to work towards! Your heart will thank you! And so will your brain!

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