Sun

Over a year the Sun passes through all twelve signs, about one degree a day, and Lilly 1659 notes that it never goes retrograde. The calculator works out its exact position, which matters for anyone born close to a sign boundary. Lilly sets the exaltation at 19 degrees of Aries and the fall at 19 degrees of Libra, two old terms for a seat of raised standing and the point across from it.

Ptolemy, in Ashmand's 1822 translation, says the Sun produces heat and moderate dryness and classes it with Mercury as of common influence, so that good or ill comes from the planets it joins. Lilly goes a little further and calls it equal to a Fortune when well placed. So the two writers do not grade this body the same way.

Popular astrology by birthday is newer than it looks. Sepharial 1920 still says a person is under the sign rising at birth, while Alan Leo 1899 had already written chapters on each sign dated by the Sun's passage. Modern columns follow Leo's route and speak of the Sun sign as identity and purpose, a weight the older handbooks gave to several points together.