Crossings
Sun–Moon crossing
Where wanting and needing line up. Where a Sun line crosses a Moon line on your map, both planets were on angles at the moment you were born, and the latitude through that point is a Sun–Moon paran.
On this page
What the Sun–Moon crossing means
The Sun and Moon are the two lights of the chart, and astrocartography reads their crossing as a place where what you're aiming at and what keeps you fed and rested stop competing for the same hours. The job you want to be known for and a household that lets you sleep tend to fit in one town here. Most people live with some tug between the two; on a Sun–Moon paran it tends to ease.
Your birth phase decides where these crossings fall, more than for any other pair. Born near a new Moon, the two sets of lines run side by side; near a full Moon, the Moon's lines face the Sun's, with the Moon setting close to where the Sun rises. Either way, a meridian line of one light meets a horizon line of the other at around 60° north or south or further out, where few cities stand. Born near a quarter Moon, with the Moon a quarter of the sky from the Sun, those crossings drop into the tropics. A waxing quarter puts the Sun MC across the Moon rising and the Moon MC across the Sun setting; a waning one swaps the horizons.
The Sun on the MC across the Moon on the horizon is the public version: work that makes your name, done while you feel at home in your own skin if the Moon is rising, or alongside a partner who quickly becomes family if it's setting. The Moon on the MC across the Sun on the horizon is read the other way round, as the public warming to you as a person, which suits anyone whose living depends on customers, a readership or a local following. Both show first in sleep, appetite and how the week runs, so give a Sun–Moon place a month of ordinary days before judging it.
This is the paran to trust least on an approximate birth time. The Moon covers roughly its own width every hour, and in a typical chart that carries the Sun–Moon paran latitude about three quarters of a degree north or south for each hour of doubt, many times what a slower pair moves. And if your natal Sun and Moon are square or opposed, the crossing won't settle that argument. It puts it on the table, where duty and comfort ask for the same evenings.
Where they meet on your map
Your Sun MC and IC lines run from pole to pole, and so do your Moon ones, so those four never meet. Each of them crosses the other planet's rising and setting curve once, which makes up to four crossings of a meridian line with a horizon line, and the rising and setting curves of the two can cross each other as well. Where they fall depends on the moment you were born: every chart has them, though some land in the middle of an ocean or too near a pole to be drawn.
At a crossing both planets were on angles in the same place at the same moment. Move east or west along that latitude and the same two still reach their angles together, only at another time of day, so astrocartography reads the whole latitude as a Sun–Moon paran. Zenith Map draws it as a band 1° (about 110 km) either side, and its weight in a place's score fades with distance from the latitude.
Birth time
A wrong birth time moves every line, and the crossings with them: an hour's error puts each crossing 15° of longitude east or west, more than 1,600 km at the equator. Paran latitudes usually stay put, because they depend on where the two bodies were in the sky rather than on the time of day, but the Moon is the exception. It moves about half a degree an hour against the stars, so an hour's doubt shifts a Moon paran's latitude by around three quarters of a degree, sometimes two or more, which is enough to take it off a city. With the Moon in the pair, both the crossing and the paran need a good birth time. What a doubtful birth time does to a map.
Questions
Is the Sun–Moon crossing good for family life?
It's one of the better pairings for it, because the tradition reads the crossing as a place where your ambitions and your household stop pulling against each other. Meetings with the Moon on the IC, crossing the Sun rising or setting, lean most towards family. Read your natal Moon first, since a Moon under pressure from Saturn or Pluto brings that pressure home too.
Why does my Sun–Moon paran shift when I change my birth time?
Because the Moon is the fastest body in the chart. It moves about half a degree against the stars every hour, and the latitude where it shares the angles with the Sun moves with it, typically by about three quarters of a degree for each hour you change the time. Parans of slower pairs barely shift, so with an uncertain time this one is better read as a broad band.
The free map draws both sets of lines; the paran bands come with Pro.