Category: Learning Astrology

How to Understand the Planets in Astrology, Part 1

Leave a comment

Time for a new series of posts! This time around, we’re going to be taking a look at the planets in astrology.

Each of the posts in this series is excerpted from my 2019 book, Charted Territory, and reflects my understanding of the planets at that time. The reality (as any student of astrology will be quick to affirm) is that you never stop learning about the planets. So, the posts in this series represent where I stood in 2019, and as part of the series, I’ll be gleefully correcting myself the whole time just to show how these understandings shift and change over time.

The first thing to keep in mind when lifting the hood on the astrological engine is this: planets are the most important part of astrology. Without planets, there is no astrology.

So, what is a planet, anyway?

Yes, they’re the “wandering stars” that accompany our Sun and our fragile planet through our voyage through the cosmos. Symbolically, they’re the entities whose connection to space and time gets baked into our stories. Their principles and purposes craft our plot beats and come into manifestation through the way we live our lives.

Planetary natures, desires, preferences, and power get impressed on the slices of the zodiac that they rule, and their ability to carry out their role is where the meat of this language of symbols lies. Their interactions with one another in time and space correspond with (notice I did not say cause)* the unfolding of events here in our earth-bound layer of existence.

*[In 2021, I have the language to distinguish between layers of causality now, thanks to Integral Theory and my deepening engagement with Vedic philosophy, so… yeah, some salt needed here.]

Without planets, astrology falls apart; there are ways of doing astrology without signs, houses, or even aspects, but there’s no astrologer that I’m aware of today that omits planets from the equation. Planets are the most important part of astrology.

Each planet is more than just a data point in the chart: it’s like a data nexus. A bundle of energies touching different aspects of life. Including the outer, invisible planets, we have ten centers of narrative gravity to keep track of, each with their own personalities and predilections. Each of them carries layers of myth and magic, accrued like sediment over millennia.

Meanwhile, skeptics holler from the sidelines that planets cannot possibly influence human existence—much less have natures, desires, wants, needs, personalities, and so on.

But they do. Too bad.

Planets imbue the signs that they rule with their meaning, not the other way around.** If someone is born in early December, their Sun is in Sagittarius. As a result, there’s a solid chance that they have a taste for adventure and love to accrue insider information wherever they go. That’s not because Sagittarius the sign is essentially about adventure and fun. In this example, Sagittarius receives its significations (the astrology jargon for “meanings”) from its ruling planet, which is Jupiter.

[**I actually believe that each individual sign is its own living causal entity on the highest levels of manifest reality, or to put it in the language of the tradition of Jyotisha I am studying right now, a “jyotir-linga” delineated by the coming-together of the Sun and the Moon as Shiva and Shakti, but… that’s for another series.]

The popular American astrologer Christopher Renstrom uses the evocative turn of phrase “a child of…” to describe the nature of a person with a peculiar tie to a sign, vis-à-vis the Sun. So, a person with a Sagittarius Sun is a “child of Jupiter.” The Sun, which represents conscious purpose and essential desire—that is, what one wants out of life—inherits its expression from Jupiter’s rulership of Sagittarius.

In the traditional astrological literature, each sign was described as being one of the planet’s “homes” or “domiciles.” A planet manages that pocket of celestial real estate and has final say over everything that happens within. Mars’ signs are decorated in leather and rivets with heavy metal blasting from towering speaker racks that shake your very bones. Jupiter’s signs are rich with feasting and frankincense. They fly upward from a banquet hall in soaring arches and towering statuary to draw your attention to what lies beyond the mortal coil. The Sun’s sign is gilt and mirrored from ceiling to floor so that wherever he goes he can see and be seen in his royal splendor.

A Leo is not performative or ego-centric simply because they are a Leo, but because they are a child of the Sun, and the Sun is at home in his palace in Leo (which looks an awful lot like Versailles, built by the Sun King himself—who, ironically, was actually a Virgo.***)

***[Another big difference between my practice in 2019 and my practice as it is today is that I’m now using the sidereal zodiac for natal astrology almost exclusively, which is the subject of a forthcoming essay. That said, Louis XIV, the Sun King, was definitely a sidereal Leo.]

Coming back to our example of the Sun in Sagittarius, the Sun finds himself in the towering halls of Jupiter’s cathedral of wisdom, carried aloft by legend and liturgy and curls of incense smoke wafting through the air. Through the cathedral’s windows, uncharted landscapes unfold before him, and the beauty of new experiences latches on to him. What the Sun wants in this instance is to continue his upward journey, to gain perspective, to behold everything, to escape the confines of the limits with which others have shackled him and soar into a brilliant, transcendent vision of the world not as it is but as it could be. That’s what it means for the Sun to be in Sagittarius.

So, it is with each planet when it visits a sign ruled by another planet. Each planet is a character in an endless drama. They have plans and priorities, and the specific expression of their plans and priorities is determined by the environment in which they find themselves. But what does a planet want, essentially?

The starting point for understanding the character of a planet is the idea of sect.

A planet’s sect is a simple idea. Almost offensively simple. But understanding it well allows one to draw out all the subtle nuances in their birth chart.

Think of any team sport. Now, even though I’m a flagrant homosexual I still know something about athletics. In most games that I’m aware of, there are two opposing teams competing against one another to see who can, well, do sports the best. In astrology, these teams are called the “sects.”

The word “sect” itself comes from the Greek word hairesis. That word gives us the English word “heresy,” but in Greek it simply connotes “the team that you’re on.” In this case, the two teams are the day team (“diurnal sect”) and the night team (“nocturnal sect”). The two team captains are the Sun and the Moon—it should be obvious to which team each captain belongs.

The Sun leads the day sect, and the Moon leads the night sect, of course.

Either sect has a different play style, too. The day team focuses on identity, public image, maturity, and creating cohesive narratives out of specific information. The day team plays through wisdom and strategy refined over years and years of play. Their play style is rational, heady, far-seeing, strategic.

The night team’s focus is everything that is instinctual, subconscious, and nuanced; they play by faith, not by sight, in other words. They move more quickly and don’t get too caught up in strategizing; their play style is intuitive, exciting, and tied to emotional drive as they make their way across the court.

The Sun leads Jupiter and Saturn on the field, while the Moon captains Venus and Mars. Each of the teams has a good cop and a bad cop, or in classical terms, a “benefic” and a “malefic.” Some publishers in the 1980s wouldn’t even let astrologers use those words, by the way. From a marketing standpoint, using such strong language was bad for business. “Bad stuff doesn’t happen—that’s too negative! We want our readers to focus on growth and empowerment,” went the reasoning. (Sweetie, bad stuff happens sometimes.) The day team’s benefic is Jupiter, and its malefic is Saturn; meanwhile, the night team’s benefic is Venus, and its malefic is Mars.

Mercury, however, is a special case. This planet can be either on the day team or the night team, and he (or she) is neither essentially benefic or malefic. Mercury is also gender-fluid in terms of expression. That said, we’ll address this special case when we get to him.

I haven’t mentioned the three outer planets, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto, none of which are visible to the naked eye. As astronomers discovered these planets, astrologers worked to try to figure out what to do with them. One approach was to include them in the line-up of the visible planets but considering that it took significant technological advances and centuries of observation to figure out that they were even there, it doesn’t seem like they should work the same way as the visible planets we can see in the night sky.

In my opinion, the outer planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto function more like referees in the game. They don’t serve either team. Rather, they adjust the rules of engagement according to their peculiar concerns and impact the obstacles that either team must navigate in striving toward their goal.

One of the other important facets of classical astrology is the role of fixed stars. Most folks know at least a handful of them—stars like Polaris, the pole star in the northern hemisphere, or Sirius, the brightest fixed star in the sky, called the “dog star.” Because they’ve got such a rich history of myth and magic but aren’t as crucial to understanding the game at play between the planets, we won’t do a deep dive into them in this [series]. This is just something to keep in a back pocket for later: the fixed stars work more like individual players’ corporate sponsors, the teams’ owners, or the international conglomerate with their name on the arena where the teams play.

Next up: The Sun.

How to Interpret Houses in Astrology — Part 13: The Twelfth House

13 Comments

At long last, we’re to the end of this journey through interpreting the houses in Western astrology.

The twelfth house is a tough one to crack.

It’s one of the four dark houses. It’s cadent. And it’s the joy of Saturn, who delights in isolation, restriction, and loneliness. For many writers in the classical Western tradition of astrology, the twelfth house was the worst of the twelve houses, and for good reason.

But just as every life must have encounters with misfortune, or encounters with forces beyond our control, so every life runs up against feelings of loss, retreat, and surrender. That said, every life also has opportunity to find gifts wreathed in shadow.

The twelfth house in astrology is the house of shadow, of enemy, of self-undoing, of isolation, of sorrow. As the joy of Saturn, the twelfth house is associated with those parts of life that limit us and bind us, those aspects of life that seem always to stand in the way of our best interests—or rather, what we perceive to be in our best interests. From an external perspective, the twelfth house is the house of unseen enemies, people who might work against us without our knowledge to prevent us from succeeding in our endeavors.

Where do the meanings of the twelfth house come from?

The twelfth house derives its meanings from three primary sources: first, it is the joy of Saturn, the Greater Malefic. Second, it’s a cadent house, meaning that planets there are moving away from an effective and powerful location on the ascendant. Third, it’s astronomically a difficult house to observe, and it’s what’s called a “dark house,” meaning that planets in the first house can’t see into it, and so the whole house lies wreathed in shadow.

As the joy of Saturn, the twelfth house inherits the full extent of Saturn’s significations (refer back to my discussion on the 3rd house and planetary joys if you need a refresher on how this works).

So as Saturn rules restrictions, harshness, coldness, limitations, people at the margins of society, boundaries, and the word “no,” so all of those slices of life become the stuff from which the twelfth house derives its meanings. Because the twelfth house is cadent, planets there are ineffective at doing their jobs, which doubles up on the “limitation” idea, too.

We must also consider the visual flavor of the twelfth house: even though planets here are rising above the horizon and are visible, atmospheric distortion prevents the observer from being able to see a planet in its true appearance.

Think of the way the Moon looks when she is full and rising over the eastern horizon at night, just as the Sun sets: huge, swollen, red, not too far off from the color she takes on during an eclipse. And consider too that tree lines and mountain ridges obstruct a clear view of the horizon. From a visual standpoint, the twelfth house is a house of distortion and shadow, even if the rising of a planet at the ascendant promises power as the planet transitions from the underworld to the heavens once again.

People and places attached to these shadowy themes become twelfth house topics, too: grief, prisons, hospitals, psychiatric units, and the concept of mental health in general (we might say “unconscious” because the twelfth house is both figuratively and literally outside the gaze of the conscious observer).

One of the names given to the twelfth house was “the bad daimon.” If you remember what I said about the eleventh house in the last post in this series, think of the opposite of “the good daimon.” This house is the part of the chart that represents all of those factors—whether internal, like the Shadow, or external, like unseen enemies—that seek to do us ill.

Meeting the Shadow

I was recently introduced to Ursula K. LeGuin’s monumental fantasy series, A Wizard of Earthsea. The story follows that of a young, dark-skinned wizard named Ged. He was the OG boy wizard of 20th century fantasy literature. Young, prodigious, curious, naive, bright. But Ged is also proud.

In one of his early lessons, he’s discussing magic with the Master Changer, a wizard who specializes in transforming objects from one appearance to another. What the Master Changer teaches Ged is useful, but it is illusory; only appearances change, not actual substance.

Ged, who is ever bright, ever curious, ever proud, presses his teacher: when are we going to learn some real magic? When are we going to turn rocks into real diamonds? The Master Changer replies, holding a pebble in his hand,

“To change this rock into a jewel, you must change its true name. And to do that, my son, even to so small a scrap of the world, is to change the world… You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow from that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power…It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow…”

Not too long after this exchange, Ged’s talent and his pride lead him, in a moment of unhinged anger, to challenge a rival student, someone he has come to hate, to a display of magical prowess. Ged boasts that he will summon the spirit of a legendary person from centuries past, and in the darkness of night he does. Blinding light sunders the world, as Ged’s classmates look on, terrified.

But to light a candle is to cast a shadow. Out from the brilliant rift between the worlds, Ged’s own Shadow—his hubris, his intoxication with his own excellence, his anger—leaps out, claws bared, and mauls him. Ged barely escapes with his life.

And from that moment, until a climactic confrontation in the final pages of the book, Ged and his Shadow chase one another, each seeking to master the other.

The brightest flames cast the darkest shadows. Those shadows, like Ged’s hubris and pride, most often lie hidden in the twelfth house, where they escape our notice until they have fermented and festered into a darkening cloud that looms over our actions. When a person whose shadow possesses them utterly acts, those actions can tend towards destruction, towards restriction, towards domination.

It’s not a place where we want to spend a lot of time, but one must look at what lies there, lest shadow loom too large.

And even though bright lights cast dark shadows, the deepest shadows in the world still have luminous treasure hidden within, if we can be so brave as to master our shadows by naming them. The treasure here is not riches or pleasure: the boon of the twelfth house is depth of experience and a deepened sense of meaning.

How to interpret the twelfth house in your natal chart

When you begin to interpret the twelfth house in your natal chart, you’re dealing with these kinds of questions:

  • What parts of my life would I rather leave unnoticed?
  • What parts of my life have the greatest potential for developing depth and meaning?
  • Where in my life do I experience distance, isolation, and sorrow?
  • How do I transmute my Shadow into a Gift?

To begin, we’ll look at two planets in particular: first, the planet that rules the twelfth house, and second, any planets placed within the twelfth house. We’ll consider the nature of the planets in question, and we’ll think about how well they’re able to do their job.

Let’s take the twelfth house ruler as our starting point.

Wherever that planet lands by house will describe places in the native’s life where they encounter misfortune and sorrow, but also where they might find depth and meaning in their life’s story. The condition of that planet will determine whether that story is one that a person can tell with ease and grace or one that requires strife and struggle (and therapy).

One important note: the planet that rules the twelfth house becomes what we call a “functional malefic.” This is because the twelfth house’s topics are generally negative, and so that planet has to be the bearer of bad news, even if it’s normally a benefic planet like Jupiter or Venus.

The questions we ask with the twelfth house ruler are, “what kind of shadow do I cast?” and “where does that shadow fall?” The planet ruling the twelfth house answers the first question. The house placement of the twelfth house ruler answers the second.

Now we move on to planets placed in the twelfth house.

A metaphor I frequently use with the twelfth house is this (I can’t remember the source, but I know it’s from somewhere—please tell me if you know!): imagine, if you will, an old Gothic cathedral, with stained glass windows on every wall facing the outside. If you pass by that cathedral during the daytime, the glass looks uninteresting. Sure, there’s some dull color, some shape, but you can’t really tell what’s going on there.

Now, drive by that same cathedral at 11:00PM on Christmas Eve, right as midnight mass is beginning: all the lights in the building are on, filling the windows with splendor and warmth. You can see all of the intricate details in the stained glass now, in full color. The building seems to pulse with life.

Planets—especially the Sun and the Moon—placed in the twelfth house have the ability to illuminate the intricate details that lie hidden in that house with uncanny insight. Planets placed in the twelfth house become very important this way, but because they are cadent, they remain outside of a person’s notice until circumstance (usually tough circumstances at that) brings those planets and their stories to the fore.

A planet placed in the twelfth house will utilize the twelfth house—restriction, isolation, sorrow, distance, margins, contemplation, and hidden enemies—to work out its purposes within the native’s life, and those purposes are, of course, determined by the house that planet rules.

It’s also important to note that any planets placed in your twelfth house were planets that were most likely in the ascendant as your mother’s labor was coming to a climax right before your birth. Because of that, planets placed in the twelfth house often describe perinatal conditions.

One example I’m very familiar with has Saturn in Libra exalted in the twelfth house. The native’s head was too big to get through her mother’s hip bones, and so after 58 hours of labor (!!!) the native had to be delivered by Cesarean section. The pressure from attempted delivery was so great that the native was severely jaundiced for the first two weeks of her life. Saturn, of course, rules both bones and pressure.

One other pattern I’ve noticed in working with clients: the twelfth house connotes distance (because it implies isolation). I’ve seen a number of charts where the fourth ruler or natural ruler of one of the parents in the chart was in the twelfth, and the native came from a household where the parents divorced while they were a child, with one of the parents remaining more distant than the other. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it’s something to consider when thinking about planets placed in the twelfth.

Which planet is your Shadow? What luminous gift does it bear? Where does your Shadow live?

As a means of interpreting these, I’m going to have recourse to the good ol’ seven deadly sins, and their counterparts, the seven cardinal virtues. This is a platform-agnostic way of looking at our shadows and their gifts, even though this is drawn from the Christian tradition (and the Pagan traditions that flow into it). Because each planet can be the ruler of the twelfth house and therefore the ruler of our Shadow, each planet presents a unique opportunity for ruin. But each planet also presents a unique luminous gift, if you, like Ged, can take your Shadow by the hand and name it with your own True Name.

Saturn as twelfth house ruler casts the shadow of acedia (translated as “sloth,” but that’s not quite what it is): fear, depression, self-abasement, and restriction in general, but he can be a powerful ally if he is strong and placed in the twelfth house too. The luminous gift of Saturn is industria: persistence, effort, and ethical action, empowered by the steel Saturn puts in our spines when we come into right relationship with him.

Jupiter as twelfth house ruler casts the shadow of gula (“gluttony”): an insatiable need to have more, to consume, to fill a void that cannot be filled, at the detriment of one’s health and wellness. The luminous gift of Jupiter is temperantia (“temperance”): humanity, equanimity, and balance in consumption and contribution, a bold and generous giver who invites everyone to his table of plenty, regardless of their ability to pay.

Mars as the twelfth house ruler casts the shadow of ira (“wrath): violence, anger, rage without a constructive direction, that picks fights just to have something to do. The luminous gift of Mars is patientia (“patience”): forgiveness, mercy, and steadfast endurance against the storms of life. Mars made luminous is a champion for those who have none to fight for them.

The Sun as the twelfth house ruler casts the shadow of superbia (“pride”): being enamored with own’s excellence and self-aggrandizement. The luminous gift of the Sun is humilitas (“humility”), which is not false modesty but rather an honest and objective understanding of one’s own position and the bravery and reverence for all life-ways that emerge from such a firm footing.

Venus as the twelfth house ruler casts the shadow of luxuria (“lust”): viewing others as objects for the gratification of one’s own desires, to the diminishment of other people. The luminous gift of Venus is castitas (“chastity”): far from being sexless or joyless, a sex-positive “chastity” allows one to view their partners not as objects to be mastered for their own pleasure but as a Subject with freedom, agency, and ability to contribute to a mutually-enriching garden of delight.

Mercury as the twelfth house ruler casts the shadow of invidia (“envy”): constantly searching for the missing piece that will make one finally feel complete and whole, but never finding it, for such a missing piece is but a myth. The luminous gift of Mercury is humanitas (“kindness” or “humanity”): not only does Mercury rule two of the humane signs (and is triplicity ruler of all the air signs), Mercury allows one to experience shared thought and shared feeling that moves one to compassion.

The Moon as the twelfth ruler casts the shadow of avaritia (“greed”): as the Moon gathers things and people together in one place, she seldom releases them, and a shadowy Moon utilizes other people to fill an insatiable need to acquire. But the luminous gift of the Moon is caritas (“charity” or “lovingkindness”), a selfless love that is wholly devoted to the wellbeing of others and manifests in generosity and sacrifice.

And of course, we remember the overall content of the twelve houses, now that our journey is complete, to show us where our Shadow—and its luminous gifts—live in our lives.

  • Twelfth house ruler in the first house: the shadow lives in the body, in our relationship with our appearance and our physical circumstances.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the second house: the Shadow lives in our bank account and our relationship with income and expenditure.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the third house: the Shadow lives in our relationship to our peers, siblings, and day-to-day environment, as well as our relationship to communal gathering spaces.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the fourth house: the Shadow lives in our relationship to our parents, ancestors, home, and the land on which we live.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the fifth house: the Shadow lives in our relationship to creativity, procreation, enjoyment, delight, aesthetics, and feasting.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the sixth house: the Shadow lives in our relationship to labor, sickness, and responsibility to others.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the seventh house: the Shadow lives in our one-to-one relationships with other people, whether romantic, contractual, or inimical.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the eighth house: the Shadow lives in our fears about powerlessness and our need to feel some sense of control over forces that we ultimately cannot control.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the ninth house: the Shadow lives in our relationship with spirituality, learning, and enlightenment.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the tenth house: the Shadow lives in our professional undertakings and our public status.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the eleventh house: the Shadow lives among the company we keep, often preventing us from feeling truly included with those who consider us a friend.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the twelfth house: the Shadow lives right where it is supposed to, and presents its luminous gifts to us readily and handily, so long as we are paying attention to it.

So, I want to know: what kind of shadow does your life cast? Where does it live? And how are you working on manifesting its luminous gifts? I’d love to hear from you!

How to Interpret Houses in Astrology — Part 12: The Eleventh House

1 Comment

We come now to the eleventh house, of boons, honors, communities, and friends.

First, some self-disclosure: of all this houses in the birth chart this is one of the houses that is most important to me, but it’s also one of the most difficult houses for me. This is where my natal Moon is, as well as my natal Saturn, in a very tight conjunction right on the cusp. The ruler of my eleventh house, Jupiter, is in his detriment in Gemini, highly active but at a loss for how to handle his circumstances.

What does all that mean? It means this: friends are vital for me. Not only are they vital for me to feel emotionally at ease and safe, they’re vital for me to feel like I’m able to continue growing and expanding in my self-knowledge. But I don’t make them easily. I don’t find groups of people to call “my people” easily.

When I do find them, I treasure them.

In the modern world, the word “friend” has lost its punchiness from overuse. Jaded bloggers have written more than enough screeds about Facebook’s devaluation of the term, so I won’t add to the noise (on that point, at least).

Friendship in the ancient world (remember astrology’s roots!) was a bigger deal than our modern concept of a pleasant acquaintance. Now, they certainly had “friendly acquantances” along the lines of Facebook-level “friends,” but they placed infinitely more value on true friendship. A true friend was akin to a guardian spirit, one with whom your soul might knit. One who would be an ally through feast and famine. One whom you might come to love.

Sometimes we say to our friends, “I love you,” with all the sincerity of a partner. (The hunky Christian boys at my college were especially guilty of this, throwing out “I love you, bro!” with impunity—twisting my little closeted gay heart into knots all the while!)

Of course, in English we only have one word for “love,” a word that has to do yeoman’s work for all of its different meanings. We say “love” when we mean “appreciate,” we say “love” when we mean “enjoy,” we say “love” when we mean “I like the content you’re putting out on social media because it’s delightful but tbh I don’t know if I’d really want to spend much time with you otherwise.” It’s a word that, like “friend,” overuse dilutes.

But the Greek and Latin world had different words to describe the different flavors of love.

(Can you believe I just made a Flavor Flav reference in 2019?)

When we think “love” as in romantic love, we’re probably thinking of, eros, erotic love such as between lovers. But there was also storgē, the love of a parent for their child, or between siblings, or between relatives. A third love was called philia, such as we see in the word philadelphia, what we render in English as “brotherly love.” The Greek word philon means “friend” in the general sense, too.

But the crown of all love was agapē, the love of people who have no reason to be with one another but for the fact that their souls are knit.

The four loves—erōs, storgē, philia, and agapē—aren’t mutually exclusive, and they blend and shift, creating harmony and discord. But agapē, being the purest form of love, was considered the goal of all relationships. It is the love that unbinds and unchains people from isolation. It levels social distinctions. And the ancients believed that agapē was especially present in the noble friendships of legend.

But why in the love of friends, like Achilles and Patroclus, and not lovers, like Orpheus and Eurydice? It’s hard to say. Regardless, a true friend is a boon beyond measure.

The Roman orator Cicero writes the following on friendship:

“…Friendship offers advantages almost beyond any power to describe. In the first place, how can life be what Ennius calls “the life worth living,” if it does not repose on the mutual goodwill of a friend? What is sweeter than to have someone with whom you may dare discuss anything as if you were communing with yourself? How could your enjoyment in times of prosperity be so great if you did not have someone whose joy in them would be equal to your own?

“Adversity would indeed be hard to bear, without him to whom the burden would be heavier even than to yourself. In short, all other objects of desire are each, for the most part, adapted to a single end — riches, for spending; influence, for honour; public office, for reputation; pleasures, for sensual enjoyment; and health, for freedom from pain and full use of the bodily functions; but friendship embraces innumerable ends; turn where you will it is ever at your side; no barrier shuts it out; it is never untimely and never in the way.

“…I am not now speaking of the ordinary and commonplace friendship — delightful and profitable as it is — but of that pure and faultless kind, such as was that of the few whose friendships are known to fame. For friendship adds a brighter radiance to prosperity and lessens the burden of adversity by dividing and sharing it.” (De amicitia, VI.22-23, trans. Falconer)

When we arrive at the eleventh house in astrology, we’re talking about friends specifically because true friendship was one of the most important boons that a person could gain throughout their life. A life with amicitia, with agapē, was a life truly worth living, regardless of one’s fate or fortune. But where does the idea of “boon” come from?

Where do the meanings of the eleventh house come from?

The eleventh house in astrology gets its meaning from the fact that this is where Jupiter delights to be. Jupiter tends towards warmth, moisture, and uplift; planets in this part of the sky are sailing upward to their heights, to the tenth house, where they will culminate.

Planets in the eleventh house have escaped the visual obscurity of the twelfth house, and if they rise before the sun, they’ve escaped the burning beams and rise bright as morning stars over the horizon. As they rise higher in the night sky, planets in the eleventh house cause us to swell with delight, with expectation, with hope—all naturally Jupiterian interests.

All of Jupiter’s natural significations wind up here: good fortune, good times, affinities, and communities of people that gather around shared interest, rather than shared geography.

And here’s the rule in the ancient world: the more friends you have, the more fortunate you are. Even though life might be falling apart around you, having people with whom you can share the load makes it possible to enjoy what goodness life still has. Moreover, to enjoy success, you need a team. You need groups of people who support your work, on whom you can depend: groups who come together around shared affinity and purpose. You need people who pull for you even when circumstance gets rough.

I’m thinking of the line the Jets sing in chorus near the beginning of West Side Story:

“You’re never alone,
you’re never disconnected!
You’re home with your own—
when company’s expected,
You’re well-protected!”

The eleventh house is also known as the “house of the Good Daimōn.” If you remember Philip Pullman’s book series His Dark Materials, the Daimōn serves as a guardian spirit that is a projection of its human’s soul in physical form.

This is not unlike the way the ancients conceived of the Good Daimon. The philosopher Socrates spoke of it in terms we might call “conscience.” And you might know the sound of the Good Daimon’s voice, too: the still, small voice who speaks to you in quiet moments. It whispers, “hey, maybe there’s a better way to handle this problem” as you raise a sixth Krispy Kreme donut to your lips following a rough breakup.

We can think of the Good Daimon as part of us, a facet of our soul. Remember that this is the house of friendship, too: the truest friends we can have are those people—friends!—who act like Good Daimons to us. These Good Daimons come to our lives through affinity, and often more powerfully through shared experiences of crisis (remember that planets in the eleventh rise out of the twelfth house of suffering).

A true friend feels almost fated, in a way, as though there’s someone pulling the strings of the universe to cause your paths to cross. It might just be the Good Daimon at work.

How to interpret the eleventh house in your natal chart

When you begin to interpret the eleventh house in your natal chart, what you’re dealing with are these questions:

  • What are the types of people you have natural affinity with?
  • What are the situations of people you might find friends among?
  • How important are groups and communities to your overall success?
  • How easy or difficult is it for you to find true friends?

Of course, if you’ve followed the houses series to this point, you know what the next steps are.

Look at the sign where the eleventh house cusp falls, and its nature, and the nature of its ruler, and the placement of its ruler by house. Remember that the ruler of the eleventh exercises its agenda through the topics of the house where it’s placed, and according to the nature of the sign it’s placed in.

Saturn-ruled signs point towards affinity with older people, people who experience some form of marginalization, communities of older or more conservative tendencies. People who are steadfast, loyal, unchanging, principled. It also signifies a tendency toward isolation in general.

Jupiter-ruled signs point towards affinity with religious or spiritual people, lawyers, scholars, teachers; belonging in a community of shared faith or ritual practice also becomes an important theme. People you can dream with. (I have Sagittarius as my 11th sign, and most of my best friends are clergy or religion-adjacent.)

Mars-ruled signs point towards affinity with people who fall into the category of “athlete,” “soldier,” or “surgeon,” other such children of Mars. This isn’t literal, of course. But expect there to be fire and heat when you’re with your people.

Leo on the eleventh house cusp signifies affinity with people in authority, well-known individuals, influencers, brand ambassadors, people with big hair.

Venus-ruled signs point towards affinity with beautiful women, entertainers, hospitalliers, folks who love a good time and who have an eye for beauty. Cultivating social connections around ideas (Libra) and around shared embodied practice—and food too—(Taurus) is also a factor here.

Mercury-ruled signs point toward an affinity with people who are younger than you, as well as with writers, scribes, salespeople, travelers, all those naturally ruled by Mercury.

Cancer on the eleventh house cusp signifies affinity with women (broadly speaking), and ordinary, salt-of-the earth people, the kind of folk we call in Kentucky “good ol’ boys.” This is amplified if the third ruler is involved with the eleventh in some way.

The condition of planets in, and the planet ruling, the eleventh house also impacts its expression. A planet placed in the eleventh house while ruling another house means that planet carries out its agenda in the field of friends, groups, and communities.

For example, say someone’s eleventh house falls in Aquarius. That makes Saturn the ruler of the eleventh house, and with Aquarian Saturn’s principled stand undergirding this person’s experience of community this will be a person for whom solidarity with a group will be extremely important.

If, in this case, Saturn is in his fall in Aries in the first house, this person’s social networks will be burdensome to him, but the kind of burden that gives them a deep sense of who they are and who they are meant to be. Since he’s the eleventh ruler, Saturn is still representative of boons, even though he won’t be able to bring them about as effectively in this placement, and so a person’s experience of good friends might run a little dim.

Meanwhile if Saturn instead is in Libra, in his exaltation, in the seventh house, this signifies boons coming from partnership, and perhaps a partner who is like a true friend to the individual, and likely older.

Another example: say someone’s eleventh house falls in Leo. This person will have a natural affinity for people who are in positions of authority, and furthermore, their solar purpose will be tied to matters of friendship (for the Sun always represents vitality and the hidden core of a person’s desires). Since this person would have Libra rising most likely, imagine their Sun is in Scorpio in the second house: this person’s friends are a source of firm support to him, perhaps without saying very much, and able to keep the strictest confidences (Scorpio being mute and secret) as well as providing financial support to him.

If, however, the Sun were instead in Aquarius in the fifth house, boons come to the native through sensory pleasure and aesthetics with people of status who aren’t in “socially acceptable” positions. This might be, perhaps, someone who has many friends who are drag queens (maybe Venus is involved with this Sun?), or someone who has deep affinity with a group of people who enjoy marginalized activities involving old topics as fun, like (and I’m being florid here) LARPing in the local park.

So, y’all—who are your people? Who are your friends? Who are the people you choose to keep company with? Who are your Good Daimons?

Photo by Phil Coffman via Unsplash

How to Interpret Houses in Astrology — Part 11: The Tenth House

Leave a comment

We come at last to the other house I specialize in: the tenth.

The question of, “what do I want to do when I grow up?” continues to haunt me even now in my early thirties. What will my impact on the world be? What work is my dharma, for lack of a better word?

We spend tremendous trying to discern the answer to this question. The scripts that previous generations hand down to us for what “meaningful work” or a “successful career” look like are as vague and varied as layers of clouds channeling the light of a sunken sun after it dips below the horizon. There’s no clear answer.

The conversation in my world, especially during my adolescence, often framed this question in the swirly language of vocation: “what is God calling you to do?” It was, of course, an assumption that each individual human had a stunningly unique calling on their lives. In the evangelical landscape, there was certainly a hierarchy of callings: missionaries were A-rank, followed closely by clergy, then, you know, bible-y people. Chapel speakers and visiting missionaries told us, in no uncertain terms, that unless we considered missionary service, we hadn’t really engaged with the question of call.

Meanwhile, communal expectations placed a tremendous psychic weight on getting the answer to this question: it had to be right, or God would make your life miserable until you did what He wanted you to do (and it was always the male version of God who behaved like this).

Many a night I prayed with burbling ululations, demanding God show me precisely what my path was to be, and to confirm it, with some sort of sign. I watched with dank envy as my peers, stout and stalwart, signed up to be missionaries, or officer candidates in the military, or teachers of music, or accountants, or seminarians—each assured of the work that lay ahead of them, each assured that their path was right.

Meanwhile, I fumbled and floundered my way into my vocation, wrangling and jangling for a decade, only to discover that Augustine of Hippo had already figured it out:

āma deum et fāc quod vīs. 

“Love God and do what you want.”

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, a writer and Episcopal priest, relates a similar story of the time God finally offered her an answer:

“…I no longer remember which night it was that God finally answered my prayer. I do not think it was right at the beginning, when I was still saying my prayers in words. I think it came later, when I had graduated to inchoate sounds. Up on that fire escape, I learned to pray the way a wolf howls. I learned to pray the way that Ella Fitzgerald sang scat.
“Then one night when my whole heart was open to hearing from God what I was supposed to do with my life, God said, ‘Anything that pleases you.’
‘What?’ I said, resorting to words again. ‘What kind of an answer is that?’
‘Do anything that pleases you,’ the voice in my head said again, ‘and belong to me.’
…I was so relieved that I sledded down the stairs that night. Whatever I decided to do for a living, it was not what I did but how I did it that mattered.” (An Altar in the World, 110).

That’s the great joke of vocation. Once all the layers of societal pressure are removed from it, it lays bare, like a pearl in an oyster, covered in the soft animal of our anxieties and locked tight in the hard shell of expectations: none of us has a vocation to do anything beyond being fully ourselves, precisely as we were meant to be.

(Please substitute “love God” here for whichever practice cultivates goodness and generosity, if God-talk is still troublesome for you.)

This is the top note that I attempt to hit in all of my vocational consultations with my clientele, who come to me from all levels of education and experience. They’re often facing the question not so much of “what should I do?” but rather “what do I want?” Indeed, dear Reader, what do you want?

After hundreds of vocational consultations I’ve come to believe that there are two crucial conversations to have when we’re learning to interpret the tenth house. The first is the difference between vocation and profession. That’s an easy enough distinction to frame: what you do and what you get paid for are two circles in a Venn diagram that may, or may not, overlap to varying degrees. If the same planets are implicated in both the affairs of the 2nd and of the 10th, chances are that vocation and profession overlap a great deal.

The second, and more important, conversation is the question of praxis: what we do.

The Tenth House as Praxis

In Greek, the word that describes the tenth house in astrology is “praxis,” from which we get the English word “practice” (or the name of the Praxis examinations for new teachers in the United States). In Greco-Roman antiquity, historians often titled their biographical monographs some sort of variation of “Acts:” for instance, “The Acts of Caesar,” “The Acts of Domitian,” or “The Acts of the Apostles,” which is the title of one of the books of the New Testament. The Greek word translated as “acts” in these titles is also the Greek word “praxis.”

If we consider the nature of the “acts” as a literary form, we can think about praxis, and thereby the tenth house in astrology, like this:

The tenth house describes the stories that are told about you.

Classical authors are in uncommon agreement about the impact of the midheaven. Firmicus Maternus, a Roman astrologer from the 4th century CE, argues that the midheaven affects all our actions and dealing with others, saying, “In this house, we find life and vital spirit, all our actions, country, home, all our dealings with others, professional careers, and whatever our choice of career brings us” (Matheseos Libri VIII II.xix, trans. Bram, 50-51). All these matters would end up in any standard biography.

The praxis story is necessarily a public one, because of the nature of the tenth house itself. The midheaven degree, which is the cusp of the tenth house in quadrant house systems, is the most elevated part of the chart. Planets here are at their highest point in their diurnal journey—which is especially obvious if you see these planets at nighttime, for they’re easy to spot.

Because the tenth house is an angular house, it is effective, meaning that planets placed here have ample opportunity to carry out actions relative to their nature and to the topics they rule by house. Planets in the tenth are bright, loud, and visible (barring interference from the Sun), but that doesn’t always mean that they’re operating in the most constructive manner. As with everything, assess the condition of the planet, and judge accordingly.

If you’re using whole sign houses, it’s important to note that the tenth whole sign house is not always in alignment with the midheaven degree. One way to approach this topic is to look both to the nature of the planet that rules the midheaven as well as the planet that rules the tenth sign to derive more information about the nature of an individual’s praxis.

(Or you could, you know, switch to quadrant houses.)

Before we get too far into the weeds, I should note that the tenth house is not just about career and vocation. Classical writers also looked to the tenth house to discern matters relative to judgment and to authority, for instance one’s relationship to the king or to local governors. In horary, an afflicted tenth house is a non-starter for positive outcomes. Again, the tenth house answers the question, “what stories are told about this situation?”

”But what should I do with my life?”

I’ve seen people in three different phases of the “what do I do with my life?” conundrum.

The first phase is the person who simply has no idea what they want to do and no idea what the chart suggests they’d be good at or naturally gravitate toward. Most of my clients in this situation are pre-Saturn return (younger than 29), sometimes even pre-second Jupiter return (younger than 24). For these age groups, I’ve found it important to explore the vocation/profession distinction and to strategize with them about how to live out their tenth house story in effective ways—especially if there are remediatory interventions that might be helpful.

For example, a young person with Venus ruling the MC in Capricorn conjoined the 5th house cusp, applying to the square of Mars in Aries with reception? To me, that looks like someone who might find success as a musician in a military performing ensemble.

The second phase is the person who is already living into some sort of unconscious manifestation of the placements relative to the tenth house, who perhaps isn’t working in a setting that is giving full voice to all the stories that those planets want to tell, or who, by circumstance is in kind of a crummy work situation.

For example, the jaded pharmacist with a Mars/Venus conjunction in Capricorn in the sixth might be doing great as a shill for big pharma, but if their ascendant ruler Moon isn’t being nourished by having the opportunity to exalt in nurturing communities from where she transits the beginning of Taurus in the 10th quadrant house, there’s something amiss. This is where we then look to the whole picture—Sun, Moon, Ascendant, Fortuna, Syzygy, MC, & their rulers to assess what is going unmet.

The third phase is the person who understands intrinsically what it is they want to do but need some sort of external validation through an interpretation of the chart that enables them to see that, yes, they are in fact allowed to do that, and it will go well, and yes, the timing is right.

That one person with Jupiter ruling the MC from his detriment in Gemini conjoined the IC and configured to an applying sextile of the 9th ruler Mars in Aries? And it’s a Jupiter profection year from the sect light, and they’re coming up on a Mercury profection from the ascendant? Time for them to do some writing on spirituality and push some buttons.

Again, my advice is always, “love God and do what you want.” Each of these three phases addresses the question of “what do I want?” in a different way, requiring different answers.

The Significator of Art or Craft

One additional consideration here, for the overachievers in the audience: Lilly judges a person’s profession based not only on the nature of the midheaven and its ruler, but also in accordance with a planet known as the significator of magistery or art, saying,

“You are to consider Mars, Venus, and Mercury; Mercury shewes the Wisdome and parts of the mind; Mars the Strength of body to endure; Venus the Delight: If then any of these is posited in places of Heaven fit to designe Magistery, that is, in the 10th, 1st, or 7th, in their owne Dignities, no Combust, or under the Sun beames, that Planet so posited, or those Planets, shall have signification of the Art, Profession, or Magistery the Native is inclinable unto.” (Christian Astrology, 625-626),

Lilly rattles off another list of consideranda, and continues,

“If none of these considerations will hold, take him of the three Planets who according to the first mover anteceds the Sun [viz., which planet of Mars, Mercury or Venus rises before the Sun], and give unto him dominion of the Profession…”

He concludes,

“I have ever gathered much knowledge concerning the Trade of any that came unto me, from the Signe of the 10th, from the Signe and house wherein the Lord of the 10th was placed.”

So, if we’re feeling frisky in our own interpretation of our chart, we can use the significator of art to flesh out additional information for talents that might be especially pertinent to our praxis story. (For example, my angular Venus fits the bill here, which we would expect to signify musicianship—and so it is, even though that’s not my main vocation.)

One final note

The modality of the sign of the midheaven, and the sign where its ruler is placed, often indicates how many roles a person will undertake in their life. Cardinal signs suggest that a person has an entrepreneurial approach to the work and may be the first in a company or in an environment to undertake something. Fixed signs imply stability, doing one thing for a long time, and depending on other indicators, mastering a craft. Mutable signs (or double-bodied signs) imply having several different occupations, or filling several different roles. Flexibility is paramount (and they’re the least likely to work 40 years in the same company and then retire—it’s a miracle if they stay in the same place for four years).

How to interpret the tenth house in your natal chart

When we begin to interpret a person’s praxis story, we’re looking at the following questions:

  • What are the essential traits of the occupations to which this person is naturally inclined?
  • How straightforward will this person’s success be?
  • What will their overall stability be like in their various positions?
  • What tendencies does the nature of the midheaven sign itself indicate? The planet that rules it? The placement of that planet?
  • Bonus points: what is their significator of art or craft?

I’ll walk through an example chart with this one that should be fairly well-known: Claude Debussy!

Here’s his chart, in Placidus houses:

For those unfamiliar, Claude Debussy was a composer of classical music and is perhaps best known for his lush and lusty impressionist music, such as his work for piano Clair de Lune from the suite Masques et Bergamasques. (You’ve heard this piece of music before, even if you don’t recognize the title—I guarantee it.)

Why not listen to this clip while we continue?

Monsieur Debussy’s MC is at 10°08’ Taurus. We’re leaving Pluto out of the considerations for now. Let’s think natural significations of Venus to start off: aesthetic beauty, harmony, balance, and especially here since Taurus is an earth sign, artifice. She’s the natural significator of music and harmony, so we know that we’re talking about someone for whom the perfection of aesthetic forms is paramount: this is the nature of Taurus.

We then look to Venus, the ruler of Taurus. Here, Venus is at 00°58’ Leo, in the 12th house. Venus is also the planet that rises immediately before the Sun, so she meets at least one of the conditions of being a significator of art. Debussy was also born before sunrise and therefore Venus is the benefic of the sect. She makes no aspects to any other planets, and she has no dignity.

In the classical model we would call her “feral,” like a feral cat: just kind of doing her own thing, responsible to no one. The 12th house is the realm of symbol and shadow, and Debussy’s musical aesthetic was heavily influenced by the Symbolist movement, as seen in his set of 24 Preludes, written to suggest a single image such as “footprints in the snow” or “a sunken cathedral.”

To summarize, Venus as the 10th ruler draws matters of Debussy’s profession towards matters of the 12th in a performative Leo style with a fierce independent streak.

Debussy was a musician who, though not quite feral, achieved fame through doing his own damn thing. While he was trained at the Conservatoire de Paris, he famously refused to follow the accepted rules of composition and drove his professors batty. Nevertheless, in 1884 he won the Prix de Rome, a coveted award for a young composer, which provided him with the opportunity to travel to Rome and stay at the Villa Medici while working on new music.

That didn’t go so well, though. His institutional sponsor chided his music as being “bizarre, incomprehensible, and unperformable.” This is, of course, all augmented by the fact that Debussy’s ascendant is Leo, and we find the Sun there, out-of-sect, and Debussy’s Mars forms a trine to the 5th house cusp (while afflicting Debussy’s 9th house—he was highly critical of church music).

Though Debussy’s life expressed his art through music, this chart could have made for a painter, or a choreographer, or any other maverick artist of the Parisian avant-garde in the late 19th century (perhaps the Saturn-Uranus square speaks to this cultural moment more broadly). Had he chosen another profession, his vocation would have been the same sort of story, with Sun and Moon testifying strongly to his essential nature as a self-assured public figure with stories told of him as being a fiercely independent purveyor of high art that refused containment within anyone’s expectations.

This is the richness available when we begin to explore the praxis stories in our charts, and I encourage you to begin looking to yours.

To recap:

  • The nature of the sign on the midheaven describes the general sort of story that your work in the world tells. The individual planets import their meanings into the signs they rule.
  • The nature of the planet that rules that sign, and the planets placed in the tenth house, inform the work itself and public perception. For example, the sixth ruler in the tenth house might suggest work in the medical field.
  • The story is never just about profession or occupation: there is always a bigger component that will likely work out in whichever work a person finds themselves undertaking.

As I mentioned, I specialize in the tenth house and I also have on-the-ground experience as a vocational counselor, dealing with the nitty-gritty of vocational selection and training. The great irony, of course, is that I never did figure out exactly what I was supposed to do writ large. It’s been helpful for me to think about life in chapters: “what am I to do in this chapter?” is much easier to answer.

It takes a lifetime to live out a natal chart, after all.

Featured image by Adeolu Eletu via Unsplash

How to Interpret Houses in Astrology — Part 10: The Ninth House

5 Comments

What is your matter of ultimate concern?

What is most important in your life? How do you derive value, meaning, soulfulness, and depth from your experiences, and what structures do you employ to make those values and meanings come alive in your day-to-day experience?

Who teaches you? Who are your mentors?

In short, what illuminates your life?

These are the questions we’re asking when we come to the ninth house in astrology. This part of the chart is my peculiar specialty, considering my life and livelihood as an astrologer, a priest, and a student of the world’s religious traditions.

A little philosophy goes a long way

The German theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich uses the phrase “matter of ultimate concern” to describe the factor or factors in our lived experience that compel us forward and give shape, meaning, and depth to our understanding of both ourselves and our world. In Tillich’s view, the content of one’s religious beliefs belongs to this category. Note that the word “concern” here is not meant in its sense of “worry,” but rather “matter for discussion,” or “topic,” or “interest.”

We can, however, expand that outward to look at whatever it is in our lives that gives us a sense of narrative cohesion. What’s most important to us? What stories, events, and life-ways are especially meaningful for us? What is the nature of our relationship with those stories, events, and life-ways?

Tillich’s label of “ultimate concern” is an apt starting point for discussing the ninth house, because throughout the astrological corpus of the West (with some corroboration from the Jyotish tradition as well), the ninth house has had a tight association with the question of religion, spirituality, illumination, dreams, and wisdom.

Yes, it’s got something to do with travel, too, but we’ll get to that presently.

Where the ninth house gets its meanings

The ninth house derives its meanings primarily from its status as being the joy of the Sun. Of all the places in the sky, the Sun most delights to be here. Simple daily experience will corroborate this, because when the Sun is falling away from the midheaven in the mid-afternoon, we experience his heat and brightness at their maximum.

This is the part of day when meteorologists advise us to double up on sunscreen and eye protection if we must be out and about. It’s the time of day when we see our world with the most sensory clarity. It’s the time of day our world is illumined most brightly.

Additionally, for the Sun to be the ruler of the ascendant vis-à-vis Leo and to be placed in the 9th house means that it is likely to be in Aries, resulting not only in a Sun who is in his joy but likewise his exaltation (I know several people with this configuration, and they are exactly the way you’d expect them to be).

Of course, given the Sun’s status throughout human history as “the big bright thing that fuels the engines of life,” a natural association developed between the Sun and concepts of the transcendent, namely, that which is bigger than us and upon which we depend. The Sun, to wit, is a figure of the sky father that imbues the earth with life; it’s a simple step from there to concepts of “god.”

If the Sun imports its natural significations to the ninth house, then it’s easy enough to figure out how the ninth house became associated with such matters as religion, philosophy, law, and our relationship thereto. Those are easy enough.

I would add, however, that the ninth house is not the only house that speaks to spirituality; if you recall the post on the third house, remember that the third house’s emphasis on communal observation as governed by the cycles of the Moon import a dynamic spiritual element to that part of the chart as well.

The difference between the third and the ninth house is this: while the third house is focused on communal experience of spirituality (really, communal experience of anything, inclusive of spirituality), the ninth house represents an individual’s engagement with spiritual life and praxis, in accordance with the nature and condition of its ruler.

Let’s bring this back to the concept of illumination and the single-pointed nature of the Sun. The question asked here is, “what do I believe? How do I make meaning? What people, processes, and stories illuminate my life?”

One of the other things that the ninth house governs is matters of higher education. Naturally, this also has ties to illumination, because the process of higher education is a process of expanding one’s horizons of what is known (such a ninth house keyphrase!) by undertaking a course of study under the guidance of a teacher. Anyone who illuminates us or serves as an illuminating solar figure in our life can be assigned to the ninth: clergy for sure, but also lawyers, teachers, professors, and so forth.

“Wait, why law?”

Think of the Sun as the cosmic judge (at least within the context of the tropical zodiac—that’s a diversion we don’t have time for right now). The Sun’s light shows things as they appear through means of sensory apprehension, objectively, and without bias. Such non-bias allows the Sun to adjudicate issues well. If in a horary chart about a court case the Sun is in the tenth (or the ninth) house and not in poor condition, chances are very good that the judge’s decision and the verdict of the jury will be just.

“But what about travel and the ninth house? My horoscope columnist says Jupiter in my ninth means I should go on trips!”

Sure, okay. Yes, the ninth house has associations with distant travel, namely, trips that you need to plan for and won’t be able to come home from quickly. But where does that meaning come from?

Think back to the ancient world: if you were an everyday person (namely, not one of the ruling class, a government official, or cleric), chances are very good that you never went “on vacation.” You rested with your family at home and anything resembling a vacation was likely due to a communal celebration of a feast day.

Unless you went on a pilgrimage.

Medieval Europeans stan a good pilgrimage. And pilgrimages, of course, are not just “vacations” but are rather an opportunity for an individual to invest in their relationship with their divinity of choice. The pilgrimage allowed the individual to expand their horizons, see new places, meet new people, and return home weeks or months later having had their world blown wide open.

Modern Westerners don’t really go on pilgrimages all that much unless they’re part of a religious tradition for which pilgrimage is a major element (Catholicism and Islam are the ones that come to mind, but many other Christians and Jews also make pilgrimages to Jerusalem and environs). But lots of us do distant travel, and the ninth house is a natural fit for that topic as a result.

Just remember that’s where the connection came from.

Despite all these lovely things being associated with the ninth house, and despite the ninth house itself being considered a “good house” (because it forms a trine aspect to the ascendant), it’s still a cadent house, and it’s a place where there’s not typically a lot of activity. If you’re on a trip, you’re not doing a lot relative to your day-to-day life, right?

It’s not a house that has significant impacts in the world on its own, but rather its topics undergird how we choose to impact the world and what we prioritize as a result of our “ultimate concern.”

Concerns about Ultimate Concerns

It’s important to note too that the nature and condition of the planet ruling the ninth house and planets placed therein result in situations where matters of illumination are fraught with difficulty, as we’ll see presently. In my research, I’ve found numerous examples of individuals whose ninth house is occupied by the out-of-sect malefic, or whose ninth ruler is afflicted, who have suffered trauma as a result of their experiences with religion and spirituality (organized or otherwise).

William Lilly’s judgments on this house in the third book of Christian Astrology are interesting to note here for the simple reason that they speak to these issues in a roundabout way. After all, in 17th century England, astrologers had to tread very carefully on the matter of whether someone would be Christian or not, considering the theological predilections of the dominant stream of Christianity (viz. Calvinism).

In Lilly’s judgments, he indicates that the negative influence of Saturn tends towards an individual holding marginalized belief systems (“heresy”), the same of Mars tends toward an individual rebelling against religious taboos (“blasphemy”), and the negative influences of Mercury tend toward skepticism and suspicion (“atheism”).

But Lilly’s remarks here are not just on how good of a Christian one will be. Remarks on the ease or difficulty with which a native engages with matters of religion are culturally important because they describe, in part, how good an Anglican a person born in England will be, namely, how well their individual route for illumination will align with the culturally authorized routes, and therefore how good of a model English citizen they will be.

When we import these considerations to the 21st century in the United States in a post-Christendom context, what seems to emerge is a commentary on one’s ability to engage with matters of transcendence, the possibility of religious or spiritual trauma, and the fluency (or lack thereof) with which one is able to find larger meaning, depth, and what Thomas Moore calls “soulfulness” in their engagement with larger narratives.

How to interpret the ninth house in astrology

When we begin interpreting the ninth house, we’re working with the following questions:

  • What is the individual’s “matter of ultimate concern,” and how might they go about finding it?
  • What is the individual’s relationship with questions of belief and skepticism?
  • What are the kinds of sources, teachers, mentors, and traditions that the individual will find especially compelling?

Once again, we judge these sorts of questions based on the nature and condition of the planet ruling the ninth house and likewise for the planets placed in the ninth house.

The placement of the ninth ruler suggests the part of life through which an individual engages with matters of spirit most readily.

The houses ruled by planets placed within the ninth house suggest those factors in life which express themselves primarily through one’s illumination process.

For example, suppose that we have an individual with the ninth house cusp in Sagittarius with Jupiter in Pisces in the twelfth in a day chart, with the Sun in Sagittarius. Aries rises and Mars is not configured to the Sun or Jupiter. Jupiter applies to the sextile of Saturn in Capricorn in the tenth.

Jupiter as the 9th ruler describes the individual’s easy-going fidelity to their religious tradition, with a natural predilection towards faith. This configuration suggests the kind of person who could become a renowned leader in a monastic spiritual community; here, the ninth ruler is functioning well but is placed in the twelfth house, which has positive associations with isolation or contemplative spiritual practice (meditation or silent prayer). Saturn as the ruler of the 10th and 11th here brings stability and success to matters related both to individual profession and to that person’s status within community or among friends.

Another example: suppose that we have another individual with the ninth house cusp in Cancer. Say that Mars is there too, and it’s a day chart; the Sun is in Leo in the 10th house, so the Moon is decreasing in light, and the Moon is conjoined the South Node with Saturn in Aries. Suppose also that the Moon is besieged by Mars ahead of it and Saturn behind it.

This is a tricky example but let’s start by unpacking it a step at a time: The Moon is the 9th ruler, so already this individual has a deep emotional security process fulfilled by their illumination/religious process. The Moon is in the 6th, so they feel a deep sense of responsibility and physical labor on behalf of their tradition (think inexhaustible church ladies).

This might also be the signature of someone for whom physical expressions of spirituality such as yoga, fasting, or martial arts (Aries!) become significant for their process of illumination. Because of the Moon’s affliction by Saturn (the 3rd and 4th ruler), deep issues arise in this process’s expression as a result of their local community or overbearing, doctrinaire parents.

Fallen Mars’ highly malefic process in the 9th causes them tend towards the transgression of religious taboos. Things are not looking very positive for this individual being a “good Christian kid,” and we might surmise that it comes from a tendency toward questioning why religious taboos exist.

Here, because the Moon applies to Mars with reception, this individual’s questioning and challenging of religious expectations in fact assists them in finding a sense of purpose, meaning, and depth, because Mars is obligated to to help the Moon accomplish its purposes.

To recap:

The matters of the house where the ruler of the ninth is placed form the ground in which one’s search for ultimate concern takes place.

The matters represented by planets placed in the ninth house show which slices of life will express themselves most clearly through an individual’s search for illumination.

Where’s your ninth ruler? What’s happening with it? I’d love to hear from you! I’m actually presenting a paper closely related to this topic in February 2020 in India, so I welcome your stories!

Meanwhile, if you’ve got some heavy-duty religious stuff you feel like you need to untangle but don’t know where to start, you’ve come to the right place. This is my specialty, and I’d be honored to work with you in the next leg of your journey of illumination.

Get Illuminated: Book a Consultation!