Category: Learning Astrology

How to Interpret Houses in Astrology — Part 9: The Eighth House

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In the spirit of the eighth house, let me get this out of the way at the beginning:

There are forces in your life over which you have no control. You can only control how you respond to these inevitable influences. The eighth house deals with powerful forces which lie beyond the ken of our ability to manage or mitigate, and the attendant emotions that those forces conjure within us.

It’s time to talk the Unavoidables: death and taxes.

Understanding the eighth house in astrology

The reality is that most people in contemporary Western culture don’t know how to talk about death.

At least, they don’t know how to talk about death in any kind of helpful capacity. We fight it. We fear it. Rather than learning to greet Death as an old friend (who does not have the final word), we resist, we fight, or worst of all, we ignore it. We consent to be left on ventilators while our bodies wither away—or rather, we make that decision on behalf of loved ones who cannot make that decision for themselves.

We ignore making a living will and durable power of attorney because we have somehow convinced ourselves that debilitating accidents, even death, couldn’t possibly happen to us. We chase after treatments and medical interventions that prolong life at the cost of quality of life. We’re afraid to admit that there comes a point at which our life will be demanded of us. Whose then will our power and resources belong to?

Step one to dealing with the eighth house is acknowledging the fact that you will die. And I think we could all do with a little more death positivity. Attempts to control, ignore, or subvert death serve only to delay our bodies’ inevitable return to the dust of the earth.

“Nate, this is kind of heavy.”

You’re right, it is. And I need to start with this conversation because the eighth house has death as one of its primary indications. It exists as part of the wheel of celestial life as much as profession, money, creativity, and love; every planet travels through the house of death on its way through the sky.

The ancients observed the way that planets fall from the midheaven, through a season of quiet sagacity in the 9th, through a period of deep ineffectiveness in the eighth. They then reach the seventh house and the descendant, where they are re-joined to the earth to begin the cycle of resurrection anew.

However, this period of deep ineffectiveness, as opposed to the angular dynamism of the seventh house, is why matters of death belong properly to the eighth. Because of the directionality of the celestial sphere, the eighth house was called epikataphora in Greek texts, which simply means “lowering down to the ground.” This implies active lowering, not simply things that are being allowed to fall: the eighth house is succedent and actively moving towards the seventh.

Death (and debt, as well as fear and power) is something endured, something which actively engages, something to which one is subject. It lies outside our control.

The cultures that developed and codified astrological techniques understood this motion of the heavens intimately. To be sure, grief, loss, and mourning have always been part of human experience, but the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Hellenistic Greeks from whom we inherit our astrological tradition in the West had the benefit of cultural technologies that allowed them to engage more deeply and more meaningfully with death. In fact, the goal was to maintain such an awareness of death that it enabled one to have a good death.

Historically a “good death” was not what we imagine in our modern western medical model, viz., quick, gentle, and painless at the end of a full life; a “good death” was a death that was preceded with enough time to settle one’s affairs and settle up with God (whichever facet of God that may have been). This would, of course, have included attending to matters of inheritance and succession, but it also would have provided time to ensure that appropriate rituals were in order to assure one’s passage into the next life and to prepare adequately for the resurrection.

“Preparing adequately for resurrection” is not the exclusive purview of Christians, mind you. A brief glance at the funerary technologies of Egypt demonstrate that the idea that consciousness continues after bodily death has been a long-standing part of human experience. But if one remains willfully ignorant of one’s own mortality, naturally one’s patterns will not be given to preparation for a good death.

The second primary consideration of the eighth house, at least from the traditional Western astrological perspective, is “other people’s money.” This signification is derived from the fact that the eighth house is the second house in relation to the seventh house, which, as we saw previously, represents the Other. Some writers suggest that the eighth represents “money held in common,” but I would counter that “money held in common” is not really one’s own money, is it?

Eighth house money is money that can be accessed only vis-à-vis other people. It of course suggests money one would receive by entering into contract with a lender or creditor (the seventh house again, which implies the contractual nature of that relationship). This also suggests that this is money that you would have to ask for from someone else. For instance, when one is judging a horary question as to whether they’ll receive the money they’re owed, judgment is taken from the eighth.

Moreover, because of the eighth house’s extant connection with death, this also has obvious connection to inheritances received from the dead, and the “wills, legacies and testaments of Men deceased” (Lilly, 54).

In short, if the money is not in your bank account, it’s eighth house money.

The third main consideration we need to keep in mind when interpreting the eighth house in astrology is this: death and taxes are fearsome. I specifically use the word “fearsome” here because, to be sure, death and taxes elicit a fear response. We have, however, lost the more positive connotations of the word “fear” amid the sea of self-improvement jingo that possesses discourse around emotive realities.

Think of the phrase, “the fear of God.” For some of you this might trigger some uncomfortable feelings, but stay with them for a beat. In this context, what is meant is not “fear” as in “being afraid of,” but “fear” as in “reverence for a power which is greater than you.”

Part of working with the eighth house, its ruler, and planets in the eighth house in astrology is understanding that those significators are inviting particular parts of your life into a relationship of reverence for powers that are greater than you, powers which you have no control over—powers which can, indeed, undo you if you do not handle them with due reverence.

When I was sixteen, I had to go to the Prince William County Courthouse to receive my driver’s license in a formal ceremony with about thirty of my peers. We did not simply go to the DMV, pass the test, and get it on our birthday. The presiding judge, robed and seated at the bench, called each of us up one by one to receive our licenses directly from his hand. As he slid the plastic rectangle into each of our hands, he reminded us to maintain proper reverence for the power that we now had.

Indeed, putting a sixteen-year-old at the helm of a 3,000 pound piece of metal hurtling down the road at 70 miles an hour should rightly be a fearsome thing. This exchange reminded us that we are not greater than the laws of physics, and each of us had a responsibility—to ourselves and to the general public—to use our newfound access to power to drive safely. We now had access to power.

This is why it is absolutely crucial that we recognize that death is not always the primary signification of the eighth house; it is, rather, the intersection of our lives with fearful power.

Excuse me while I get on my soapbox for a moment.

The challenges of using judgments on the eighth house well is the reason why it is especially important for astrologers to get it right when it comes to understanding our own relationship to power. As astrologers, we have access to data that must be interpreted soundly through good technique and sensibly through good people skills.

Individuals turn to astrology not because everything is going right in their life, but because there is a measure of dissatisfaction, fear, or difficulty with this or that life process. To be sure, sometimes the situations are self-inflicted through patterns of poor decision making on the client’s part, but sometimes life is just hard, grief and loss are real, and wealth distribution is horrendously imbalanced. Lilly reminds the student of astrology to deliver difficult judgments by degrees and not to add to the misery of those who have come to the astrologer seeking help.

But at the same time, we do our clients an incredible disservice if we gloss over the fact that there are events in life that are rightfully fearsome, factors which lie outside our control. We have more agency than we believe in navigating challenges, and yet, our agency remains limited by factors external to ourselves.

The call here is for the astrologer to understand that they have access to power that does not lie totally within their control. The responsibility of an astrologer is to use the ability they have wisely and diligently for the aid of those who have come to us for help. If we are only astrologers because we are seeking power for its own sake, we will be consumed by it. This isn’t only true of astrology; it’s true of the human condition.

Soapbox over.

”But what about sex? I thought that was an eighth house topic!”

Sex belongs to the fifth house.

“But la petite mort—”

Sex belongs to the fifth house.

“But modern astrology and Freud—”

Sex belongs to the fifth house in the classical Western tradition of horoscopic astrology, et in saecula saeculorum amen, alleluia.*

“Your strong opinion on this is making me feel bad and I disagree!”

I’m sorry you feel that way! You’re welcome to disagree with me—that doesn’t make you a bad person, nor does it mean I think any less of you. Just know that eighth-house-as-sex is not supported by the bulk of the available literature, and the deathliness of the eighth house makes it thematically contradictory to the sensory delight, enjoyment, and fun that are part and parcel of sex. Note the asterisk on the last declaration, too.

“Okay, fine, geez. So how do I interpret the eighth house in my chart?”

How to interpret the eighth house in astrology

Many of the traditional judgments on the eighth house dealt primarily with the manner of death a native was going to endure and their economic picture as far as inheritances or dowries. I’m going to leave those off for now because the last thing Internet Astrology needs is more out-of-context judgments on such matters floating around higgledy-piggledy.

Instead, I’m simply going to offer these two starting points for judging the eighth house:

The location of the eighth house ruler by house signifies where one experiences being subject to intractable power.

The second is like unto it:

Planets placed in the eighth house express the topics belonging to the houses they rule through one’s engagement with power, fear, and the unavoidable.

For example, say that the eighth house cusp in a chart falls in Pisces. This makes Jupiter the ruler of the eighth house; engagement with matters of power, fear, and the unavoidable, then, is closely attuned with matters of faith (which is the natural character of Jupiter). Jupiter, in this example, is placed in the eleventh house in Gemini in a day chart. Jupiter then expresses the matters of the eighth house through matters of fidelity, aspirations, friends, groups, and community. Remember that Jupiter in Gemini has his powers attenuated, as though he must travel through the world in disguise.

We might surmise in this instance that one’s closest friends and sense of values emerge from a community that comes together to wrestle with a common experience of loss, death, or fear. This chosen family becomes a significant source of support (financial or otherwise) in the individual’s life.

For another example: say an individual has their natal Sun in their eighth house in Virgo, ruling the seventh house cusp. The Sun, of course, represents the native’s essential life motivation, which in this case, because the Sun rules the seventh house, is deeply tied to matters of partnership. However, because the Sun is in the eighth, it has trouble expressing itself adequately, and matters of partnership will be situations where the native feels like they are encountering powers far beyond their control.

That’s all you need to start with to begin working with the eighth house, to be completely honest: an understanding of your own limitations, and where the powers greater than you exist in your life. If you can access those powers responsibly and with utmost fear, you’ll be able to cultivate a relationship with death and financial obligation that empowers you to experience soulfulness and depth throughout life.

Here’s a house-by-house breakdown of eighth house ruler placements to get you started thinking (and as always, there is way more that a full consultation with me can add for context):

  • Eighth house ruler in the first house: fearsome power rests in claiming my own vitality and agency, and I might feel that I am beyond my own control.
  • Eighth house ruler in the second house: fearsome power rests in my relationship with my finances and resources.
  • Eighth house ruler in the third house: fearsome power rests in my local neighborhood, siblings, communication, and powers of mind.
  • Eighth house ruler in the fourth house: fearsome power rests in my family legacy and what I inherited from my ancestors.
  • Eighth house ruler in the fifth house: fearsome power rests in my creative potential, sexuality, and love of aesthetic beauty.
  • Eighth house ruler in the sixth house: fearsome power rests in my engagement with discipline, responsibility, and the people for whom I feel responsible.
  • Eighth house ruler in the seventh house: fearsome power rests in the Others who engage with me.
  • Eighth house ruler in the eighth house: fearsome power rests in my own reflections on the Unavoidables and healthy engagement with death, loss, and grief throughout my life. (This is a signification of, perhaps, someone who has a deep understanding of the fearful majesty of death and gives Sister Death her proper regard).
  • Eighth house ruler in the ninth house: fearsome power rests in my search for knowledge, truth, wisdom, and illumination, as well as in any capacity in which I am a distributor of wisdom.
  • Eighth house ruler in the tenth house: fearsome power rests in the impact of my conscious actions on the world around me and I am known as someone with access to power, for good or for ill (either that, or you’re a funeral director or CPA).
  • Eighth house ruler in the eleventh house: fearsome power rests in my relationship with chosen family and my aspirations.
  • Eighth house ruler in the twelfth house: fearsome power rests in my engagement with matters of sorrow, isolation, retreat, and all matters hidden.

Where’s your eighth house ruler? How do you experience fearsome power? Leave a note in the comments below, and if you want to dive deeper into your relationship with power, fear, and the Unavoidables, book a consultation with me!

*The one exception is if the eighth ruler is in the fifth, or vice versa; judge accordingly. In this instance, sex may indeed be a source of fear or even shame until such a time as benefic transits/progressions/revolutions involving those rulers take some of the pressure off.

How to Interpret Houses in Astrology — Part 8: The Seventh House

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There are many ways to be in partnership with someone.

I’m back from my trip to NORWAC, I’ve got both of the manuscripts I was working on done, and I’ve got plenty of thoughts about either I’ll share separately. For now, it’s time for us to return to our reflection on each of the twelve houses in astrology!

This week brings us to one of the houses that receives a lion’s share of the attention from astrologers who take questions from, and offer guidance to, those of us who are lusty, lovesick, or limerent. It’s time to talk about the seventh house in astrology, and how to interpret it.

Of course, it takes no time at all when you’re first whetting your astrological appetite to discover that, when it comes to love and romance, the seventh house is the sector of your chart with the most importance. However, to stop at that surface level delineation is to lose out on the depth of magic and myth that this part of the sky contains within its reaches. It’s about romance, sure, but it’s so much more than that.

Unlike most of the other houses we’ve explored, the seventh house does not derive its meanings from a planet which delights in being there, as is the case with the 5th and 6th houses. Instead, the seventh house, being an angular house, derives its meaning primarily from its visual features.

This is the part of the sky where planets sink beneath the horizon. Except in settings with few features on the horizon and clear visibility all the way to the heavens, setting planets quickly become obscured by atmosphere and environment. As they fall away in the west, they begin their journey through the realm of the dead, the foundations of the earth, as they wander through the unseen and the instinctual demesne of what lies hidden to the world. There they encounter deepest death and are turned, silently and subtly, back towards life at the imum coeli before beginning their ascent towards the eastern horizon once more.

The Greek name for this house is dysis, which simply means “sunset.” The word’s construction, however, suggests a process that embodies “difficulty, opposition, injuriousness or the like, and corresponding to our mis-, un-” (Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 160). The day unfolds itself into night as that which rises in the ascendant falls into its undoing at the point of dysis. Things are undone here.

Because this house is an angular house, it is one of the pillars of the earth, or one of the tent pegs of the sky that gives it shape and structure. Planets here are actively playing a role in the unfolding narrative of the chart. However, they are playing that role relative to people who are not us. What is most important in understanding this house is its configuration to the ascendant: it opposes the ascendant, and therefore carries an essential understanding of the Other.

When I say Other here, I’m not referring to the Other in the sociological sense (viz., marginalized people who receive the scrutiny of the majority as a scapegoat population). What I mean is anyone with whom we are in a formal, public interaction who is not a subordinate, superior, friend, or blood relation. Any person with whom we can engage one-on-one as a partner, lover, or enemy is signified by the seventh house.

In the ancient world, the setting of planets underneath the horizon, especially the setting Sun, symbolized death. It’s a simple enough association: once the Sun is no longer visible, its light gradually vanishes from the sky until we’re left with naught but starlight. This point in the chart is the entry to the unseen, the mystical, the reunion of heaven and earth.

The Other is the ultimate unknowable; we may think we have a deep understanding of those with whom we are in formal relationships, but the reality is that, if it’s impossible to fully know even our own selves, it’s even less possible to come to a full understanding of another human being as a separate Subject.

The philosopher Martin Buber describes the Subject-Subject relationship in terms of “I and Thou,” which acknowledges the essential transcendence of the Subjects with whom we are in relationship—they are unknowable, inscrutable, and yet so tremendously present and active in our lives that to imagine a life without their presence giving our own experiences form and shape becomes impossible. Since the Other’s presence in our lives can give our own life increased understanding, so too does the other Subject become the Object of our pursuits. We’ll see how that plays out in the significations when we break it down further.

The antipodal I-Thou relationship baked into the seventh house in astrology is the point of departure for all its meanings: this place, its ruler, and its inhabitants all serve as peers, foils, and partners in our journey towards becoming ourselves. We might imagine that when we encounter a Thou to meet our I, our self-concept becomes as undone as the Sun does as it sets in the western sky to be raised again, transfigured. To love, to fight, and to collaborate requires that we make room for the Other, and in so doing, we ourselves are changed.

For this reason, we not only ascribe one-on-one romantic relationships to the seventh; we ascribe any individual with whom we are in an I-Thou arrangement. Those whom we pursue in love, war, and business, to be sure, are the main subjects of this part of the sky, but if we think about it, we might consider that other planets placed in the seventh house play out their meanings within the realm of the I-Thou dynamic as well. They become objects of pursuit, and our relationships will coalesce around the matters over which they have rulership. For instance, say the fifth house ruler is in the seventh; pursuit of creative endeavors expresses itself in collaborative work.

It’s also important to note that the element of pursuit lends itself to the seventh house’s use in classical horary astrology to symbolize thieves, fugitives, hunted targets, business contracts, and the opposing party within a lawsuit. Depending on the context of the question, the seventh house can also represent a desired location, for instance if the question is whether one would be better off staying put or moving to a different home. Imagine anything that lies in front of us as an object of our action or pursuit: that can be a seventh house factor, too.

How to interpret the seventh house in astrology

As with each of the houses we’ve explored to this point, we need to think about the questions that the seventh house raises. Examining these questions involves looking carefully at the planetary ruler of the seventh house, its placement and condition by sign and house, as well as the condition and house rulership of any planets placed within the seventh house. If there is a planet conjoined to the degree of the descendant (within five degrees), pay attention. This isn’t something you’ll want to miss in interpretation.

The questions we need to ask relative to the seventh house fall along the following lines:

  • Which planet represents the partners with whom this person finds themself in relationship?
  • What level of importance is placed on the person’s relational processes?
  • What kind of people serve as the Thou to this person’s I?
  • What slices of life best express themselves within the realm of one-to-one partnership as far as this person’s narrative is concerned?
  • How well does this person’s ability to be in healthy, differentiated relationship with others express itself? Does it come with ease, or does it require careful cultivation and discipline?

I want you to notice very carefully which questions we are not asking here. We are not asking, “is this person doomed to a lifetime of singleness?” Because, remember, singleness isn’t a bad thing! We’re not asking, “does this person attract garbage people?” Because it’s not a person’s fault if their partners are garbage! The most we could surmise, if the person’s seventh house and its ruler are afflicted, is that relationships are troublesome for them, based on the nature of the affliction. (By the way, Western post-Evangelical culture doesn’t have a helpful container for the dynamics of singleness when it’s something you actually want.)

Suppose that someone has Aquarius rising, with Saturn in Leo in the seventh house, but their Sun is in Sagittarius in the 11th house (this would make it a daytime chart). Saturn is slowing down to station retrograde. Saturn in such a chart has several rejoicing conditions working for him, but it’s as though his story is written in boldface and he has quite a bit of say over the unfolding of the chart.

This is an individual who very likely desires one-on-one connections with people, but it might be a herculean effort for would-be suitors to win their affections, simply because Saturn in this placement acts as an impenetrable hedge. The one who would win this person will allow them plenty of space and autonomy. Given the Sun’s placement in Sagittarius in the 11th, this individual will likely need lots of freedom to maintain relationships with their community of friends, with the acknowledgment that these friend relationships and their local community is primary.

Meanwhile, consider the same rising and setting sign—Aquarius and Leo—but in this instance, instead of Saturn conjoined the descendant, it’s Venus, and she’s receiving a partile overcoming square from the Moon in Taurus, and the Sun is in Virgo in the eighth. In this instance, this person is the marrying type. Because Venus is probably the fourth house ruler as well as the ninth, there’s a spiritual dimension to the person’s desire to have a person to call home, as much as they need a place to call home to feel emotionally secure (Moon in the fourth sign). Yet, with their Sun as the seventh ruler in the eighth, there’s a perpetual fear that what they have attained, they will lose. In this instance it’s crucial for the individual to be willing to look their worst-case scenario in the eye; in so doing, it will lose its power.

Of all the houses, the seventh house is (I think) one of the hardest to interpret in cookbook style considering the varied narratives that it contains. To be honest, I don’t think it’ll actually be helpful to stick with these, but they can serve as an entrée: I’ll simply offer a general comment for each placement. In any case, we’ll need to pay very close attention to the configuration of the seventh ruler and any planets placed in the seventh to get the most useful information, a task for which this format is woefully inadequate.

We’re all just trying our best. (These are satirical but rooted in actual astrology. Take with lots of salt!)

  • Seventh house ruler in the first house: your partners see you as a way of helping themselves out.
  • Seventh house ruler in the second house: your partners either want to create abundance with you… or somebody’s digging for gold.
  • Seventh house ruler in the third house: chances are you married your high school sweetheart (even moreso if your third ruler is in the seventh).
  • Seventh house ruler in the fourth house: your first date was dinner, a movie, and a U-Haul. (Shoutout to West Ardere for this one.)
  • Seventh house ruler in the fifth house: kids, creativity, and shared enjoyment is what keeps you bound to your beloved.
  • Seventh house ruler in the sixth house: the couple that gets swole and/or unionizes together stays together.
  • Seventh house ruler in the seventh house: well, at least one of you has it together.
  • Seventh house ruler in the eighth house: your idea of a fun night in with your beloved is Netflix and Shared Existential Dread about the imminent threat of climate disaster and rising fascism in the West. So sweet!
  • Seventh house ruler in the ninth house: you’ll either meet at Mass or you’ll move halfway across the planet to be together. It’s kind of cute, to be honest.
  • Seventh house ruler in the tenth house: your partnerships are like unto that of a power couple with their own HGTV house-flipping series.
  • Seventh house ruler in the eleventh house: just marry your best friend already, everybody thinks you’re dating anyway.
  • Seventh house ruler in the twelfth house: if, by some twist, you don’t actually want to be single, you’ll probably meet your boo at an ashram.

If you want to untangle the richer stories that your seventh house contains, it’s best to look at the chart holistically. If you have questions about relationship, remember that you bring all of your manifold complexities and idiosyncrasies to partnership, as does your beloved (or potential beloved). Knowing thyself is the first step to being able to form functional, loving relationships; the second step is jettisoning all your expectations, because love will change you.

How to Interpret Houses in Astrology — Part 7: The Sixth House

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The sixth house in astrology is a fun one, if you’re into discipline.

Let’s just get this out of the way up front: the sixth house is one of the places that reminds us that a balanced life is one that has crummy parts to it, but amidst the garbage we can still find diamonds in the rough.

A few weeks ago, I had a dream that was straightforward in its imagery but powerful in its implications. The dream found me in a conference room somewhere in the electric wilds of Tokyo (Akihabara, to be specific) delivering a lecture on horary astrology to a room full of entertainment executives who had flown me in to train individuals on their staff in the art of horary and elections for business purposes.

Final Fantasy creator Shironobu Hakaguchi was in the room, taking copious notes and asking an endless stream of questions. By the end of the dream he was so taken with the lecture that he invited me to elect the launch date and time of the next entry in the Final Fantasy series. It was a fun dream, to be sure, but this dream was made even more interesting by the fact that it was entirely in Japanese.

Now, in the waking world, my ability with Japanese is rudimentary, despite having been enamored with it since, oh, 1999. When I made that first puerile attempt to pick up the language I had no idea what I was getting into and the fervor of a young weeaboo could only take me so far. The only point of contact I had with learning a language was the old Berlitz “Japanese for Travel” cassette and phrase book sets that I could get from the library. I knew how to say good morning and ask where the bathroom was, but beyond that, I had no idea what a part of speech was, or how to conjugate, or what to do with word order.

Everywhere I turned I hit a brick wall, defeated, disappointed.

Twenty years on I now have the chops to learn a language, and those chops come from years of study, practice, and discipline. Ever since that dream, I’ve been throwing myself into the rigor, tedium, and reward of learning a difficult language from the ground up. 結果は成功しますよ。The work is bearing fruit, but that doesn’t make memorizing thousands of kanji or drilling conjugation forms any less labor-intensive.

This is our first point of contact for the sixth house in astrology.

I joked on Twitter the other day that the sixth house is “big D energy:” disease, drudgery, duty, discipline, and drive. This collection of meanings comes from a confluence of factors, just as we saw with the fifth house.

First, because the sixth house is cadent and in aversion to the ascendant, not only is it considered “ineffective,” but it also can’t connect with the place of the chart associated with life and vitality. For that reason, it has natural connections to illness, disease, and the process of falling away from vitality and activity.

Not everything can be sunshine and daffodils all the time, as much as the “love and light” folks want to make it out to be. Sometimes we get sick, y’all. We’re squishy organisms in a universe that, by and large, is not conducive to life unless you’ve got lead plating for skin. Disease is part and parcel of being human. We have to acknowledge that we have limitations, and the sixth house reminds us of the physical elements of these limits.

The second is that the sixth house is named the “house of Bad Fortune,” according to ancient authorities. The idea of “bad fortune” acknowledges that the accidents we suffer are not the effect of us “manifesting” ill fortune for ourselves; sometimes, shit happens. Chaos is part of the package of existing in a universe where chance and probability is an operating assumption, and there come times in your life where the odds are not in your favor.

However, bad fortune, illness, and injury are sometimes the result of us making poor decisions, using our authority, agency, and drive to put our health and wholeness into jeopardy. When we’re not exerting energy in a disciplined, focused, and honed manner, we’re often toeing the line of disaster. In this way, the sixth house is the part of the chart that describes the risks that are ready to strike when we’re not taking proper precautions, or when we’re a little too confident in our ability to avert fate.

People who were in “bad fortune” situations in the ancient world were often the unlucky people who had been captured and sold into slavery in Hellenistic society. Remember that slavery in the ancient world was quite unlike chattel slavery in the Americas (it was still slavery, though). In the Greco-Roman slavery model, masters had a moral and legal obligation to attend responsibly to the needs of the individuals who were part of their household, working on their masters’ behalf.

If we port this into a 21st century context, the connection here becomes obvious: people who work for us and workers themselves belong to the sixth house. It’s the house of the proletariat. It’s also the house of people for whom we are responsible who are not otherwise related to us by blood. The power dynamic is baked in.

The third factor is that the sixth house is the joy of Mars. Mars is naturally associated with illness, accidents, injuries, and explosive disasters: of all the planets who are wont to cause problems, Mars especially delights in discord, bringing it with him into battle wherever he shows up. For us to avert Mars’ disastrous impact through the lens of the sixth house, we need to build a relationship with his energies that is focused, disciplined, humbled, and honed through diligent application of effort and tedious practice.

Think about it this way: Mars, the ruler of fire and iron, delights to be in the forge. A forge is a hot, sweaty, sooty, dangerous, and tedious place to be; the blacksmith’s hammer pounds away into the night as they shape a chunk of crude iron into something that can be used. With each shower of sparks that flies off the glowing metal, the form of the tool comes more clearly into focus. What will it be? Will it be the blade of a sword? Of a kitchen knife? Will it be a blade at all—what if it’s a nail, or a horseshoe, or a key blank? We won’t know until the blacksmith has finished the work at the anvil and plunged the finished tool into a trough of water, after which the final form will be revealed in a burst of steam.

Even then, the work isn’t finished yet. The blade must be honed on a whetstone. The horseshoe must be fitted to the horse. The key blank must be fit to its lock.

That’s the real blessing of the sixth house: it’s our point of contact for the crappy, random things that happen in life. However, our response to those ill-fated accidents draws out some of the best of us, when we apply our energy appropriately. The situations and people that get filed in the slice of life that is the sixth house in astrology are elements that require us to step up to the plate and embody responsible effort on their behalf. They form the anvil on which we’re shaped into effective people.

Enduring the heat, soot, sweat, and labor of the sixth house forges us into stronger, more effective individuals.

How to interpret the sixth house

As always, there’s a series of questions to be asked when it comes to interpreting the sixth house in astrology, and the answer are determined by the planet ruling the sixth house, its placement and condition by house and sign, its connection to other planets, as well as any planets placed within the sixth itself. The usual suspects.

Here are the questions to ask:

  • What parts of life become especially difficult for this person?
  • To which kinds of diseases and injuries is this person especially susceptible?
  • Where might a person best expend labor and responsibility to forge and hone themselves into more effective people?
  • To whom or what is a person naturally responsible? What humbles them?

Let’s consider this example: a person has their sixth house cusp falling in the sign Cancer, meaning that the Moon is the ruler of their sixth. Their Moon is in late Sagittarius on the 11th house cusp, peregrine, applying to the conjunction of Saturn in Saturn’s term and face (for advanced readers, this means that there is some very light reception happening here, nothing too strong). We can answer the questions as follows, knowing that the Moon is also naturally the ruler of a person’s emotional center of gravity and coping skills.

  • For this person, finding a place to call “home” relative to groups, friends, association, and community becomes especially fraught with difficulty. Not impossible, but it will take this person quite a bit of time to land in a community or circle of friends where they feel like they fit in and are able to form secure bonds.
  • Sagittarius rules the hips, thighs, and buttocks (what I like to call “ye olde haunches”). This person will be susceptible to bone and joint problems in this part of the body, because of the sixth ruler’s conjunction to Saturn—and these will likely be injuries due to stiffness and lack of flexibility, or from wear and tear.
  • This person can best expend their labor and responsibility to forge themselves into a more effective person through disciplining their interior emotional state and impulse to get the hell out of dodge (Sagittarius Moon) any time things start to go pear shaped. Being able to see things through to the end is a crucial growth point for them.
  • This person is naturally responsible to their sense of identity within a collective setting (sixth ruler in the eleventh house in a fire sign). There’s an ideological and spiritual responsibility here too, considering the nature of Sagittarius as ruled by Jupiter. Because of the nature of the Moon-Saturn conjunction this responsibility is one that matures the native by driving them to nurture, protect, and bolster the people in their circles. They’re a consummate dad friend.

For the purposes of getting you started with the sixth ruler, let’s look at the ruler of the sixth house through each of the other houses. The question here is the third one in the list above: Where can I best expend labor and responsibility to forge myself into a more effective person?

I best forge myself into a more effective person through applying rigor and discipline to and through:

  • Ruler of the sixth house in the first house: …my health, appearance, and overall circumstances. The disciplines of intense physical training are absolutely vital for my well-being and I become my best self through my body..
  • Ruler of the sixth house in the second house: …my finances, resources, and ability to generate income for myself. I must learn how to keep a budget.
  • Ruler of the sixth house in the third house: …my day to day environment, my siblings, relatives, and ability to keep my word. Learning to use something like a bullet journal and remembering to check in on my “lateral contemporaries” will keep me on the straight and narrow.
  • Ruler of the sixth house in the fourth house: …my relationship with my parents and my efforts in maintaining a stable home environment, regardless of what “home” looks like in my case.
  • Ruler of the sixth house in the fifth house: …my artistic endeavors and my “children,” whatever I’m putting out into the world that adds more energy and joy to life. “Enjoy responsibly” is my catchphrase.
  • Ruler of the sixth house in the sixth house: …my ability to cultivate effective disciplines across all parts of my life, not just the particularities of other houses. Having another life to be responsible for, like a plant or a pet, will keep me focused.
  • Ruler of the sixth house in the seventh house: …my relationship to those with whom I’m in formal one-on-one relationships, whether they are my romantic partner, business partner, or person with whom I’m in open conflict.
  • Ruler of the sixth house in the eighth house: …my relationship with spending money and managing the resources of other people. I must learn to be responsible in where the outflow of my resources is directed.
  • Ruler of the sixth house in the ninth house: …my search for illumination through higher education, learning, travel, and spirituality. A daily spiritual discipline such as prayer, meditation, lectio divina, or fasting can be tremendous for my overall well-being. Maybe try learning Japanese while you’re at it, too.
  • Ruler of the sixth house in the tenth house: …my responsible use of power on behalf of those under my care in my professional life, and through ensuring that the impact I have on others is always in the best interests of my subordinates and the people I serve.
  • Ruler of the sixth house in the eleventh house: …my connection to friends, groups, and associations, ensuring that I am responsible to the collective witness of my communities and chosen family.
  • Ruler of the sixth house in the twelfth house: …my relationship to people who are suffering, isolated, or mired in sorrow, as well as my relationship with my own unconscious challenges or limiting beliefs. I must discipline my internal narratives.

Where are the places that you’re being asked to discipline yourself? How do you feel about that? It’s not fun, but we’re all in this together—I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Featured image by Robert van der Sluijs via Unsplash

How to Interpret Houses in Astrology — Part 6: The Fifth House

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I knew that as soon as we approached the subject of the fifth house I’d be wading into the treacherous waters of a slowly roiling controversy among astrologers, especially those on the Internet.

Somewhere in the development of the modern psychological approach to astrology, matters related to sex got assigned to the eighth house. There’s a strong case that can be made if we are approaching this from the Freudian framework that conceptually joins sex and death. Of course, the French euphemism la petite mort immediately comes to mind.

I’m one of the holdouts that insists on sexuality belonging to the fifth house. I wanted to rip that bandage off at the beginning, because I think there’s a solid reason for that peculiar topic to take its rightful place in the fifth along the other matters that fall within the gilded halls of the fifth house.

Remember that the houses either take the bulk of their meanings from their astronomical characteristics, as is the case with the four angles as well as the second and eighth houses, or from the significations of the planets that have their “joys” there. When a planet is in the house in which it rejoices, it’s a little bit happier. All other factors being equal, it at least gets to be involved in something it actually enjoys instead of being stuck managing something it has no interest in.

Deborah Houlding’s book Houses: Temples of the Sky (affiliate link ahoy) compiles and interprets historical sources on the origin and nature of planetary joys, which is a fabulous discussion of the subject in addition to being The Book on houses. Likewise, astrologer Chris Brennan wrote a wonderful article exploring the influence of the planetary joys in house rulership throughout the astrological tradition. I don’t want to go too far into the weeds here as to why planets rejoice to be in the houses that they do; just remember that this is where the bulk of house meanings get drawn from prior to 1900 AD. Those resources are the ones you want to have on hand if you decide to do a deep dive into this subject.

When we come to interpreting the fifth house in astrology, it’s best to know that we’re dealing with three primary elements that import their influence into the meaning of this house. These influences inform the questions that we need to ask here.

First off, this house is the joy of Venus. In fact, most of the meanings of the fifth house emerge from this influence alone. To get there, let’s consider the nature of the planet Venus to begin with.

Venus and Mars both represent interior, intuitive, nocturnal influences that cause us to move and to act in accordance with instinctual nature. This is because they’re part of the night team, the “nocturnal sect” of planets that operate on a subconscious level. Together, Venus and Mars form a polarity of energies that we see manifest in our behaviors and pursuits: while Mars’ function is to drive us (which we will explore more next week when we address the sixth house), Venus’ function is to draw us.

In her bid to join and harmonize us with one another and with the natural world, Venus inflames the hearts of humans with a desire to merge. Consider the last time that you’ve been absolutely captivated by something of tremendous natural beauty, whether a sunset, or a landscape, or a flower, or a birdsong, or a flavor, or perhaps even another human. The intoxicating factor here is the Venus principle at work.

Aesthetic beauty has the peculiar property of drawing us to it. Throughout history humans have made attempts to imitate and replicate this beauty with their own hands, skill, and intellect, crafting art to reflect reality in rarefied, idealized form. Aesthetic beauty isn’t the only thing that draws us; writ large, the principle here is pleasure. Anything that pleases our senses has the ability to draw us to it quite apart from our intentions or better judgment at times. Venus, then, has rulership over anything that brings sensory pleasure to us and draws us out of ourselves into richer engagement and union with the world of matter.

None of the senses are immune from her inexorable draw: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell all are susceptible to Venus’ indolent vacuum. The simplest reason for sex belonging to the fifth house is due to the sheer fact that it’s a pleasurable experience (or at least it’s supposed to be; I know this is tragically not the case for many). For the bulk of human history, sex was the sine qua non of having children, and so naturally children and pregnancy also belong to matters of the fifth house. Venus, of course, is conducive to life and is implicated in cycles of fertility—which reminds me, have you bought Nicola Smuts-Allsop’s game-changing book on fertility astrology yet? (It’s an affiliate link, Harry.)

But along with sex and sexuality come all the other sensory pleasures: flavors and aromas, colors and forms, harmonies and melodies that transfix us and give us a taste of the transcendent beauty of the world in material form (remember that the fifth house is also configured to the ninth house by trine as much as it is configured to the first). For that reason, any activity, person, or environment where these drawing elements are placed at the fore belongs to fifth house.

Second, the fifth house is referred to as the house of Good Fortune. There’s a reason that gambling is addictive: just as one can become addicted to any kind of sensory pleasure that draws us, one can also become addicted to the emotional thrill of inviting good fortune into our lives. “You have to play to win,” says the person who buys scratch-off tickets by the dozen. So the fifth house, then, rules games and any activity that joins us to Fortune, and any happy accidents that happen along the way.

(By the way, if you have the Moon applying to Jupiter in Cancer with the Part of Fortune all in the fifth house, playing the lottery might not be the worst decision for you—but your mileage may vary.)

Third, the fifth house is configured to the first house by trine. Astrologer Sam Reynolds explains this configuration makes the fifth house the house of “swagger.” The flowing partnership between the first and the fifth creates a space for the energies of the first house to express themselves.

Note too that this is a superior trine from the first: planets in the first have a direct impact on anything happening in the fifth and determine the outcomes here. Joined to the aesthetic sensibilities of Venus, there’s a strong case for this house and its ruler being implicated in a person’s style and self-expression through their aesthetic choices, dress, preferences, and performance. Child-bearing is also a natural part of this narrative: what’s more “expressing yourself” than making another human who looks like you?

How to interpret the fifth house in astrology

When it comes to interpreting the fifth house in astrology, we of course need to begin with the ruler of the fifth house to determine which area of life the person’s tastes and desirous factors work themselves out in. Likewise, we also need to determine how the planets placed within the fifth house express themselves.

SOAPBOX ALERT: I have, in my relatively brief time practicing professionally, encountered more than one client who has been told that they will not have children because they have no planets in the fifth house. This is patently wrong, and I will happily die on this hill. This approach to delineation ignores the fact that the fifth ruler might be wildly well-placed.

For example, say we have the fifth house cusp in Pisces in a day chart with nothing in the fifth, making Jupiter the ruler of the fifth (and very likely Venus as the almuten). Jupiter in this case is in Taurus in the seventh, with the Sun and Venus applying to Jupiter by sextile from Cancer in the 9th. If someone with a chart like this came into my practice and asked whether they would have kids, I’d have to ask them how many they already had.

That said, if Mars or Saturn were implicated somehow by hard aspect in this configuration, I’d expect there to be some difficulties depending on where they are afflicting Jupiter or any of the other planets involved from. Say Saturn were in an overcoming square to Venus from Aries in this same example, the issue might not be the native at all, but it might have to do with the fertility of their partner and we’d need to explore some medical interventions to help that out (since Saturn is in the sixth).

The most important thing to do in these instances, I’ve found, is not to pronounce an interpretation with finality one way or another but investigate all the factors that need to be considered and work with the client to discern solutions that they might not otherwise consider.

All that said, here’s a series of questions that we need to ask in analyzing the fifth house.

  • What is the individual’s relationship with pleasure, fun, and aesthetic sensibilities?
  • How can they bring more joie de vivre into their daily experience?
  • What is the impact of the native’s creations and creativity in this life?
  • How will the native’s creativity express itself naturally?

Taking the same example from above, we have Jupiter in Taurus in the seventh house as the fifth ruler, supported wonderfully by sextiles from the Sun and Venus in Cancer the ninth, not otherwise afflicted. In this instance, the native’s creative work will be wondrously fertile, their aesthetics are richly Venusian and tend towards the comfortable and classically elegant. Their creative priorities are pulled towards engagement one-on-one with other people. There’ll be a natural pull of this person to do creative work that renders physical objects that beautify their surroundings, and there’s a strong chance that this individual will become a parent, or otherwise have children as a significant part of their life if they choose not to have children of their own.

Since the fifth house is so multifaceted and expresses so much to do with style, attending to the sign in which the fifth ruler is placed is especially important. Signs determine the style in which planets express themselves. That said, by looking at the house position of the fifth ruler, we can determine what life priorities attune a person’s aesthetic compass. Is it a “beauty will save the world” situation? Or is someone’s draw the sensual allure of history? Of romance? Of death? Of their hometown?

Interpreting the fifth house ruler through the houses

  • Fifth house ruler in the first house: that which draws you is you, in the most basic way of phrasing it. Aesthetic sensibilities, pleasure, and creative output have their hand on the wheel in this case and form one of the guiding principles through which you live out your life narrative.
  • Fifth house ruler in the second house: pleasure-seeking activities and creative output are tied to your bank account and understanding the role they play in your life becomes important in improving your overall financial portfolio. These aspects of life function as a resource in your back pocket, if you nurture them well.
  • Fifth house ruler in the third house: the joy of gathering together with your local community and the beauty of everyday pleasures are important influences for you to nurture.
  • Fifth house ruler in the fourth house: the allure of history, legend, inheritance, and the land itself draws you to it and desires expression. Your tastes are likely strongly aligned with those of your family, for better or for worse.
  • Fifth house ruler in the fifth house: creation for its own sake is a crucial plotline in your life. If your fifth ruler is in its own sign, you can expect, in general, quite a bit of ease in enjoying anything to which you’re drawn.
  • Fifth house ruler in the sixth house: creativity is a labor for you, and chances are that your tastes are aggressively pragmatic. Anything requiring discipline and habitual effort becomes, in its own strange way, fun for you.
  • Fifth house ruler in the seventh house: there is a certain pleasure you derive from engaging one on one with other humans. If there’s any placement that signifies bids to win people over (or settle arguments) through an appeal to beauty—entrancing your beloved with art in their honor, or holding a stereo up outside their window—it’s probably this one.
  • Fifth house ruler in the eighth house: art must change you, if it doesn’t terrify you. Every opportunity to engage with a creative act has the opportunity to draw you into deeper engagement with the cycles of life and death. Sex can be a fearsome thing (in both the positive and negative connotations of that word). And, you might just really dislike being around children.
  • Fifth house ruler in the ninth house: creativity, performance, and pleasure for you are windows into the sacred and the transcendent, and the connection to Dostoyevsky’s position is stronger for you than most.
  • Fifth house ruler in the tenth house: aesthetics aren’t just an extracurricular activity for you. Creative work, pleasure, or any of the other fifth house factors are part and parcel of the impact you make in the world as you live your life, and can become a career story for you as well.
  • Fifth house ruler in the eleventh house: chances are if this is the case, your fifth ruler is in detriment, and you’ll be investing a lot of effort into drawing a community of friends around you to meet whichever sensual and social needs are going unmet throughout your life. Used well, this impulse can be tremendously beneficial for your friends and audiences.
  • Fifth house ruler in the twelfth house: the darkened glass of the unconscious and the forgotten areas of life become rich fodder for your bids at self-expression.

The final point on the fifth house I need to make is this: fun is not frivolous. The deeply utilitarian nature of most modern economic discourse is, in my humble opinion, a load of bullsh*t. I believe, body and soul, that aesthetic beauty and enjoyment of sensual pleasure, as well as the process of creativity, is wholly a holy end unto itself and does not need to be placed in the service of some “higher” priority.

Just because something belongs to the realm of “fun and games” does not mean it can be dispensed with; a soulful and purposeful life depends on nurturing the Venus principle within us. Understanding the matters she rejoices in are critical to the thriving of our souls.

Dostoyevsky was right: beauty will save the world.

(In related news, my fifth ruler Mercury is in the eighth house, ninth sign, in Libra.)

Where’s your fifth ruler at? How does your fifth house ruler influence your tastes and your approach to creativity, enjoyment, fun, sensuality, and the rest of it all? Let me know in the comments!

Featured image by Yutacar via Unsplash

How to Interpret Houses in Astrology – Part 5: The Fourth House

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Where do we come from, and when all is said and done, where is it that we shall return? What is the source and summit of our sojourn through life? What is our center of gravity?

These weighty matters are the purview of the fourth house in astrology.

But before we get too far into the weeds, it’s time for a useless piece of information that I find delicious.

そっこんは、日本語をならいます．(I’m learning Japanese right now). In numerous east Asian cultures, Japan included, the number four is associated with death, partly because the number four (四, pronounced shi in Japanese, except when it’s pronounced yon) sounds like the word for die (死, also pronounced shi). Considering where we’re about to go with the meaning of the fourth house, you might want to keep this in your back pocket.

Unlike the third house, which derives its meanings from the planet that joys therein (namely the Moon), the fourth house in astrology derives its meaning from its astronomical features. No planet joys in an angle, save Mercury in the first, who strides across the realms of death and life with fleet feet, bridging the matter and spirit as a psychopomp.

The other three angular houses derive their meanings from the way in which planets encounter turns in their diurnal courses there. Remember that these angles are, to the ancient mind, the four stakes upon which the world is founded.

In quadrant-based house systems, the fourth house is centered around the lowest possible point in relation to the Zodiac, called the imum coeli, literally “the bottom of the sky.” This point marks the cusp of the fourth house. In sign-based systems, the fourth sign counter-clockwise from the ascendant fulfills this role.

This point is as far below the earth a planet can descend before it begins to ascend once more. If you’re standing in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere and facing south (i.e., facing the midheaven), the imum coeli, is under your feet and behind you a little. In middle and tropical latitudes, this point generally falls within the fourth sign from the ascendant as well.

The IC is as far out of your field of vision as it can possibly be. Planets at this point are hidden deep within the earth, but because they take their position at one of the celestial stakes, planets placed here have a subtly stunning impact on the unfolding of the narratives promised by a chart.

This point is a turning point. The transition that occurs here is one that is subtle, invisible to mortals on the surface, known only to those who understand that an uncanny transition from death to life begins at this point.

It’s worth noting that the Latin term “medium coeli,” which refers to this point’s opposite point in the visible sky, is not, as you might expect, called “cacumen coeli” or “apex coeli,” either of those meaning “top” or “highest point” of heaven. The ancients understood the place where planets reach their heights as primarily the middle of the sky, where planets were at their most visible and influential (beside the ascendant).

The base of heaven, then, is not just the lowest point—it is also the terminal point where the journey of a planet around the sky according to the diurnal march of the heavens around the celestial sphere end their journey and begin a new one. In this sense, the IC and the fourth house form the alpha and omega point, the beginning and the end.

The mythic power of the fourth house is floating right on the top of this soup of symbolism.

Dane Rudhyar, the 20th century astrologer and composer, evocatively described the fourth house as “the center of the globe,” that is, the center of gravity. Our center of gravity. The point draws our attention to the planet on which we stand, its gravity, its cycles, the raw material from which our experience emerges and unto which we will return. “Ashes to ashes.”

The fourth house symbolizes our center of gravity and everything upon which our experience of this lifetime stands; it is our point of deepest sustenance. Bernadette Brady, a British astrologer, describes planets and stars tied to the imum coeli as related to our “foundations,” fixtures that ground us and root our entire experience.

Because of its location, the meanings of the fourth house are shot through with the myths of the underworld. When I say “underworld” here, I don’t mean the fire-and-brimstone realm that is the darling of so many fundamentalist Christians. In fact, this version of “hell” is largely a medieval rhetorical invention that borrowed heavily on the description of a place called Tartarus which Vergil’s Aeneid described and which Dante Alighieri and those who followed in his footsteps so colorfully and horrendously describe in art and verse. What I mean, rather, is Hades, what the Hebrews called Sheol.

The early Christian conception of the underworld was much more in line with the Jewish view they inherited, itself influenced in large part the Greek understanding of Hades which was in the drinking water of the Mediterranean basin in the first century CE. In this view, the underworld is not a place of conscious torment, but rather a prison, a gravitational well.

That which laid in the grave was inert: “the grave cannot praise thee, Death cannot celebrate thee,” sang the psalmist. However, in the Easter mythos, the underworld is emptied of its dead as all its inhabitants are raised to new life at the resurrection of Christ, the great turning of the world—which unfolds at the cosmic imum coeli, the point where death pivots into life.

This myth has a similar flavor to other dying-and-rising myths found around the Mediterranean basin during astrology’s heyday. Because so many stories from around the world have subterranean dying-and-rising baked in, there’s a thread to pull here.

I’d go so far as to conjecture that every human narrative has some form of dying-and-rising experience. In that sense, the fourth house serves as the setting for the unfolding of that turn in our personal mythology. Keep in mind that the fourth house and the eighth house, which describes death, are configured to one another by a trine.

It is at the imum coeli that the roots of the world tree run their deepest; it is at the imum coeli that the waters under the earth gather as they flow from cloud to spring to mountain to ocean. It is in the bowels of the underworld that death is changed to life as all life flows there through its course. That which returns to the grave is transformed into the raw material of new life. The cosmic cycle begins anew.

The Astrological Meaning of the Fourth House

Ultimately, the fourth house in astrology describes the places we come from, and the place that we will return at the end of it all. It’s our source, our summit, our center of gravity. And for that reason, the fourth house picked up three primary significations:

The first is our roots, specifically our parents and the legacy that we inherited from them (and that we inherit from the living in general). Our parents are the closest humans to us, and we emerged from them, as humans emerged from the Earth (figuratively). The peculiar relationships we have with our parents are described by the nature and condition of planets involved with the fourth house, whether the house’s ruler or any planets placed therein.

The second is our home, both in the sense of the place that comes to mind when we think of “home” but also our daily dwelling place—so, our actual house or apartment. That’s because the home is our daily center of gravity; it’s where we depart in the morning to attend to our daily activities, it’s where we return to sleep in the evening, and it serves as the center of gravity around which our day-to-day activities revolve.

The third is the land, for all the reasons I cited above. We gain our sustenance from the land, our bodies transform material that is drawn out of the earth into our embodied life, and upon our death, we return to the land. Because of the connection to the land, we can also see how any matter related to the land is signified by the fourth house: material resources, real estate, speculative assets.

Sidebar: in horary astrology, there’s one additional signification that gets thrown around when the fourth house is highlighted in a chart. That signification is the “end of the matter.” Often folks want to go here to determine what the final outcome of a question is, but that’s not quite what this Jacobean turn of phrase means. Rather, this phrase signifies the legacy that a question will leave for the person who asks it, and the ripple effects that a given course of action will have for those who come after them.

How to interpret the fourth house in astrology

Given the three major significations I laid out, we’ll be looking at three primary questions when it comes to dealing with the matters of the fourth house:

  • What is this person’s relationship to their parents and ancestors, and what will they pass on to those who come after them? In other words, what psychic baggage did they inherit from their parents, and how will they adapt, transform, and heal that psychic baggage to hand it on to those who come after them?
  • What its this person’s relationship to home? Where is their center of gravity? Are they fixed in one place, or do they have a fire under their tail that drives them from one place to another? Are they given to settling or constant motion?
  • What is this person’s relationship with the land itself? Do they feel a connection to the land on which they walk, or do they travel through their unique geography as a sojourner?

Remember that the ruler of a house expresses its purposes among the affairs of the house that it is placed in and in accordance with the style and priorities of the sign in which it falls. How well or poorly a planet can do its job depends on its condition. (Do I sound like a broken record on this point yet?)

Meanwhile, planets placed in the fourth house have a direct impact on a person’s relationship to those three areas spelled out above.

Let’s look at an example. Say that a native has Virgo rising, with their IC falling in Sagittarius in the fourth sign (keeping it easy here). In this case, their fourth house ruler is Jupiter. Suppose their natal Jupiter is in Virgo, right in the first house. This suggests that their connection to their parents is deeply influential to them, sitting right on the steering wheel of their chart. This ensures that they live up to the expansively scrutinizing standards of their parents becomes a major theme throughout their life, and something which they as a parent will pass on to their children.

Likewise their relationship to their physical house and dwelling place is of the nature of Jupiter in Virgo: they have a deep, abiding desire to have a house to call home but it may be that other factors in their life, possibly their marriage partner’s job (since Jupiter is also the 7th ruler, as well as the turned 10th ruler) prevents them from being able to own a home and put down roots in the way that they would truly prefer. Finding a place to settle down will require a herculean effort and it’s likely that having to pack up and move every so often will simply be part of their life narrative. When it comes to maintaining their home, only perfection suffices: they have an overblown standard of cleanliness, and heaven forfend anyone leave their crap laying around.

The ruler of the fourth house through the houses

  • Fourth house ruler in the first house: your parent’s desires and expectations, your relationship to your dwelling place, and your level of engagement with the land all have an unyielding influence on your personality and your attempts to create the best circumstances for yourself. It might be difficult for you to differentiate from your parents if your fourth ruler is afflicted, but if it’s in good condition, this may suggest that you enjoyed a wonderfully supportive upbringing that has carried you into adulthood.
  • Fourth house ruler in the second house: your relationship to parents, home, and the land is as a resource to you that you can access to support overall outcomes in your life. If this planet is well-placed it can indicate that you’ve got access to estate; if poorly-placed, home can become a money pit.
  • Fourth house ruler in the third house: you’ve likely never strayed far from home, and your old stomping grounds are probably still your current stomping grounds. You find a sense of family identity especially among your siblings and lateral contemporaries.
  • Fourth house ruler in the fourth house: you’ve got roots that run deep and you know precisely who you are and where you came from. You don’t need the Disney musical to tell you who you are, and carrying on that legacy to the next generation is a major part of your sense of identity and purpose.
  • Fourth house ruler in the fifth house: home is a source of fun and creative drive for you. Your relationship you’re your parents was likely pleasant and supportive, depending on how well the planet that rules the fourth is doing here.
  • Fourth house ruler in the sixth house: home, family, and the land are areas where you feel a certain sense of drudgery and responsibility. This may manifest as being asked to return home to care for an ailing parent when your fourth ruler is activated by timing techniques, or it may signify that you work within the family business.
  • Fourth house ruler in the seventh house: your sense of home and center of gravity is tied up in forward motion and it’s very unlikely that you’re one to stay in a single place for a long time. One of the reasons for this is that, in relocation horary questions, the 4th house is “stay” and the 7th house is “go.” This could also mean that you are more likely to follow your partner’s career and call wherever they land “home,” because for you, there’s a good chance that “home” is where your partner is if this is the case. (This is my 4th ruler placement, by the way.)
  • Fourth house ruler in the eighth house: you have a strong sense of what it is that you inherited from your family, and it is a present possibility that there is some element of fear or loss connected to the story of your upbringing. Interpreting that story in life-giving ways then becomes part of your own dying-and-rising myth.
  • Fourth house ruler in the ninth house: home is far away, either far away from where you grew up or far away from where you are now. The land you tread serves as a teacher and a spiritual nexus for you as well.
  • Fourth house ruler in the tenth house: your family and land story plays out in the actions you take for which you are most remembered, whether within the context of your career or the ways in which the legacy you inherited from your parents drives your public actions.
  • Fourth house ruler in the eleventh house: home and lineage is a source of good fortune for you, and you find yourself among friends when people know who your parents were (or among enemies, if the fourth ruler is afflicted here). Pay attention to the way that stories from your upbringing play out anew among your friends, groups, and chosen family.
  • Fourth house ruler in the twelfth house: distance. Distance between you and your roots, you and your parents, you and the land on which you tread. Bridging that gap of isolation requires long, thoughtful, considered effort, and can be wildly fruitful if the condition of the planet so promises. The other niche interpretation is a strong connection to livestock and animal husbandry, but that’s going to be fairly unusual.

    • Where’s your fourth house ruler? What’s its condition? How do you see the story of your fourth house playing out in the overall arc of your story? Let me know in the comments!

    Featured image by Jared Rice via Unsplash