House Placements of Planetary Patterns
May 2015
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Rethinking Houses from a Clockwise Perspective
Aside from these various planetary combinations, it also makes a difference where in the houses such planetary combinations fall.
Before we can assign various houses of the birthchart to various chakras, we must understand what is going on in the houses from an astro-logical scheme. Most of us learn about the houses as a kind of mishmash of concepts and ideas lumped together seemingly randomly in relation to each house. But there is a schematic logic to the houses that underlies and in some cases contradicts conventional astrological wisdom about the houses. This is too broad a subject to go into here, but I can give you a quick and dirty synoposis of my take on them.
The first thing to understand about the houses that is different from the way they are normally presented is that while planets appear to be moving through them gradually in a counterclockwise direction, they also move through the houses each 24-hour period in a clockwise direction.
This can be seen most clearly in the movement of the Sun, which rises at the Ascendant, moving through the 4th quadrant in the morning to culminate at the Midheaven around noon, then down through the 3rd quadrant in the afternoon, to set at the Descendant. In the evening hours, after dark, the Sun moves through the 2nd quadrant, reaching the Nadir about midnight, then gradually back through the 1st quadrant in the hours before the dawn, which takes place again at the Ascendant. As with the Sun, so with the rest of the planets.
It is this clockwise motion, which refers to the Earth’s rotation around its internal axis that most relates to the journey of the soul, and not the conventional association of houses with correspondent signs. Although not new, this is still a fairly radical and unconventional way of looking at houses that it may take some time to wrap your head around. But for the moment, let’s just see if we can’t suspend what we think we already know about the houses, and see what the implications of this clockwise motion might be in terms of our current project of tracking the soul.
Any understanding of the houses must begins with an understanding of hemispheres and quadrants, which provide the broad strokes which serve as the background context for the placement of any given house. The 1st house is in the eastern and the northern hemispheres and the 1st or NE quadrant. The 8th house is in the western and southern hemispheres and the 3rd or SW quadrant. These astro-logical facts, in part, help determine the meaning of the 1st and 8th houses.
Hemispheres and Quadrants
Any planet in the northern hemisphere (below the horizon) is by definition moving through a portion of celestial space that is invisible to us, below our feet on the other side of the Earth. Any planet in the southern hemisphere (above the horizon) is moving through a portion of celestial space at least potentially visible to us, in sky above us. I say potentially because, of course, during a day birth, all planets but the Sun are invisible in the sky. They are, however, not hidden from our view, and consequently are somehow more accessible to conscious recognition.
If we consider the metaphorical implications of this simple distinction, we might postulate that planets in the north represent faculties that are more unconscious, more internal, and harder to access than planets than planets above the horizon, which are relatively conscious, external and easier to access.
Meanwhile, planets in the east are those that are rising, suggesting association with new beginnings, and energies moving from the center of our being (internal) out into external manifestation. Planets in the west are by contrast, setting. These we can in some symbolic way associate with endings or completions, and energies moving from the external world back into us. This is where we process our experiences and hopefully learn from them. Often these lessons come through relationships, so the west can represent those aspects or qualities of being that we experience in others, either through direct encounter or through projection. Planets in the east are those we can more readily identify as belonging to us.
With this simple framework, we then have an ability to understand the quadrants. In the NE quadrant, planets are rising but invisible. In the SE quadrant, they are rising and visible. In the SW, they are setting and visible. In the NW, they are setting and invisible. Each of these associations has metaphorical implications that we won’t go into now, except to say that they have a bearing on the processes we have associated earlier with the chakras. Much of this is rather intuitive, as I hope to demonstrate to you by asking a few simple questions.
The next post in this series is House Placement by Chakra.
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