What is your Rising Sign?

That determines what sign is on your 7th House cusp. 

CLICK HERE to see your opposites.

 

 

 

If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that who we fell in love with at 20 can be eerily the same person at 30, and even 40. We also know that the same kind of person keeps showing up as our boss, as a coworker and even as a friend, even if we decide to leave and distance ourselves from their presence.

 

We can continue to do that for a long time. We can leave one relationship and find another, and we can certainly leave a job, or a friendship, or even a sibling who we have decided is causing us pain. We can continue to blame others for our negative experiences, or we can muster up the courage to take a long, hard look at our own Shadow.

 

The Shadow

As I reflect on my past relationship patterns I wonder if, had I had a more thorough grasp of the meaning of the astrological 7th house, my own particular aspects to Venus and the ruler of the 7th house, would I have been able to create something different in my life? I believe so.

 

I started studying astrology under Kimberly McSherry at the Houston Institute of Astrology in 1985. I quickly found out that astrology is unsurpassed in its ability to help a person understand himself or herself. Most people who read the simple horoscope columns have no idea just how detailed and complicated it is. The subject is so vast you could spend your whole lifetime studying it, as there is so much to it that although I needed an understanding of the basics, I eventually developed a passion for learning specifically about relationships issues. It was an area of astrology that I was destined to learn about being a woman with five planets in the sign of Libra, the marriage sign, in the 3rd house, the house of the mind/communications and the North Node in the 7th house to boot.

 

Inside us or outside of us, it is all the same— a reflection par excellence.

This is the house that shows us who we are and what we can expect when we are in relationships. It also shows us what kind of people fascinate us when we meet them. The symbols in this house will clearly show us what we are required to integrate in ourselves if we want to be in a healthy, committed relationship. And here is where the trouble begins, because it is a very misunderstood house (area) within the psyches of all of us. Most of us are used to finding our partners out there somewhere instead of looking inside ourselves.

 

A couple came to me for a reading recently, and they wanted to know “Is this the person for me? What is our compatibility?” These two people were in their mid- to late 30s, and had both been married before, and I asked them each this question: “Are you the person for you?” Yes, I know it sounded strange, but this is the real question at the bottom of our relationship struggle that we need to ask ourselves.

 

The people we are extremely attracted to are the parts of ourselves that we are missing. And the curious thing is we can be repulsed and attracted to the very same person. When we have a feeling that we are “in love,” when we have that kind of fascination or compulsion toward an individual (and this applies whether we are gay, straight or whatever), it’s a real clue that it is a projection of our own unconscious contents. There will be an almost erotic, magnetic feeling within us when we meet someone who can carry the projection of our shadow, our anima or animus as described in the analytical psychology of Dr. Carl G. Jung.

 

The shadow is in us all.

This is why the ancients believed this house was also the house of open enemies, because the partner becomes the enemy that we will polarize with. At first all is wonderful. You feel you have met your true “soul mate.” But eventually (and this has to occur for our own psychological growth), the couple will begin to polarize, find fault with each other and a crisis (which is also a turning point in the relationship) will occur. The relationship will start to deteriorate so that they can differentiate, as John Sanford explains in the book, The Kingdom Within. Unknowingly, they are both carrying unconscious psychological contents for each other. This is what psychologists call an unconscious collusion. At first, as I said before, it is quite compelling. We can feel as if we have known this person before because he or she seems so familiar and so comfortable to us. When we are in this state, no amount of logical reasoning can talk us out of it either. We have to go through it in order to develop an awareness of our whole Self. Jung felt that deep within us, the Self is guiding us to our own wholeness, which he called the process of individuation. The alchemists called this meeting, the divine marriage or the coniunctio. Because it can wake us up and help us see many things differently, falling in love can be a very transformative and wonderful experience.

 

Then why is it so scary?

Because it can just as easily turn around and become a nightmare. Just as quickly as a relationship begins, it can end. The original love can turn to hate. When relationships end that violently, you know that neither partner was able to get past his or her own unconscious projections. Unless they are both willing to do some inner work, they will just go on to find other partners and it will repeat over and over and over again and a pattern of victim consciousness continues.

 

As Paul McCartney sings in the song that he and John Lennon wrote:

 

I’m looking through you.

What did I know?

I thought I knew you.

What did I know?

You don’t look different, but you have changed.

I’m looking through you.

You’re not the same.

CHORUS

Why, tell me why, did you not treat me right?

Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight.

 

The reason this happens to everyone and is so archetypal is that the shadow side of us is so hidden from our consciousness. What’s really interesting is that everyone else can see this part of us and we can’t. We then become our own worst enemy, because anything unknown is not under our conscious observation or direction. As Jung said, “Whatever one does not live, lives against one.”

 

Therefore, the enemy is us.

When we are projecting the 7th house onto the beloved, he or she will bring up emotion and feeling, great highs and lows, physical sensation and intense passion. It can be very magnetic, and, as Dr. Liz Greene says in the book, Relating, Living with Others on a Small Planet, we will act as if we are possessed. All logic, values, rational behavior, etc. can go out the door as we feel compelled to follow a person who has triggered this unconscious, archetypal possession. Recently my teacher at the Jung Center, Rev. J. Pittman McGehee, said in class, “If you want the projections to fall off, just marry the person.” We all laughed because many of us were over 40 and we knew that what he was saying was true.

 

Libra characteristics chosen consciously can help us.

The sign or archetype of Libra is the natural ruler of the 7th house, and Libra is considered to be the sign most interested in relating to others. Libra is a cardinal sign, active in social affairs and good at organizing people. Ruled by the planet Venus, it has a flair for art and creativity and a distinct need for beauty, symmetry and balance. This need for balance extends into relating skills as it is also very aware of equality and keeping things fair. This is a clue to what we all need in order to have successful relationships. We all have Libra somewhere in our chart, not just the people born under the sun sign of Libra. We have to learn the Libran traits of compromise, cooperation, recognizing each other’s needs, and giving our partners equal room in the relationship. We have to learn to be considerate and reach out when the other needs us, and be willing to show that we need them too. Nothing is a one-way street. Any planet in the 7th house will have these requirements no matter what sign is there.

 

Libra is also seeking to be objective as it is at the 180 degree opposition in the chart, an aspect that describes two opposite urges in the psyche that will need to stay in proportion to each other. The symbol is the scales. This symbol implies that in partnership we will be required to consciously create balance with our significant other. Libra is also interested in ideas and concepts as it is also an air sign, and is therefore very mental in its orientation to life. So thinking, reflecting, becoming objective where our partner is concerned is a very important ingredient to sustaining a successful relationship. We also have to differentiate from our beloveds and see all of them, the dark and the light, in order to love them, the real flesh and blood human beings that they are.

 

Astrology is a syncronistic model.

Glenn Perry, Ph.D., in his talk on Synchronicity and the Soul, describes in detail this syncroncity of the archetypes in our own birth chart. The chart shows us that what is inside us shows up in our outer world experience as if by synchronicity or coincidence. Whatever sign is on the descendent or 7th-house cusp, whatever planets reside therein are a detailed picture of what we will develop in this lifetime with or without our intention or consent. So we might as well learn about this part of us and make a decision to develop it because then we can experience the more productive aspects of that particular energy.

 

I hear people with Mars (planet of action, male principle, directedness) in the 7th or ruler of the 7th telling me over and over again how violent their ex-husbands were, how they have constantly attracted aggressive or angry partners. People with the Moon there tell me how needy and emotional their partners are, how dependent. Uranus — how unpredictable, detached and aloof. Saturn — how cold, unresponsive, limiting and critical. Jupiter — how opinionated, inflated, self-indulgent. These are simplistic descriptions, but a good astrologer, knowing your 7th house, the aspects to your Venus and the ruler, has a very clear understanding of what your own needs are in relationships, which can be different from everyone else’s. We are all unique. Don’t feel something is wrong with you if you throw out the cultural model of the white picket fence and the two-car garage. That may not be what your soul is requiring in this lifetime. So stop feeling guilty if you aren’t creating it. What you have is what you wanted on a soul level. As Glenn Perry, Ph.D., puts it, “Who you’re with, is where you’re at.” Know that, and then you can make it livable.

 

Learn about yourself through your astrological chart so that you can make the conscious effort to be this part of you and learn to meet people — but only halfway. And that is the dance called Libra.

 

So as Lee Ann Womack says in her song, “When you get the choice to sit it out or dance — I hope you’ll dance!”

 

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