discussion | example Tony Blair | difference 9th house and Sag
selfportrait of the author as a child | when good glyphs go bad
also see article about 9th house person Angelina Jolie
This is a reading I did for an individual who has a 9th house Sun and North Node. She also has Saturn in Sagittarius. In an email to her I referred to her as a "9th house person".
There is a similarity between a Sagittarian person and a 9th house person but there are subtle differences which I will explain at the end of the report. Otherwise I could have easily said a "Sagittarian type".
There are several indications in this chart that the woman is a 9th house person. But her Sun is in Scorpio and she fancies herself a Scorp. She was surprised when I said she was a 9th house person, yet she felt my descriptions in this section of her report were accurate. She wondered what the reason was. Why did I do this?
I did this intuitively from years of experience but have analyzed it to present it here so you can learn, too. Here's the informal check list I considered when weighting factors in her chart.
The way I arrive at a statement like this, that someone is a "9th house person" is be looking at the chart as a whole to see what the major influences are.
- look at Saturn
- look at the Moon Nodes
- make the house, sign and planetary correlations
- 1st house = Aries = Mars
- 2nd house = Taurus = Venus
- 3rd house = Gemini = Mercury
- 4th house = Cancer = Moon
- 5th house = Leo = Sun
- 6th house = Virgo = Mercury
- 7th house = Libra = Venus
- 8th house = Scorpio = Pluto
9th house = Sagittarius = Jupiter - 10th house = Capricorn = Saturn
- 11th house = Aquarius = Uranus
- 12th house = Pisces = Neptune
- What is the overall chart tone?
- What is the distribution between mutable and fixed?
- What is the distribution between thinking and feeling?
Let's look in the chart for the distribution of things that are Scorpionic besides the Sun: 8th house, other water signs,sign Pluto is in.
- The 8th house has Neptune and Venus in it but they are in the air sign Libra which makes them about as far from Scorpionic as you can get. The four signs "farthest" from any sign you are looking at are the ones immediately preceding and following it, and the two signs that are inconjunct to it. The sign opposite it is really just like it, a variation of polarities. Thus, the four signs most unlike Scorpio will be Libra which precedes it, Sagittarius which follows it, and the two inconjuncts to Scorpio are Aries and Gemini (five signs forward and backward)
- Intuitive weight is give to the fact that there is so much Sagittarius and Libran energy in this chart and those are the signs that bracket Scorpio, dilute, wear it down, pin it in, etc. These are the two signs that wont give Scorpio the recognition it usually gets (!)
- Other water signs: There are two other planets in water signs, Mars and Neptune. Intercepted Mars is very weak in Pisces. Neptune is not particularly strong in the 8th house. It is conjunct Venus in the air sign Libra and thus has a predominantly "mental" aspect by association with Libra. The 12th house is ruled by Capricorn and has a good deal of Aquarius in it.
- What sign is Pluto in? Pluto is in Virgo in the 7th house.
Now look in the chart for the distribution of things that are 9th house or Sagittarian:
- Sun in 9th house
- North Moon Node in 9th house
-
Saturn in Sagittarius
- Mercury is in Sagittarius in the 9th house (double weight)
- Sagittarius rules the Midheaven
- Sagittarius rules two houses (there is an intercept in this chart of the signs Virgo and Pisces)
- Jupiter aspects Sun, Mercury and North Node favorably; Mars unfavorably
I also gave weight to mutable vs. fixed energy as this would swing the balance from Scorpio to Sagittarius as well.
- overall chart tone is Pisces (mutable)
- Jupiter is in a mutable sign (Virgo)
- Moon is in a mutable sign (Gemini)
- the Ruler of the Sun is in a mutable sign (Virgo)
- Mars is in a mutable sign (Pisces)
I also gave weight to "mental" versus "emotional" which is to say air versus water signs. Yes, Sag is a fire sign but I am connecting to its relation with the Mind. I am also looking at the "air" houses, 3, 7 and 11.
- Aquarius Rising
- Venus and Neptune in Libra - very cerebral Venus
- Jupiter and Pluto in the 7th house
- the Ruler of the Sun is in the 7th
- Moon, presumably the most emotional of all planets, is in air (Gemini)
- IC is in air (Gemini) I give more weight to the IC than most astrologers. To me the IC shows the Soul of the person more than any other objective indication in the chart
Here is what I wrote in pertinent part:
For you the Mind is all. Everything is Mental. Yes. But not the way you think. You keep building reality constructs that cave in, like slippery Shibboleths or Towers of Babel, upward spiraling gyres that fall in upon themselves under their own weight of half truths. The part that is problematical about this, however, is that this bothers you. The rest of us do this all the time and in fact, we expect it to happen. It happens everytime someone says, "I never thought something like this could happen to me."
The critical piece of information is the part about "me". I knew it happened in the world. I knew it happened to others. I just didn't know it could happen to me. Therefore, I have to rearrange all the files in my mind to include this possibility and now the world is a very different place ... and my reality map is a little better.
Almost all your security in life came from elegantly arranged explanations of things, beliefs about things, probably beliefs about goodness or what does and doesn't happen to "good" people, likely some sly little hidden clauses about rewards for good behavior and that sort of thing, beliefs that set you apart from others for superior qualities that were tacit assumptions in your negotiations with the Almighty for a meaningful life.
Instead of true covenants with God, you struck cheap bargains and waved words superstitiously around like Talismans to protect yourself and ward off the evil spirits -- if I say these things enough, maybe even I will believe them.
You professed to believe in a good, true, beautiful, proper and orderly world which is fine and your Mind was a good, true, beautiful, proper and orderly mind but you also believed in a good, true, beautiful, proper and orderly God which set you up one day for a huge hangover when He/It/She didn't act that way or reward you for your obstinate unquestioned faith and for the dogged way in which you repeated the required phrases, many of them used to cheer others up -- and for your faithful public attendance at the altar, so to speak.
Whatever triggered this event may have happened in public or involved humiliation or put you in a situation where you could have been accused of hypocrisy had you backed down on your original assumptions. Very, very tricky. This part of it is actually pay back time for other lifetimes where perhaps as a priest-king you did some double dipping. Reminds me of when Jesus threw the money lenders out of the temple. As spiritual beings we are supposed to live in two worlds, not be two different people.
If you don't have an experience of past lives, please consider this a metaphor. It works just as well.
At this point there is only one book I could recommend and that is Jung's Answer to Job.
Your path in life is to become a powerful advocate for the truth, for the highest truth of which you are personally capable. To reach this place, you have to kick the stool out from under yourself. I truly and sincerely hope that is what you have done recently. When you landed on your keester with a black hangover, at least you finally had something important on the ground.
You have spoken and read so many words that were so useless, so meaningless, you have quoted people ad nauseum, used every platitude imaginable -- that one of the finest things you could do for yourself not to mention others would be to take a vow of silence for the rest of your life :-) I exaggerate to make my point. However, have you ever gone on a silent retreat? I recommend this. Let the first words that break your silence be as painful as painful can be, having known the ecstasy of the time before words, before the OM vibration, before the Mind knew itself, reflected upon itself and began to create images in its likeness. This particular kind of darkness, stillness, is not an abyss but a matrix of creation with all things possible stirring deeply within it. The first words you speak begin the act of creation and thus you learn that you are a very powerful God indeed. The purpose of your chart is to be one of those people who push God into evolving. This is why I recommend Jung's Answer to Job. God is a verb.
There are so many wonderful things written about the Mind is All but Unity comes to mind foremost. If you would like some acquaintance with this try putting Unity Daily Word in a search engine and each day read the simple words of truth. You must unlearn your fancy vocabulary and learn new words before you can build up to concepts and ultimately to truths. In the process, learn more and more about language and silence, how they relate to one another and the power of the Spoken Word. There is also a small book called Your Word is Your Wand by Florence Schoville Schinn. I am selecting Unity because Unity refuses to be intellectual. First you must learn words. Later you can use phrases, then sentences. Words (chitchat, buzz words, pat phrases, quotes, answers to everything ... ) have been WAY too much with you.
The second feature of what you are learning in this lifetime, in order to become a powerful conveyor of the truth, is the process of destruction. You are used to building methodically and you do this well. But in this lifetime you must destroy as much as you build and the process of destruction is messy, dirty, chaotic and sometimes intimidating. When you swing that wrecking ball in the middle of a downtown block, it better hit just right!
Yes, destruction is scarey but it need not be depressing. If your ego becomes involved you will think you are the creator and destroyer of worlds but you are not. You are merely the creator and destroyer of world MAPS. When you get clear about this you will not fear your power.
The highest use of your chart would be as a wizard, to manipulate energy using symbols. There are many ways to study and prepare for this, some of the most common being the Kabala, some of the magic and mystery schools ( Builders of the Adytum).
You are less interested in people than in the World Mind -- what Hegel was referring to in the dialectic of history, where one might (dare we say) reads God's mind: the thesis, antithesis and synthesis of creation. Individual human beings are not complicated enough, not fluid enough, not influential enough and not "big" enough for you to dialogue with -- you would prefer to know God's mind, the outworkings of God's mind as revealed in things like history, cross cultural symbolism, evolution, anthropological sociology, world myths -- also the "great" artifacts of societies such as opera, literature, sculpture, architecture and other footprints left by great minds through time. You may be akin to Joseph Campbell in this but far more abstract. Everything Campbell talks about he somehow makes human. Yours is a process of moving ever farther and farther away from the human -- to society -- then societies -- and then ultimately to race and species -- and from there "through time and space". [Jung was a 9th house person; Campbell is more of a 3rd or 5th house person.]
In some ways, the picture couldn't get bigger.
If you try to pour all of this into one person, as in a client who comes to you for therapy, it misses the mark badly. Both you and the individual suffer as if you were pouring ambrosia into your dog's dish. Your dog, being willing to be exactly what it is, prefers dog food.
Your chart is not a practical one. In fact, it is the farthest thing from it. It is so "out there" it is hard to imagine how you could develop it until you were at least as old as you are now. To use it well requires years and years of preparation, not only learning something of all the topics I've mentioned, but making observations of patterns over time and space. You must have interdisciplinary training when possible and a cross cultural perspective to make this work well. And much of the preparation goes on in silence, unnoticed, without much practical application and often just based on intuition or personal interest. Perhaps like J. Campbell you will spring onto the world stage sort of without announcement!
The Indians frm India have a word for 9th house people. They are called Brahmins. They are the ones who are chosen to have the privilege of developing the mind. THE Mind. Our collective mind. Their job is to THINK. These people are on the foremost wave of civilization and all that civilization means.
Our extroverted American culture makes absolutely no place for this type of thing but it is good to know that it is recognized in higher cultures, those with greater spiritual wisdom. The Brahmins are given this privilege and somehow the universe supports them -- they may not all be wealthy (as they once were in India ) but somehow they are provided for, they have enough, and also they have the wisdom not to be greedy. Their job is to THINK. To think about things, how they are connected, how they got the way they did, to connect the dots, to remember and make note of things they see and to know why it is that they will not unfold until much later -- notice I didn't say to read, study or quote other authorities. The job is to think about what you watch and to learn from it ... much like the shepherds on the hilltops and mariners at sea in ancient times eventually mapped the heavens. You are privileged to drink straight from the fountain and you have sometimes spit in the fountain instead :-)
No matter, the time is coming when all of this is revealed to you but not a moment too soon. You have worked up to this point in several other lifetimes only to lose the thread at the last moment, to turn to idol worship, so to speak because to know the truth is a very, very dangerous thing -- to experience the Godhead. This time, however, you are determined not to make the same mistake. You are building yourself into a vessel which can contain the truth and that takes as long as it takes.
There are some wonderful myths about this part of the process, about people exploding because they beheld the Godhead before they were ready. Some people have made foolish wishes about this. Semele asked to see Zeus in his godhead. It destroyed her and from this bizarre union the god of ecstasy and madness was born, Dionysius. I think this myth has particular significance for you ... Zeus took Dionysius from Semele's body and hid him in his thigh until he was born. This means something to you.
So take your time and don't measure yourself by any ordinary standards. Your chart has a time and flow all its own. These are things that you will have much to talk about later on ... just be sure before you break your silence that you really have something to say.
Ultimately you will take a few apprentices.
You might as well have been Socrates in a past life!
Nancy R. Fenn
Now for some examples. Tony Blair comes to mind as one of the best examples of a 9th house person today. Please put politics aside. This man is a Thinker. Here is his chart.
Notice that a thinker looks UP invariably or off into the distance. I will give you some more visual examples of this. A thinker must be differentiated from a worrier. Worriers look down and usually straight down. Worriers have an abundance of the other mutable mental sign energies, Gemini and Virgo, used poorly.
Tony Blair, quintessential 9th house person
Prime Minister of the UK
Notice the far distance focus of the eyes and that the gaze is UPward. This indicates a highly intuitive person, one of the qualities of the 9th house thinker. Blair is deep in thought. The picture at the bottom was taken during the Iraq War deliberations. The photo shows lack of sleep and pressure but it not worry.
Here is Blair's chart. Amazing. The single distinguishing feature that indicates "9th house" is Jupiter sitting right on the Ascendant from the 12th house. Jupiter is in Taurus. Blair has had lifetimes developing his ability to guard and preserve the best things about civilization. With Jupiter and these others planets in the 12th, his gift must be shared with "all".
Other things in his chart make him eloquent and aggressive, a tough fighter. One hardly sees the Gemini Ascendant it is so overshadowed by great Jupiter from the 12th. Learn to read charts this way. Look for the overriding features and give proper weight to them.
selfportrait of the author as a child
[eyes up and to the right]
The difference between a 9th house person and a Sagittarian.
A Sagittarian type person centers on the outdoors, freedom, perhaps athletics, open-ended schedules, a knack for knowing the future, casual, fun loving, easy going, enjoying life and living it to the fullest.
I think the difference is pretty obvious. The similarities, the things that are Sagittarian to both are the optimism, emphasis on the future, ranging free (one with the mind the other with the body), love of the laws of nature....
This reading gives you an idea of the focus for 9th house people and I hope is an inspiration for those whose charts have this emphasis.
If this sounds like you, EMAIL ME with your date, time and place of birth. Put AM I A 9TH HOUSE PERSON ? in the subject line and I'll gladly reply!
Lots of artists take a shot at astrological glyphs, some of whom have no understanding of the meanings of the signs!
The 9th house and Sagittarius are related, so I thought I'd give you some examples of good and bad astrological glyphs. These are all purchased from clipart.com
This one is OK, facing right which is the future but the arrow needs to be pointing up.
This one is fanciful and shows the pensive side OK.
This one is very good. Facing right (the future), poised, ready to pursue the truth and looking upward.
This is a terrific artist and I love the centaur. Very sexy. However, Sagittarians and 9th house people aren't hunters and are not interested in anything on the ground!
This is pretty good. It has the 'trueness" of the aim. It's impossible to have him facing left and turning right though. The left is the past and of no interest to the 9th house person other than to draw from it and pass the best of it forward. Future. Future. Future. That's the 9th house. How can we bring the best forward and improve on it?
No way, looking and moving toward the past.
