Wonkishness rating: 4 out of 5 wizard hats.
Today we’re going to talk about how to tease even more interpretive juice out of your fifth house through the key concept of rulership. Planetary rulership — which planet is in charge of each sign, and, by extension, each house and planets not in their own rulership — is a key concept in understanding a natal chart in both its big picture message and in terms of specific topics.
Think of a birth chart as a map — say, of Westeros, since we’re being nerdy. Each house is a country which is ruled by a particular king or queen. The ruler of one country may be beneficent and the populace happy and well-fed (which actually never happened in Westeros, but whatever), while in the next realm the ruler is despotic and the people are rioting in the streets. That’s how the topics of the houses can play out in our lives — smoothly and without a hitch in some areas while in other areas there can be difficulties. Rulership tells us whether we have helpful or difficult kings or queens ruling the various parts of our lives and if they have support or are themselves under attack from other parts of the chart.
In Hellenistic and traditional astrology, the rulership scheme is a self-contained system that assigns each traditional planet to a particular sign of domicile (its home sign, where it has everything it needs), exile/detriment (the sign opposite its home, like being in a foreign country), exaltation (its home away from home, a place where it has support), and depression/fall (the sign opposite its exaltation, where it struggles).
The Traditional Rulership Scheme
The rulership system begins with the luminaries, the sun and moon, assigning them to Cancer (moon) and Leo (sun). Mercury, the closest planet, is assigned to the next two signs fanning out in zodiacal order: Gemini (the sign before Cancer) and Virgo (the sign after Leo). Next is Venus, assigned to Taurus (the sign before Gemini), and Libra (the sign after Virgo). Mars is next, assigned to Aires (the sign before Taurus), and Scorpio (the sign after Libra). Jupiter is up next, assigned to Pisces (the sign preceding Aires) and Sagittarius (the sign following Scorpio). Finally, Saturn, the most distant of the traditional planets, is assigned to Aquarius (the sign before Pisces), and Capricorn (the sign following Sagittarius). Not coincidentally, Aquarius and Capricorn adjoin, opposing the signs that started us off — Leo and Cancer — bringing us full circle:
All of the additional categories — exile, exaltation, and depression — are a result of aspects formed from the rulership scheme. Signs of exile are the sign opposite the domicile; exaltations are formed by a helpful trine or sextile aspect from the domicile; depressions are the sign opposite the exaltation:
Sun: domicile = Leo, exile = Aquarius, exaltation = Aires, depression = Libra
Moon: domicile = Cancer, exile = Capricorn, exaltation = Taurus, depression = Scorpio
Mercury: domicile = Gemini & Virgo, exile = Sagittarius & Pisces, exaltation = Virgo, depression = Pisces
Venus: domicile = Taurus & Libra, exile = Aires & Scorpio, exaltation = Pisces, depression = Virgo
Mars: domicile = Aires & Scorpio, exile = Taurus & Libra, exaltation = Capricorn, depression = Cancer
Jupiter: domicile = Sagittarius & Pisces, exile = Gemini & Virgo, exaltation = Cancer, depression = Capricorn
Saturn: domicile = Capricorn & Aquarius, exile = Cancer & Leo, exaltation = Libra, depression = Aires
What About the Modern Planets?
You will notice that the rulership scheme doesn’t include the modern planets — Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. These so-called outer planets were discovered fairly recently and therefore don’t figure into the traditional rulership system.
However, modern astrologers have tried to fit them in, assigning Uranus to rule Aquarius, Neptune to Pisces, and Pluto to Scorpio. But once you disrupt the traditional rulership system, it all starts to fall apart, as the pieces are interdependent and based on aspects formed within the traditional planets.
Therefore, I don’t use any modern planets — or asteroids for that matter — in determining planetary rulership. I definitely pay attention to the outer planets (some traditional astrologers do not) as well as asteroids. But I have found that it works better to layer them in after first getting a good grasp of a natal chart using just the seven traditional planets. The outer planets, as their name suggests, reflect big picture societal events. Individual birth charts may be more or less connected to them, just as certain people experience the world events of their time more personally than others.
My early astrological education included using the modern planets in rulership — I worked with Neptune as the ruler of my Pisces sun, for example, for years. However, switching to using traditional rulerships, along with using Whole Sign Houses, and using a few other traditional techniques like sect, which I will discuss later, have radically improved my astrological practice. Switching from modern rulerships to traditional ones takes some practice and relearning, but the results are worth it!
The Ruler of the Fifth House by Rising Sign
While the chart ruler (the ruler of the ascendant) is the most important rulership to understand in looking at a natal chart, the concept of rulership can be applied to any house to examine how the issues of that house play out in a person’s life. For example, if we want to know about family and home, we look at the fourth house and its planetary ruler. For personal income, we look at the second house, for career, the tenth house, and so on.
The ruler of a house is actually at least as important, if not more, than planets (other than the ruler of the house) contained within a house. This is because the ruler of a house acts as its boss, even if located somewhere else in a chart. Meanwhile, a planet located in a sign that isn’t the ruler of that house is actually ruling another house. It’s important to look at both, and how the planetary and house stories may combine. But I always start with the house ruler and then add in planets located in a house.
To get a deeper understanding of the fifth house, the house of creativity, children, romance, recreation, and fun we must first identify the ruler of the fifth house, which acts as our creative boss, for better or worse. Identifying and understanding the ruler of the fifth house gives us insight into our creative impulses, which can be of great help in approaching creative work.
Once you’ve identified the ruler of your fifth house, look at its sign and house placement in your chart and explore the themes that emerge. This is obviously just a starting point, and we could unpack an individual chart placement for hours on this topic alone. Here are the rulers of the fifth house by rising sign:
Aires Rising (Leo fifth house): the sun is your creative guide, pulling your core identity into your creative work. You are called to shine in your creative endeavors. Look to where your sun resides to see where your creativity shines.
Pisces Rising (Cancer fifth house): the moon is your creative goddess. You must be emotionally engaged for your creative process to work. Intuition, feelings, and memory drive your creative work, and there can be great sensitivity. The placement of your moon shows you where you express your creativity.
Taurus Rising (Virgo fifth house) & Aquarius Rising (Gemini fifth house): Mercury guides your creative work, prioritizing logic, communication, and data. Organization and information flow are crucial to your creative process. Look for Mercury’s location to see how the planet of communication can help you.
Gemini Rising (Libra fifth house) & Capricorn Rising (Taurus fifth house): Venus is your goddess of creativity, endowing you with artistic potential and a flair for beauty. Relationships fuel your creative process. Sometimes you get too comfortable, though, and may need to shake things up. Venus’ placement shows where your creativity plays out.
Cancer Rising (Scorpio fifth house) & Sagittarius Rising (Aires fifth house): Mars pushes you creatively, prodding you to act and take risks. You welcome creative competition and seek to distinguish yourself from the rest. Creative frustration can sometimes boil over in anger if there isn’t an appropriate outlet. Look for where Mars resides for where and how his energy drives you creativity.
Leo Rising (Sagittarius fifth house) & Scorpio Rising (Pisces fifth house): Jupiter takes you on creative journeys, in its magic school bus of fun. You need to have the feeling of exploration, of breaking new ground, in your creative endeavors, or else you find that the thill is gone. There can be a philosophical orientation towards creative work. Look at where Jupiter is placed to learn what creative lessons are in store.
Virgo Rising (Capricorn fifth house) & Libra Rising (Aquarius fifth house): Saturn holds your creativity to a high standard, pushing your to hone every detail and plan everything out. There can be a sense of never-ending work, or possibly an experience of restriction. But, like the tortoise in the fable, you may be the one who makes it across the finish line in the end, after everyone else has exhausted themselves. Look to Saturn’s position for clues about how to work positively with this task master planet.
Next Level Hack
If you’ve read to this point, you deserve a bonus hack to take your astrology to the next level! Once you’ve identified the ruler of your fifth house, a further interpretive step is to then look at the ruler of its ruler.
Note: this concept is only relevant if the ruler of the house in question is not in its home sign in that house. For example, if you have Leo rising, with the fifth house in Sagittarius, and happen to have Jupiter (the ruler of Sagittarius) in Sagittarius, also in the fifth house, then you can stop and pat yourself on the back because you have a planet strongly placed in its home sign in the “place of good fortune.” Yay! Your creative boss is at home and has everything it needs in its comfortable Sagittarian offices (I’m thinking an equestrian theme here, maybe some maps on the walls, an amusement park outside the window….).
But just like not everyone can be the big boss in the corner suite calling the shots, for most charts there will be a ruler of the ruler of the fifth house. For example, if someone is a Cancer rising, their fifth house is located in Scorpio, ruled is Mars. Let’s say Mars is located in Virgo, in the third house. Mars is the ruler of the fifth house and expresses itself through practical Virgo in the realm of communication, siblings, and local neighborhoods (third house). Now, look at which planet rules Virgo — Mercury — and where it is located. This is the ruler of the ruler. You can keep going on like this — finding the ruler of a ruler, tracking the pathway of rulership across different houses — until one of two things happens:
1) You end with a planet in its domicile, in which there is nowhere else to go — a planet is home. In our Cancer rising example above, if Mercury is located in Gemini, in the twelfth house, then it would be in its own domicile and our game would end. We would know that the pathway of creativity (our fifth house inquiry) ends eventually with Mercury in Gemini in the twelfth house. In interrogating this chart about fifth house matters we started in the third house with its ruler Mars, then ended in the twelfth house with the ruler of the ruler in its own domicile. Planets in their own domiciles are very powerful, even one or two steps away from a given house, putting to an end the endless go rounds of rulership. Many charts have one planet in rulership; more than that is considered quite lucky. (And don’t despair if you don’t have any planets in rulership — there are other ways that planetary configurations can be strengthened through mitigating conditions known as bonification.)
2) The other scenario is that the inquiry — the ruler of the ruler of the ruler — doesn’t end in a planet in domicile. In this case there is often a pattern that begins to repeat. Let’s go back to our Cancer rising example, but let’s say Mercury is in Aquarius instead of Gemini. We would have the ruler of the fifth house, Mars, in Virgo in the third house, and the ruler the third house would be Mercury, in Aquarius. The ruler of Aquarius is Saturn — let’s say Saturn is in Leo, in the second house, in its sign of exile. Next we look at the ruler of Saturn in Leo, which is the sun — let’s say it’s in Aquarius, in the eighth house, which then brings us back to rulership of Saturn again, as Saturn rules Aquarius. Again we look at Saturn in Leo and then look to its ruler, the sun, in Aquarius, which sends us back to Saturn, and we go round and round between the Leo and Aquarius houses of the chart (the second and eighth, in this example).
This scenario shows us that the topics of the fifth house in this (completely made up) chart are tied into those of the third, eighth, and second houses, and that the motion is constant, without a sense of closure. There are siblings and communication involved (third house), as well as money of many kinds (second and eighth houses), and the implications may be more or less positive or negative based on other factors in the chart. The issues may be ongoing as they don’t end in a planet in domicile, and thus there can be a sense of frustration. But, it’s better to understand a pattern, I think, even one that doesn’t resolve itself, than to be at its mercy. Understanding where we go “round and round” in life can help in problem-solving and being prepared. But, unlike despotic monarchs, we can’t overthrow our planetary rulers (and we all know how things ended for Daenerys). They are with us for life! So, better to learn to work with them.
Happy chart reading!