Hello world!
Welcome to Fifth House Astrology, a place where the ancient practice of astrology meets the creative process. I’m an astrologer and creative artist. I’ve been a dancer since age six and a writer for most of my adult life. I’m also a parent of two and the partner of a fellow artist. Many of my family members are artists of one kind or another, but I recognize and honor creativity in all forms, not just in the arts.
My Astro Journey…
I came to astrology formally in my teens, though, as with many other astrologers, I was primed for the study of this ancient craft through a childhood obsession with Greek mythology. In high school, I taught myself the basics with an astrology book that literally fell in to my hands, out of the shelves of my school library (and whose title I wish I remembered). Though I hated math class, I applied myself over several days to calculate my birth chart by hand — this was in the days before websites and apps that calculate charts in seconds.
I began a program of self-study, using what resources were available then, which now would be described as modern astrology, which, broadly speaking, overlays a psychological framework onto astrology. Several years ago I learned about the current renaissance of traditional and Hellenistic astrology through the work of Chris Brennan, among others, and have been expanding my astrological knowledge and practice ever since. Hellenistic astrology sees the birth chart as less of a psychological portrait than a map of a person’s life, including phases of time and how they manifest throughout life.
What is the Fifth House?
The natal chart is divided into twelve places or “houses,” each corresponding to an area of life. The houses start with the first house, known as the ascendant or rising sign, and move in counter-clockwise order around the wheel through each of the twelve signs of the zodiac.
Briefly speaking, the houses correspond to the following:
Self, body, personality
Money, income, possessions and other resources (real estate, etc.)
Communication, siblings (and those like siblings — cousins, childhood friends, etc.), immediate neighborhood, local travel, early schooling
Home and family, especially family of origin
Children, creativity, pleasure, romance, gambling, traditionally know as the “place of Good Fortune”
Daily work (the drudge work), health concerns, people who work for you, pets
Relationships (especially partnerships — in love or business) and “open enemies” (like in a lawsuit or other public dispute)
Shared resources, other people’s money (scholarships, grants, one-time income, etc.), death, inheritance
Philosophy/religion/spiritual path, long-distance travel, higher education, teaching, expansion of mind and body
Career, public image, reputation, authority figures
Friends, communities/groups, audiences, hopes and dreams, the common good
Retreat from the world — voluntarily or not (hospitals, prisons, religious orders or retreats, exile), difficulties, traditionally known as the “place of Bad Spirit” and the “house of self-undoing.”
Let’s look at an example. If someone says they have “Aires rising” it means Aires was on the horizon at the moment of their birth, such as actor Errol Flynn (below).
I use the Whole Sign House System and have since I began studying Hellenistic astrology. I will get into this topic in more depth later on, but the main thing to understand is that there are different systems of house division. Using the whole sign house system, all houses are equal 30 degree sections of the chart and correspond entirely to each sign.
So, in Flynn’s chart, above, the first house corresponds to Aires, the second to Taurus, third to Gemini, and so on. His fifth house is in Leo, unsurprising for an actor who ate up the spotlight. Someone with a Taurus rising would have a different pattern: first house in Taurus, second house in Gemini, third in Cancer, fourth in Leo, and fifth in practical Virgo — a totally different array than our Aires rising example.
Note: I will cover the signs, planets, aspects, and other features of astrology more generally in later posts, especially as they relate to creativity. If you want a more general introduction to astrology, there are a number of great books and websites out there. I recommend Astrology: Using the Wisdom of the Stars in Your Everyday Life by Carole Taylor for a basic introduction. To generate a free birth chart, visit astro-seek.com (I recommend choosing Whole Sign Houses under Extended Settings where you enter your birth data).
How Can Astrology Help with Creativity?
As someone with a strong fifth house placement, I’ve found astrology to be key to my own understanding of my creative impulses and work. Everyone has a fifth house in their chart, just as everyone encounters every topic in the birth chart at some point. The birth chart paints a vivid portrait of the ways in which we encounter these topics in our lives.
To learn about our fifth house, we look at the sign contained within the house, its planetary ruler, any planets or important chart points contained in the house, and any aspects made by those planets to others.
Looking at our example, Errol Flynn has Leo in the fifth house but no planets or points there. Leo is a creative and attention-seeking fire sign in the fixed modality, which confers stability and a consistent energy-level. Someone with this placement would consistently seek the spotlight through their creativity (the performing arts would be natural) as well as their love affairs, another area in which Flynn was famous/notorious.
As Leo is ruled by the sun, we would then look at where the sun is located in his chart, in Gemini in the third house. A natural communicator (as actors are), his Gemini sun is conjunct (within several degrees of) dark and stormy Pluto, also in Gemini, which would have brought his lighthearted sun down into the depths and added a darkness to him. No wonder that some of his most notable roles were as Captain Blood, a swashbuckler, and Robin Hood, prince of thieves — men living on the edge, outside the law. We can also see that his Gemini sun makes an energizing sextile (60 degree aspect) to his Aires rising (denoted as AC in the chart above), pulling his creative work into his personality — what you see is what you get, so to speak. His ascendant is itself conjunct Saturn in Aires, which would give him a personality at odds with itself, as Saturn limits and controls whatever it touches, and it struggles in fiery, individualistic Aires, which resists discipline. Finally, we see his Gemini sun in a sign-based (not exact by degree) square with his Mars in Pisces in the twelfth house, signifying difficulties and tension with his aggressive urge, which could have been dissolute and prone to self-undermining behavior, which in his case it unfortunately was.
All of this is tied deeply into his fifth house, his place of creativity, and demonstrates that even a fifth house with no planets within it can be incredibly active, connecting to many parts of a person’s life. (And this is not the extent of his chart, just looking at what the fifth house shows us.)
What are the characteristics of your fifth house? How does it tie into other parts of your chart? How does your creative impulse manifest? How can you support and nurture your creativity? These are some of the questions I will explore in this newsletter.
Thanks for coming along with me on this journey!