The Sun
in the Eleventh House
The Eleventh is another house that was thought well of by ancient astrologers. They associated it with Jupiter, and since Jupiter is about hope and the expectation of better things to come, it was considered the house of “ambition,” “wishes,” and “good luck.” The emphasis on friends and friendship seems to have started with William Lilly in the seventeenth century, and it has continued into modern text. Llewellyn George writes that the Sun in this house brings “success through friendship,”6 “honorable and constant friends,” 7 and “social success.”8
When I read these interpretations, I wonder, “Don’t we all have hopes and wishes? Don’t we all have friends?” Who among us, regardless of where our Sun is placed, can say that all of our ambitions and hopes have been fulfilled? Who among us has not had some friends who were constant and some who turned out to be faithless? I think we should aim for a reading of the Eleventh House that is rooted in something more fundamental and exclusive to this sector of the horoscope.
Community
That fundamental meaning of the Sun in the Eleventh House is community. There are basically two kinds of communities. First, there are the accidental communities we form with our families, our neighbors, and the people with whom we work. These are the communities of the Third and Fourth Houses, and we have little or no choice when it comes to joining them. Eleventh House communities, on the other hand, are intentional communities—communities we join because we want to, because we find in them a sense of belonging.
In many ways, the meaning of the Eleventh House becomes clearer when we look at its opposite, the Fifth. In the Fifth House, we express creativity, passion, and love as individuals. In the Eleventh, we do the same thing on a broader scale. In order to do this, we need the cooperation of other people who share our hopes, dreams, and aspirations. With the Sun in the Eleventh, we recognize the necessity of social interaction and experience the thrill of being part of something larger than ourselves.9
The community that the Sun in the Eleventh House person builds around his or her aspirations doesn’t have to have an official title. It can simply be a circle of friends. Nor do the hopes and dreams that unite that group have to be all that grand. In some instances, the uniting factor might be religion, politics, or social issues, but it could also be a hobby or particular interest that joins these people together.
Commitment
For people born with the Sun in the Eleventh, the most important choice they make in their lives is often the intentional community they join. Not only does this choice say a lot about that person’s character and tastes, it can have as much of an impact on his or her future as the career or spouse he or she chooses.
With the Sun in the Eleventh, joining a community is not simply a matter of socializing. Here, the community or group you choose will become a reflection of your ego and your identity. Typically, this means that your commitment to that community will be strong and the values and aims of the group will become your own. Within the right community, this commitment can greatly expand your vision of the world. In the wrong group, on the other hand, your vision will often narrow and your commitment will become less about aspirations and hope and more about hatred and fear.
The unfortunate thing is that, looking over my list of famous people with the Sun in the Eleventh, there seem to be just as many who chose the wrong community as chose the right one. It is all too easy to find frightening examples like David Koresh and Timothy McVeigh. More positive examples like poet and author Thomas Merton, who found his sense of community in a Trappist monastery, tend to be less well known. That may be a commentary on the values of our society, but it also points out the power of this placement, particularly when it is misused.
Creativity
We tend to look to the Fifth House when we are discussing creativity. We think of visual artists, writers, and composers as being isolated creatures who need to be alone with their art. However, when you really start looking at how these creative people divide up in terms of the placement of the Sun, it turns out that there are many more artists and writers (such as Frida Kahlo, M. C. Escher, D. H. Lawrence, and Ernest Hemingway) with the Sun in the Eleventh.
For people in the performing arts, of course, isolation is impossible. They have to interact with an audience. However, even the lonely painter in his or her garret studio needs a community. What is an artist without a patron, or a writer without a publisher? Where would either of them be without a teacher or a mentor? These creative types, like people in just about every profession, need to have contacts. They have to have a social network for both financial and emotional support. Their aspirations might be personal, but making those aspirations a reality typically requires the help of other people.
The same reasoning applies to people who are not involved in the arts. We all need a community that supports our aspirations and beliefs, but we also need a community in which our individuality and creativity will be honored and appreciated. We need a community that gives form and purpose to our hopes and, at the same time, leaves plenty of room for us to be ourselves. Just as such a community allows the writer, artist, and musician to reach out to the world, it can extend our reach and make us more than we could ever be on our own.
Your Mission
Your mission with the Sun in the Eleventh House is to find that special community of friends. For most of you, this will not be a challenge. Your interests and skills, your hopes and aspirations, will guide you. Sometimes the community you join will have a grand name and an awesome website. Other times it will be a loose coterie of like-minded people. All that matters is that, within that community, you feel you belong.
However, you can’t be satisfied with just this sense of belonging. You have to participate. You have to find a place—a role within that community in which you can be effective. Remember, what makes an Eleventh House community important is the way it helps you express your individual aspirations. You should have a feeling that through your community you are contributing to a cause or ideal that is larger than yourself.
Being part of a group is not always easy. There will be moments when you will be frustrated, irritated, and unhappy with your companions. Like all relationships, friendships have their high and low points. However, people with the Sun in the Eleventh often have a knack for patching over these rough spots and keeping their focus on the overall aims of their community. Sometimes this requires what some people disparagingly call “politics,” but politics is basically the art of reaching a consensus, and finding a consensus is what keeps a community together.
As we’ve seen, the greatest challenge for people with this placement is often finding the right community. You have to be cautious about the community you join, and you have to be willing to walk away from a community that no longer complies with your moral and ethical standards. Staying and trying to change things is one thing. Staying and passively going along with the majority is another. The mission is to participate, not to blindly follow.
Participating also means giving of yourself. In fact, that may be the most important part of the mission laid out by the Sun in the Eleventh House. You have to be willing to contribute, even sacrifice, for the sake of your community. You may have to compromise your aims, make deals, and shave a bit off your own ego in order to preserve your community and further its aims. If it hurts when you do this—if it makes you feel cramped and uncomfortable—that’s a good sign that you are in the wrong community. But if it feels right, if it feels less like compromise and more like cooperation, then you might be onto something. You may have found a community that is a true extension of your aspirations and your ego, a place where being yourself and being part of something larger than yourself are pretty much the same thing.
6. Houlding, The Houses, 41.
7. Llewellyn George, Llewellyn’s New A to Z Horoscope Maker and Interpreter, ed. Stephanie Jean Clement and Marylee Bytheriver (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2003), 178.
8. George, Llewellyn’s New A to Z Horoscope Maker and Interpreter, 178.
9. Howard Sasportas, The Twelve Houses: Exploring the Houses of the Horoscope (London: Flare Publications, 2007), 134.