The Sun
in the Ninth House
The ancients had a lot of good things to say about the Ninth House. They called it the Temple of the Sun and associated it with gods and royalty.4 Ptolemy considered it one of the “places of power” 5 in the horoscope. While placements in other Cadent houses, mainly the Twelfth and the Sixth, were considered weak and ineffectual, the Ninth House was thought to raise the dignity of any astrological body it contained, particularly the Sun.
Modern interpretations of the Ninth have lost some of this luster, but it is still given rulership over a lot of neat stuff, like travel, philosophy, higher education, publishing, and religion. However, as impressive as these attributes are, they don’t apply to everyone with the Sun in the Ninth. For example, travel. Though there are a few people in my collection of celebrities with the Sun the Ninth for whom travel was an important factor, for most it was not. And even for those people who did travel a lot, the significance of that travel often had little to do with the Ninth House.
Travel as it relates to the Ninth House should be for the purpose of expanding one’s education and awareness of the world. It should be broadening. Travel that is part of the routine of your work does not seem to qualify. For example, performers like Pete Townsend and professional athletes like Venus Williams travel around the world in connection to their work. We might assume that, since they have the Sun in the Ninth, these people have been educated and enriched by this travel, but, even if this is so, enrichment was not the ultimate aim of their journeys.
Higher education is another Ninth House issue that only seems to apply to a few people with their Sun in that sector. Though there are some people among my examples for whom advanced degrees were important, there are many others who got along fine without going to college. In fact, Jennifer Lawrence didn’t just skip college, she also skipped high school. Lawrence dropped out when she was in middle school to pursue her career as a model and actress.
However, education does often figure prominently in the lives of people with this placement in another way. Regardless of how they choose to learn about the world, whether it’s through books or experience or both, Sun in the Ninth people seem to feel that they have a particular obligation to educate the rest of us about what they’ve discovered. Despite her lack of formal schooling, Lawrence has not shied away from speaking out about political issues and equal pay for women in Hollywood. Venus Williams has also distinguished herself as an advocate for equal pay—in her case, for female athletes. Pete Townsend wrote songs that told the world about “his” generation.
What these examples prove is that you don’t need a PhD in order to entertain big ideas. Regardless of their education (or lack thereof), people with the Sun in the Ninth House gravitate toward exalted principles and high ideals. Some may wax philosophical. Others organize and advocate. They make their principles, their ideals, and their causes a part of their lifestyle. But most of all, people with this placement are prone to speak out and tell the world about what they think is right.
Preaching
Many times in their effort to educate us, people with the Sun in the Ninth can appear to be preaching at us. Of course, in a few cases, they are preaching at us. The Ninth is associated with religion, and there are occasions when the Sun in the Ninth person expresses his or her view of the world from the pulpit. However, in most cases, the Sun in the Ninth is more like a soapbox, a place from which the person with this placement can speak boldly about matters that deeply concern him or her.
An excellent example of this is Mary Fisher. In 1991, Fisher contracted AIDS from her husband. A lifelong Republican who had worked on the campaign of President Gerald Ford, Fisher was invited to speak at the 1992 Republican National Convention. There, in a stirring speech, she urged these conservative politicians to give the victims of this disease the attention and compassion they deserved.
After she was diagnosed with AIDS, Fisher could have resigned herself to a life out of the public eye where she could have concentrated on her health. Who would have blamed her? But that’s not what people with the Sun in the Ninth House do. Where other people see trouble or the heavy hand of fate, people with this placement see a cause and an obligation to speak out and change minds.
Optimism
Implicit in every Sun in the Ninth House call to speak out, to preach and educate, is the assumption that by speaking out and making the problem and its proposed solution known to the world, the current situation will improve. When the Sun in the Ninth person argues with his or her friends over a beer at a local watering hole, it’s not just to hear him or herself talk. It is an act of faith: faith in the ultimate goodness of human nature, faith that once these people see the point he or she is making, they will understand. They will do better.
The basic optimism of people with the Sun in the Ninth is not limited to their ideas and causes. It is an underlying factor in every part of their life. People with this placement tend to assume not only that people will listen to them, but that the world will accommodate their daring plans and big ideas. There is also an assumption that the world will forgive them when they mess up or go too far with those big ideas.
The fact is that sometimes people with the Sun in the Ninth do get into trouble. This usually stems from having too much faith in their big ideas, their fellow human beings, and the world in general. In most cases, though, they recover. They relocate their optimism, their huge capacity for hope, and they get back on the soapbox. Much more worrisome are the Sun in the Ninth people who, for one reason or another, lose their optimism and faith in the future. Often these are people who have been distracted from the big picture by more immediate worries or pleasures. They’ve given up, at least temporarily, on their commitment to change the world. These folks will typically find their way back to their Ninth House optimism, but their journey will be longer and more difficult.
Your Mission
If you were born with the Sun in the Ninth House, you have been given a great gift. You are able to see humanity and the world from a higher perspective. It’s no wonder that so many of you feel the need to speak out. You see what the world could be. You see what we could be, and you have faith that, once we hear your message, we will do better.
With this placement, your primary mission is to hold on to your faith in the future and in humanity. In the course of your life, you may encounter many disappointments. People will let you down, refuse to listen to you, and label your optimism a delusion. You may be tempted to step back from your higher perspective and focus on the more immediate problems and pleasures of life. You have to resist these temptations. You have to hold on to your gift.
The other part of the mission of the Sun in the Ninth House is to hold on to your spirit of adventure. Sometimes the best way to demonstrate your faith in the future to your peers is to take a risk. Your tendency to test fate is a natural by-product of your optimism. The type of adventure you favor will, of course, vary. Some of you will prefer physical adventures (travel), while others will be drawn to intellectual adventures (education) or spiritual adventures (religion). Whatever style of adventure you choose will become another means by which you educate both yourself and the world.
There will be times when your spirit of adventure will get you into trouble. It wouldn’t be an adventure if trouble wasn’t a possibility. There may be moments when you have to backtrack, apologize, and rethink your opinions. That’s okay. What is not okay is allowing these bumps in the road to interfere with your faith in the future. Your mission is too important to give in to doubt. Remember that with the Sun in the Ninth House, you are not here to have fun. You are not even here to preach and instruct. You are here to change the world.