That part of heaven which rises first from the bottommost regions and brings back the sky once more controls the fortunes and fates of brothers; and it acknowledges the Moon as its mistress, who beholds her brother’s realms shining on her from the other side of heaven and reflects human mortality in the dying edges of her face. Goddess is the name to be given to this region.
Manilius, (c. 10 AD) Astronomica, II v.856
The more the origins of astrology are explored, the more apparent it becomes that the complex structure of its techniques has arisen out of the simplest needs of survival and society. Contemporary astrology adapts house meanings to embrace concepts pertinent to modern life, but their essence is timeless and universal, relevant to all races and creeds. The struggle for existence and relationship with the cosmos; life; mating; the rearing of children and family relationships; the provision of nourishment and shelter; liberty and health; sickness and death – these basic concerns unite us all, man and beast, and are the pivots upon which all later additions to the houses are attached. Though astrology lends itself to many different shades and styles of life, its strength is that it is fundamentally a study of life.
Similarly, the origin of many astrological techniques is a simple recognition of the cycle of the Sun and Moon around the Earth. These two planets are always considered as partners and opposites: the Sun is of the day and its domain lies in the upper regions of the chart, whereas the Moon belongs to the night and reigns in the lower realms. Contrary to what might appear to make sense to us, the ancients did not regard the 10th house as the temple of the Sun and the 4th as the temple of the Moon but chose instead the 9th and 3rd houses. This seems, again, to point to an older, underlying recognition of diurnal movement, whereby it is the Sun’s passage through the 9th house, in the period immediately after noon, in which solar radiance is recognised as being most powerful and effective, (so that we are generally warned to stay out of the Sun during this period of the day in summer).
For symbolic purposes, it was also appropriate to associate the Moon with the 3rd house and not the 4th. The 4th was connected with death which is why Manilius called it the temple of Saturn, ‘the Great Reaper’. But from the process of death life resumed again under the influence of the Moon, whose links with fertility were obvious. The Moon was the personification of the Great Goddess, whose essence pervaded the earth offering nurture and protection; accordingly the 3rd house was called Dea meaning Goddess. In the words of Ptolemy:
“The Moon, as the heavenly body nearest the earth, bestows her effluence most abundantly upon mundane things, for most of them, animate or inanimate, are sympathetic to her and change in company with her; the rivers increase and diminish their streams with her light, the seas turn their own tides with her rising and settings, and plants and animals in whole or in some part wax and wane with her.”1
In traditional astrological philosophy the Moon represents the mundane, elemental world, the animal spirit, or ‘Spirit of the Earth’. In astronomy, the Earth and the Moon hold a special relationship – together they form a binary system with a shared centre of gravity that lies within the body of Earth. Our ancestors were aware of the integrated relationship between the two bodies because of the obvious influence of the Moon’s cycle and its corresponding effect upon tribal and cultural concerns and matters of community. As a consequence it is not out of place to find the Moon, our immediate neighbour in space, governing a house that relates to our immediate environment on Earth. Today we know the 3rd house as ‘the house of neighbours’ but this shift in terminology no longer reminds us of the sense of community spirit which was so vital to our ancestors. It not only implies our close environment, but also our everyday surroundings and the tight-knit community with whom we exchange ideas and viewpoints. Brothers, sisters, cousins and lateral contemporaries are the principal concerns of this house;2 but not the older generation of parents or grandparents who are represented by the 4th house of roots and inheritance. Traditionally, parents were never expected to dialogue with their children as equals in the way that a brother or sister would; their role was to instil a sense of moral values, to protect and pass-down the lessons of their own experience, allowing the next generation to benefit from the wisdom of age and maturity.
Among the principal rulerships of the third house we find: writing, messages, rumours, all forms of communication and short journeys. Naturally we assume that these derive from the third house’s association with the third sign of the zodiac – Gemini – and its planetary ruler, Mercury. But to the ancients, the Moon always held a special responsibility for communication, and in particular for conveying meaning through the written word – which was originally perceived as a sacred symbol, no less magical than any other symbol in its ability to convey meaning and intent. With the ancient Egyptians, the Moon-god Thoth was the ‘god of scribes’ whose symbol was the stylus. He was the secretary and messenger of the gods and embodied most of the characteristics that were later attributed to Hermes by the Greeks and Mercury by the Romans.
The recent findings of Gauquelin’s research have reminded astrologers of the importance of the Moon in charts of professional writers and authors,3 but traditional astrological literature has always supported this view. Both the Moon and Mercury are primary significators of the ‘mind’, with Mercury tending to represent the rational and the Moon tending to represent the imaginative. However, when the 16th century astrologer Jerome Cardan speaks of the influence of planetary spheres over areas of learning, he associates Mercury with geometry and arithmetic but links the Moon’s realm to the sphere of learning grammar.4
In ancient times the Moon was known as the ‘Traveller’ because of its rapid movement through the heavens, and we frequently encounter lists such as that in William Lilly’s Christian Astrology, which includes as the type of men and women symbolised by the Moon “travellers”, “letter carriers” and “messengers”.5 This is because transference through the Moon (by its separation from one planet and application to another) symbolises the relaying of information, the passing on of a message, or the communication of interest. In traditional astrology the Moon’s principal role is ‘transmitter of influences’, whereby it collects the virtues of the planets as it moves between them and brings their influence down to bear upon the sublunar sphere of the earth. Guido Bonatus referred to the Moon as a mediatrix between superior and inferior bodies saying:
“For she is the schoolmistress of all things; the bringer down of all the planets’ influences, and a kind of ‘internuncio’ between them, carrying their virtues from one to the other, by receiving the disposition of one planet and bearing it to another.”6
The Moon’s special responsibility upon the mundane, the ‘everyday’ and the ‘earthly’ is also clearly expressed in the natural philosophy of William Ramesey:
“She is most powerful in operation of all the other Planets on Elementary bodies, by reason of her proximity to us, and her swiftness, by which she transfers the light and influence of all the Superiors to us, by her configuration with them.”7
Direct evidence that this sort of lunar influence is embedded into the third house significations, appears in Bonatti’s explanation of the planetary joys:
“The Moon rejoices in the third because the third signifies short and quick journeys, and things which change quickly, and which repeat. Whence the Moon signifies speedy and quick changes from one purpose to another, from one thing to another.”8
It would be wrong to assume that the Moon’s proclivity for change has arisen out of an association with the third house. That is clearly not the case. The Moon is an impressionable and changeable planet because it takes its virtue from the planets it communicates between, causing rapid shifts of emphasis and influence, and becoming empty of influence when void of aspect. As Ramesey observes:
“She is neither fortunate nor unfortunate, but as she is placed and in configuration with either the Fortunes or Malevolents”.9
Rather, it is likely that the third house’s signification over changeable environments and short journeys evolved out of its association with the Moon. The traditional signification of the Moon includes the everyday environment, the tribal community, swift journeys and changes, writing, and all forms of communication. We should surely take it as more than coincidence that the house conceived as her temple and named in her honour rules all of those things too.
Whereas the Moon was associated with the Great Earth Goddess, influencing human life through its earthly and mortal environment, the Sun was the Supreme Lord and Ruler of the Divine Heaven. To the Egyptians the disc of the Sun signified the face of God and research into the ancient theology of widespread cultures increasingly demonstrates that solar-symbolism underpins the concept of God as the creator and source of all life. The 9th house, traversed by the Sun immediately after noon, was recognised as the temple of the Sun. Manilius said of it:
… “where the height of heaven first slopes downward and bows from the summit, these Phoebus [the Sun10] nourishes with his splendour; and it is by Phoebus’s influence that they decree what ill or hap our bodies take beneath his rays. This region is called by the Greek word signifying God.”11
Through this identification with the Sun, the sovereign of heaven, the 9th house is associated with fate, destiny and the will of the gods. Its traditional rulerships include religion, revelations, dreams, visions, and soothsaying. Today we call it the house of religion and the Church, often forgetting that spiritual matters were once intricately linked with divination as a route to Divine Revelation. Cardan referred to the Sun’s sphere as that which pertained to the moral world;12 although ancient pagan religion was not only concerned with doing what is morally right, but also paying due respect to the gods, connecting with their will, and winning their approval in order to gain their favour.
The 9th house’s connection with the Sun - and the Sun’s connection with divination - is reflected in the characteristics of most Sun-gods. From the 5th century BC onwards the chief of the Sun-gods for the Greeks was Apollo who was associated with light, honesty and purity as well as wisdom, divination and prophecy. His characteristics were similar to Shamash, the Sun-god of the Mesopotamians, known to them as ‘the revealer of truth’; the god who was able to cast his light into dark mysteries and reveal all that was hidden and obscure.
In the 9th house, the elemental, mundane knowledge gleaned from the daily experiences of the 3rd house, is lifted to a higher level of comprehension, one that is inspirational and probing of grander mysteries. Being associated with the Sun, all things concerned with Higher Spirit or philosophical understanding are attributed here, and it is linked with places where wisdom and understanding are developed (such as universities, at one time the dominion of the church). Its identification with long distance travel is said to be an extension of the desire to learn, in the sense that we travel to broaden our horizons physically and mentally, and this seems naturally supported through the modern association with Jupiter. However, the ancient origination lies in the classical notion that all the cadent houses represent alien places, foreign territory and travels that take us away from the comfort and security of home. Through the 3rd house’s association with the Moon’s rapid changes and mundane environment, the journeys given to the 3rd house are swift and never too unfamiliar. But the 9th house, connected to the Sun’s longer, annual journal, and seen as representative of the seat of divinity, is reflective of places and situations that are far beyond our normal reach and which take us into the unknown. This is often tied into spiritual quests and places of retreat. It is noteworthy that when William Lilly judges of long journeys, he uses the 7th house as denoting the intended place of destination, and sees a significator in the 9th house as an indication that the traveller:
… “is gone from the place to which he first went into a further country, or if capable he is entered into some religious order or .. is imployed in some journey far distant from his former abode.”13
The 3rd and 9th houses are also known to have been used to represent royalty in the classical period, with the 9th house specifically representing kings and the 3rd house representing queens. Although other aspects of astrological symbolism would seem to support a stronger basis for royalty being attributed to the 10th house, there is no explanation for this other than that it evolved through association between house meanings and the two luminaries who acted as their sovereigns.