Once upon a time, marriages were arranged by parents, we married once and only once, there were no divorces as it was considered scandalous. These days we have people marrying more than once, and sometimes even three or four times. How do we evaluate multiple marriages using the tools of astrology?

Usually, students of astrology first learn that the 7th house indicates marriage. However, over the years many have asked me about how planets in the 7th house indicate marriage influences, and if an empty 7th house shows a deficiency in our marriage sector. I’ve also heard that some learned if there is no planet in the 7th that there is no possibility of marriage. That of course is a ridiculous notion, since we have the power to marry or not marry according to our intention, willingness, and choices in who we dance with.

Beyond astrological factors, here I’ll remind you of something I extensively discuss in The Magic of Venus: Friendships, Soul Mates, and Twin Flames. Written from an astrological, psychological, spiritual, and experiential view, I explain how friendship is the foundation of all healthy relationships, and if there is no friendship, there can be no lasting marriage. Nothing in our chart overrides our “real world” attitudes and approaches.

Planetary attractions do not override “real world” circumstances. Even if your Venus conjuncts someone else’s Sun or Moon, while it shows an attraction, a healthy Venus will never feel comfortable with an unhealthy Moon. I remember reading that if their Jupiter is on your Moon then it guarantees a favorable connection. However, if their Jupiter is unhealthy, it could lead to unfortunate emotional overreactions, or overblown dramas.

That’s something explained in the book. Just because we have an attraction doesn’t mean we should lose our sense of perspective, or ignore the fact that the only long term relationships which work are based in friendship and respect. If two people are not loving, kind, respectful, and affectionate toward each other, at some point the lack of these will be a deal breaker.

All the long term healthy relationships I’ve encountered are based in mutual attraction, respect, and genuine harmlessness with complete autonomy and trust which builds the friendship over time. That doesn’t mean we always get along or agree. It doesn’t mean we don’t get impatient at times. Just because we’re in a relationship doesn’t mean we don’t have a lot to learn, including how to respond in healthy ways to another’s behavior.

I figure if the relationship is healthy, even when we confront unpredictable and/or jarring events, these teach us patience and forgiveness. We all have a personality with its idiosyncrasies, habits, peculiarities, and deficiencies, since none of us were raised by saints or sages. This is where our chart shows us what’s serious and what’s harmless, what’s ours to own and what’s ours to accept and reject in relationships.

The sign on our 7th house does show how we relate to others, and the types of people we’re likely to attract to work out our “horizontal plane” business on Earth. Planets in the house play a huge factor in the types of people we attract, but this must be seen in the broadest possible application. A person with Moon in the 7th may or may not attract someone with strong Cancer in their chart; it could just as well manifest in someone who has a prominent Moon with no planets in Cancer. Saturn in the 7th might bring an elder with traits of the Saturn sign, or might bring someone with strong Capricorn or Aquarius in their chart AND a prominent Saturn.

Whereas the planet ruling the sign on our 7th is the “ruler” of our 7th, planets in the 7th are considered the “Lord” of the 7th. And yes, planets in our various houses show us our predispositions and lessons related to that planet in that house. That means we may be inclined to partner with someone of the sign on our 7th, or even who resembles a planet in our 7th, we may find that we are attracted to someone who has the traits of the ruler of our 7th rather than the sign on the 7th.

Regardless of our attractions shown by contacts between two charts, we still have to consider the relative health of what’s expressed between two individuals. While Gemini and Sagittarius are considered mate signs (because they oppose each other), if one is healthy and one is unhealthy it will create problems. It’s up to us whether our planets express in healthy or unhealthy ways. We can only control our own functions, and never another’s. We can use our free will to elevate our responses, but we don’t control that in others.

That’s why regardless of planetary placements, we cannot “blame” a planet in a house for our response to that energy. We choose how to externalize that planetary energy, and the people we’re with either help us to a more perfect healthy expression of our personality traits or they don’t. If someone has an unhealthy Venus and uses seduction, manipulative charm, or mirroring techniques to try to enmesh someone in a relationship, it’ll never last, even if there are fabulous planetary contacts.

7th House Factors

Getting back to the erroneous notion that those who lack a planet in the 7th are somehow deficient in relationships. We have several houses which don’t have a planet in them, but that doesn’t imply an deficiency! An empty house means nothing of itself. An empty house can still bring varied and intense experiences which are plenty “vibrant.” A lack of planets in the 7th does not mean our partnerships “are not vibrant.” That’s entirely up to us, whether we have Mercury or Jupiter or the Sun or Pluto in the 7th, or no planets at all.

Remember, we are not limited by our planets! While our planets show us what we were born with, our talents, inclinations, and deficiencies, ultimately we are the determiners of our fate, “the dispenser of glory or gloom unto ourselves” in every life matter. This is beyond the factors and planetary positions in a birth chart. This is an eternal Truth.

The sign on the 7th and its ruler indicates our general inclination in partnerships, along with any planets we may have there. As noted, it also rules both the first marriage and marriage in general, as distinct from the 5th house which rules love affairs. The 7th rules contracts, and unless there’s a contract, there is no 7th house relationship.

In advanced analysis, when considering the chart of someone who has married more than once, we find the 9th house is the nature of the 2nd marriage partner, the 11th the third, and so forth, with each subsequent marriage two houses from the previous one. Of course, there will always be some sort of 7th cusp sign and ruler of the 7th active in every marriage.

While a planet in the 7th does often show a primary quality of potential partners, it can manifest in countless ways, whether by planet emphasis, sign emphasis, or dispositor emphasis. When looking at the second marriage, I have found that a major influence involves the quality of planets in the 9th, the sign on the 9th, the ruler of the 9th, and other factors that are equally as strong as the 7th house indicators.

One person told me that they observed similarities in how they met at least two of their partners that seemed to correspond to planets in their 7th. Here the “real world” reminds us that while we may meet people in conditions that seem similar to prior experiences, in truth we meet people under completely different conditions since there is no way that two circumstances are ever the same. Of course, it’s always good to note parallels and patterns in our interactions, since they provide clues about what works and what doesn’t, what we’ve learned and what is still left to be learned.

How Outer Planets in Our House of Marriage Manifest

I heard it said there MUST be planets in “the other’s” 1st and/or 7th house for a marriage to work. I really haven’t found that. Depending on the rising sign, there will be entire eras when the outer planets will ALWAYS occupy someone’s 1st or 7th or NEVER occupy someone’s 1st or 7th.

For example, my wives were all born between 1951-1953, and so their Plutos were/are in my first, which is the only natal planetary contact in the 1/7 axis between me and any of them. While some texts would give zero chance for a Pluto marriage to work, I’ve found they worked as long as everyone was honest and above board.

In The Magic of Venus: Friendships, Soul Mates, and Twin Flames I also explain how the Transpersonal planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, TransPluto) impact our partnerships, but are “nothing personal” since they are generational influences. They don’t really specify much other than an invisible global spiritual influence, since if they did work out personally, depending on which invisible planet is in the 7th, we’d be attracted to everyone (hundreds of millions!) with that position, which is clearly not the case in the real world.

Regarding my wives’ Plutos in my 1st, because I don't consider Pluto anything “personal,” I believe I represented that Plutonic quality of Divine Purification in whatever way their Dharma or Karma required, with no “personal” intention on my part. Though it may lurk behind and express through one of the "Sacred 7" in the world of human affairs, Pluto is an invisible hand of the Purifier/Transformer Lord of the Underworld.

It could be said that on a personal level all relationships have that quality to some degree or another. The Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto energies defining the spiritual field do affect our personalities, and it could be said that we’re constantly working through those energies in all our relationships, not just our marriage. That's why if there's a Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto contact between partners, it's more generational and archetypal than personal.

The outer Triad symbolize Divine Force, the “Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer” three-fold quality of what we call “God.” While these do affect us personally, these Divine Manifestations aren’t really personal in the sense of the 7 Sacred Planets. I believe that when one or more of our partner’s Transpersonal planets occupies one of our angles, they become a impersonal representation of that Divine energy working out in our lives.

I have Pluto rising. That has often made me a purifier of others with no conscious intention to be that. My Pluto may have some great aspects, but sometimes “the other” in my life have chosen the low road. I don't take it personally, even though they have certainly made a personal choice.

Pluto strips us down to the core, just as Uranus sends us out over the precipice, and Neptune dissolves us to the point of wondering if we'll get lost at sea. While these Transpersonal Divine energies do affect us, they also offer us the transformations of a lifetime and we can come out a more perfected form of Divine Expression as we interpret it in our own unique, collective, and economical style. Here I’ll briefly note that those with the Divine planets in angles often have that effect on others whether they mean to or not, but that’s another article for another time.

So please don’t get discouraged or fearful if you don’t have a planet in your 7th, or if your partner has one of their outer planets in your 1st, 7th, or any other sector. Any planetary contact between charts can manifest as a force for good if you choose, i.e., Saturn can be a drag on your line, or a path to authorship of your life. And, even though a Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto contact between charts can bring upheaval, chaos, or even a sense of the unreality of an experience, they also bring us face to face with our Eternal God-Self, which is always a good thing!

In part 2, we’ll discuss the psychological issues in marriages, as well as how that plays out in our charts. You can find out a lot more about the psychological, spiritual, and astrological factors in synastry and chart placements in The Magic of Venus: Friendships, Soul Mates, and Twin Flames at the above links.

See you tomorrow!

Reprinted on crystalwind.ca with written permission from Robert Wilkinson. Copying this article to other blogs is strictly prohibited. It is copyright protected. 

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