We can only meet another as deeply as we’ve met ourselves.
There is a popular belief among anthropologists that you must immerse yourself in an unfamiliar world to understand your own. Relationships serve as our mirrors – they allow us an opportunity for a deepening. Love peels us. It peels the layers of our bark, our false identities, masks, conditioning and limiting beliefs, so that we come closer to our true essence, so that we release our sweetest most natural fragrance.
Love peels us. Humbles us. A relationship of deep love demands us to look into ourselves, and all of our layers, until we see ourselves clearly. And by seeing into ourselves, we see into another, more clearly. This is intimacy: into-me-see. To accept and see another, as they are, and be able to pay attention to them, as they are and as they need, is what true long-lasting love is then built upon.
Love dissolves the boundaries between us, this is when intimacy happens. We may often think we are losing ourselves, but we are only finding ourselves – we are only losing that which isn’t true. We are here to meet one another, and through experiencing each other, understand our own self, while also deepening the inner world of another. We can only meet another as deeply as we’ve met ourselves; and we can only love another as deeply as we’ve built our inner capacity to love.
Today we’ll dive into the 7th house of relationships, and at the end I’ll guide you through what various planets in this house may mean to you, and how you can integrate this so that you come into deeper love and experience more fulfilling romantic relationships.
The Marriage / Relationship Axis: 1st and 7th House.
In both Esoteric Astrology and Shamanic Astrology, the rising sign represents the desire that brought us to life. We incarnated into a physical body because we had unfulfilled desires from past lives and these desires generate the birth and the driving force throughout our life.
While our ascendant describes the path we need to follow to fulfill our soul purpose and who we are learning to grow into and become, our descendant describes our significant other and our marriage or long-term committed partnerships. It also signifies our shadow side that needs to be integrated to fulfill our path.
We are holistic beings and as such we also embody the energy of our partner – but it is often a bit more unconscious. This is why our greatest lessons in life, on a spiritual level, are learned through our relationships.
Deeper Understanding of the 7th House.
Mirror of the soul, and the path towards our soul’s purpose or dharma.
The 7th house is also know as the mirror of the soul, and the path towards our soul’s purpose or dharma. After we have fallen in love and have made the decision for togetherness, we enter the 7th house. This is the traditional house of marriage or long-term commitment, and its Libra expression points to something we establish that is built upon trust, loyalty, stability, inter-connection, interdependence, and harmony within and without.
Libra is ruled by Venus, which shows the need for self worth and self value when it comes to relationships and intimacy; and the importance of learning how to love. The 7th house is squared by the 4th house, which shows that early childhood plays a significant role in our understanding of love, nurturing, our ability to love another person and how selfless and giving we are willing to be; and it shows what our subconscious definition of love is. And the 9th house of higher purpose is three houses away from our 7th, which essentially shows that our efforts and willingness to love another, through our every day lips, hands and gestures, and our courage to love, is what will pave our path towards our dharma and connection to God. In the same way, our rewards for soul growth, inner work, and walking a life of truth and integrity, is our relationships. This is why our highest purpose in life is learning to love and being in service to others.
The 7th house is one of the most important houses in our natal chart, because our partner is an extension or expression of ourself – they are a mirror to us. As such, this is the house on our way towards fulfilling our soul’s purpose. We don’t have to be married legally, but when we start living with someone under the same roof, and are committed to them, it becomes a 7th house matter. For people who are monks for example, this house would be their relationship to God and the monastery – their commitment to it and their experience within it.
As a spiritual astrologist, I sometimes view this house as a sacrament – or the cross we choose to carry in this life; it is what we choose to enter into and devote to, it is our devotional pathway, through which divine grace enters us, so that we grow spiritually. We mature through our 7th house because we face ourselves, we face our mirror and integrate all parts of us that we hadn’t integrated before.
So even if you are not married, or don’t want to be married, the relationship would be the devotion you enter into. If you are a monk, it’d be your monastery; if you are a gardener, it’d be your garden; if you are an entrepreneur, this is how you approach the partnerships in your business. In any case, this is a house that asks us to practice self-awareness and dedication; it is a house that connects us to God and a higher calling, allowing us the opportunity for a deepening into more trust, faith and grace.
The 7th house is essentially the disappearance of the self, it refers to a need for selflessness, so that we can begin to learn harmony and balance within a relationship and what it takes for us to live together and thrive together; how we get along after the sun sets, behind closed doors, is what the descendant shows. This house is also where we bond physically through sex, and sexual pleasure and compatibility are also often indicated here.
Integrating The Shadow Self.
The 7th house represents our inner partner. It is the image we create for the kind of partner we want and are attracted to, which also includes all of our shadow sides that we haven’t yet integrated. In other words – our unacknolewdged sides will often times be expressed through partners. Once we integrate our shadow, or our unconscious personal elements, through acceptance and allowance – we will be faced with less mirroring and will move towards a higher manifestation of our 7th house including the partners that we attract and the kind of relationships we’ll experience. Actually, the 4th, 8th and 12th houses also feature a lot of our shadow side through our relationships with other people but that’s a different topic.
Our ascendant develops very early on in life and is made up of what we know about ourselves, what we want to be, what we identify as ourselves and what we want to be seen as. Our descendant develops around the same time and contains all that we are unconscious of or the parts of us that we don’t want to associate with. So in essence, we split ourselves in two. Our descendant is both what we are attracted to and repelled by in other people – and in ourselves. Whatever we desire but we haven’t integrated within ourselves, we look for in others. We can’t really know our unconscious side – that’s why it is unconscious – but we can experience it in flashes through others, which then allows us to integrate these parts of us when we acknowledge them to be true about our own selves.
This doesn’t mean that everyone you are in a relationship with is who you are – because who we are is also who we are not; in other words, the “other” is only an opportunity for a deepening, to reflect on who we might be, who we no longer want to be, or what parts of us may be seeking our attention. A big part of knowing who we are is also knowing who we are not – but – if we find ourselves constantly attracting and staying into relationships that we otherwise know and say are not good for us, and yet we still stay, perhaps it is time to reflect on why we do this, what does love mean to us, what is it that we find attractive in this other person that makes us stay despite knowing we shouldn’t?
We have to allow ourselves to be comfortable with parts of us that maybe aren’t so “pretty”; the truth is that we all contain everything within us. This doesn’t mean we have to act on these qualities because there are choices to be made always, but it means to be in allowance and humility that we hold them too – rather than always projecting them to other people.
We search for us in others. Once we integrate and come into connection within – then we start to experience the entirety of who we are and can experience a love of greater depth. This will also allow us to be much more discerning about who we allow into our lives as partners rather than continuing to replay and relive old narratives; we will no longer settle for less because we won’t need someone to show us our shadow side. When we come into our wholeness, we won’t even be attracted to anyone who isn’t on our resonance anymore; we are able to stay in our truth, aligned to our own higher purpose and stand on our own; and this is when we can enter into sacred relationships. Becoming our whole attracts another whole; and we experience something truly deep and fulfilling.
The Different Planets in your 7th House, and What They Mean.
To understand anything in life we often need to understand the opposite. In general, whatever you find in your 7th house is part of your shadow – and are qualities or aspects of yourself you are looking for in another person to give to you – to reflect to you, so that you may acknowledge them as part of you, let go of no longer serves you, accept all your various aspects and layers of yourself.
We are looking for the qualities of our 7th house in others because we don’t feel we have this within ourselves – but really, we do, and once we find this within ourselves our relationships will be experienced by us in a much deeper and fulfilling way, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
If you have your natal Moon there, you are looking for emotional security and nurturing, for comfort.
If you have your natal Jupiter there, you are seeking expansion and joy – someone who can allow you to touch the beyond the borders, the faith, hope and positivity.
If you have your natal Sun there, you are seeking fun, romance, and to step into your expression of self.
If you have your natal Mars there, you are essentially seeking to learn to stand up for yourself, as on a soul level you want to give expression to your courage; and you are also looking for protection and a healthy expression of passion and anger, i.e. learn how to channel fire. So your relationships can either be of conflict – to reflect to you your need to stand up for yourself; or they can be of passion and deep desire; or you might find passive aggressive people, who are just trying to help you get in touch with your own intense emotions and understand yourself more deeply – falling in more compassion for yourself, rather than feeling ashamed with expressing disagreement, and to help you protect your boundaries, and set boundaries, so that people don’t step all over you.
If you have your natal Saturn there, you are longing for stability and continuity – so the best way to integrate this is to find stability in your own life – dedicate yourself to something and invest consistently into it, stay true to your word and commitments, and learn discernment, so that you choose partners who will support your inner core, stability, sense of home and belonging, and be loyal and committed to your also.
If you have your natal Venus there, you are essentially looking for someone to give you confidence and self worth. With this placement, you are looking for beauty, grace and worthiness from another, so that you feel worthy in yourself because someone else desires you. Venus on the Descendant natives usually do not love themselves enough, so they are looking to be loved by others – so with this placement it is really important to learn self love. Venus is not just romance, she is about self worth, self love, and healthy confidence.
The more you develop your 7th house qualities, the more you’ll attract partners who embody the higher manifestation of this house, and all the other aspects, because they are no longer in a role to “awaken” you through challenge, they will be showing up in a more supportive role and you’ll experience deeper intimacy.
Relationships are a mirror to us – to who we are and how we are doing at this particular time in our life. All these qualities we seek in another, Venus, Moon, Mars and so on, are just us seeking something we may not feel we have within ourselves.
But if you can recognize that these are all already within you – and you can give them to yourself, and nourish yourself enough to give them to yourself, then you’ll see that you were the one you were always looking for. Our relationships allow us an opportunity for a deepening – and this is their higher purpose: to bring us closer to ourselves, and whom we truly are. And when we are what it is we want to find, we’ve already found it – and now, a whole comes, just like us.
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Cover film still from Casablanca, 1942, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
