The Seventh House

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THE SEVENTH HOUSE

Dane Rudhyar

As the seventh house is reached we are dealing with experiences that result from a type of activity based no longer primarily upon the individual self but instead upon sustained modes of relationship to other selves, modes of relationship which imply a fundamental sense of cooperation and sharing with other persons. But mere cooperation does not tell the whole story, for of itself it may have but an impermanent and superficial value. The cooperators should feel that their "operation in common" serves a purpose within a larger unit of existence, normally within a particular social community, or at most within mankind considered as a planetary organism. It should be a functional participation. One should find implied in the relationship between two partners an at least dim realization of what the relationship is for, what is its purpose; and in this purpose each partner should then be able to discover his or her own individual purpose. A life without purpose — or, as the American Indian would say, without a "vision" — is hardly worth living; it is not greatly different from the life of an animal. But obviously human beings can live, act, and cooperate, consciously or instinctually, in terms of a variety of purposes.

This matter of purpose is very important astrologically — as well as psychologically and socially — or it alone can clarify the basic relationship between the first, the fourth, the seventh, and the tenth houses. In the first house a man can realize intuitively — and at first in an instinctual sense below the threshold of what we call consciousness — that he is an individual "I." This realization, in terms of actual and effectual existence, leads in the fourth house to a conscious and more or less stabilized feeling of being a particular person with a particular character and certain basic beliefs and values, on the basis of which the person acts, expresses himself, succeeds or fails, learns and suffers on the path of self-transformation. This self-transformation implies a change of polarity. The individual comes to realize that, willy-nilly, he or she is a component part of a larger whole. This is often a confusing realization which leaves one quite insecure, faced, as it were, with a great question mark on the horizon of consciousness. What am I supposed to do? Will I be able to do it well?

The child very likely does not ask himself these questions, at least not in a basic sense, because he normally takes for granted his belonging to a family and an environment. He tries to express himself in it, is hurt, learns, etc. It is normally at puberty, with the rise of sexual energies, that the feeling that some power far greater than his limited consciousness arises. The human species claims the child — he or she has to perform a special function, he or she has a biological, personality-transcending purpose. The adolescent is also increasingly claimed by his society as he goes to high school and college. He finds himself operating in a field of activity in which he is not sure what is demanded of him, or whether he likes and can fit in with these demands. He may be emotionally lost, he may rebel blindly, he might escape into intense religious fervor and dedicate himself to the God of devotees — the sublime Thou, Who is conveniently always there to listen and comfort, provided He is exclusively worshipped.

In horary astrology it is said that the seventh house of a chart cast at a certain time to answer an inquirer's question shows "the result of the matter" inquired into. The function of an organism is the result of his identity — first house. Everything is born to fulfill a particular function. That function can be known only, however, if the new entity is related to the other entities with which it has to cooperate. "Life" produces males and females, but they are of no value to the human species unless they function together. Each person learns what he or she is, not only biologically but in terms of the socio-cultural community, only as he functions together with other human beings. This functional cooperation eventually produces something of value to the human race, to the particular society, or to both.

If a primitive man in New Guinea found an old airplane propeller lying in a field, he could describe its shape in detail and even build some kind of sculptural decoration around it; it has "form" and is made of substances which can be determined. It is an entity; but the New Guinea tribesman does not know what it is for. He could only know this, if he could be taught how it operates in relation to other objects, all of which are functional parts of an organized system with a definite purpose: that is, flying. If a man who never left city slums is sent to a forest and becomes attracted to the shape of an acorn lying on the ground, he may play with it, even dissect it, but he will not be able to see in it the potentiality of a great oak. He cannot know its function, its place in the cycle of vegetation, unless he can somehow relate it to the tree. It is only in relation to other entities that any single entity has significance in terms of living processes or of the organized activities of a communal or national whole.

The same is true, with some important yet perhaps not so essential differences, of a human being. We may know what he is made of structurally and biologically, but such a knowledge is necessarily incomplete until we see him function in relation to other individuals and within a collective social-cultural field of activity.

Function suggests purpose, and both are inherent and potential in what a man is, but they are revealed only as he operates within the larger whole within which he is a participating unit. Theoretically, the purpose of an individual existence is fulfilled in the tenth house, but this fulfillment — positive or negative, partial or complete — results from what was established or realized consciously at the level of the seventh house. The quality of a person's relationship to others at the functional level is the foundation upon which he will achieve or fail to achieve whatever has been the inherent purpose of his existence since he was born, whether or not he has been at all aware of that purpose.

Individual experiences related to the seventh house should all refer to activities which, at least potentially, have a functional character. The ultimate keynote of these experiences is participation; yet the experiencer may not be aware at first that he is participating in a greater whole — a community, or the human species. He may be enthralled by his partner and the excitement of the partnership, or he may be confused by it. The glamorous feeling of coming to know and experience fully another human being in and through whom one may reach self-fulfillment powerfully affects the honey-moon period of the relationship. It is, however, often as the partners settle down to the everyday work involved in the relationship that its functional meaning becomes clear. The value of a public and ritualistic marriage ceremony is that, at the very beginning of the conjugal relationship, its social significance — how it is to be a part of family and group processes — is definitely asserted and solemnized. The expected presence of some result to come from the conjugal relationship — children, or at least some form of cooperative achievement — is made to overshadow the purely emotional tension and the ecstasy inherent in the relationship. It is for the same reason that a man entering an important public office is made to go through a public ceremony of inauguration or coronation. He is entering into a relationship which has a definite public function — relationship with new associates with whom he is to cooperate in the fulfillment of his task. He is wedded to a social purpose.

This act of being wedded to a purpose is inherent in all seventh house types of relationship, even — I repeat — if the individuals being related are barely aware of the basis of their association. But it is only in the eighth house that the responsibility which such an association entails becomes apparent to the partners, perhaps vividly and emotionally. As it may mean the "death" of some illusions, and the regeneration of the partners' egos, the eighth house has been called the house of death and regeneration.

Today the concept of marriage has changed so much that it seems as if the relationship of a man and a woman has no function other than that of bringing personal happiness, security, and emotional fulfillment to the partners, with no significant reference to either progeny — service to the race — or social-cultural achievement-service to the community. This, in a sense, is the result of the over- individualistic and analytical character of our civilization and its piecemeal consciousness which considers parts as if there were no whole in which they were meant to operate. These parts nevertheless are also wholes, which themselves are constituted by many interrelated and interdependent parts.

Today the answer to this, often taken for granted, is that a human being is a very special kind of whole which does not belong functionally to any larger unit. From the point of view of the philosopher believing in "Personalism," every person is an end in himself, a kind of absolute. He relates to other persons, but this relationship is essentially personalistic; that is, it is not a part of any cosmic operation, it is not "functional." Society, mankind, the planet Earth do not constitute "organisms" of which human individuals can symbolically be called component cells. Essentially, each individual stands alone and self-sufficient, as a monad. Contacts made with other individuals have a purely existential character; they have value and meaning only in terms of what they bring to each individual separately.

All this may seem quite metaphysical and of little consequence to the astrologer, but actually the preceding paragraphs present the basic opposition between the two most important approaches to the relationship between two or more individual persons, and between these persons and both the organized social community in which they live and the human race as a whole. Whether one takes one approach or the other will fundamentally affect what human relationship, marriage, and partnership will actually mean in everyday life. The sad thing is that people today more or less unconsciously try to live partly in terms of one of these approaches, and partly in terms of the other. Thus a basic confusion reigns in all matters of human relationship—all seventh house matters.

The old-time religious approach to conjugal relationship and to any at least relatively permanent partnership in work having a social or cultural character was basically functional. Today this functional foundation is lacking in a great many instances. Individual meets individual just for the sake of development of their respective personalities. This, of course, can be very valid and constructive, but the relationship becomes an end in itself, or rather a means to assist the fourth house development of the essentially separate personalities, or the release of fifth house energies. When this is the case, then it is almost inevitable that sooner or later some eighth house type of experiences will spell death — or if all goes well, transforming rebirth — to the relationship.

To sum up: experiences related to the seventh house — that is, to marriage and all forms of more or less stable partnerships — can merely mean the cooperation of individuals, or they can mean participation in a larger whole to which the related persons are deeply conscious of belonging in terms of a common destiny or a definite social-cultural purpose. The main issue in these relationships is not whether there is great love, or the deeply felt common interest of business partners, but what is the quality of this love or this common interest. The marriage may mean what the French call l'egoisme a deux — a difficult phrase to translate, but meaning the union of two persons solely for their own mutual satisfaction and personal growth*; the business partnership may be entered into solely for the profit of the two partners with no concern for social consequences. On the other hand, the relationship may be consecrated to a more-than-personal purpose at whatever level it may be.

*Years ago a Russian film, concerning a young man and young woman who were both fighting on two war fronts, was reviewed in the Soviet Russia magazine, January 1943. A letter from the boy to his beloved comrade was read saying: "In our time the fate of the world is being decided and that fate must be decided by us. We are facing a stern and militant life and I want to share this life with you." How important it was that the boy did not say "share my life," but instead "share this life with you." A shared participation in a new life: how different from l'egoisme a deux.

No astrologer can positively tell which of the two approaches a person will follow in his or her close and stable relationships, but the zodiacal sign on the cusp of the house, the place and aspects to the ruler of that sign, and the nature of the planets which may be located in the seventh house can tell a great deal that can help a sincere person eager to participate in a greater field of existence to determine what are the best conditions for such a participation, and perhaps also alert him to some of the dangers or tests involved in it. This may not make the relationship easier; it could make it more significant and more fruitful.

The most important point, astrologically speaking, implied in all the above discussion is that one should never consider the seventh house — or indeed any house — alone when interpreting a matter referring to experiences or problems dealing with this area of human existence and activity. The principle of relatedness. Descendant, and the principle of selfhood. Ascendant, constitute two independent polarities. What one is as an individual self will be demonstrated in the way one relates to other persons and to the world in general; likewise the results of relationships provide feedback which affects what psychologists today call one's "self image."

The pattern of individual selfhood — which at the biological level manifests itself in the genetic code within all the cells' nuclei — is a permanent factor in the cycle of an individual's existence. Change in the personality comes through all types of relationships. Relationship is the creative — and in some cases, destructive — answer to the existential fact of relatedness. The seventh house is thus potentially the most dynamic of all houses. It is in this field of human experience that the person can be most basically transformed. It is also here that man experiences his greatest freedom—unless certain planets are very close to the descendant, planets which symbolize compelling pressures of destiny which alone can build through the magic of relationship the type of foundations required for the fulfillment of a powerful purpose inherent in the individual self. In such a. case, the individual may find himself driven by this purpose to enter into a certain type of relationship, or into a relationship with a certain type of person, which might provide experiences that can serve best to dynamize the purpose of destiny, even if if be through stress and strain, or even tragedy.

Marriage, and other kinds of partnership as well, can be a field of unresolvable tensions. The experiences derived from these tensions can also serve the purpose of personal growth and lead to the fulfillment of the individual's destiny. The planet near the Descendant is normally a strong indication of how best to meet such experiences. They will be met at different levels according to an individual's stage of development and, one might add, according to the phase in the evolution of the "Soul" which this particular life embodies. A dialectical process can be seen at work here, as indeed everywhere, revealing three basic levels of relatedness.

At the basic biological and tribal level all relationships are subservient to the compulsive dictates of life and to the welfare of the communal group. Relationships are definitely purposeful and regulated socially by strong taboos, essentially formulated in view of what is naturally valuable and constructive for the tribal whole, though in time other preoccupations may pervert the original purpose.

When man reaches the stage where the individualization process begins to operate strongly, relationships take on a more personal character, but the basic relationship of marriage is still subject to the biological imperative and to the need to preserve and transmit cultural and religious values. It is only since the Industrial Revolution began to break down traditional patterns of relationship — actually not before the beginning of this century — that an intensified kind of individualism and the revolt of women against patriarchal rules have utterly transformed the institution of marriage. Marriage has lost most of its social and institutional-religious character. It has ceased to be in most cases an affair determined by parents, social class, and financial values. It is now mainly a matter of two individuals coming together of their free will in order to enjoy a richer life in common. Thus the factors of selfhood and relatedness have received nearly all the attention and those referring to the tenth and even the fourth houses have lost their main importance — this, because the majority of marriages, at least in the United States, are without a sense of destiny and social or transcendent purpose (tenth house) and practically without very vital and solid roots, social as well as geographical.

A third level should now be reached, at which perhaps whatever is left of the marriage pattern will be even more transformed. At that level the relationship once more will be dominated by a common purpose — social and supersocial, spiritual or planetary. Truly autonomous and authentic individuals will be joining their energies, perhaps in a ritualistic manner, so as to work for a truly common and deliberately shared purpose — a functional purpose envisioned in terms of participation in the total evolution of mankind and of the Earth.

It seems evident that this third level of close and creative relationship — which can be, yet need not be, also procreative — is still inacceptable and perhaps unthinkable for the immense majority of humanity. But great changes may be imminent, and the emerging nonwhite countries may find in their ancient cultures features which will make it easier for all people to accept a new type of fruitful and super-personal togetherness.

The Astrological Houses