The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 507, titled:

The 5th House in Astrology, Part 2: Ruler of the Ascendant

With Chris Brennan and Leisa Schaim

Episode originally released on September 19, 2025

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2025/10/28/the-5th-house-in-astrology-part-2-ruler-of-the-ascendant/

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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com

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Transcribed by Teresa “Peri” Lardo

Transcription released November 16th, 2025

Copyright © 2025 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. Joining me today is astrologer Leisa Schaim, and we’re gonna be looking at the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house in astrology and going through more than 50 example charts of notable figures that have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house in order to understand better what the 5th house means as part of our three-part series on the 5th house in astrology. So hey, Leisa – welcome back. 

LEISA SCHAIM: Hey Chris. Glad to be here. 

CB: Yeah. So we are back again for another jam-packed installment in this series. In the last episode, we did an extended discussion about the meaning and significations and symbolism associated with the 5th house. And in this episode, we’re gonna really ground that by going through and looking at charts of people that have the 5th house prominent in their life, because I feel like that’s when the abstract significations and the archetype of the 5th house comes alive in a much more detailed way when you actually see how it’s worked out when it’s prominent in different people’s charts, right? 

LS: Absolutely. Yeah. I’m really excited to dig into the actual chart research that we’ve done here and show how different Ascendant ruler in the 5th house people exemplify different particular significations of the 5th house. And sometimes, you know, two or three or more. 

CB: Right. For sure. 

So I started this research last year, actually, because I think I did the 4th house episode in November, and then I started researching the 5th house, and I was having help researching it where some charts were sent in by Orla, an astrologer named Orla on Twitter, and Lindsey Turner as well as Camille Michelle Gray. And then I kind of got interrupted by doing the year ahead forecast stuff last year, and then life intervened. And it took me a while to get back to it. But over the past month, we’ve gotten back to it, and you and I especially have been deeply researching more than a hundred different example charts. And so in this episode, we’re gonna present probably about half of our example charts, which are examples of people that have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. And then in the next episode, we’re gonna look at the ruler of the 5th house in each of the 12 houses. And that’ll complete the picture. But in this episode, by looking at the ruler of the Ascendant as we’ve done in the last few episodes in this series on the houses, the ruler of the Ascendant shows something about the native’s overall life direction and some major areas of life or topics that the life is directed towards. And part of the metaphor for that in ancient astrology is that the Ascendant and the first house was called the helm, as in the helm of a ship. And the ruler of the Ascendant was sometimes referred to as the captain of the ship. So it’s as if like, the captain of your life’s ship of your birth chart in some instances, if the ruler of the Ascendant is in a specific house is directing you towards those topics. And that’s really useful for our purposes, then, because if there’s – when we’re looking at charts of people where their life is in some way being directed towards the 5th house, it gives us a much more vivid understanding of what the 5th house means in general. 

LS: Absolutely. Those are really the people that exemplify or really illustrate the 5th house themes the most – either the Ascendant ruler in the 5th or sometimes a stellium of multiple planets in the 5th house. And so that’s what we’re gonna do today is look at a whole bunch of those charts. We’ve been doing sort of a deep dive into looking up charts and talking about them together and even watching movies sometimes at night that are, you know, documentaries about different people’s lives. So yeah, this should be a really rich illustration of the 5th house. 

CB: Yeah. And as always, I’m gonna release our research notes to patrons of The Astrology Podcast who sign up through our page on Patreon at Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast, and that’ll also include our movie list of like, some of the documentaries and stuff we’ve been watching about some of the figures that we’ve been researching over the past several weeks. So it’s a nice little bonus, and I’ll probably also release a bonus recording of The Secret Astrology Podcast with some miscellaneous charts that we don’t get to in this initial three-part series. 

So is there anything else we need to touch base on before we jump into the example charts? 

LS: No. I think that’s it. Just maybe to recap, you know, these particular areas or topics of the 5th house that we’re gonna be looking at. So just as a reminder, children, pleasure and enjoyment, sex and sexuality, creativity, and good fortune. And we have some slightly different subtopics of how that shows up in different people’s lives and charts, but they all align with at least one of these topics. 

CB: Right. So those are our primary core archetypal significations is those areas. And then we’ll see a bunch of subtopics. And in particular, we’re gonna see a number of people that have either the ruler of the Ascendant or sometimes the ruler of the 10th house in the 5th and what happens when the career or the overall life direction becomes tied in with 5th house topics, and sometimes the types of professions or other things that people can gravitate towards in those instances.

LS: Yeah. For sure. We have mostly Ascendant ruler in 5th charts today, but there’s a few honorable mentions that they really stand out for 5th house things that we’ll get to – like, stelliums or 10th and 5th combinations. 

CB: Brilliant. All right. Well, let’s just jump right into it then, since we got so much to cover. 

So our first section that we’re gonna talk about is the topic of children, focusing in particular on people that have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house or other things. Like, in some instances, stelliums or we’ll talk about a couple of planets in the 5th house that help to give you an idea of some of the different scenarios that are possible. But as we talked about in the last episode, children has always been the primary topic and the primary thing associated with the 5th house over the past 2,000 years. So it’s a major topic that can come up, especially if you have important planets placed in the 5th house in your birth chart. 

So let’s start with the very first birth chart, which is the birth chart of Judy Blume who’s a children’s book author who has not just the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house of children but also a stellium of planets in the 5th house of children. 

LS: Yeah. So she is an American author known primarily for children’s and young adult books, although she did write some adult fiction as well. She published more than 26 novels, and I think that’s interesting in itself, even though we’re mostly talking about her children focus, because, you know, the creative output and prolificness sometimes comes through in the 5th house as well. So she wrote really well-known children’s and young adult books like Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret; I think that’s possibly her most well-known one. Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing, Superfudge, and Blubber. And one of the things that I also love about her example is I found this note that she was one of the first young adult authors to write novels focused on some controversial topics – I mean, they came across as controversial at the time, anyway – such as masturbation, menstruation, teen sex, birth control, and death. And what I found kind of funny about that is most of those are 5th house topics as well, right? The sexuality piece – so the teen sex and birth control, masturbation – and the only one that wasn’t was death, which she also has the ruler of the 8th in the 5th, which has to do with mortality-related issues as well as other topics. So she’s a really great example of 5th house themes. The children and the young adult focus – yeah. She just really stands out for 5th house. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. So and for those listening to the audio version, we’re looking at a chart that has Libra rising, and the ruler of the Ascendant is Venus which is placed in Aquarius in the 5th whole sign house. And it’s together with three other planets, which are Mercury, Jupiter, and the Sun, and then Venus right after that – all of them in the 5th house. So it’s tricky because on the one hand, this is a ruler of the Ascendant example, but it’s also a stellium example. And those are the two ways that a house, like the 5th house, can become very prominent in the life, if you have the ruler of the Ascendant there for the reasons stated earlier, or if you have a stellium there. Because then the rulers of all the houses that those planets in the stellium rule all then go back to that house – in this case, the 5th house. So it becomes kind of this, it has this gravitational pull in the life that will sort of pull you towards whatever topic a stellium is located in in a birth chart. 

LS: Definitely. And you know, one of the things that’s interesting about her example as well is it’s not just that she wrote books for children and young adults, but part of why she even addressed some of those topics that some people found controversial is she was taking young people seriously. Right? And she was talking about topics that actually came up in their lives, you know, at an age-appropriate level. So I think that’s an interesting kind of additional facet of her focus on young people. 

CB: Right. Maybe it’s tied in with like, the Saturn there ruling all of that and just like, different people do have different philosophies about how to talk to children and whether to talk in more of like, a childlike tone for a long time or at what point you start talking more like they’re younger adults or something. 

LS: Right. And one last note – I’m sure she had multiple motivations for writing all these books, but one thing I saw that was kind of funny was said that because she was like, at home raising her kids, she started making up stories to amuse herself, and that’s how she started writing these books. And of course, pleasure and enjoyment – things you do for fun – is also a 5th house topic. 

CB: Right. Well, and also stories for her own children, because she had two children and that was how she got started. 

LS: Right. 

CB: Yeah. Nice. So in that way, we see something that we’ll see a lot of throughout this series, which is that while sometimes it can be like, one of the 5th house topics can come up very prominently in the life, oftentimes you have other multiple like, 5th house topics coming up at different points in the life, or occasionally overlapping in some way. So we’ll see that a lot in a bunch of our examples. 

LS: Absolutely. Yeah. Some people are really known for like, the one core 5th house signification, but there are a fair number that illustrate more than one. 

CB: Yeah. For sure. All right. So that is our first example. So let’s move on to our next one, who is also a stellium example. 

And this is the birth chart of Walt Disney, who was born with Virgo rising and a stellium of four planets in the 5th house of children, including Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars all in Capricorn in the 5th whole sign house. And this is not a ruler of the Ascendant example, but it’s such a great example of like, what happens when you have a bunch of planets – like, a stellium – in the 5th house that the topic of children can become more prominent in the life in general. And you know, we had already talked about him because he has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 3rd house, which is like, the place of communication, but then the ruler of the 3rd house is in the 5th house itself in the place of children. So he’s literally communicating to children; Walt Disney created the Disney animation studio, which has produced tons and tons of animated movies for children over the course of the past century. And that also brings in another major 5th house component that we’ll focus on even more later, which is the 5th house and its relation to creativity, which is also a major topic that creatives come up in the 5th house. And Disney is interesting, because he kind of blends the two with both the topic of children but also the topic of creativity by doing animations and movies, basically. 

LS: Right. Yeah. He was responsible for many of the most well-known children’s movies that we think of today. And I learned that he also introduced several new developments in the production of cartoons, which is, you know, a creative output aspect, but it’s also geared towards children again primarily. And then, of course, the Disney theme parks came later, right, out of this work later in his life. And that’s where lots of families take their kids! So again, there’s a focus on children. 

CB: Definitely. A focus on children, but then actually also a focus on another topic that comes up, which is the topic of like, fun and pleasure and enjoyment. And it’s literally created theme parks and yeah, just places where people go to have fun in general. 

LS: Right. And just as a more creative output note, he actually as a film producer holds the record for the most Academy Awards earned with 22 of them. And then 59 nominations. So the most… Yeah, like, the highest record for an individual, which is really quite impressive. So you can really see that 5th house stellium coming out. I think it is the stelliums oftentimes that come out in multiple ways, although sometimes the Ascendant ruler as well. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, that’s interesting about the Academy Awards, just because one of the – we’ll see a lot of actors later on in another section, but we’ll also see some famous directors like Steven Spielberg is one of our ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house examples. So even though we’re introducing Disney at this point in the children section, since that’s clearly the dominant theme, there’s also this other part which is like, the director and the creative. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, we had to make a few judgment calls as far as categorization, but yeah, trying to explain all of the different facets. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. But people often defy categorization. So — 

LS: Right. 

CB: All right. I think that’s good for this example, so let’s move on to our next one. 

Our next birth chart is the chart of Jill Biden, who is the former First Lady of the United States, who was born with Sagittarius rising and Jupiter in Aries in the 5th whole sign house. And what’s interesting is even though people primarily know her at this point as the former First Lady, the wife of Joe Biden who was the previous president before the current one, she’s actually a lifelong educator, and much of her life was dedicated towards education, right? 

LS: Yeah. She actually has a PhD in educational leadership. And I actually found the title of her dissertation; it’s called Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students’ Needs. And I thought it was interesting that the focus was on students specifically – like, not education more broadly – because that is very much a 5th house theme. And it’s a good additional thing to point out here in the children’s section, which is it’s often children that are coming up or children or young adults in the 5th house section; but it can be younger people in general sometimes, especially when it comes up in the realm of education. I’ve seen a lot of like, university professors with 5th house focus because those are the young people for them.

CB: Right. Yeah. That makes sense. And one of the things you pointed out also – in addition to education, she has the ruler of the 5th in the 7th, right? 

LS: Yeah. And she famously became the stepmother, of course, to Joe Biden’s kids as well as having a child together, you know, once they got together. Because Joe Biden was widowed before they got together in a relationship, and so she became a stepmother to his kids. And that’s a thing you’ll often see when there’s a combination between the 5th and 7th, which we’ll get into more in the next episode. But you know, basically suddenly having kids because of a partner in her case. 

CB: Yeah. When we get to the 7th house section of the next episode on the ruler of the 7th in the 5th or vice versa, because it shows that there’s an overlap for some reason between the topic of children and the topic of relationships, which on the one hand is like, you would think is kind of a no-brainer, but — 

LS: Right. 

CB: — what you sometimes see happening then is that the topic of children is imported into the person’s life through getting into a relationship with somebody else, which sometimes means that there’s like, preexistent children that come into the life through the partner. 

LS: Absolutely. Yeah. And one other thing I just wanted to note about her teaching is that she kept teaching while Biden was in the White House and while she was living there, which was kind of unheard of. So it just really again shows the focus on the 5th house in her life. 

CB: Right. Absolutely. 

Okay. Excellent. Well, I think that’s good. Let’s move onto our next example. 

LS: Okay. 

CB: So our next chart is the chart of Thomas Beatie, and do you wanna introduce this one? 

LS: Yeah. So Thomas Beatie is an advocate of transgender and sexuality issues with a focus in particular on transgender fertility and reproductive rights. So you can clearly see already the 5th house coming up. What he’s known for – he came out as a trans man in early 1997, and then after having gender-affirming surgery in 2002, he actually became pregnant in 2007 via artificial insemination and became publicly known as like, the pregnant man. Because he got a lot of media attention at the time, both tabloids and more serious media attention. 

CB: Right. Like — 

LS: So — 

CB: — he was on like, Oprah like, a few times. 

LS: Yeah. And you know, there was good and there was not-so-good coverage of it, but you know, in total there was a lot of popular attention at the time on him being a transgender man but also being pregnant.

CB: Right. 

LS: And he did that because his wife couldn’t get pregnant. 

CB: Right. There was like, a medical issue and she was unable to. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: So for those listening to the audio version, we’re looking at a chart with Libra rising and the ruler of the Ascendant is Venus which is in Aquarius in the 5th whole sign house. Venus is retrograde in a night chart, and it’s copresent or conjunct the Sun in Aquarius as well as Mercury and Jupiter. Yeah. So we’ve got, once again, a not just ruler of the Ascendant but a stellium in the 5th house, and obviously there’s something then about this chart that’s being directed towards the topic of children, and indeed being sort of like, a landmark instance of like, a trans person having a child stand out as part their like, overall biography, even if that’s not like, the only thing they’ve done in their life, obviously. 

LS: Right. For sure. So the topics of children and you know, reproduction, the process of having children, which was really the focus at the time. There’s another thing that came up where unfortunately he and his wife then filed for divorce in 2012, and then he became part of the first court case on record involving a documented legal male who gave birth to the couple’s children. Because when talking divorce settlements and things, children often come up, and there was a whole thing about, you know, how that was dealt with in their case because they had to like, prove that he was like, legally a man in terms of like, that state’s specifics and everything – specific laws. And something interesting I noticed about his chart related to that is he actually has mutual reception between the 5th and 9th houses. So Mercury is in Saturn’s sign – Aquarius in the 5th – and Saturn is in Mercury’s sign, Gemini, in the 9th house. And the 9th house, one of the topics involved with the 9th is the legal system. So there’s a really strong connection in his chart with those two houses. 

CB: Absolutely. Yeah. And that was something we saw a lot earlier in this series and that we’ll continue to see, especially in the next episode on the rulers of the houses, is that we found that when there’s a mutual reception or just an exchange of signs between the rulers of two houses, it creates a very strong connection between those two houses in the chart, but also it often means that there’s something distinctive in the life in general in connecting or overlapping those two houses. In this instance, it’s, you know, a landmark case setting a legal precedent, which is the 9th house, involving children, which is the 5th house. 

LS: Exactly. Yeah. So really good example there. We’re giving you a little preview of the rulers of the houses section episode. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

Okay. I think that’s good. So we focused on the topic of children so far up to this point, and the different ways that the topic of children can come up. But one of the things that was interesting when I was doing this research and I was doing some webinars with both patrons as well as students of my Hellenistic astrology course recently is there was one example – or there was actually a few examples – that came up where there were people that had 5th house placements, but sometimes it was involving Saturn. And the people were childfree, where they made a deliberate choice out of personal volition where they don’t wanna have children in their life for various reasons; there’s a number of different reasons for that. But that can show up sometimes as well. And what’s interesting is that sometimes when it shows up, it can indicate that there’s still a focus on the topic of children in some way on the 5th house. But that there’s a negation of that topic. And there’s different ways that that can happen, but one of the ones that was coming up a few times was Saturn being involved or aspecting the 5th house in some way. And because Saturn, one of its functions is to say no to things or to negate things, and sometimes it has that power to negate what the 5th house otherwise signifies. And sometimes that can be a challenging thing. Like, it can indicate let’s say like, a medical inability to have children. So the person like, wants to have children, but they’re not able to for some reason. Or in some extreme instances, malefics being involved in the 5th house could be like, the loss of a child or something like that. But sometimes it can be something that comes from within the native themself of just a choice for many different reasons or everybody differs, but just not to have children or to say no to that topic. And in some instances, there’s some people where it’s like, that in and of itself becomes a major thing – like, that they are childfree or that they have a blog or a website or something where they talk about that, and it’s like, a significant portion of the life. 

LS: Right. Yeah. Because Saturn does restrict or say no to things at times. So yeah, that is one of the ways it can play out, for sure. 

CB: Yeah. So one of the students that sent in a chart was named Michelle Oberdorf, and Michelle was born with Pisces rising and the ruler of the Ascendant is Jupiter, which is in Cancer in the 5th house along with Venus in a night chart so that there’s like, there’s things clearly drawing us to the topic of children in this chart. But then those planets are being squared by Saturn, which is in Aries in a night chart, which is bringing some of those like, “no” type significations to the 5th house planets. And what is really interesting is Michelle wrote me an email and explained her story and how she made a conscious decision to be childfree and to not have children and in fact wrote an honors thesis on that very topic back in 1998/1999 where she said that she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in sociology and interviewed 10 different women as part of an empirical research project that was titled, “Why Do Some Women Choose To Neither Bear Nor Raise Children,” and she was awarded honors class one as a result of that. 

LS: That’s great. Yeah, that’s a really great example. It’s interesting that Saturn’s overcoming the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th and also Venus, which is the ruler of the 3rd of communicative activity such as writing in the 5th house of children. But Saturn is like, having the upperhand since it’s in the earlier sign position. 

CB: Right. Yeah. So and there was a number of different reasons; there’s like, a ton of different reasons for people to be childfree or to make a conscious choice not to have children at this point so that it’s almost like, too much to even go into or attempt to summarize. And that’s not necessarily the point here, but one of the points and something that’s important and something I see trip up sometimes new students of astrology is when there’s placements like, in a house, they will assume that it means that they have to be doing something with that house or that house is supposed to then be prominent in the life. And they’ll be surprised if it’s the exact opposite. But that’s what happens sometimes if there’s something either inverting or negating the significations of the house in some way, and it’s something that you really need to be aware of as a possibility in order to understand the full spectrum and like, range of human experience that can happen. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, it’s interesting in those cases where it’s like, the life focus is drawn to a certain area, but it’s drawn to it in a way that’s restricting or negating it. But that doesn’t take away that there’s still a focus there of some sort. 

CB: Yeah. And it’s like, you’ll see the same thing come up in other houses. It’s like, sometimes that happens with like, the 7th house and like, in extreme instances you can have people that are like, let’s say like, incels or something like that, where they are like, very much focused on that topic of the fact that they’re not having relationships, but they’re also very bitter about it or turn that into their whole ideology which then ironically can sometimes have the backfire and like, make them more single than they might be otherwise because they’re like, negatively focusing on that topic or something like that. 

LS: Right. Yeah. Definitely. 

CB: Yeah. So and there’s many different manifestations of that, but there’s the point is that sometimes we have to pay attention to tath potential for an inversion of the significations, even if there otherwise seems like a focus on that area of the life. 

LS: Yeah. That’s a really great example of that. 

CB: Cool. All right. So shout out to Michelle; thanks for sending that in. 

All right, so let’s move on. Other major topics that come up – we talked about in the last episode how sometimes the number of children, if a person does have children, you can see different things about like, the number of children sometimes in the chart. And one of the classic ones with that is sometimes if like, Jupiter is in the 5th house, you’ll see a person that has like, a lot of children. And one of the contemporary examples of that is Elon Musk, who has Jupiter in the 5th house, and he’s known to have up to 13 children with — 

LS: Right. 

CB: — multiple different women at this point, which is a lot of children. 

LS: It is a lot of children. And it’s not just that he’s like, happened to have a lot of children. As you might imagine in this day and age, if you have that many children, it’s usually a deliberate thing, right? And it definitely is for him. He’s said that he wants to have lots of children, I think as you said on the last episode, right, because he is anticipating some sort of civilizational collapse, and therefore he needs to have lots of children to offset that. And he has Jupiter in the 5th house, and then it’s ruled by Mars in the 8th house, which has to do with things like death in addition to other topics. But that is one of the ways it’s playing out for him. 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: So it’s like, for those listening to the audio version, we’re looking at a chart with Cancer rising, and Jupiter is in Scorpio in the 5th whole sign house, and this is a day chart. And that Jupiter in the 5th house is ruled by Mars, which is placed in Aquarius in the 8th house of death and mortality – at least, those are some of the significations traditionally of the 8th house – and on the one hand, it’s interesting because this comes up for him where he lost I believe it was his first child died of I think it was like, SIDS or like, Sudden Infant Death mortality or something like that in infancy. So on the one hand, he has experienced the personal loss of a child. But then on the other hand, he’s stated publicly that part of his personal philosophy is that he thinks that population decline will lead to the destruction of the world and to like, major catastrophes and disasters for humanity so that he thinks that everybody has to have as many children as possible, and that’s become part of his personal mission. So it’s interesting that we’re just seeing that come through vividly here of like, Jupiter in the 5th house indicating the native having lots of children, but then the motivation for that being tied in to some extent with the ruler of the 5th house in the 8th. 

LS: Right. Yeah. And he already had those two connections between the 5th and the 8th – both the motivation for having lots of children as well as having actually one of his children die. But it’s interesting, another manifestation – I mean, sad, but interesting astrologically – is one of his children is transgender, and he’s repeatedly talked about her publicly as though she’s died. He’s like, said that she’s dead, because that’s how much he will not like, acknowledge her because she’s transgender. And I thought that was an interesting ruler of the 5th in the 8th as well is she’s not literally dead, but he’s feeling as though she is. 

CB: Right. Or treating it as such. 

LS: Right. 

CB: Treating her as such. So yeah. So that’s that example, but we actually have a couple other examples like that. So one of them was Mia Farrow, the actress, has quite a few children, right? 

LS: Yeah. She has – sorry, I’m having trouble pulling up the thing – she has I think about 13 children, if I’m remembering right. 

CB: Right. And it’s a — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: — mixture of like, biological children, but also she adopted a number of children. 

LS: Yeah. I think she has about four biological; the rest are adopted. And they’re adopted from different places in the world, and some of them deliberately adopted because they had like, HIV or other chronic illnesses. And then she has, I think, about 15 grandchildren already from those children. And yeah. So it’s just another explosion of children example. One of the other things I thought was particularly interesting about hers was, you know, in speaking about different people having different motivations for having lots of children, she said that she wanted her home to be like, filled with like, different cultures and different lifestyles and things like that. And I thought it was interesting that she has the IC – which is a sensitive point with regard to home and family – in the 3rd house, and it’s ruled by the Moon in the 9th house. And the 9th house has to do with foreign places, places that are different than what you grew up with, things like that. And so that’s definitely part of how that manifested for her. 

CB: Okay. Yeah, so that was another Jupiter in the 5th house example. And then one more like, contemporary one that is another good example of this, just to like, drive the point home, is the birth chart of Nick Cannon, who’s a famous comedian, but he has a stellium of planets in the 5th house, and he has 12 children with six different women. So again, like, a lot of children with a stellium in the 5th house. 

LS: Yeah. It’s really incredible. Like, I don’t know. 

CB: There it is; there’s the chart. So it’s Gemini rising with Saturn and the Sun and the Moon and Pluto in the 5th whole sign house in a night chart. So yeah. So in this instance, it’s interesting because it’s not like, Jupiter or something like that. But it’s just showing a major cluster of planets in the 5th house. And you know, it’s tricky because on the one hand, that is very literally like, he has a bunch of children, but then also there’s other 5th house topics that are relevant because he’s also like, a comedian, and he’s famous especially for hosting the show Wild ‘n Out – I think it was on MTV. But it was like, comedians doing like, comedy battles and almost like, roast battles against each other, which is an interesting manifestation of like, the Saturn in the 5th house to some extent as well. Because we’ll see later when we get to some like, writers and social commentators that there’s like, this critical aspect of Saturn when it’s in the 5th house, or even like, famous movie reviewers that we’ll see later on as well. 

LS: Right. Yeah. And we have a whole comedian section coming up, too. 

CB: Yeah. All right. So let’s move on. 

One of the topics that comes up sometimes is like, paternity can come up as a general topic of like, paternity, paternity disputes and other things with the 5th house. And one that was interesting that came up as I was like, trying to research this with notable nativities – and we focused on notable nativities because these are like, publicly documented events that people can research and verify and that you can find out more information about, and so that it’s clear that what we’re saying can be like, validated in terms of this research that we’re attempting to put out there. 

Okay, so one of the charts that I found related to this is the chart of Gwen Stefani. And here’s her birth chart; it has Capricorn rising with Saturn in Taurus in the 5th whole sign house conjunct the IC within a few degrees, which is also in early Taurus. And one of the things I found interesting about this, because I was like, a huge No Doubt fan; like, I don’t know if you listen to No Doubt, but I was in the late ‘90s and early 2000s they were like, a huge band. But she had this like, song in her like, 2000, 2001, maybe it was 2002 album where she talked about like, wanting to be a mom. And it was like, clear that this was something that she sort of like, yearned for in one of these songs from this song, “Simple Kind of Life.” And in verse three, it said, “I always thought I’d be a mom. Sometimes I wish for a mistake. The longer that I wait, the more selfish that I get. You seem like you’d be a good dad.” So ironically, this is from her album, The Return of Saturn, and she has Capricorn rising and has Saturn like, in the 5th house of children as the ruler of the Ascendant. So she ended up marrying, I think – I don’t know if she was already dating Gavin Rossdale who’s the lead singer of another famous band, Bush, or if they’d gotten together by that point – but they got married in 2002, which would have been just a couple of years after this album was released in April of 2000. And they ran into an issue, though, where I think it was like, not long after they got married, he found out unexpectedly that there was this young woman who was 15 years old that reached out to him. And it turned out that he had fathered a child with another woman that he was in a relationship with that he had no idea about from like, years earlier. And that the daughter herself didn’t know until she was about that age, and then she decided to – her mom like, said it, and they did a paternity test at that point, and it came back positive that like, that was basically that was Gavin Rossdale’s daughter. 

So this caused, reportedly, one of the things that was happening that was interesting is like, the nodes were moving over and conjoining Gwen Stefani’s Saturn at this point in the 5th house so that eclipses were taking place in her 5th house of children. And reportedly, like, this caused a significant amount of tension between the two of them at the time, because it was like, really early in their marriage, and even though she wanted to have children, they hadn’t had children together. They would go on later – they would patch things up and work things out and go on to have three children together over the course of the next decade. But this was like, an early rocky patch between the two of them, evidently, like, not super long after they got married. And I kind of like, was thinking about it from her perspective as like, there was almost like, a sudden thing of like, probably I assume that would have come up of like, “Am I a stepmom?” like, all of a sudden when this came up at this time and eclipses were happening in her 5th house. So yeah, I thought that was really interesting example that obviously the topic of children is personally relevant for her. But then it came up in this other weird way as well at one point in time. 

LS: Right. Yeah. That would be – I’m sure that created like, a huge issue at the time. And it’s kind of exemplified by that Saturn in the 5th. I’m just distracted in a funny way about the band being called “No Doubt,” too, because her Ascendant ruler is Saturn in the 5th, and you know, the 5th being also creative output, and Saturn being associated with things like doubt! So the name is funny in itself. But yeah, that experience – that would be like, a really challenging experience with regard to the topic of children. Yeah. And she has that Saturn there, and also the ruler – Venus – is closely trine the Ascendant from Virgo in the 9th house, and it’s copresent by sign anyway with Pluto. So again, it brings up sort of more tumultuous experiences as well as powerful experiences with regard to the 5th house. 

CB: Right. Yeah. With the ruler of the 5th house of children being Venus in the 9th house, I thought it was funny that Gavin Rossdale is from the UK, and Gwen Stefani’s from the US. And so she ended up having children with somebody from another country, and as a result of that, all three of her children have dual citizenship with the US and the UK, with the ruler of the 5th house of children in the 9th house of foreign places and foreign travel. 

LS: That’s great. 

CB: Yeah. So the last point is that they – her and Gavin Rossdale – like, a decade later, would later split up supposedly due to accusations of infidelity on his part. And then that’s a topic that we don’t have to go into a lot here, but we’ll see come up more later as well as a potential topic sometimes with the 5th house, because of its connection also with like, sex and sexuality. 

LS: Right. Which can go in positive or challenging ways. 

CB: Yeah. Exactly. 

All right. So let’s move on. So where are we at? I think that’s it. The only other one I was gonna mention just briefly without showing charts is looking at that and thinking about paternity made me think about there was this period in like, the mid-2000s where Eddie Murphy – one of the like, Spice Girls said that she had fathered the child of Eddie Murphy, the famous comedian, but then Eddie Murphy was like, denying paternity very publicly. But then the baby was born like, on his birthday – like, literally on the exact same day – and it was like, he had the Sun in Aries at a specific degree I forget right now, and the baby was born with the Sun at Aries at like, the exact same degree. And so like, I remember at the time, all of us astrologers were like, looking at each other and being like, yeah, that’s probably gonna end up being his child. And later it ended up being the case. 

LS: Right. Yeah. That’s really funny. It’s like an early tell if you know astrology, and otherwise, you know, not so much. Although I guess even if you’re not an astrologer, people would be like, I don’t know – born on your birthday? You know. 

CB: Yeah. Well, especially as an astrologer, I mean, certainly it’s not — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: — one hundred percent, but it’s certainly raising some eyebrows. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: So all right. So that’s the section on the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house of children. In some of our future examples, we’re gonna continue to see children come up as like, a major factor. But this at least gives you an idea and a demonstration of that with like, real life empirical chart work of how the 5th house can really come up and be important as a major topic when you have the ruler of the Ascendant or you have stelliums there. 

LS: Yeah. I think that was a good, robust selection of charts where that shows up. 

CB: Cool. All right. So let’s move on to our next section, which is gonna be the topic of sex and sexuality and some charts were that’s like, a major focus when the ruler of the Ascendant is located in the 5th house. 

So the first chart example that I wanted to share is the birth chart of the famous basketball player Wilt Chamberlain, who had the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. So here is the chart. So it has Taurus rising, and the ruler of the Ascendant is Venus, which is located in Virgo in the 5th whole sign house in a night chart along with Neptune and Mercury. 

So what’s interesting about him – on the one hand, we’re gonna see a lot of famous sports players and people that take what are otherwise like, games that are done as hobbies but like, elevate them to being part of their career or part of their life’s work, and he’s an early example of that because he was a famous basketball player. But one of the things that became notable about his biography is he wrote an autobiography at one point, and in his second book, titled A View From Above, he claimed to have had sex with 20,000 women. And that was like, an estimate, but it was like, based on supposedly like, his calculations or averages or something; I don’t really know. It explains at one point like, how he came up with that number. But that’s obviously like, a crazy number – or a very large number of people to have had sex with, and he has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house of sex and sexuality. So this has always been one of my most like, literal examples of let’s say like, an extreme version of that. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, you can definitely – I mean, I think without discussion you can see the focus there, both with the sports and the sexuality. It’s interesting also that he has Mercury as the ruler of that house, and it’s in its own sign of Virgo, so it’s supporting the 5th house very well. And Venus itself – the Ascendant ruler – in the 5th is very closely applying to square Jupiter in its own sign of Sagittarius. I’m not so much focusing on the house of Jupiter; it’s just Jupiter as we know expands things, and so it’s like, expanding that topic further for him. 

CB: Right. For sure. On Wikipedia, it said in response to public backlash regarding his promiscuity, Chamberlain later said, “The point of using the number was to show that sex was a great part of my life as basketball was a great part of my life. That’s the reason why I was single.” In a 1999 interview shortly before his death, Chamberlain regretted not having explained the sexual climate at the time of his promiscuity, and warned other men who admired him for it, saying, “With all of you men out there who think that having a thousand different ladies is pretty cool, I’ve learned in my life that I found out that having one woman a thousand different times is much more satisfying.” Chamberlain also said that he never came close to marrying, and he had no intention of raising any children. 

So I thought that was really interesting, just because it can show you, again, like, how sometimes there can be some topics that come up or one topic or sometimes two topics – in this instance, like, sex and sexuality as well as games and basketball and just generally like, pleasure and enjoyment – but then there can be like, other topics that don’t necessarily come up. So he’s an example where, you know, he said he had no intention of raising children, and presumably had no children, so that topic might not come up even if the other topics did. 

LS: Yeah. You can reliably locate the life focus when, you know, there’s an Ascendant ruler in a house to at least one of those topics, but you kind of have to see how it plays out in terms of which topics come to the forefront. 

CB: Right. Absolutely. All right, let’s move onto the next example chart, which is the birth chart of Kristine Gebbie, who was the United States’s first AIDS policy coordinator that was appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993. And this is like, during the height of the AIDS epidemic basically, they created a new like, role in the government in order to help try to address this and like, fight this topic. 

LS: Right. And she has – I don’t know if you wanna pull up her chart now – she has Pisces rising with Jupiter exalted in Cancer in the 5th house. So there’s like, a strong focus on a 5th house topic of sexuality or something that, you know, greatly involves sexuality even if not exclusively so. And she had a high-level position, which is shown by the exaltation of that Ascendant ruler in the 5th. 

CB: Yeah. So we’re looking at a chart with Pisces rising and the Sun and Jupiter in Cancer in the 5th whole sign house in a night chart. And that’s something I’ve really learned about exaltations in the past few years that I’m gonna do a whole episode on at some point, but just that what exaltation means in a very literal sense is like, either doing something at a very high level, or being raised up to the highest possible position that you can get in a chosen profession or field or sphere of activity. And that’s literally it, in her case. It’s like, with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house, it’s somebody that’s in her instance like, focused on safe sex and like, medical things surrounding safe sex and helping people when it comes to sexuality and sexually transmitted infections and things like that. But then it’s like, raising that up to the highest level of literally being like, the leading doctor in the land to focus on that topic and to try to set a standard for all other doctors as well. 

LS: Absolutely. Yeah. I think it’s a really good example of sexuality focus in the 5th. It’s also interesting – she has the ruler of the 5th in the 2nd, and I think you found something about funding for this with regard to her position, right? 

CB: Yeah, that under — 

LS: Financial funding? 

CB: Under her guidance, and with President Clinton’s leadership, the budget for HIV/AIDS research and prevention saw a significant increase of over 30 percent. So you know, it was also about putting a lot more money towards dealing with the problem than had been done up to that point by the previous two administrations, especially Reagan who was like, ignoring it for the most part. 

LS: Absolutely. Yeah. So this was a really big sort of sea change with regard to the topic. Yeah. And she was also considered at some point controversial, right, because she was being so frank about sexuality with regard to this. 

CB: Yeah. Well, she was just like, opening up discussions, and she was advocating for the distribution of like, condoms and things like that and increased education for safe sex, which then in and of itself obviously means like, educating younger people about safe sex. But then some of that drew criticism at the time, especially from conservatives who were like, pushing back due to having more conservative like, orientation towards sexual stuff and wanting to promote like, abstinence instead of realizing that younger people especially were out there having sex, and the best thing to do was to try to increase awareness of needing to use protection if you were going to. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. And just to be clear, that wasn’’t my opinion that she was controversial – just that some people considered her controversial at the time simply for talking about the topic of sexuality very openly, which you absolutely need to do, you know, in order to help people be safe. 

CB: Right. Yeah. So — 

LS: I think that’s the Moon-Mars there, you know? The ruler of the 5th very closely conjoining Mars in Aries. 

CB: Yeah. The Moon is conjunct Mars. And then eventually it was like, they – due to all of the pushback – she ended up having to be like, fired eventually like, a year or two later. But despite only having a tenure of over like, a year or something like that, her role as the first what they called like, AIDS Czar was a significant step forward in terms of the federal government’s response to the epidemic. So it was a really important turning point in terms of that, in terms of getting that more under control especially than it was at that point. 

LS: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. This is a really good find; this is one from Astro.com, right? 

CB: Yeah. I found this when researching – I found her chart when researching through AstroDatabank for different people that had done important work related to sex and sexuality and different things like that, and hers was one of the more prominent examples that I found that I loved because of that exalted Jupiter in the 5th house. 

LS: Definitely. 

CB: All right. So moving on. Another example of how sex and sexuality can come up and one of the things I mentioned in the last episode was how sexual orientation can sometimes come up to the extent that the 5th house can have to do with pleasure, but also the exploration of like, what is pleasurable to you. And sometimes in that process, of course, that can lead to sexual orientation and things like that. So one of my examples of that was the actor Nathan Lane, who – what was significant about Nathan Lane is that he was a famous actor, which is really the majority of his 5th house placements is that he’s a famous actor not just in movies, but on the stage and performer. But when the 1996 movie The Birdcage came out, there was a lot of speculation about his like, sexual orientation and whether he was gay. But for a long time, he didn’t confirm that. But then eventually I think it was in 1999, he did come out, and he did confirm his sexual orientation and that he was a gay man. So for him, that was like, a major thing and a major step, especially in that timeframe in the 1990s where there was still a lot more stigma or a lot more possible negative repercussions that could come with that sometimes. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. And just like we talked about in the significations of the 5th house episode, you know, it’s not the case that you can tell sexual orientation per se from the chart, but you can see, you know, is this area a big deal for whatever reason for this particular person more than the next person? And so yeah, a lot of the 5th house placement there is his acting, but it was also that it was like, a notable step for him to take at that time to come out publicly as gay. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. So let me share the chart for the video viewers. So we’re looking at a chart with Cancer rising, and the Moon is in Scorpio in the 5th whole sign house. So he also has Venus, like, exalted like, right on the degree of the Midheaven at 20 degrees of Pisces in the 9th whole sign house, which the Moon is moving into a trine with, which is really cool and really nice in terms of that and the success of his performances and everything else. 

LS: Yeah, definitely. I like that. 

CB: So let me see if I had a timing thing. So he came out in The Advocate magazine in February 1999. I thought there was some interesting timing, but I may not have written that down – oh yeah! That was part of it is like, he has the Moon in Scorpio, and so it’s like, he was… On the one hand, like, he had come out to some people in his private life years earlier, including his mother where he said that when he told his mother at age 21 that he was gay, she said, “I’d rather you were dead,” and he replied, “I knew you’d understand,” in his like, classic, famously comedic voice. But he has that Moon in Scorpio in the 5th house, and I thought that was part of his like, Wikipedia biography that one of the people in his life that he was close and he attempted to come out to is his mother but that she was just like, not receptive at all. And what’s interesting then, and you can kind of understand then why he might have more trepidation about coming out after that film in 1996, but then part of the motivation eventually for why he came out publicly in 1999 is that it was after the killing of Matthew Shepard, who was a gay man that was famously killed for being gay in this incredibly brutal and like, violent way, and so that became part of Nathan Lane’s like, motivation then for finally coming out when he did. 

LS: Right, which you can really see the tenor of with the placement being not just the Ascendant ruler in the 5th, but that being the Moon in Scorpio, which has, you know, some kind of like, weighty, emotional tenor to it. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. So I wanted to bring that up, just because that can be a topic that can come up in terms of like, sex and sexuality; it can be things related to orientation, can be things related to how other people in a person’s life react to your orientation or your sexuality, or sometimes different stages in your life with respect to that or different eras that can be motivated by either events that happen or different transits or what have you, and that that can be something that changes at different points in the life based on what transits you’re having or what parts of the chart are being activated or what have you.

LS: Right. Yeah. For sure. It’s not – just like anything else in astrology, it’s not a static thing. There can be all sorts of timing that activates it more strongly at different points in your life or makes it quieter for a while. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

All right, so let’s move onto the next one in a similar vein. So here’s the birth chart of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who was born with Cancer rising, and the Moon in Scorpio in the 5th whole sign house, so it provides a nice parallel to the example with Nathan Lane, except for her – for Eve – she has this really lovely Venus-Jupiter copresence, like sign-based conjunction, in the 9th whole sign house in Pisces in a day chart, which brings this more academic focus. And the bio from Wikipedia says that she was an American feminist academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory, and critical theory. And that her groundbreaking work challenged conventional understandings of sexuality, gender, and identity, leaving a lasting impact on the humanities and social sciences. So this is the chart, basically, of an academic who wrote a lot of – and did a lot of – major academic work, especially in the area of sex and sexuality and queer theory and gender studies and other things that are adjacent to that. 

LS: Yeah. Her writing helped create the field of queer studies, and she published several books considered groundbreaking in the field of queer theory. Though one of the things she published that she was more well known for in addition to her books, there was a particular article – I’m trying to find the title – it’s called “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl,” which I just cracked up at, given the Ascendant ruler in the 5th house. She published it in 1991, and it was popularly debated, because of course, you know, sort of more liberal and more conservative reactions to that – some people were like, just couldn’t accept that Jane Austen had anything to do with sexuality, which made me laugh and also made me go look at Jane Austen’s chart, and she has a Mars-Pluto conjunction in the 5th house! So I think it’s, you know! It may well be a very relevant read. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. So other quotes were, “Sedgwick argued that an understanding of virtually any aspect of modern western culture would be incomplete if it failed to incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition,” because part of what she was doing was going back, like you said, and analyzing and making inferences about some of these tensions about homosexuality in traditional like, literature and things like that and arguing that there were often themes that were overlooked that could in a significant way like, alter the interpretation of a text. 

LS: Right. Or that there were like, veiled themes that if you knew where to look for them or if you were looking for them, you could see that were perhaps not able to be as explicit when those things were written, you know, a few hundred years ago. 

CB: Right. So and a lot of this is – I don’t know if you had already mentioned this, but – a lot of this is also tied up in that she had like, a Mars-Saturn conjunction in the 3rd house of communication, and that Mars is ruling the 5th house. So the ruler of the 5th house of let’s say sex and sexuality is in the 3rd house of communication, and she’s writing these critical like, analyses of things related to that, not just in literature but in other areas as well. Like, one of her notable books was The Epistemology of the Closet in 1990 where the book tackled the question of what makes up human sexuality. 

LS: Yeah. And I think we maybe get to this chart in the houses episode next, but it reminds me of a similar ruler of the 5th in the 3rd in terms of writing about sexuality in a more academic fashion – Adrienne Rich’s Compulsory Heterosexuality – also with the ruler of the 5th in the 3rd. Which was like — 

CB: Okay. 

LS: — a really like, landmark essay that everyone reads in those topics in university. 

CB: Yeah. Or another example of the ruler of the 5th in the 3rd was like, Hugh Hefner who created Playboy and like, Playboy Magazine. So it’s like, there’s different versions of that that can come up, but it’s interesting seeing the archetypal similarity when there’s connections between certain houses or in this instance, it’s like, we have somebody that has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house, but they are not Wilt Chamberlain or not somebody who’s having like, 20 children or something like that, but instead she’s focused on writing especially academic scholarship that’s focused on this area and in adjacent areas of like, sexuality and sexual orientation. 

LS: Right. Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: Great example. 

CB: So sometimes the ruler of the Ascendant is like, the things that a person finds interesting or focuses their attention towards in some way. 

LS: Absolutely. Yeah. 

CB: All right. So moving onto the next example, an adjacent example that I found is the birth chart of Barbara Wilson. And this is the birth chart with Gemini rising and Mercury in Libra in the 5th whole sign house, along with Neptune, Venus, and the Sun. So this is not just a ruler of the Ascendant, but it’s a whole stellium example of planets in the 5th house. And do you wanna take this one? 

LS: Sure. Yeah. So she was one of the first authors to publish short stories, novels, and particularly mystery novels that featured openly lesbian protagonists. So it was, you know, partly the literature aspect that was coming out in terms of creative output with the 5th house, but a very specific sexuality focus as well, because that was at a time when that was definitely not a thing that was happening in most of literature. 

CB: Right. So it was really interesting, because it was like, mystery novels and like, murder mysteries and things like that, but it was just that it had a lead character that was like, a lesbina, and that this was something that wasn’t really done up until this point. And she did that both for her own novels, but also helped to publish other works by setting up a press of like, a similar genre and that had a similar focus or like, openness. 

LS: Yeah. She was a cofounder of Seal Press in 1976. And she helped publish other people who were also bringing like, feminist and lesbian voices to society through writing. 

CB: Yeah. So I found that example in researching, and I thought it was an amazing, just again, just echoing similar themes. 

LS: Right. And there were other American authors who wrote about lesbian relationships before that, more in like, the pulp fiction era of like, ‘50s and ‘60s. But she was kind of doing it more like, explicitly and for more of like, a mainstream audience. 

CB: Yeah. And another one that’s similar actually that could just be mentioned in passing here was William S. Burroughs, who also had… What did he had? He had like, Aquarius rising and Saturn in Gemini in the 5th whole sign house. I’m trying to find his chart. 

LS: Yeah. It was – and I believe it was — 

CB: There it is. 

LS: — an Aquarius stellium in the first house ruled by that Saturn in the 5th. So Saturn in the 5th ruled like, a ton of his chart in the — 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: — first house of self and identity. 

CB: Yeah. So it’s like, here’s the chart; it has Aquarius rising, and Saturn is in Gemini in the 5th whole sign house conjunct the degree of the IC. But it’s also copresent with the Moon and the Lot of Fortune and Pluto in the 5th house. But then the ruler of the 5th house is Mercury, which is like, placed in Aquarius in the first house in a mutual reception with Saturn, and the other first house Aquarius planets using whole sign houses are like, Jupiter, Uranus, Venus, the Sun, Mercury, and the Ascendant. So you know, there’s a lot of different things, because he was a famous writer and creative, especially with the Beat generation. Like, he was one of the people with like, Allen Ginsberg and the other Beat poets. So originally, we’re gonna talk about him primarily just in the context of like, the creative section. But one of the things that was interesting is that he was a gay man, or at least wrote about or talked about as early as the 1950s and ‘60s like, things related to sex and sexuality and homosexuality. And at one point penned like, a famous book titled Queer. And it was about a figure who was like, a gay man that has a longing and like, an interest in another man that was like, unrequited. And he like, wrote most of the book in like, the 1950s or ‘60s, but then like, didn’t release it, and then he came back to it and published it and finished it and published it in 1985. So I just wanted to mention that, because as we were talking about the last example, it made me think of him and just a parallel where on the one hand, you have one early writer who’s featuring like, a lesbian protagonist, and then on the other hand you have another famous writer of the 20th century who’s featuring like, a gay male protagonist. 

LS: Yeah. Right. And he was doing that so early. I mean, even if he – you know, certainly when he was writing it, it was quite early in terms of openly writing those themes. But even, you know, publishing in ‘85? It’s still kind of early in terms of mainstream acceptance, anyway. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and I think about it also – it’s like, ‘85 was Venus retrograde in Aries, and 1993 when we were talking about earlier the czar that was set up at that time was Venus retrograde in Aries, and sometimes that ties in. It was something that I talked about a lot with Elly Higgins in the episode about Venus retrograde and queer history earlier this year how this particular retrograde that happened again this year when so much terrible stuff is happening related to that, but that it ties through sometimes a number of really crucial years. 

LS: Right. Yeah. You kept finding them – activations of that – as we were researching. 

CB: Yeah. You were like, getting a little tired of it at a certain point. 

LS: I was like, yeah, yeah. It’s another one. 

CB: Yeah. I know. Yeah. All right. Okay, so those are some of our writers. Another example that I found of the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house to give a different sort of tenor but still sex and sexuality related is the birth chart of Larry Flynt, who is the founder of Penthouse magazine. 

LS: Hustler? 

CB: Or was it Hustler? Okay. Yeah — 

LS: It was Hustler. 

CB: — sorry. Sorry — 

LS: Not that — 

CB: — I defer to you — 

LS: I wrote it down! 

CB: — on your knowledge of pornographic magazines, Leisa. 

LS: Not pre-existing knowledge. I wrote it down, though! 

CB: All right. I don’t judge! I have no judgment. 

LS: All right. Right. Yeah, he was the founder of the magazine, Hustler, which was not just a sexuality magazine, but it was actually known as one of the more explicit ones, including sometimes disturbing images. But it was a very, you know, strong sexuality focus with his Ascendant ruler in the 5th house. 

CB: Yeah. So Larry Flynt had Gemini rising, and Mercury’s the ruler of the Ascendant and it’s in Libra in the 5th whole sign house copresent with Neptune earlier in the sign. 

So Larry Flynt – let me find my notes — 

LS: He was — 

CB: — really quickly. 

LS: Yeah, I actually wrote down these. Or I don’t know if you have other ones. He also produced pornographic videos and TV channels even though he was mostly known for Hustler. And in 2003, Arena magazine listed him as number one on the 50 most powerful people in porn list. 

CB: Yeah. And I was reading about his biography, and he got started like, running strip clubs apparently, and he ran eight different strip clubs. And then eventually like, started a newsletter related to the strip clubs that became like, popular and that’s how he ended up parlaying that eventually into doing a magazine. But it’s like, it’s interesting – the contrast with Hugh Hefner’s chart that we’ll look at, I guess, in the next episode, because it’s like, Hugh Hefner with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 3rd house and Larry Flynt had it in the 5th house, and it’s like, there was always this like, perception or distinction that like, Playboy was more like, highbrow and it had essays and like, written – it tried to be part of the culture — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: — and have like, actual literary merit in some instances as well as, at least by let’s say like, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s timeframe like, less explicit content in terms of what it showed. Whereas Hustler was much more explicitly graphic in terms of like, the sexual content and the other things that it displayed. 

LS: Yeah. When I was reading up about Larry Flynt’s life, it said something like that he could kind of constantly ran into issues with people who were, I don’t know if they were helping fund Hustler or just anyone who was helping produce it, like, kept trying to be like, “No, we can’t publish this one,” you know, each time because there was too much explicitness going on. 

CB: There was actually a movie they made about that in the ‘90s that… What was it? Like, Courtney Love starring called The People Versus Larry Flynt, and I think it centered on a lot of the like, free speech cases that he ended up doing and dealing with in court or something like that. We didn’t watch that; we could have watched that in preparation for this. I’ll put that on our list of like, movies; I’ve never actually seen it. I just know like, bits and pieces. 

LS: Yeah. I haven’t seen it either, although when I was reading up on him, there was some commentary that the movie focused more on the court challenge, of course, and the free speech argument, but kind of downplayed some of the more not-so-great things. 

CB: Yeah, or like, whitewashed his image to a certain extent where — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: — there was a lot more problematic and like, sketchy stuff as well that wasn’t included. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. All right. So that is a great example of that, of how sex and sexuality can come up in a very literal fashion or where it can not just like, come up, but like, elevated to having the ruler of the Ascendant there and that literally becoming like, part of the person’s life’s work in some instances. 

LS: Right. Yeah. 

CB: Let’s see. So moving onto the next example. One of the ones I found through AstroDatabank and doing research for different placements of like – you know, one of the things of course that’s challenging is looking for like, timed charts, because there’s tons of celebrities that we don’t have timed charts for that we’d like to know what their placements for, but we don’t. But this is the birth chart of a woman named Mery Laurent, and according to some of the descriptions I was reading, she was “a celebrated courtesan who was the mistress and muse of several Parisian artists in the late 19th century.” So she was very tied in with, evidently – and this is her chart. I should say the chart. She had Scorpio rising and Mars in Pisces in the 5th whole sign house, along with the South Node, the IC, and probably Neptune. And the ruler of her 5th house is like, Jupiter, which is placed in Leo in the 10th house along with the Moon and the Lot of Fortune. Yeah. But the primary thing about her example was that she became the mistress of a number of famous artists and people in Paris at the time. So including it says Francois Coppee, Stephane Mallarme, Antoine Proust as well as Edouard Manet, and that Manet – it was not just his mistress but also a model and appears in a lot of his famous like, pieces of art. 

LS: Right. 

CB: So one of the things that’s interesting, because she probably has the IC in the 5th house as well, is she set up an actual like, salon in Paris, and this salon became like, this vibrant hub for the artistic and literary avant garde at the time and attracted this whole distinguished group of different regulars, evidently, including all of these famous like, painters and other people like that. And she herself was a really discerning patron of the arts and an avid art collector where she would like, she acquired a bunch of different works from artists that she admired and supported. So I thought it was really interesting that it ties in this art sort of idea; it ties in the idea of like, a courtesan and like, sex and sexuality and sometimes the ways that that can be tied in with money or become part of one’s profession or what have you in terms of we had mentioned in the last episode like, sex work and things like that, but that it also ties in this major like, arts component and that she created like, a hub or Paris or like, a physical place which makes it kind of like, a good IC in the 5th house example as well in terms of like, buildings or living situation. 

LS: Yeah. I really like that IC. Yeah. And so then if you add the acting, and it’s like, three different 5th house manifestations, topics. 

CB: Right. Exactly. 

So let’s see – the last thing that I read in one of the sort of bios that said that she died in Paris in 1900, leaving behind a legacy as a muse who inspired great works, and a patron who nurtured the talents of the artists and writers who defined her generation. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: Yeah. It’s interesting that she also – Jupiter is ruling not just her 5th house, but also her 2nd house of finances in terms of, yeah, being a patron. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And tying in the 2nd house of finances with the 5th house of not just creativity and artistic works but also sex and sexuality. And that’s one we’ll see also in the next example of – in the next episode with I think it was like, Heidi Fleiss had the ruler of the 2nd in the 5th and became famous in the 1990s for creating what is it? Like, a network of escorts or she was in charge of that somehow. 

LS: Right. Yeah. 

CB: All right. So let’s move onto… Okay. So we’ve done a whole segment, because I’m trying to get a good spectrum of like, different manifestations of like, positive and constructive and negative and everything else. And you know, sometimes there can be charts where there’s also like, a focus on sex and sexuality but not in a good way. And arguably, we’ve already talked about some instance of that up to this point. But there can also be like, really extreme instances. And one of the extreme instances I found was the birth chart of Ted Bundy, the famous serial killer, in the late 20th century had the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. 

So here’s his birth chart. He had Leo rising with the ruler of the Ascendant being the Sun, which is in Sagittarius in the 5th whole sign house, along with the South Node, Mars, and the Moon. And you know, those placements are important, and then also he had Saturn and Pluto and the Lot of Fortune in the first house in a night chart in the rising sign in Leo. And yeah. Ted Bundy was famously a not just serial killer, but he was like, abducting women and assaulting them and doing all sorts of like, bad things that were not good between 1974 and 1978, having murdered dozens of young women and girls. 

LS: Right. And you had found that there was like, a sexuality motivation around this, right? 

CB: Yeah. Like, one of the things that was interesting on Wikipedia, it said biographer Ann Rule characterized BBundy as “a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human’s pain and the control over his victims to the point of death and even after.” So elsewhere, some of the summaries I was finding were saying that the topics of sex and sexuality were not just a major part in the life of Ted Bundy, but they were a central driving force behind his violent crimes, and that his pathology was built around a deeply deviant and predatory form of sexuality that fused fantasy and power and violence. And it’s like, you know, some of that’s coming in from the focus on the 5th house with the ruler of the Ascendant being there; we have Mars there, and these topics of violence. But then with the themes of like, control and power I think are speaking to the Saturn-Pluto conjunction that’s in his rising sign in the first house. And obviously there’s other things that are going on, because I don’t want to say that it’s all like, one thing, because it never is; it’s a complex – each chart is a complex and each life is a complex result of like, multiple different things in the chart and tendencies or potentials. But then also you have, as we were talking about yesterday, like, childhood upbringing and circumstances and choice and all these other things that also play a factor as well. 

LS: Right. For sure. And you know, the Saturn-Pluto is playing such a strong role here not just because it’s in the first house, which is very primary, but it’s making an overcoming – they’re both making overcoming squares to Jupiter in Scorpio. And Jupiter is the ruler of the 5th house, so that’s why those like, power and control issues and domination were particularly tied in with the topic of sexuality for him. 

CB: Yeah. One of the bizarre things is that he had a dual life. And one of the things that’s interesting is like, the ruler of the 5th is Jupiter, which is in the 4th house, and one of the things we talked about in the last 4th house episode was about how the 4th house is the most hidden place in the chart where sometimes things can be hidden or kept secret. And like, he had weirdly like, supposedly normal relationships and had like, a long-time girlfriend, and then was later married to some other woman. And evidently, he like, completely compartmentalized and had on the one hand consensual sexual relationships with some women and then just other ones that were absolutely not and were very brutal with others. And there’s something going on there with like, the connection between the 5th house and the 4th house and just the hidden element of the 4th house. 

LS: Absolutely. And especially since Venus is – it’s not just Jupiter ruling the 5th in the 4th house, but Venus as a general significator of some similar topics is also hidden in the 4th house in Scorpio. 

CB: Right. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: Right. Yeah. 

LS: Oh yeah. 

CB: Anyway. There’s other stuff we could go into! We’re not going to — 

LS: Yeah! 

CB: — for the sake of this and to wrap things up. Well, I think that’s good maybe. I think — 

LS: Okay. 

CB: — we can move on, because we’ve kind of demonstrated the point at this point that there’s like, a spectrum. And obviously there’s a full spectrum especially when it comes to something as tricky as like, sex and sexuality, like how you can have positive manifestations and like, neutral manifestations and really challenging or in some instances, like with him, really dark manifestations. So I think — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: I think that point has been demonstrated. 

LS: Yeah. I think so. 

CB: Cool. All right. So let’s move onto the next section where I wanna talk about the topic of games, because it’s one of the ones that surprised me that I’ve known about for more than a decade now, but it was fun researching it even more and releasing even how more prominent it is in the 5th house than I even thought, which is that the 5th house, the traditional significations we were talking about yesterday were like, pleasures and things like that. But it’s also like, fun and enjoyment and those things that bring you fun and enjoyment and entertainment in life. And one of those things can be like, something as simple as like, playing games and having a hobby. 

But what’s interesting when you put the ruler of the Ascendant or other important planets in the 5th house, sometimes that ties in themes with the native’s life’s work, and it can elevate things that otherwise for many people are just hobbies. It can elevate it into making it part of their life’s work. And one of the ways that I’ve seen that come out is through people who make games part of their life’s work or who make sports, in some instances, which is ultimately just a game, like, into part of their life’s work. 

So one of my favorite examples of this that I’ve used for many years is Garry Kasparov, who is the former world chess champion where he was just like, the undisputed chess champion in the world I think from like, the 1980s through the 1990s and maybe into the early 2000s a bit. And he was born with Sagittarius rising and Jupiter in Aries in the 5th whole sign house along with the IC and the Sun and the Lot of Fortune. So the ruler of the Ascendant is in the 5th house, and it’s like, Garry Kasparov played chess, which is just a game or for many people a hobby, but it’s like, he became literally the best chess player in the entire world and the undisputed chess champion for a very long period of time, for over a decade. 

LS: Right. Yeah. So it’s just like you were saying – like, for most people, games and hobbies and so forth is just like, a leisure pastime. It’s something you do when you’re not working or resting, but for some people, it’s like, a central, driving force, and a major life focus, and what they become known for. And he’s definitely one of them. It’s also — 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: — interesting that the IC is there as well, because part of his playing chess eventually led to him changing his like, country that he lived in, right? 

CB: Sort of. I mean, he had the ruler of the – so the 5th house is Aries, and it’s ruled by Mars, which is in the 9th house. And you know, he was still coming out of an area towards the end of the Cold War and just after the Cold War when chess champions were especially representing their country, and there was an international component to it from like, the 1950s and ‘60s and ‘70s especially during the height of the Cold War where you had, you know, the world’s superpowers and the different countries, especially the United States and Russia, competing against each other and using the field of chess which was just a game as if it was like, you know, international politics and — 

LS: Right. 

CB: — almost as important in some instances as like, military and other strategic things that were happening. So it’s interesting that he had – he was born in Russia, he is from Russia and represented Russia as the world chess champion for a number of years, and therefore competed a lot with other international chess champions with that ruler of the 5th house of games in the 9th house of foreign travel and countries.

LS: Right. 

CB: But then later on, due to the changing political climate in Russia, he ended up having to move abroad. 

LS: Right. Yeah. So I just saw that Mars as well in the 9th, but it’s just interesting that the IC is also there, and it’s, you know, I think if he had not been playing chess, then he wouldn’t have had necessarily had the same exposures to the other countries that then led him to like, moving countries later in life. 

CB: Right. Yeah. So that’s one example. But if that wasn’t compelling enough, another example that I’ve always liked to use of this is Tiger Woods. 

So Tiger Woods was born with Virgo rising and Mercury in Capricorn in the 5th whole sign house along with the Sun, which is also in Capricorn in the 5th house. And Tiger Woods grew up playing golf and eventually became like, the number one golf player in the world for a really extended period of time. And that became part of his life’s work and what he is most well known for is just being this phenomenal golf player, and golf again is like, one of those things that a lot of people do as a hobby just to like, blow off steam and have a good time or have fun or what have you. But for him, it became his life’s work. 

LS: Right. Yeah. And I can imagine growing up as one of these people and, you know, presumably some people would be supportive of that life aspiration because you’re like, good at your sport. But still, it’s like, I think for a lot of people it’s gonna be like, are you sure you can make a living at a game? you know? Like, that kind of thing when you’re like, a younger person. 

CB: Yeah. Who did we watch that was like that that was like — 

LS: Steven Spielberg. 

CB: Oh right, okay. Yeah. So Spielberg was one where we were watching that movie that he released that was based on his early family life, and his father was like, pressuring him of like, “When are you gonna get a real job” instead of — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: — just focusing on this hobby. And yeah, I’m sure there’s a lot of other instances of that when it comes to like, games and stuff. And that’s the recurring core theme that we’ll see is people that take something that’s fun and enjoyable and then make it their entire career. You know, which sometimes can be a double-edged sword in terms of how that works out or in terms of, you know, there can be instances of that, of course, where it’s like, maybe it doesn’t become fun anymore. But then, you know, one of subsections we’ll get to later is like, comedians and stuff, and comedians who make people laugh and have a drive to do that. But then also some of them have a drive of feeling like they couldn’t do anything else. That if they can’t do this thing that they enjoy doing and it brings them pleasure and enjoyment, that they couldn’t do like, a normal job or something like that. 

LS: Right. That like, they have no desire to do anything but this like, one fun thing. 

CB: Right. Yeah, exactly. 

Okay. So there was an issue with Tiger’s at one point where with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house and the ruler of the 5th house is Saturn, which is in the 12th house. And it’s actually in a night chart and it’s in a mutual reception with the Sun. He did have like, a major thing at one point – a major setback in his career, a downfall – when his wife discovered he was having a bunch of affairs and then this became public, and he suffered a very public downfall and period where sponsors were like, canceling their sponsorships and other things like that. And it was like, a major event in his life. And so that element of like, sex and sexuality is coming up to some extent as well here with the 5th house, but sometimes in a challenging way where that led to – like, his actions and stuff led to a downfall or a major like, undermining of things for a period of time in his life. Although later he has sort of like, come back from that. 

LS: Right. Yeah. I remember that. And we’re giving a little, you know, house ruler preview again, but it’s interesting that he has – it’s like that one-two thing where the Ascendant ruler is well-placed, and then the ruler of that is not. And so that doesn’t necessarily negate, you know, that he has a life focus on the 5th house; it’s just something at some point in time will then be like, a greater challenge around one of those 5th house topics as it was. 

CB: Yeah. I use that as an example of what was called counteraction in Hellenistic astrology where it’s like, a planet can be really well-placed and indicate positive things at first, but then if the ruler is really poorly placed, it can sometimes drag things down, especially later on. And there’s like, a sequence to that. And then the reverse is also true, that a planet can be really poorly placed, but then if it’s ruled by a really well-placed ruler, then things can be difficult at first but then be improved later on. 

LS: Right. Yeah. And this is a great example of that. 

CB: Yeah. All right. So let’s move onto the next example, which is the birth chart of Danica Patrick. Danica Patrick is a famous racecar driver, and she has Libra rising and Venus in Aquarius in the 5th whole sign house, and it’s in a mutual reception with Saturn, which is exalted in Libra in the first whole sign house. Yeah. So pretty good, pretty strong mutual reception there. 

LS: Yeah. Whenever you have like, the mutual reception like that – I mean, especially if it’s like, a flowing like a trine or a sextile here, it’s a really strong and positive connection between those two areas. She’s got a night chart, yeah. I guess it’s really close. Yeah, it’s really close. 

CB: Yeah. The Sun has just set, so it might still be functioning as a day chart probably, but yeah, you’d have to research her biography more. But — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: — Wikipedia says she’s an American former professional racecar driver who competed in the IndyCar Series from 2005 to 2011, and the NASCAR Cup Series from 2012 to 2018. So she’s just been a very prominent like, racecar driver over the course of the past decade or two, and I thought that was amazing just showing again another area of something of like, racing cars that somebody might do for fun but making it like, your entire profession or part of your life’s work. 

LS: Absolutely. Yeah. So hopefully you’re getting the gist, seeing these, you know, several charts in a row. It’s like, Ascendant ruler in the 5th, drawn to something that’s enjoyable that could be a hobby but is elevated to a life focus. 

CB: Right. All right. I was also looking at poker players, and one of the ones I found that was fascinating is a poker player named Phil Ivey. And this isn’t the ruler of the Ascendant, but it’s something else that I’ve seen come up a couple of times that was really fascinating. But Phil Ivey is one of the most prominent poker players, and he has Venus in the 5th house exalted in Pisces in a night chart, and it’s in a mutual reception with Jupiter, the ruler of the 5th house, which is placed in Taurus in the 7th house of other people and one-on-one interactions. And what’s interesting about this – there’s actually a few things that are interesting about this, but – for Phil Ivey, he has won 11 World Series Poker bracelets, one World Poker Tour title, and he’s appeared at nine World Poker Tour final tables. And what I thought fascinating about his biography is it says, “Ivey is regarded by numerous poker observers and contemporaries as the best all-around player in the world.” So it’s like, there are some people that think that this guy is like, the best poker player – one of the best, if not the best poker player in the world. And what I love about this is like, because on the one hand, it’s the game aspect again that’s coming out in the 5th house. But there’s another aspect that might be coming out here related to the 5th house, which is that idea of good fortune or good luck, and the element of chance that is connected with that Greek word tuche, which was part of the name for the 5th house is that it’s called literally the house of good fortune or the house of good luck, which is that element of chance that is like, outside of your control but can sometimes be necessary when you’re playing like, games of chance like poker, which are supposed to be like, 50/50 things where you’re trying to beat the odds or you’re trying to beat chance. And by extension, like, to have good luck. But one of the things about this was like, you know, could there be people – one of the things that was interesting it raised the question for me is, we talked about this a little bit already last year in an episode I did on the Lot of Fortune and the Lot of Spirit, but that there could be people that have good luck or better luck than others or who have chance and circumstances that are outside of their control that they just are like, in the right place at the right times. And then we can use shorthand to say that they have good luck. And that may be part of what we’re seeing here, but the other part of what we’re seeing here is he’s standing out above other people, which is like, Venus in its exaltation in the 5th house, but it’s like, he’s playing other people in this game like, one-on-one directly in some instances or playing other groups of people, which is like, the 7th house component that’s coming into play. 

LS: Absolutely. Yeah. That’s an amazing combination there. And I definitely think it’s a thing where some people are, you know, more broadly luckier than others and yeah, he was like, lucky in the realm of a game, but also in tying in that one-on-one interactions, yeah. That’s lovely. 

CB: Yeah. For sure. 

So okay, I think that’s good for that example. And I wanna move on next to Robyn Astaire. And this is one – did you find this one? 

LS: No, I did not. 

CB: Okay, maybe this was mine. I wasn’t sure if you’d found it before I did. But so Robyn Astaire is Taurus rising with Venus in Virgo in the 5th whole sign house, along with Jupiter, Mercury, and Mars. So this is an important example, because Robyn Astaire is an American jockey, and she was the first female to ride professionally with her first race happening December 5th of 1969. And then four years later in 1973, she became the first woman to win a major stakes race and the first to ride three winners in one day, or three winning horses. So it’s like, the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house as well as a stellium in the 5th house, and racing horses and becoming a notable figure for racing horses was part of her destiny or part of her fate. 

LS: Yeah. That’s great. That’s such a close Venus-Jupiter conjunction, even though it’s like, slightly separating. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. So it’s like, good things happening in that area. Okay. So the one you did find that you love is like, the next example. 

LS: I do. So the next example is – yeah, go ahead. 

CB: So here’s the chart — 

LS: The next – okay, the next example is the horse Secretariat, just because I love, you know, non-person charts too, because just showing that those work just as well as people charts. 

So Secretariat had an exalted Sun, Mercury, and Venus all in Aries in the 5th house. It’s not an Ascendant ruler one, but having the exalted Sun in particular in the 5th as well as Venus, which is the benefic of sect in a night chart, Secretariat was one of the top race horses of all time. Like, considered one of the top race horses of all time. And the other funny thing about it – so you see like, the games or sports aspect, but top race horses are then usually bred pretty early in their lives, like, after the first few years of life, so that they’ll have good, you know, like, I don’t know, good race horse gene children. And so then he was bred quite a lot, and there was a recent timing activation that made me realize what was going on with his chart. So for the 2025 Kentucky Derby, which was on May 3rd, 2025, there were all sorts of activations of his 5th house right before that. And it turned out that all the horses in the Kentucky Derby race this year were descendants of some sort of Secretariat, which is amazing and shows you how well-regarded he was and how many times he was bred. But during the spring preceding the race, there was a solar eclipse at nine Aries, which was the exact degree of his exalted Sun in the 5th house. And Mercury also went retrograde in Aries and it stationed retrograde at, again, nine Aries. And then if that were not enough activation, Venus also went retrograde this spring and stationed retrograde at 10 Aries. And so there were like, three different but overlapping activations of that exalted Sun in the 5th house. And then shortly after that, there was the Kentucky Derby race where, you know, all of the little horse children of Secretariat – children or grandchildren as the case may be – were in that race. 

CB: Yeah. That’s amazing. I love the timing especially with all the Aries stuff that was happening this spring activating that. 

LS: Yeah. Me too. That is really the perfect part. 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: Yeah. So you can see how games and also children were major aspects of this horse’s life. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and it also shows when you can start applying it to like, other living entities that the underlying symbolism that we talked about as being the basis for the 5th house where it’s like, the succedent house that follows after the 4th house, and the 4th house is like, your parents, your origins, your ancestry – in this instance, your genes to some extent – and then the 5th house represents the continuation of that. Like, the continuation of your family lineage. We can see that applied to another living entity and how that symbolism is still working in this instance so that the astrology and the underlying archetypal symbolism is not just limited to humans, but this is like, a universal system that’s been developed. 

LS: Yeah. That’s why I really like using non-person charts even though you like to tease me about some sort of burgeoning horse interest with us using this chart! But no, I just like showing that astrology works no matter what kind of chart it is, as long as there is an origin time. And it’s also unique because you usually don’t have origin times written down for animals, but for things that are considered valuable commodities like race horses, they do sometimes record the time. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

All right, so let’s move on. We got just three more charts really quickly in this section. So one of the next ones that I wanted to show is originally from our comedian section, and it’s the birth chart of Drew Carey, who – here’s his chart. He was born with Scorpio rising and Mars in Pisces in the 5th whole sign house. And it’s like, the primary thing about Drew Carey is that he is a stand-up comedian, he became famous in the 1990 for doing a comedy show, The Drew Carey Show, and then later for doing Whose Line Is It Anyway, which is another kind of like, comedy improv show. But one of the things is that recently, like over the past – later in his career over the past 10 or 15 years, he had this whole second career where he took over for Bob Barker on the game show The Price is Right, which is like, this legendary game show in the US for like, the last quarter of the 20th century where there would be multiple contestants, and then they would guess the price of specific things – like, normal household goods – and like, if they got closest to the right price, then they would win these big prizes. 

So I’m using this chart first, because what was crazy is like, you were the one that actually first noticed this or said we should look this up of like, who are some people that did game shows? And it turns out we found like, a few different people that did game shows, and one of them that it then made me realize where I already had Drew Carey in the comedy section is that he had this whole second act as like, a game show host, and that’s a really funny additional manifestation of the 5th house. 

LS: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. So we were sitting there talking about that in front of the computer, and then I was like, “What about major notable game show hosts?” Like, people who were just known for that as like, their life. And we found a couple of them that are particularly funny to contrast with each other. So I don’t know if you wanna move onto the next one? 

CB: Yeah. So one of them was like, the guy that Drew Carey took over for, which is Bob Barker, who I believe was the original host of The Price is Right and certainly he was the one that is the most memorable in terms of that show, and he — 

LS: Yeah, so Bob Barker famously was the longtime host of The Price is Right, and the funny thing that you will see once we have the chart up is, you know, we were like, we were really just looking for Ascendant ruler or stelliums in the 5th house just to show – yes, there’s a major game component to this person’s life. But what we found was even funnier, which is there are specific other house connections to what kind of game show they show they hosted. So in this case, there’s a connection between – I don’t remember the specifics, but there’s a connection between the 2nd house of personal finances and the 5th house, which is hilarious of course, because he was like, a longtime host of a game show, and then – there it is! So it’s Jupiter is ruling the – is that the right? Jupiter is ruling the 5th house, and it’s placed in its own sign of Sagittarius in the 2nd house of personal finances, and the game show that he hosted was about, you know, guessing the right price of goods and products. 

CB: Right. So we’re looking at a chart that has Scorpio rising, and Pisces is the 5th house of let’s say games, and the ruler of the 5th house is Jupiter, which is placed in Sagittarius in the 2nd whole sign house, and he’s literally – the nature of the game show that he hosted and became the most known for was just like, guessing the price of normal like, household goods and cars and other things like that. 

LS: Right. And I mean, this is a little bit of making all the connections in the chart, but I think it’s worthwhile to also note that the ruler of his 10th house of career is the Sun, and that’s placed in that 2nd house in Sagittarius – so of personal income, financial things, possessions, you know. And then it’s copresent with that ruler of the 5th house of games. 

CB: Right. So we thought that was really funny, and then to like, prove our thesis further here, we found the chart of Alex Trebek — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: — who was born with Virgo rising and Capricorn on the 5th whole sign house, and the ruler of the 5th house of games is Saturn, which is placed in Taurus in the 9th whole sign house conjunct Jupiter. And Alex Trebek is famously known as the host of Jeopardy where you have like, these experts that are tested on like, a wide variety of different information for like, who knows the most and who has the biggest breadth of different information. 

LS: Right. So it’s literally a game show about knowledge, and — 

CB: Right. 

LS: About notable knowledge, right? And that’s that Saturn ruling the 5th in the 9th, and it’s not just in the 9th, but it’s conjunct Jupiter as well. So it’s really just further emphasizing that, you know, like, how much do you know is the point of the game show. 

CB: Yeah. So I love that. So yeah, there’s probably other examples of that, but we don’t have a lot of other like, time charts. But it’s interesting like, line of thinking and line of thought about how sometimes the situation with the ruler of the 5th house can like, inform you about in those instances like, the type of game show that the person hosted, but in other instances, we’ve seen just how the 5th house manifests in some additional way besides just the planets that are in the house.

LS: Right. Yeah. This was definitely the funniest aspect of our research, these two. 

CB: Absolutely. It was a good find. 

All right, in the next section, we’re gonna move onto talking about comedy and comedians and especially a number of comedians came up that have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. And I thought this was really interesting, because the 5th house is the house traditionally of like, pleasures and enjoyment. But also when we read the significations of Venus yesterday from the work of Vettius Valens in the previous episode, one of the things that he talked about is how Venus was associated with merriment and with laughter. And that element of laughter is actually kind of key as one of the significations that you find in the 5th house, I think, and I think that’s one of the things that ties it together. 

LS: Yeah. We had just found a whole bunch of comedians with like, a focus on the 5th house. Yeah. And it really does tie in with the laughter component – very key. 

CB: Yeah. So the first one I wanted to share is the birth chart of Lucille Ball, who is a famous comedic actress, especially from like, the 1950s and ‘60s who did the I Love Lucy show. And she was born with probably Capricorn rising and Saturn in Taurus in the 5th whole sign house in a day chart, along with Mars, the Lot of Fortune, and the North Node. 

So yeah, do you wanna talk about this one? 

LS: Well, so she was just kind of like, one of the most famous comedians I think for the 20th century. She also had this really funny physical comedy component where we had previously been looking at another comedian’s chart, which we will get to in a few here, where there was a large component of like, hurting himself as a part of the comedy. And I suddenly as we were looking up Lucille Ball, I was like, wait a minute. I remember some of those episodes kind of faintly where she was like, doing a lot of physical comedy. And it turns out she actually did some, she had some injuries as well because it’s not like she had like, stunt doubles at the time or anything. So she had some like, bruises – and nothing like, too too major, but – anyway it’s really funny because she has Saturn in the 5th house as the Ascendant ruler, and there’s some, you know, component at least, maybe a scaled-down version of like, harm to her physical body via comedy, the 5th house. 

CB: Yeah, that was something that we saw sometimes as a recurring theme in connection with Saturn or in this instance Mars being conjunct Saturn. But yeah, so she’s really well-known for like, the I Love Lucy show and for her comedic work. And after her death, the American Comedy Awards were officially dubbed the Lucy after her. So I thought that was a really good example because of how sometimes I’ve talked about in other houses how sometimes when the ruler of the Ascendant is in a certain house, it can elevate that house and make it part of the person’s life’s work and almost like their legacy that they become known for later on so that it’s like, more important on almost like, a universal level in some ways. 

So we were reading about her biography, and one of the things that was funny is that she had a relationship early on when she was a teenager in terms of how she got into comedy where in 1925, she got in a relationship, and this is from like, the Wikipedia biography. It says she got in a relationship at only 14 years old, and she was dating a guy that was 21 years old, and he was supposedly like, a local hoodlum or like, guy that was like, into some not great stuff. And what was funny is that her mother was unhappy with their relationship and hoped that their romance, which she kept trying to influence, would burn out. But after a year, her mom tried to separate them by exploiting Lucille’s desire to be in show business – that Lucille already had this like, drive to be an entertainer and to be in show business. And despite the meager finances of the family, that her mother enrolled Lucille Ball in the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts, and that was like, how she got her start eventually in show business and then eventually got into television and comedic acting and everything else. But I thought that was kind of interesting as part of that story. 

LS: Yeah. And it’s, you know, both of those – romance and comedy – are 5th house topics, of course. But she also has the ruler of the 5th house in the 9th house of education is one of the topics of the 9th house. And so it’s funny that there’s like, a connection there between her mother trying to get her away from like, a bad romance by like, sending her to school for acting. 

CB: Right. Or like, Aries is the 4th house, and the ruler of the 4th is in the 5th house, which is Mars. So it may connect the topic of the 4th and 5th house or even like, her birth time’s kind of rounded, and if she was born like, a little bit later, the IC itself could have hypothetically potentially moved into the 5th house, which would be a funny overlap as well. 

LS: Yeah, that’s true. 

CB: Because that’s something — 

LS: You know, and something — 

CB: — that we’ll see in other IC in the 5th house examples in the next episode is sometimes the family or family ancestry influencing a person’s creative output. 

LS: Right. For sure. And something I’m thinking of right now for the first time is that, you know, not just her comedy career but like, the fact that her TV show was called “I Love Lucy” – just like, the topic of love is like, a 5th house thing as well. 

CB: Right. Totally. 

LS: It’s funny. 

CB: Yeah, and like, her costar in it who was like, became her partner or was her partner, right? 

LS: Right. And she has the ruler of the 7th of partnership in the first house, so she was like, very known as being part of this comedic duo. 

CB: Right. Yeah. For sure. 

LS: I think it’s just something that we’re gonna see a couple times over not just the – as I’m like, faintly remembering watching some of those episodes when I was a child – you know, there is the physical comedy aspect and the like, injuries as part of comedy which we’ll see with someone else. But even the self-deprecating part? There’s a little bit of that where I remember there were some episodes where she was just sort of comically like, hapless. Not that she actually was in real life, but yeah. We’lll see some of those repetitions with Saturn in the 5th house in a few comedians. 

CB: Yeah. Sometimes when it’s like, the first house is connected with the 5th, we see instances of like, making yourself the butt of the joke, especially when Saturn is involved because of the critical or deprecating nature of Saturn. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: All right. So other ones – originally, this was where I was gonna do Drew Carey, so just to reiterate Drew Carey’s chart, and he got into stand up comedy and then became famous for his television show The Drew Carey Show, which was like, a funny show on Fox in the 1990s, and then eventually became also very prominent for hosting an improv show where other comedians with like, it was called Whose Line Is It Anyway, and he would give other comedians like, a prompt of something that they would have to play out, and then they would play it out in like, a comedic fashion. And he would have other famous like, comedians sometimes do cameos. Like, one of the best episodes was this episode where Robin Williams, who was like, a legendary improv comic, showed up and did an episode or more. 

LS: Wow. Yeah. That’s great. 

CB: Yeah. So that is The Drew Carey Show and the element of comedy sometimes becoming part of the life’s work. 

Another famous comedian that came up in researching this with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house was Janeane Garofalo, who has Aries rising and Mars in Leo in the 5th whole sign house along with Venus and came up as a stand-up comic and doing stand-up comedy as a stand-up comedian, but then became really famous and prominent in the 1990s doing other television shows and other movies and made like, a lot of appearances in a bunch of different things. 

LS: Yeah. She did I think over like, 50 movies and then also a bunch of TV shows. It’s kind of, yeah, impressive. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. One of the like, interesting like, throwaway lines in one of her biographies that I was reading is like, the Wikipedia biography for example says that in 2019, Garofalo publicly came out as asexual. And that her openness about her asexuality has been noted in various publications that highlight asexual celebrities and aim to increase visibility for the asexual community. And I thought that was interesting, because it’s like, she has the ruler of the Ascendant is Mars, which is in the 5th house along with Venus, but then it’s being opposed by Saturn in Aquarius in a night chart from the 11th house. And so there is like, a negation of something going on there, and so it’s kind of like, an interesting thing with like, we were talking about the childfree discussion earlier about how sometimes you can see an emphasis on something, but then sometimes when Saturn or in some instances Mars is involved, there can be a negation of it in some way. And one of the things that I was reading is she had done another interview from 2012 saying talking about how her libido had always been really low, and that was part of the reason why she was asexual. So it’s interesting in this context that we have to remember like, that lesson from earlier where an emphasis on the 5th house doesn’t always mean that you’re gonna have children; it may mean sometimes quite the opposite – that you will choose not to. In this instance, it doesn’t mean that, for example, the 5th house placements aren’t indicating someone that’s highly sexual like the basketball player earlier, but instead it’s somebody who’s asexual and that becomes part of their identity. 

LS: Yeah. So you can just kind of like, hear some of those aspect, you know, in people’s biographies sometimes. 

CB: Yeah. For sure. All right, so let’s see. So moving on – the next famous comedian and comedic actor is Amy Poehler has Aquarius rising and Saturn in Gemini in the 5th whole sign house in a day chart, and is known for being on SNL as a comedic actor in a number of things at this point. 

LS: Yeah, she’s especially known for her roles in sketch comedy as well as comedy films and sitcoms. And she’s actually won – yeah, won or nominated for a bunch of awards. She was earned a Primetime Emmy award and a Golden Globe. She was nominated for a Peabody Award as well as a Grammy. And then she in 2015 received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for contributions to comedy. 

CB: I love that. Yeah. And she famously like, hosted the Golden Globes with Tina Fey, and we were like, rewatching that set because it was like, a really good set. Because I think it was not just once; I think it was twice. But maybe it was just once? I’m not sure. But it was really good, especially coming after like, some of the other Golden Globes in the previous years when it was more like, misanthropic with Ricky Gervais. Them following up on that was like, an interesting shift. 

LS: Yeah. For sure. 

CB: All right. So that’s Amy Poehler. So the next one that I came across, and this is one in doing the research that was a big breakthrough for me that was interesting and like, insightful. So this is the chart of Johnny Knoxville, who has Capricorn rising and Saturn in Taurus in the 5th whole sign house in a night chart. And what I found really fascinating by this is that, you know, it’s showing a focus on comedy with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house, but because it’s a night chart, it’s making Saturn the most difficult planet in the chart placed in the 5th house so that some of the greatest challenges or difficulties or setbacks in the life broadly speaking would theoretically come from the same place. But because it’s the ruler of the Ascendant, my traditional delineation of that is that the difficulties may arise from within the native themself. And I suddenly realized like, what that meant in this context once we started realizing how closely connected the 5th house was with comedy is that Johnny Knoxville was the creator of the MTV show Jackass, I think around the year 2000, and a lot of like, what they were doing in Jackass was like, Johnny Knoxville specifically was like, hurting himself to comedic effect and doing all these like, physical stunts that were either putting him in danger or that were actually really painful. And then they would like, release that as part of the comedy at the time. 

LS: Yeah. Which is just such a funny combination between the Ascendant – the first house has to do with your life force and your body and mind, and you know, so your physical being is definitely connected with the first house. And so it was like, but this is Saturn ruling the physical being, and then in a night chart in the 5th house was just like – but he’s turning that, and like, using it to comedic effect. Yeah. Which is quite silly to watch, as someone who never watched it when it was on! 

CB: I had to like — 

LS: You showed me a clip! 

CB: I had to like, catch you up on like, what the show Jackass was and like, try to demonstrate how this was actually a really good example. 

LS: Yeah, it was — 

CB: And you were very impressed. 

LS: I was impressed with the astrology. You know, what’s funny is – you know, it’s called Jackass, and so it’s a little bit of a self-deprecating title even, right? you know, with the Saturn in the 5th and ruling the first thing. 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: So but what was wild is like, he has a very strong mutual reception in this chart where Saturn is in Taurus in the 5th house, but it’s ruled by Venus, which is placed in Aquarius in the 2nd house of finances. And because it’s a night chart, that’s the most positive planet in the chart, so he has a strong connection between this like, difficult but important humor placement in the 5th house and the 2nd house of finances, and that television show Jackass became wildly successful. And then eventually they parlayed that into making like, several movies that some of which were like, hit movies that made them tons and tons of money doing the same things like, on a theatrical scale but still often involving dangerous, absurd, and often painful stunts and pranks for comedic effect. And Johnny Knoxville was the sort of leader of that crew that took place in some of the most perilous and physically demanding stunts. So one of the write-ups I saw said that these acts of self-inflicted harm presented in a comedic context were the cornerstone of the show’s appeal and the primary driver of its popularity. So I also noticed that in 2000, when the show came out – because it first aired on April 12th, 2000 – there was a triple conjunction of Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter in mid-Taurus very close to his natal Saturn. So basically his Saturn return was starting to do this show functionally, or at least the show coming out that he would become primarily known for, but also involved like, inflicting all of this like, physical pain on himself. So that kind of like proves, that demonstrates that timing aspect of his Saturn return happening at that time kind of proves the thesis at this point that it’s like, tied in with physical comedy and like, the sort of like, pain that he was inflicting on himself, which later – like, he had some really bad stunts. Like, I think there was one that like, really injured him later on his career. 

LS: Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah. But it’s like, the Venus is ruling the 5th, and it’s overcoming the Saturn, so it’s like, it’s still somehow like, really good for him, especially financially. But it involves like, physical pain and injury for comedic reasons. 

CB: Yeah. I mean, realistically, Venus is also overcoming Saturn, so it’s mitigating it and making it not as worse as it would — 

LS: Right. 

CB: — be, which is part of probably what saved him from like, worse injury. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. 

CB: Because there’s like, a scenario where it’s like, he has the same Saturn placement in the 5th but it’s not mitigated and he just like, accidentally dies by doing some stupid prank stunt or something at some point. 

LS: For sure. Yeah. I can see that. 

CB: Yeah. All right. So that – one of the things that was funny about that, though, is it suddenly made me understand another chart that I had come across in my research of ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house comedians, but I didn’t fully understand. And it was the birth chart of Tom Green. 

Here’s the birth chart of Tom Green, who has Cancer rising and the Moon in Scorpio in the 5th whole sign house, along with Jupiter in a night chart. And what was funny is that Tom Green had a show that came out in like, 1999 where he was also doing physical kind of like, comedy. Like, not all the time; it was mainly comedy that was like, making people uncomfortable sometimes, or he has doing like, outrageous things. But it kind of acted as a precursor in some sense to the show that Johnny Knoxville later did, like, started doing like a year later or something like that. But The Tom Green Show frequently employed shock humor, and according to Wikipedia, some of Green’s most notable skits included pretending to hump a dead moose, having an X-rated lesbian scene painted on his father’s car, drinking milk by sucking on a cow’s teat, and putting the cow head in his parents’ bed while they slept because his father was a fan of the Godfather films. So it’s like, the ruler of the Ascendant is the Moon, and it’s in Scorpio, which is like, not usually the ideal place for the Moon. And it’s just like, doing stuff that makes people deeply uncomfortable to comedic effect. And then weirdly, like, the ruler of the 5th house is Mars in the 8th house, and like, sometimes it’s like, he’s humping a dead moose and that’s like, his most famous gag for like, a period of time or something like that. 

LS: Yeah. It’s interesting with the Moon in Scorpio and often talking about like you said, you know, it being not the most comfortable place for the Moon to be, and then that’s sort of that parallel of like, because you played me some clips from him as well, I was like — 

CB: I also had to like, catch Leisa up on like, who Tom Green is — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: — and that was fun. 

LS: I’m not a big comedy person. But yeah, it was like, deeply physically cringe. That was my feeling impression of it. And I was like, yeah, that’s like the Moon in Scorpio in the 5th! 

CB: Right. Yeah. Well, so it just goes to that sometimes the placements connected to the 5th house can describe what a person finds funny. Like, what they find humor in, and that there can be this whole like, spectrum of different humor that people find funny and what they gravitate towards or what speaks to them or what arises from within them in some instances, as well as just like, what they are themselves comfortable with. And I think I talked a little bit about this previously in an episode on the astrology of comedy and comedians, but this was a new aspect of it that was really fascinating. 

LS: Yeah. For sure. 

CB: So one other thing that was really important is that Tom Green, during the height of his popularity – let me put his chart back up with Cancer rising and the Moon in Cancer in the 5th house, but it’s like, ruled by that Mars in Aquarius in the 8th house – at the very height of his popularity, he was diagnosed in early 2000 with testicular cancer. And he ended up being successfully treated for it, but one of the things that he did is he actually directed and starred in like, a one-hour MTV television special that was titled, The Tom Green Cancer Special that aired May 23rd, 2000, which documented this entire process of the time leading up to his surgery and included graphic footage of his own surgery. And it was interesting, because it was like, it was widely acclaimed for revealing this more like, vulnerable and human side of his otherwise like, seemingly juvenile television personality up to this point. And later he started the Tom Green’s Nuts Cancer Fund to raise money for cancer research. So it’s like, he’s still doing it in a comedic context, but it’s like, a very serious thing of all of a sudden he’s dealing with like, the really real threat of his own mortality and the potential of dying from cancer, you know, in his testicles. And he ended up having to have one removed. But then he’s still doing it partially in a comedic context, and then he’s even using comedy as part of this charity that he sets up. 

LS: Yeah. That’s a great illustration of that ruler of the 5th in the 8th. 

CB: Yeah. For sure. So and it’s like, I don’t know how that affects things or how that affected things for him, because he was somewhat private about how it affected him after that point going forward and it affected like, 5th house things after that point or not. But I thought it was just interesting in that context, so that there can be multiple levels sometimes where things come up. 

LS: Right. For sure. It did say that he had like, some chronic nerve pain from the surgery, so I can imagine that could have affected 5th house things as well. 

CB: Right. Yeah. For sure. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: All right. So moving on, this also led me to one other major, major discovery about another really famous comedian, which is Kevin Hart. So Kevin Hart has Virgo rising and he has Capricorn on the 5th whole sign house, and the ruler of the 5th house is Saturn, which is at nine degrees of Virgo conjunct the degree of the Ascendant at seven degrees of Virgo in the first house in a day chart. So this isn’t a ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th example, but it’s the reverse; it’s the ruler of the 5th house of comedy in the first house of self and body and appearance. And I thought that was amazing, because one of the things that’s very distinctive about Kevin Hart’s comedy is there’s a lot of self-deprecating humor, especially where he often makes himself the butt of the jokes, which is like, the Saturn part in the first house self part. But often like, a lot of the jokes are about his height, for example, that he’s like, shorter than average. And so a lot of the jokes directed – that he makes himself – are about his height in a self-deprecating way. And this is one that Camille actually first – Camille Michelle Gray – first pointed out to me about just him being one of the most famous and successful standup comedians of all time over the course of the past decade or two as well as one of the richest entertainers in the world. But just that I was really interested by the self-deprectating aspect of things. 

LS: Right. For sure. And I think that’s something we’ve seen a bunch. You know, either the physical comedy where you can get hurt, or if not that extent, the self-deprecating part in particular I feel like with malefics connected with the 5th house. Because I think we’ll see it with a Mars thing too. 

CB: Yeah. It’s not just malefics connected with the 5th house, for sure, but also when you bring it directly into the first house, because Saturn is so highly critical and that’s one of the things I think people sometimes don’t understand about Saturn is that Saturn can see the flaws in something. And sometimes that gets turned outwards, and it creates somebody who’s highly critical of others and always pointing out the flaws in things. But sometimes that energy, especially in this instance when it’s connected with the first house by being in the first house, can be turned inwards. 

LS: Yeah. For sure. 

CB: Yeah. So self-effacing or self-deprecating comedy as part of his brand. His style of humor is also highly personal and observational, focusing on himself, his flaws, and his experiences, making himself the primary target of jokes. But this makes him more relatable to like, a wide audience, which is really interesting. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. 

CB: One of the things that came up later, though, is at one point in like, 2014, there was this cheating scandal where I think somebody attempted to – somebody was gonna like, extort him or like, blackmail them because they had evidence that he had cheated on his wife that he was recently married to. But then he ended up like, flipping it around and he ended up coming out publicly about the affair. And then later, it was like, this whole thing, because he was also in the process of like, trying to promote a big movie at the time. So he ended up doing interviews and talking about it. But then he and his wife stayed together and worked things out, and then later did like, a Netflix series in 2019 about exploring that and exploring their attempts to work things out and patch up their marriage that was titled Kevin Hart, Don’t Fuck This Up. And this was in 2019, so it’s like, Saturn was still in Capricorn at that time, and that was part of the transit of when this first came out is that Saturn was going through his 5th house. So it’s like, Saturn going through the 5th house and having a very public instance of that coming up and it being very prominent in terms of one’s career and public image. 

LS: Right. Yeah. That’s very literal. 

CB: Yeah. For sure. Okay. So that was one. Another major one that we found that we were researching recently is the birth chart of Dick Gregory. 

So here’s the birth chart of Dick Gregory. He was a comedian who was especially prominent around the 1960s. So Dick Gregory was born with Aries rising and the ruler of the Ascendant is Mars, which is in Leo in the 5th whole sign house. There’s some ambiguity about whether he was born around sunset, so some ambiguity about whether this is a day chart or a night chart, and we were debating it last night, and it wasn’t really… We could kind of see it going either way, I think, right? 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, it’s a little unclear, because he has his Ascendant ruler in the 5th, which has some good fortune attached to it no matter what. He had an edge and, you know, could be very assertive, but that could be Mars either day or night. And then Saturn’s in the 10th, and you would think he wouldn’t have had such a good career if it was a night chart. But then it’s mitigated anyway, because it’s in its own sign. So either way! The example’s still a good example. 

CB: Yeah. So he was a comedian and actor, writer, and activist and a social critic, and he especially came up in the 1950s and ‘60s as a standup comedian who – he was a Black man who was very open about talking about like, difficult racial issues and social issues in his standup comedy, and especially also became known for not just giving comedic – like, doing standup comedy to Black audiences, but also to sort of fearlessly also doing the same jokes for white audiences as well. And there was like, this legendary instance where he was giving – he got his big break where he was invited to do standup comedy at the Playboy Club, I think, in like, Chicago. And he did this legendary set, except when he got there, it turns out they had booked a group of people, of like, southern, white businessmen, and so the people that were running the club were like, “You don’t have to do this; you don’t have to go on tonight. We can just book it another night.” And he was like, “No.” Like, “I’m gonna do this; this is my big break.” And he got up and gave this like, legendary set where he just absolutely killed and did a great job, and the set went on for like, multiple hours and like, made tons of people laugh and it made him a legend at that point. And then he started getting booked for television shows and all sorts of other things after that, and then became a very successful standup comedian. But also he was very focused on the civil rights movement and was very involved in protesting, and he was a friend of like, Martin Luther King, Jr., and was just a very prominent person, not just as a comedian and for his unflinching style, but also in terms of civil rights.

LS: Absolutely. Yeah, we watched a really good documentary about his life that will be in the movie list. 

CB: The One and Only Dick Gregory – yeah, you can — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: — rent it on like, Amazon or YouTube. 

LS: I thought it was really interesting, because he had initially started out as a comedian at like, small and primarily Black nightclubs, because that’s like, what was available at the time. And then the fact that his big break was like, via Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club was just such an interesting little additional 5th house overlap, right? They had like, some video footage of the Playboy Club at the time, and you know, it’s just really funny now to see these women just like, dressed as bunnies and stuff and like, sitting on railings, and you know. Yeah, it’s just like, an obvious 5th house overlap there. 

And then – go ahead. 

CB: Right. The like, quasi 5th house like, sexual nature of getting one’s big break through a club like that, through something that was otherwise like, connected with Playboy and with like, pornography and things like that. 

LS: Right. Yeah. And so you know, in thinking or when we were discussing about whether his Mars ruling the Ascendant in Leo in the 5th was like, a day or a night Mars, it was hard to tell because they said he had no-holds-barred sets and he was like, poking fun at bigotry and racism, which he was in some of the clips we saw. And I was like, well, was that considered edgy just because he was talking about, you know, racism at all in his comedic sets? Just going back to what we’ve talked about previously about the individual birth chart always having to be seen within the larger cultural context and time period, you know, it existed in. Anyway. So it was interesting, you know, little thought experiment about that Mars. 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: But he became — 

CB: I mean, I could still tell that a lot of the jokes were still pointed and like, you could tell the — 

LS: They were. 

CB: — pointedness and the social commentary even today. 

LS: They were. It’s just they wouldn’t be seen as as pointed nowadays, you know? 

CB: I don’t know. It was like — 

LS: Comparatively. 

CB: — one of the jokes was like, what was it? It was like, the bus joke where he said like, they’re gonna legalize — 

LS: Oh yeah. 

CB: — having Black bus drivers, but that they’re gonna have to create a steering wheel that goes all the way to the back of the bus. 

LS: Right. Yeah. 

CB: So it’s like — 

LS: No, it was pointed. Yeah. 

Anyway, he became super successful as a comedian. He was named 82 on Comedy Central’s list of the hundred greatest standups of all time. He also earned his own star on the Saint Louis Walk of Fame. But it’s interesting, you know, he had this whole other – we’ll probably include him in the 6th house episode, right, because he had a couple benefics in the 6th house, and he had this whole other career later. And then towards the end of his life, he like, came back around to comedy, which was interesting. 

CB: Yeah. He got really into like, health stuff with his Venus-Jupiter in the 6th house. But one of the things that was funny is the documentary we watched about him was actually produced by Kevin Hart, who – so it’s like, a comedian with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house producing a documentary about another legendary comedian who set the stage for the ability to do his own work with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. 

LS: Yeah. Kevin Hart had 5th in first. 

CB: Oh right. Right. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: So the last thing that shows up really prominently in his biography, though, with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th is that he had 11 children. And early on, there was a tragedy – was it his first child? Or his first male child? 

LS: Yeah. His first son, anyway. 

CB: First son like, passed away of something as an infant, and that was like, a tragedy that he and his wife experienced early in their life. But he had 11 children. And one of the things – it wasn’t like some of our other people, because one of the things about him is interesting that he had the ruler of the 5th house in the 7th house. And it was him and his wife for like, the entirety of their life, and it was him and his wife had 11 children together. So he was reportedly – and one of the things they emphasized in the biographies and in the documentary was that he was often away working or doing his… 

LS: Activism. 

CB: Doing activism basically. Like, getting arrested over a hundred times and doing important work with the civil rights movement, so he was very focused on that, so that he wasn’t around as much. But just having 11 children in general is like, really huge, having the ruler of the Ascendant there. 

LS: Right. For sure. And there were a couple other interesting things I wanted to mention. One was, you know, we had said that he had later in life, he went into this health food era for his profession. But after he was doing comedy early in life – like, in his 20s – and then it seemed like he got into more strongly into activism around his Saturn return or so. And then he like, stopped doing as much comedy, but he was still – what he was doing in between that and like, the health era, was he was speaking at universities for a while to young people but for activist reasons. But it was clear that he was still being booked because he was like, a good performer as he was speaking. You know? I mean, he had a stage presence, and he was talking about serious issues, plus he was talking about it in a way that would be engaging, that people would listen to. And I thought that was a really interesting additional era of his that was like, 5th house focused even though it wasn’t like, the standup clubs. It was like, speaking to young people. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

LS: Yeah. So that was cool. And then there was this great quote I like, paused the documentary to write down that made me think again about the malefics connected with the 5th house. He was talking about how when he was really young, he was, you know, not feeling so great about where he came from. He didn’t have a father, and his family was on welfare, and you know, he had said those are things that are easy for other kids to make fun of you for. And then he said, he was talking about how he got started in comedy at that point, and he said, “I noticed that once you get a man laughing with you, it’s hard for them to laugh at you. The whole thing changed then.” And I was like, oh yeah! Mars in the 5th, right? Ruling the Ascendant. So I think there’s actually like – I mean, one could say, of course, that more broadly that can be a component of comedy period, like in the 5th house. But I bet it shows up more with like, Mars or Saturn connected with the 5th house and the Ascendant. 

CB: Right. Well, and he was using it as a defense mechanism because part of the context was he was getting picked on by kids in his neighborhood — 

LS: Right. 

CB: — but then he found out that if he made them laugh, like, they wouldn’t pick on him as much. 

LS: Exactly. But it reminded me also of like, Kevin Hart’s like, self-deprecating thing. Like, you say the joke about yourself first, and then people are laughing with you instead of at you, and then you’ve got a comedy career instead of like, bullying! 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. So yeah, so legendary figure in terms of comedy and having the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. 

All right, so let’s see. So moving on just a couple more examples in this section. So let’s see. So the next one I found with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house is Joe Rogan, who was born with Taurus rising and Venus retrograde in Virgo in the 5th whole sign house along with Pluto and Uranus. And so the big thing about Joe Rogan, or the primary thing, is just that he was a standup comedian, he was doing standup comedy I think in the 1990s, and became a local fixture to some extent in Los Angeles and was passed by Mitzi Shore who was like, a local owner of one of the main standup comedy clubs in California, and then eventually he parlayed that into a career doing a comedy role on television and doing other roles. But then eventually interestingly was influenced by Tom Green, because Tom Green – I think we forgot to mention – like, did this whole thing where he was one of the first people that did essentially like, a video podcast. And there’s this interesting video – because me and Nick Dagan Best like, watched it back then when Tom Green did this like, video podcast. It was this really like, novel, innovative technological thing at the time back around like, 2006 or so. And at one point, Tom Green had Joe Rogan on his little video podcast, and Joe Rogan was really impressed by it. And there was like, these clips out there where you can see them talking about it and you can see like, the wheels turning in Joe Rogan’s head. And then I think a few years after that, he ends up starting his own video podcast to do something similar. And then Joe Rogan was sort of in the right place at the right time, has a successful podcast, but then one of the things he would regularly do was have comedians on the podcast. And it became very influential, because that’s part of the reason why now in 2025 like, 15 years after he started that podcast that like, almost every comedian has a podcast at this point, and it’s become a really common vehicle for comedians to start a podcast and talk regularly and make jokes, because that’s what they’re used to doing already and have such a fluency in, they get a large following, and then they can tour and do standup sets around the country or around the world and have become really popular. So Joe Rogan influenced that in a very significant way in terms of comedy as well as, you know, in other ways as well. 

Yeah. So the other thing about that is that I noticed is that he has the ruler of the 5th house in the 4th house. The ruler of the 5th house is Mercury, which is placed in Leo in the 4th whole sign house in the place of the home and living situation, and one of the things that he famously did in 2020 — 

LS: 2020? 

CB: — yeah, in 2020, is that he famously like, moved from California – from Los Angeles – he moved to Austin and then one of the things that he did is he set up a comedy club there. And it’s created this hub of like, comedy in Austin of a certain type of comedy, especially like, political comedy in Austin and other comedians and podcasters have like, moved there, or he’s encouraged them to move there, but for this comedy club as well as to be close to his like, podcasting empire so that it’s possibly influenced things in terms of creating a physical location in a specific place for comedy that’s tied in both with his home and living situation, both in the sense of like, literally working from home and having a podcast, but also in terms of creating a physical space for comedians at that time. 

LS: Isn’t it also called something like the mothership? 

CB: Yeah. The comedy club is called the Mothership. 

LS: Yeah. So another funny 5th house, 4th house thing. 

CB: Yeah. So and there’s been a lot of like, commentary and discussion lately about his overall effect on comedy and whether that’s been a good thing, especially because he’s become very focused on politics and very militant about pushing different conspiracy theories and other things like that as well as famously last year helping Donald Trump to get elected and then going to the White House to the inauguration. And that was one of the really weird things is just like, if you see a photo of the inauguration last year, you’ll see all of these like, billionaires and like, tech moguls and like, the CEO of Google, the CEO of Apple, and all this other stuff. And then there’s this guy, and it’s like, Joe Rogan. And obviously the larger context is he’s become essentially an establishment media source at this point because he’s hosted what’s been the largest podcast in the world at different points over the past decade. But in terms of his own self-conceptualization, he primarily conceptualizes himself and his primary background is as a comedian. 

LS: Right. 

CB: Yeah. So there’s been – it’s interesting with the ruler of the Ascendant in Virgo and it’s retrograde conjunct Pluto and Uranus; there’s been a lot of commentary recently about like, the positive and negative impact of his work on the comedy world in general and the types of voices that he’s elevating and different things like that. So there was this really popular series over the past year from a YouTube channel titled The Elephant Graveyard where it’s focused on his impact on comedy. And some of the titles are like, “How Comedy Became a Dystopian Imperial Hell World,” and “How Comedy Was Destroyed By An Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult,” and it’s like, it has Joe Rogan’s face on the thumbnail of that, and he’s the primary focus of those and some of the thesis that it talks about in terms of his impact on comedy as well as like, culture in general. Yeah. So I’d recommend checking those out for more background, but it creates a much more vivid picture when you sort of understand the role that comedy’s playing in his chart, but also through his impact and what he’s used that for in different ways. 

LS: Right. For sure. Usually, you know, you think about – I mean, obviously his tie in between the 5th and 4th houses is like, creating this local comedy sort of arena in Austin. But sometimes in some people’s charts, the 4th can also be like, the nation because it’s like, your home more broadly. And I wonder about that signification coming into play. 

CB: Right. Influencing one’s country. Well, and it’s interesting, because there’s another writer – who is it? Like, Charles Bukowski that I think we’ll look at later that also had the ruler of the 5th in the 4th. And one of the things in his biography is that he was very influenced by his home city of Los Angeles, and he would talk about it a lot in his work and talks about the influence that it had on him and his creativity. And there’s something similar here that we’re seeing in this chart in terms of things that’s probably worth exploring more in different ways. But we’re not going to, because we’re gonna keep moving. 

LS: Sounds good. 

CB: All right. Cool. So the last example I was gonna use here in this section that I thought was interesting was Nikki Glaser who was born with Taurus rising and Virgo on the 5th whole sign house, and the ruler of the 5th is Mercury, which is in the first house in the rising sign. So this isn’t an example of a ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th, but again it’s the reverse – the ruler of the 5th house in the first house. And Nikki Glaser – one of the things about it is it’s Mercury opposite to Mars, which is in Scorpio. And one of the things that Nikki Glaser has became known for is one, there is – she’s also another example of a comic that’s very self-deprecating compared to other comics with the ruler of the 5th house of comedy being in the first house of self. But interestingly, she’s also become known at this point as a legendary like, roast comedy for some of the roasts that she’s done of just being really biting and really like, brutal in some of the roasts in terms of how incisive her commentary came be with Mercury opposing Mars in the 7th. 

LS: Yeah. That’s really funny, actually, because – I mean, and apt, obviously, with the biting communication. But it’s in the 7th house of like, the other party, but Mars is also ruling the 12th house. And I think about how like, roast comedy sometimes if it’s like, super edgy it’s like, do you actually hate me? Or are you just like, playing here? You know what I mean? And yeah, I feel like that can play in with Mars in the 7th but ruling the 12th. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Let’s see – there’s other things we can go into there, but I think that might be good. I just wanted to mention hers even though it doesn’t fit fully with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house theme, but that there’s still an important first house theme that just expands on some of these themes that we were seeing earlier and talking about. 

LS: For sure. 

CB: To sort of summarize and wrap up and end this section about comedians, I mean, I think that’s an interesting – you know, we’ve seen a lot of things about a person’s form of comedy and where comedy can come from, like what a person finds funny, as well as like, what it’s directed towards and sometimes directing it towards the self or directing it to other things. But we also see a theme sometimes – I mean, those two with Dick Gregory and Joe Rogan are a great contrast in terms of when a comedian sometimes gains prominence for being funny, and then uses that to try to promote their political beliefs or agenda. Like in the case of Dick Gregory, it was like, literally like, the civil rights movement and going and trying to help out Martin Luther King, Jr., or people in Mississippi, versus like, you know, Joe Rogan nowadays and promoting Trump and like, anti-trans things or like, conspiracy theories about covid or other – in my opinion – like, not great things. But that originally it came from a place of gaining popularity through comedy or through other comedians and things like that. 

LS: Right. For sure. And I guess, yeah, it’s like I think the 5th house sort of crosses over there and that they have like, a stage to do other things with. 

CB: Yeah. And that’s something we’ll see with a lot of our other people – just that with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house, that there can become a lot of power and a lot of good fortune as a result of your creativity, your ability to make other people laugh, or your ability to like, inspire other people can give you a platform and a voice and can magnify your voice in really significant ways. And then sometimes the people use that for different things, for better or worse. 

LS: Right. For sure. 

CB: Yeah. All right, in the next section, we’re gonna talk about actors as a major thing that came up of people that have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house as an aspect of creatives and creativity, and one of the ways in which creativity can be manifested sometimes in like, concrete careers and professions. 

All right, so our first example is the birth chart of Shirley Temple Black, who was known as Shirley Temple who was a child actor in – what was it – like, the 1920s? 

LS: ‘30s I think. ‘30s and — 

CB: 1930s, yeah. 

LS: — early ‘40s. Yeah. 

CB: That sounds more correct. So Shirley Temple is born with Sagittarius rising, and the ruler of the Ascendant is Jupiter, which is in Aries in the 5th whole sign house along with a stellium of Mercury, Venus, and Uranus. 

LS: And she notably had both benefics there in the 5th, one of them being the Ascendant ruler, as well as those other two planets.

CB: Yeah. So Shirley Temple famously became like, a really famous child actor from very early on, I think starting at the age of three. And what’s interesting about her is because she was in all these famous movies, it sort of like, cemented the idea almost of like, childhood or like the archetype of a child in the like, I don’t know, national or international memory of a lot of people just because then she became like, the primary version of that, at least in film. 

LS: Yeah. She was known – I mean, that was basically her whole persona was like, child actor. And she in fact fell more out of favor as an actress as she got older, as she got to be like, later teenage years, because it’s like, her whole persona was like, happy bubbly child. And interestingly, before she even got into feature films, how she got her break – because she was only three years old – was like, one of these short films that was called something “babies” in the title, but it was just like, a bunch of toddlers, and that was the whole short film. So again, really evoking the 5th house, not just of acting but like, child acting. 

CB: Yeah. And Lindsey Turner who helped research and submit this one pointed out that Shirley Temple was kind of like, a national treasure during the Great Depression because her movies served to cheer the downcast populace. And I think this is part of her having a Venus-Jupiter conjunction in the 5th house as well is just that role of like, cheering or bringing joy in some sense. And interesting with the 5th house thing, she wrote an autobiography later on and it was titled Child Star just to give you another like, 5th house thing. So it’s interesting in this case that it’s like, the topic of children is coming up as her in some sense. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, just also when we were talking, I think, in the previous episode about people who do things that bring pleasure to others or create things that are pleasurable for other people to experience. And so I think that was part of it too was bringing joy or bringing happiness to the nation during the Great Depression, but it was also like, going to the movies was something that wasn’t super expensive that people could still go and do and be happy for a little bit and take their mind off of more serious things. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. So interestingly, later in life, one of the significations we talked about in the last episode that comes up in some of the medieval texts is they often associate the 5th house with emissaries or ambassadors or legates or messengers, basically, and it’s because the 5th house issues forth essentially from the 4th house. And if the 4th house can represent the homeland, the 5th house is like, sending out emissaries from the homeland, because it follows after the 4th. And oftentimes, especially in ancient times, like, emissaries would carry gifts. So later in life, she actually became the US ambassador to Ghana, and then later to Czechoslovakia. 

LS: Yeah. I loved when I first discovered that too, because it’s just like, two things that at first glance you’re like, wait, what? You know? Like, major career change later in life. But then they actually do both belong to the 5th house. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. So she was the first woman US ambassador to Czechoslovakia in 1989 during the fall of the Soviet Union. 

LS: Wow. 

CB: All right. So let’s move onto our next actor. So when I was doing the research for actors, one of the ones that came up that I thought was really interesting was Jake Gyllenhaal. And here’s his birth chart; he was born with Leo rising, and the Sun is in Sagittarius in the 5th whole sign house along with a stellium of Venus, Mercury, and Neptune. So four planets in the 5th house. 

So on the one hand, it’s like, I like this example because we’ll talk about it more in the next episode, but he has the ruler of the 3rd house of siblings in the 5th house of creativity, and he was actually first inspired to become an actor by his older sister Maggie Gyllenhaal who started acting before he did, and who he said at one point like, just clearly took great joy in the process of acting, and that was something that really appealed to him and really attracted him to the profession, so he ended up following in it, and then they actually have been in – earlier in their careers – three films together, including the cult hit Donnie Darko where they actually played siblings in that movie. 

LS: Nice. 

CB: Yeah. But in terms of thinking about his broader career, because he’s a major actor that’s been in a ton of dramatic roles and has become really prominent, especially in the 2000s and 2010s. But one of his biggest roles that he got the most award nominations for and some of the biggest recognition for somewhat early in his career was in the movie Brokeback Mountain. He played one of the two leads roles opposite to Heath Ledger. And this was back in like, 2004, right? 

LS: Yeah. It was around 20 years ago. So it’s getting a little bit older now, but at the time, it was considered like, a really major, you know, notable movie that was like, a mainstream movie that showed like, a gay love story – and not just a gay love story, but a gay love story amongst people that weren’t considered to be accepting of that. It was in the West; it was like, two cowboys. And he stated he was proud to be part of a film that could challenge perceptions like that and set a precedent, and despite the potential risks to his career that some people warned him about, he was committed to doing it because of the social significance. 

CB: Right. And it’s like, that movie famously that year at the Academy Awards probably should have won Best Picture and like, would have won Best Picture; but instead, the movie Crash won Best Picture, which at the time but for sure in retrospect people look back on as just being a mistake in terms of which movie won Best Picture that year. But I know – I think you were researching that it’s like, there were some people supposedly in the Academy who wouldn’t even watch the film because it was like, focused on a gay couple. 

LS: Yeah, which I think we just learned in the past few years or so, right, that they’re not all required to watch it in order to vote, which just changed recently. But — 

CB: This year. 

LS: — that’s kind of – okay, yeah – that’s just kind of mind-blowing. It’s like, how are you allowed to vote if you didn’t see all of them? But anyway, they weren’t back then. And yeah, it said like, a bunch of people refused to watch it, and someone – I can’t remember who it was – connected with the movie said as soon as they heard that Clint Eastwood was refusing to watch it, he should have because he, you know, has done westerns and stuff, that’s when they knew they wouldn’t win Best Picture. Because of, you know, the number of high-profile people who refused to watch it. But you know, it’s had more of a long-term impact, I think, which is interesting given the ruler of this actor’s 5th house conjunct an exalted Saturn. So it’s like, something that appeared, you know, more significant as time went by, I think. And also — 

CB: Yeah.

LS: — I think that’s also kind of illustrating his like, you know, being willing to take a potential risk to his career for something he thought was like, important. It’s like that exalted Saturn conjunct the ruler of the 5th. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So we found this quote from Jake where he said that “what ties these two characters in Brokeback Mountain together is not just a love, but a loneliness. I think primarily it was a deep loneliness, and what I always say about that movie, which I think maybe over time is more understood, is that this is about two people desperately looking for love, to be loved, and who are probably capable of it. And they just found it with someone of the same sex. And that does not dismiss the fact that it is about really primarily the first kind of very profound gay love story. Hopefully it can create an equality of an idea, that is that it’s possible that you can find love anywhere. That intimacy exists in so many places that convention and society won’t always allow us to see, and we won’t allow ourselves to see because of what criticism and danger, really, it might provoke.” 

And I thought that was really important and interesting, just because it’s a theme we started to see come up in a number of the 5th house examples where the theme of like, love as an overriding thing kept coming up strangely in a bunch of biographies and a bunch of writers and different things like that, and we’ll talk about that more with some of the later ones. But that was one of the significations of the 5th house that goes right back to at least the 8th century with Sahl ibn Bishr; it’s one of the early significations given for the 5th house in that medieval Arabic text. 

LS: Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. So he’s like, not just an actor, but he became really well known for this particular love story. 

CB: Right. Absolutely. And then that film itself may have influenced things, both in the entertainment world as well as in the broader world of, you know, hopefully influencing some people’s views in positive ways. 

LS: Right. Yeah. We were talking about it after we watched it; I rewatched it, and you watched it. But about how, you know, it was made about 20 years ago, and how things change even over the course of just 20 years in terms of relative acceptance and in terms of like, is this ground-breaking right now? No. But 20 years ago, you know, it was more of a thing. And I really thought, you know, in terms of the entertainment industry and the mainstream of that, and I remember reading that Heath Ledger was actually invited to present awards at the Academy Awards that following year after making that movie, but he rejected the offer because they were gonna have him make like, a gay joke. Like, a joke about gay people like, as part of his presenting. And he refused to do that, because he was like, no, this is serious; this is about people’s lives. And you know, it just really reminded me how in 20 years, things can be a bit different. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. As well as that even some of the criticisms in retrospect – I was reading an article that just happened to come out in the past week that was like, looking at it again and reassessing it from – it was like, a gay male writer that was writing the article, I think, and he was pointing out that there was no gay or openly gay people or queer people involved in the production of the movie. So that, you know, today if you made it the same way, it would obviously be looked at very differently, and that there may still be something underlying some flaws in the movie that are there and why there are flaws with it. But nonetheless that hopefully it had some positive impact in terms of messaging and things like that in terms of the change that happened in the United States over the course of the past couple of decades towards gay people and towards queer people and things like that where there was like, a stigmatism and a lack of rights and a lot of really negative things and how that changed and how we’ve seen that change in our lifetimes, for example, with the legalization of same sex marriage in 2015 and how that was something that was literally like, illegal at the time this movie was made versus some of the different factors that went into play that eventually got us to the place where it’s not illegal anymore or where things aren’t as stigmatized anymore, even though obviously there’s still a lot of battles that are being fought today and sometimes progress doesn’t always move forward but sometimes goes retrograde like it did this year with the Venus retrograde. 

LS: Yeah. There’s definitely still fights happening and backlash and whatnot. But the difference is, you know, there’s some precedent there to build upon, rather than it being, you know, never having happened. 

CB: Right. For sure. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: All right. So let’s move onto our next actor, who is Margot Robbie. And Margot Robbie has Cancer rising with the Moon in Scorpio in the 5th whole sign house along with the IC, Pluto, and the Lot of Fortune. And they have this nice trine from Jupiter, which is in Cancer right on the Ascendant at 19 Cancer conjunct the Ascendant at 23, and also Mercury and the Sun in Cancer in the first whole sign house. But one of the things I thought was really interesting about this is that, you know, a couple of years ago in 2023, she was the primary driving force behind not just starring in the Barbie movie, which I think at this point is like, her biggest role, but she was the one that she created a production company and she was the one that first approached the studio and approached the director and was like, driving force behind getting the movie made, and that she wasn’t originally pushing to star in it, but then eventually ended up becoming the star in it. But one of the things I realized at one point that it was interesting is that the entire movie was based on like, a toy – a children’s toy – which is the Barbie doll from like, the 1950s. But like, somehow through the writing and the directing and the acting and everything else, they actually made a moving Hollywood film about fundamentally just like, a children’s toy. 

LS: Yeah. No, that’s great. It’s such a funny literal manifestation. 

CB: Yeah. Because it’s like, the 5th house is like, children but it’s also play. And I thought I saw at least one signification somewhere that it was about like, toys or something like that. Like the instruments of fun and play or something like that. 

LS: Yeah. Well, if you put – yeah, like, play and children together, you get toys. 

CB: Right. Yeah. And then immediately after Barbie was done and it was like, this huge success, I think she took some time off work for like, a year to have a child or to have her first child. 

LS: That’s funny. Camille had a funny additional note that she has the IC in the 5th house too, and that as a child she was enrolled in circus school where she learned trapeze. 

CB: Nice. Okay. That is really interesting. All right. So shout out to Camille Michelle Gray for that one. And all right, so the next actor that came up is a prominent current actor is Timothee Chalamet has Virgo rising and Mercury in Capricorn along with Mars, the Sun, Neptune, and Uranus. So like, a pretty big stellium in the 5th house. And the thing that I found interesting about this is like, you have the 5th house planets in the stellium, and the focus on acting just in general, but he recently did this Bob Dylan biopic that came out last year and was up for – was nominated for – a bunch of awards this year. And he actually, I think he won some of them, and he gave an acceptance speech. And during his acceptance speech for the Best Actor award at the 2025 Screen Actors Guild, he made this really bold declaration about his career ambitions where he said, “I’m really in pursuit of greatness.” He said, “I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats.” And so he was like, making this declarative statement that he wants to be like, one of the greatest – known as like, one of the greatest actors. And I think that’s really important, because it speaks to that Mars there in Capricorn, which remember I was talking about earlier how exalted planets represent like, hitting the highest form of something or whatever the highest or best version is of something, exalted planets will often strive to achieve. And while he’s like, not fully there yet, he’s like, getting there because he’s actually been in a ton of really big movies over the past few years and has done really well. You can see the drive and the desire for that, not just through the ruler of the Ascendant and not just through the stellium in the 5th house, but also through having that exalted planet in the 5th house at the same time. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So there’s like, a general, large focus there, but there’s also this drive to like, rise to the top in that area. 

CB: Yeah. Definitely. All right. So moving onto the next one – my next example chart I found was Ian McKellen, who has Sagittarius rising and Jupiter in Aries in the 5th whole sign house conjunct the IC and copresent with Saturn, which is later in Aries but in the same sign. And his is really interesting, because Ian McKellen was a famous and celebrated and really respected stage actor for decades. And he didn’t become a household name as an actor until later in his life when he was already in his 60s, and then he played the role of Magneto in like, the X-Men films in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, and then most famously he also played a major role in the Lord of the Rings films basically is like, what he’s probably most known for at this point in time, because he played the role of Gandalf in this like, really memorable role as like, an old wizard. But I think that’s interesting with the copresence with Jupiter and Saturn, just that he became the most well-known as an actor later in life. 

LS: Yeah, for sure. Because Saturn can like, delay things. It’s not always a “no.” Sometimes there’s a “no” or sometimes there’s a constraint, but at other times, it’s just delays or things that you have to work longer for. 

CB: Yeah. So he’s stated that he’s grateful for this delay because he believed that achieving stardom earlier might have distracted him from his passion for theatre, but he was already knighted like, way back in 1991 by Queen Elizabeth for his services to the performing arts, which solidified his status as a British cultural icon a long time before he had this like, blockbuster film success, which I thought was really interesting. It might tie in like, the IC component, you know, being knighted on behalf of one’s country and queen. 

LS: Right. For sure. 

CB: So another interesting piece about Ian McKellen also is that he has been known, he’s been out or openly gay since 1988, and he’s championed LGBTQ social issues like, worldwide since then. And he’s also been awarded a number of like, honors and stuff as a result of that. But he was like, a example from at least the early 2000s when he became like, really well-known through some of the biggest roles of a generation with like, Lord of the Rings that he was also like, a gay actor as part of his – not his identity, but sort of wrapped up in just who he was. 

LS: Right. Well, just doing more things outwardly like, around that or like, caring more about sexuality issues. It’s like we were talking about before; it’s not that it shows that he was queer, but it shows that there was an extra focus compared to the average person on, you know, one or more of those 5th house topics. 

CB: Right. Yeah. All right, so moving on. Another actor that I found was James Dean, who was born with Aries rising and Mars retrograde in Leo in the 5th whole sign house in a day chart. So this is really interesting, because Mars then is contrary to the sect, and you get some of the more tricky aspects of Mars as a malefic planet can come up. But you know, what’s interesting about him is he became a major cultural icon and Hollywood figure in the 1950s, and his career was really short; it only lasted for five years. But he was remembered for playing the roles of like, troubled teenagers and social estrangement, and his most famous movie was Rebel Without a Cause from 1955. So on the one hand, his like, acting legacy is tied up in that of being like, a rebellious youth, but then also in his personal life, he developed this love of auto racing and basically like, driving fast cars as a hobby and was doing that a lot. But then unfortunately, famously died tragically in a car crash while he was speeding one day, which is like, that aspect of Mars that really likes to go fast and putting it in the 5th house in terms of that being his hobby or something he was passionate about. 

LS: Right. That’s incredibly funny that he has Uranus so exactly on the Ascendant, and he’s known for Rebel Without a Cause! 

CB: Right. Yeah. 

LS: It’s like, obviously also the Mars, you know? But yeah. Like, contrariness. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

All right, so let’s see. Moving on. This was an example that Camille Michelle Gray found, which is the actress Tracee Ellis Ross, who was born with Taurus rising and Venus in Virgo in the 5th whole sign house in a night chart. Do you wanna take this one? 

LS: Sure. So she’s actually the daughter of Diana Ross, famous singer, and she was a model in her teens and later worked – she graduated with a theater degree. She later worked in the fashion industry as a model and contributing fashion editor to Mirabella and New York magazines. But what she’s really known for is she became an actress, just like her mom, with her most famous roles in the TV shows Girlfriends and Black-ish. So yeah, there’s the 5th house emphasis with regard to acting; there’s another 5th house topic that comes out as well, which is that she’s vocally childfree, and that frequently comes under attack for not being married. And you noted, right, that Saturn is squaring her Venus there by night. 

CB: Right. So she has Venus in Virgo in the 5th whole sign house, but then we have Saturn there in the 2nd house, which is squaring Venus by sign and not too far off by degree. So she… That’s kind of the same example as we were seeing earlier of Michelle — 

LS: Right. 

CB: — Oberdorf that submitted their chart that wrote the thesis on being childfree, of Saturn sort of negating that. But it’s a point of choice. It’s like, the ruler of the Ascendant. So there’s this act of volition to it, and it’s something that she has championed. 

LS: Right. So yeah, she said that one of her central themes is that a woman’s life is not less meaningful without a partner or a child, and has pushed back against the idea that having a child is what gives life meaning and has consistently stated that her life is full and joyful on its own terms, which is again interesting with, you know, there is that Ascendant ruler in the 5th focus on like, joy and doing pleasurable things, but one of those for her is not the topic of having children, which is the Saturn. 

CB: Yeah. And I found some quotes. So one of them said, “It’s really interesting to be a woman and to get to 45 and not be married and not have kids. I’m a good friend, a solid daughter, a hard worker. My credit is good. I take out the garbage before it gets smelly. I recycle. And I won a Golden Globe.” She’s like, listing all these things that are like, you know, more important but that people are sometimes like, focusing on other things. 

So elsewhere, she gave a speech at a political rally alongside Vice President Harris and Oprah Winfrey, and she said, “As a 52-year-old childless woman, I wanna say to the people who think that a woman’s worth is measured in her baby count that childless women have been mothering the world and elevating cultures as aunties, grandmothers, teachers, mentors, sisters, and friends. You do not need to push out a baby to help push humanity forward.” And I thought that was really, really cool. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, and even – you know, she was listing all those roles that are like, adjacent to childraising, right, but even just her own creative work – you know, like we were talking about conceptually with the 5th house being something flowing from you, from the Ascendant – you’re like, pushing humanity forward even if you’re like, not doing anything with children. 

CB: Right. Absolutely. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: So another thing that Camille Michelle Gray pointed out that this actress is also known for her award-winning haircare line called Pattern, which Camille said grew out of Ross’s own journey with accepting her hair. So Camille points out that it’s like, the Venus in Virgo placement especially, but it’s interesting because yesterday when we read the passage from Valens, he also said barbers or haircutters or those that work with hair, which I thought was a funny signification that’s relevant here. But she specifically focuses on making like, haircare products that are geared for people with like, Black and brown hair basically that aren’t always other haircare products don’t work as well for and aren’t geared towards, which is like, a cool thing coming up with the Venus in Virgo placement. 

LS: Right, for sure. And related to that, Camille noted that the title Pattern is an astrologer good name, because weavers and pattern-makers are ruled by Virgo, which is her Ascendant ruler – that Venus in Virgo. 

CB: Right. Totally. 

All right. So the next birth chart I wanted to share of an actor was the birth chart that I came across of Tori Spelling, who was born with Aquarius rising and Saturn ruling the Ascendant placed in the 5th whole sign house in a night chart, copresent with Venus as well as the degree of the IC at the very beginning of the sign in the 5th whole sign house. So I thought this was really fascinating for a few different reasons, but one of them is that the IC is in the 5th house, and the ruler of the 5th house is Mercury, which is actually placed in Taurus in the 4th whole sign house, the place of parents. And it’s actually exchanging signs with Venus so that there’s a strong connection between the 5th whole sign house of like, creativity and acting and the 4th whole sign house of parents. And Tori Spelling was famously or became the most famous for earlier in her life as a teenager her father was like, a famous television producer – like, a really legendary and influential television producer. And then in the late or early 1990s, he created the hit television show 90210, and he cast his teenage daughter in one of the lead roles who was Tori Spelling. And so Tori Spelling was interesting, because it was like, an early instance of like, you know, nowadays people talk a lot about nepotism and accusations of nepotism and the pros and cons of that, but Tori Spelling was a really early – at least in my lifetime – like, example that people used of nepotism, because people tried to argue that her acting skills weren’t as good as like, the other actors on the series or that her range wasn’t, and that she was primarily picked, they argued, for having her father being the one that created the television show, basically. 

LS: Right. And you know, whatever you think of her particular acting skills, the example still stands because that is, you know, essentially how she got the role is her father was this famous media person. 

CB: Yeah. At least that there’s a connection there, regardless of whether one thinks that’s true or not, because I do think there are sometimes issues where people go kind of far about the nepotism accusations sometimes in contemporary times. Because sometimes there’s people that are genuinely talented who have parents in an industry that inspires them, and that sort of goes back to the ancient notions of like, trades that are passed on from like, parent to child, which included like, astrology, for that matter, where astrologers – their parents would teach their children, and that’s how the knowledge was passed on for generations. And sometimes that does give you an edge, but it gives you an edge – one of the primary ways it gives you an edge is just because you’re learning that from the very beginning of your life. So in some instances, you’re just naturally gonna be better at it then.

LS: Yeah, for sure. And it’s probably more an anomaly now than not, right? That people do completely different things compared to what their parents did, which was just not true for a long time, mostly. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. 

So that is primary thing about that was just like, I don’t know. I mean, you watched 90210. I watched — 

LS: I did! 

CB: — 90210. We learned that, that we both watched 90210 back then. And definitely she played a reduced role in that compared to like, the other actors and in terms of that in different ways, right? 

LS: Yeah. Probably so. I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve watched it, so my memory’s a little fuzzy, but at the same time, you know, you could wonder like, was that due to like, pure acting skills? Was that due to like, you know, people wanting to diminish her role to sort of offset the fact that she maybe more easily got the part? You know, who knows? We don’t know. 

CB: I mean, I don’t know. I wanna be balanced and like, not judgmental, but I don’t wanna go as far to like, obscure what we’re actually seeing or think, which is that this is one of those instances like some of the previous categories where because it’s a night chart and Saturn’s contrary to the sect, the basic interpretive principle is that there’s some issues that arise from within the native themself. And so I think there is some element of that here that was partially true at least at the time and is just part of her story in some ways, whether that’s just a perception thing or whether that’s true in terms of skill of like, acting range type thing. But there’s some element of that that’s relevant. 

LS: Sure. Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. Okay. So I think that’s good. So we had one last acting example, which is the birth chart of Will Smith. And this one’s kind of tricky, because the birth time is like, inferred based on a report about him seeing like, an Indian astrologer and going into a certain dasha period which then somebody supposedly backformed to come up with this birth time. And I genuinely don’t know how accurate this is. But there’s two possible rising signs, because there’s another argument that’s come out that he may have Cancer rising, and he does refer to this at one point. There’s like, a music lyric in a song from not that long ago, from the past few years, where he says something like, “I’m a Libra, but I identify as a Cancer,” and some people have taken that to mean that he might have Cancer rising. And I mention that only because in the version of the chart we’re looking at, which is the current theoretical birth time, he has Gemini rising and Mercury in Libra in the 5th whole sign house, along with Venus and the Sun and the South Node. But interestingly, if he had Cancer rising, then he would have Cancer Ascendant with the ruler of the Ascendant being the Moon in Scorpio, which would also be in the 5th whole sign house at that point. So either of the two potential rising signs that are sort of considered at this point, both would have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. So it may be the case that he does have it one way or another. 

LS: Right. Yeah, which is really interesting and makes the case stronger. You know, talking about him as a 5th house person. 

CB: Yeah. So you know, Will Smith is a famous actor and also musician and like, rapper, and known for his dramatic roles. And the thing I think is important that’s interesting that came up for us was like, what, so he did like, comedic roles more in the 1990s, especially with like, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which is the television show that he was on. And then he made the transition into doing movies, like especially action movies, but also with a comedic element to it. And then one of the things that was interesting, though, in the 2000s is that he had children, and this was like, a really major part of his life. And one of the things that he became known for is that he very early on like, tried to integrate his children into his life as an actor, and to have at least one of them follow in the same path as him, where he had his son Jaden Smith star in a number of movies with him. Yeah. Which were at least, like, one of them was like, a sci-fi movie and one of them was like, a dramatic film. But it was something that he became known for in terms of trying to sort of raise up his son into this role as an actor as well. 

LS: Yeah. Which I don’t know – it seems like the Gemini rising kind of is like, the stronger contender with that aspect because, you know, that Mercury exactly conjunct Venus in a night chart in the 5th. I mean, it could go either way, for sure, but it’s just interesting that like, both of those topics are very strong for him. 

CB: Let me animate the chart, just so we can switch back and forth. Because the problem is – I can see it go either way, only because… Well, it’s like, one of the things was, so this is the Cancer rising chart with like, the Moon in Scorpio. One of the things is like, so there’s a few things. One of them is that he was doing a number of dramatic roles for years, but then he finally did a dramatic role playing the father of Venus and Serena Williams a few years ago in like, 2021. And he actually finally won like, an Academy Award for that role. And ironically, like, Serena Williams is gonna come up as one of our chart examples in the next episode, because she had the ruler of the 3rd house of siblings and the IC representing parents in the 5th house of games, basically, of sports, and she was trained together with her sibling to be the best tennis champion in the world. But it’s interesting, the award that Will Smith finally won an Oscar for was for playing like, the father of Serena and Venus Williams in this like, sports movie about tennis. But then famously, of course, that was the night that he like, the comedian Chris Rock said a joke about Will Smith’s wife, and then Will Smith got up and like, slapped Chris Rock and then walked off the stage and told him not to say anything about his wife anymore. And it really ruined the moment, because then he ended up winning the award later that night for Best Actor, but he was just in tears and referred to it a few times, because he realized that he kind of like, ruined the entire night when he was hitting that moment. But you and I were looking at his transits again, and his Moon was really getting hit that night, it seemed like, by both Jupiter and Saturn or something like that. And the centrality of it in the Cancer rising chart was the one that almost made me wonder about this as the possible rising sign.

LS: For sure. Yeah. I mean, there was also some points in favor of the other one, but yeah. I mean, it was interesting that the Moon was so central in the transits that night. 

CB: It was like that, but also he tried really hard to – I don’t know where it was coming from and whether it was coming from Will or whether it was coming from his son Jaden, but it seemed like for a long time they were really trying to make Jaden a prominent actor, and like, Will was doing a lot of things not just acting with him, but also putting him – helping to get him in other big movies. Like, there was a Karate Kid remake with Jackie Chan at one point, and they did like, After Earth and all this other stuff. But it seems like it never really took hold, and it never really worked, and Jaden never really took off as an actor as much as Will did. And I don’t know if he’s still acting or where he’s at at this point. I feel like I haven’t seen Jaden in as many acting roles in recent years, and I don’t know if they have sort of stopped like, pushing for that if it wasn’t working quite as well as they had hoped. But that’s another interesting element in terms of whether it’s the Cancer rising or Gemini rising chart. 

LS: Yeah. Although they’re still young, so you know. There’s still time — 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: — to see. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I guess I was just thinking of a scenario where what if there was a scenario, let’s say, just hypothetically where somebody was raised into a family and wanted to be something, or their parents wanted them to follow in their path, and they tried but it just didn’t work out. And so they ended up following a different career path or finding that they had a passion for something else eventually and decided that that wasn’t actually their passion. I don’t know if that’s what happened, or what have you. 

LS: Yeah. I definitely do not know. 

CB: Right. Okay. So was there anything else we wanted to mention about his chart as an actor, aside from just that he did win an Oscar technically eventually for that role as the father raising a family of children, but also raising Serena and Venus Williams? 

LS: Right. No, I mean, I think that was one of the main things we wanted to say. It was a really good movie, by the way – King Richard. 

CB: Yeah. That was one of the ones we watched in preparation for this, both because of Will Smith’s chart but also especially because of Venus and Serena and them being great chart examples that we’ll get into in the next episode. 

Cool. All right. Well, I think that’s it for this section with actors, yeah? 

LS: Yeah. I think so. 

CB: Okay. Let’s take a break then. 

If you’re really looking to deepen your studies of astrology, then I would recommend signing up for my Hellenistic Astrology course, which is an online course in ancient astrology where I take people from basic concepts up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. There’s over a hundred hours of video lectures, plus monthly webinars and Q&A sessions. And then at the end of the course, you get a certificate of completion saying that you studied with me if you pass the final written test. Find out more information at TheAstrologySchool.com. 

All right. In this next section, we’re gonna talk about a few famous directors that have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house as another expression of creativity. So the first one I wanted to look at is Steven Spielberg, who is probably one of the most famous and influential directors in the world in the late 20th and early 21st century. And he was actually born with Cancer rising and the Moon in Scorpio in the 5th whole sign house. 

So Cancer rising, Moon in Scorpio in the 5th whole sign house in a night chart, but it’s copresent with a Venus-Jupiter conjunction – Jupiter at 17 Scorpio and Venus at 19 Scorpio – that’s really influencing and coloring the nature of that house in a much more positive way. And yeah, so he’s one of the most famous directors of all time, and one of the things that’s interesting about him is that a lot of his films feature children or children actually feature prominently in a number of his films. 

LS: Yeah. I know we were talking about that recently, and you were talking about even ones that weren’t like, focused on children per se always had kind of like, a child cameo or something about a child. 

CB: Yeah. Like, you know, there’s some of the more famous movies that he has done, like E.T., for example, features child actors, and Hook is another major film that he did that features a lot of child actors. But even like ones that aren’t as focused on that, like War of the Worlds, for example, features like, a young Dakota Fanning. And a lot of the dynamic is often between like, difficult father figures especially is like, one of the recurring motifs in his films, or you have like, Jurassic Park where you get the lead character, which is the scientist Grant, and he’s like, forcibly put together with these two kids that are younger, even though he doesn’t like children. And then they end up like, bonding throughout the film even though he’s like, doing it reluctantly. 

LS: Right. Yeah. It’s fascinating. When I first looked at his chart, you know, the Moon in Scorpio – obviously, the Ascendant ruler in the 5th brings that topic to life. But the Moon in Scorpio doesn’t initially sound like, you know, huge blockbuster success. And it’s really just the copresence of both of those benefics. When you get the Ascendant ruler copresent with both benefics, that’s going to very, very seriously elevate the quality of whatever the person is trying for. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

So and just so you can see that it’s not just me, like, saying this, on Wikipedia here’s a quote that I found where it says “a consistent theme in his family-friendly work is a childlike sense of wonder and faith,” and “the goodness in humanity will prevail. He has also explored the importance of childhood, loss of innocence, and the need for parental figures. In exploring the parent-child relationship, there’s usually a flawed or irresponsible father figure, and this theme personally resonates with Spielberg’s childhood. Exploring extraterrestrial life is another aspect of his work. Spielberg described himself as like an alien during childhood, and this interest came from his father, a science fiction fan.” 

LS: Yeah. It’s interesting, the thing about the father. You know, we just watched The Fabelmans recently, which is like, a semi-autobiographical movie about his childhood and teenage years, and it focuses on him first getting into film-making as a young person, and then like, the dynamics in his own family. And you know, the Moon is in his 5th house, and even though that’s the Ascendant ruler, you know as we were watching it, you know, you were very strongly like, “That’s his mom,” because his mom was the one that was more artistic in terms of the two parents. And then his dad was sort of like, “When are you gonna stop focusing on these hobbies and do something serious?” You know? So I think that’s part of why that went that way. Obviously, I don’t know his parents personally, but it seemed like he had a more natural affinity with his mom who was also interested in artistic endeavors. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. Although it was interesting – it’s like, he has the ruler of the 5th house is Mars, which is placed in the 7th house of relationships and marriage. And one of the things that was interesting about that movie is it focused on his mother I guess essentially having an affair with a family friend, and then leaving the father and that being like, this core turning point in Spielberg’s life that was connected in like, his mom’s relationship with another man and how that led to the end of the marriage. But then also his discovering of that, where it was like, evidently actually based on something that actually happened where one summer he was shooting a bunch of family movies where they were out camping or something like that, and then later when he edited them together, he noticed his mother and like, another man like, having lightly romantic touching or other things like that. 

LS: Right. Yeah. And when you were reading up on it after we watched the movie, it did say, right, that that was pretty true to life, that part? 

CB: Yeah. I mean, evidently that did happen, or at least that’s what he says happened. And it was actually at the age of 16, which is a 5th house profection year, so it was actually activating the 5th house and then activating the ruler of the 5th house, which is in the 7th. And I actually see that a lot where people that have 7th house placements, sometimes it describes an early experience that they have in terms of their parents’ relationship. 

LS: Yeah, for sure. Which makes sense just, you know, more naturally, because that’s like, the first model you ever have of like, adult relationships. 

CB: Right. For sure. 

LS: And it’s also interesting – I think you found that the ruler of the 5th in the 7th, he tends to collaborate with the same artistic collaborators over and over throughout his career, which is really great. That’s like, a less common I think ruler of the 5th in the 7th interpretation, but it’s really great for someone with an artistic career. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. Because it’s like, he just has these people he works with over and over again. It’s like, Tom Hanks, so it’s like, actors, for example, with Tom Hanks that he’s collaborated with a few times. It is also producers. It’s also music – like John Williams; he started working with the composer John Williams relatively early in his career, and then that’s led to some just like, famous collaborations and famous scores that are like, major Hollywood scores for big movies that are very well-known. 

LS: Yeah. That’s great. 

CB: Yeah. The last thing I saw that was interesting about Steven Spielberg with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house in Scorpio is that one of his movies, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was so scary or had such intense themes – like, at one point there’s like, a priest that like, reaches inside somebody’s chest and like, pulls out their beating heart. It was so intense that it led the rating association for movies to create a whole new level, which is the PG-13 rating. Because prior to that time, they either just had PG – that it was like, you know, kids could watch it – or it was like, rated R and kids couldn’t watch it. And it was as a result of that movie that they created this whole like, intermediate category of like, 13 and up. 

LS: Wow, that’s really great. I didn’t know that. 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: That’s funny. That’s like, it’s funny not just because he has an Ascendant ruler focus on 5th house things, so young people. But like, that it’s the Moon in Scorpio, so it’s like, well, it’s young people, but there’s some edge in there, so we gotta do something different in the middle! 

CB: Yeah. It’s like, a little edgy sort of Scorpio Moon vibe, and it was funny because in The Fabelmans, he was like, filming almost like, horror movies with his siblings who were his actors that he was like, directing, and having them dress up as like, mummies and stuff like that. Or his first big hit was like, Jaws, which was like, this tense film about like, a killer shark. But a lot of his stuff with that Venus-Jupiter conjunction copresent there like, softens things quite a bit. And yeah, you get this more sort of inspirational thing in terms of a lot of his films and a lot of his themes. 

LS: Right. For sure. 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: And like, larger than life kind of, with the Jupiter there. At least some of the ones that I’ve seen. 

CB: Yeah. Larger than life, or that there has to be like, an underlying sense of like, love and like, positive family things that bring people together in the end. Like, there’s a sort of positiveness or upliftingness ultimately through a lot of his films. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: All right. So moving on, another one that I noticed is the director Rob Reiner, who was born with Scorpio rising and Mars in Pisces in the 5th whole sign house along with the Sun and Mercury. And Mars is actually in a mutual reception with Jupiter, which is in Scorpio in the first house in a night chart. So Rob Reiner’s famous for a number – he’s done like, a ton of films. But like, a famous one you and I like rewatched recently was The Princess Bride. 

LS: Yeah. That’s a great movie. I need to look up the timing of that, because it’s such like, a classic at this point. Like, well considered as a classic. But he made his directorial film debut with actually a heavy metal mockumentary called This is Spinal Tap. Have you seen that one? 

CB: No. 

LS: Oh, okay. I haven’t either, but they’re interestingly about to release some sequel to that this year. But he directed a ton of well-known films, so not just The Princess Bride, but also things like Stand By Me, When Harry Met Sally, which is a huge hit, A Few Good Men, et cetera. A whole bunch of other ones. And then he earned four nominations for Golden Globe awards for Best Director and three nominations for Directors Guild of America awards. So he’s a rather notable and like, long-standing director. 

CB: Right. It’s funny. When Harry Met Sally is like, a romantic movie, and then The Princess Bride kind of is as well, and it’s funny that the — 

LS: Right. 

CB: — premise of The Princess Bride is it’s like, a grandfather who’s telling a fairy tale to his sick grandson. 

LS: That’s true. Yeah. Well, and also the whole repetition of like, “true love.” It is about true love — 

CB: Right. 

LS: — right? 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: That’s true. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: I like it. Okay. So let’s see – other directors. Another famous director, one of my famous directors that I found that has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th is Kathryn Bigelow. So Kathryn Bigelow was born with Sagittarius rising and Jupiter in Aries in the 5th whole sign house. And I love this, because she’s especially known for like, action movies, and one of my favorite action movies of hers is the Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze movie from the early ‘90s, Point Break, is probably one of my favorite ‘90s action movies. And so I love that she has – you know, this is different, because we’ve been looking at a lot of like, watery ones. Like, you know, Rob Reiner and Steven Spielberg, but this is like, a fiery chart with the Sun and Mercury in Sagittarius in the first whole sign house and then Jupiter in Aries in the 5th house. 

LS: Right. For sure. Yeah. She directed Point Break; she also directed Strange Days and Zero Dark Thirty. And then actually became the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director for the war drama The Hurt Locker. And I like that with that Jupiter in Aries being like, a first. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And The Hurt Locker was like, a war movie based on like, a bomb expert who was in the Iraq war, basically. And then Zero Dark Thirty was a movie that was made about the assasination of Osama bin Laden, just to give you some idea of like, the range of, you know, themes in some of her movies. 

LS: Yeah. For sure. It’s like, Jupiter in Aries in the 5th, and then it’s ruled by Mars, which is in Libra, but it’s like, applying to that Jupiter with reception. So it’s like — 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: — a Mars-Jupiter amped up Jupiter. 

CB: Yeah, through an opposition. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah, for sure. 

All right, so those are the only three directors that I wanted to focus on in that section, just to give you an idea of some types of creatives and how their creative output is kind of like, informed not just by the 5th house placement but also by the sign that it’s in and other things like that. 

So the next section I wanted to move onto is musicians, singers, and entertainers, because that was one of the things that I found when researching this section that there were a number of like, musicians and singers that stood out with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house which is interesting and makes sense, since singing or having a sweet melody of voice were some of the significations that Valens actually associated with Venus. But I found that especially some of the ones that really stood out to me were like, entertainers or like, performers. Like, people that were all around sort of entertainment oriented on multiple different levels. 

So the most striking example that I found was a birth time that we only got in the past year, which was the birth chart of Beyonce, who was born with Aries rising and Mars in Leo in the 5th whole sign house. Late Aries rising, but it’s an exact birth time, with Mars in Leo at one degree of Leo conjunct the North Node. And then that whole Libra stellium in the 7th house, and the Sun in the 6th house. 

So yeah, Beyonce’s one of the most famous not just like, you know, singers, but also just like, performers and entertainers of our time period basically and is like, multi-talented not just in music but also in like, the presentations that she gives in terms of some of the music videos and the artistic quality in terms of some of the conceptual albums that she’s done like Lemonade, and also just in terms of some of the performances. And one of the funny things about hers, like when her birth time first came out, that I thought was interesting that she had Aries rising and Mars in Leo, there were these stories early on about how she developed and adopted this stage presence that she called Sasha Fierce in order to sort of like, build herself up to give these huge performances to so many people and to like, almost like, become this other character on stage. And I think part of that is because that energy that she ended up having to adopt to become that level of performer is just like, very different compared to that like, lone Virgo Sun that’s over there in the 6th house, or that huge emphasis on like, Libra planets in the 7th house or even the Scorpio Moon up there that’s a little bit more reclusive in the 8th house. 

LS: Yeah, absolutely. It’s like, the Leo Mars is her Ascendant ruler; it does represent her in a major way. But yeah, there is so much else going on that that’s a great story like, that she kind of built up this entertainer persona. Yeah. And it is very — 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: — like, Mars in Leo. It’s like, very loud, and it’s very like, theatrical. Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

All right. So moving onto another major performer type chart, this is the birth chart – very similar – that I wanted to do as a comparison of Bette Midler, who has Aries rising and Mars in Leo in the 5th whole sign house. And it’s a day chart, and what’s interesting is like, so it’s got those similarities with Beyonce, but then look at the Moon is also in Scorpio. And Jupiter is also in Libra. So there’s like, a lot of funny parallels actually between Beyonce’s chart and Bette Midler’s chart. And what I find kind of interesting and fascinating by that is just what a varied performer Bette Midler is in terms of covering like, a lot of different areas in terms of like, music, in terms of acting, in terms of theatre and like, performance and a bunch of different things. 

LS: Right. And I’m having trouble finding the note, but you told me a really funny story about how she started out her life as – what was it? Bathhouse Betty? 

CB: Yeah, like — 

LS: Her performing life? 

CB: She caught her first big break performing in bathhouses in like, New York in the 1960s or 1970s, so much so that she like, got the nickname Bathhouse Betty. And I think she made that the title of like, one of her later albums or like, a book or something. 

LS: Which is so funny. I mean, obviously, you know, with the additional 5th house layer of like, you know, the association with sexuality, but it’s also funny to me because, I don’t know. I just first heard her music in the 1980s as kind of like, a middle-of-the-road, you know, top 40 artist singing pop songs, so I was like, surprised but amused by that story. 

CB: Yeah. I mean, my first exposure is like, the movie Hocus Pocus from 1993, which was like, a children’s famous Halloween-type film. So yeah, it is funny sometimes younger people being in later generations once people’s like, images have been sanitized, sometimes like, going back and seeing how they got started and seeing that sometimes there’s like, you know, these other edgier components sometimes to people’s history and people’s story. Like, with Bette Midler performing at these bathhouses, which is such a 5th house thing, and then becoming super famous there as a result of it. Or even like we were talking about Dick Gregory earlier and how by like, the ‘90s and stuff so much of his career was focused on promoting health things, but that he had this much earlier career that was edgier as a comedian and that he was catching his first big break in the Playboy club. 

LS: Right. For sure. Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. So major performer and major entertainer there. 

All right. So moving onto the next one who’s in a similar vein is the birth chart of Dolly Parton, who has Virgo rising and Mercury in Capricorn in the 5th whole sign house along with Venus and the Sun. 

LS: And she’s a super well-known singer and performer. She’s almost like an icon at this point, I would say, with that Ascendant ruler in the 5th with Venus and the Sun. And it’s interesting; she has a couple other 5th house layers, too; I don’t know if you wanna say more about her performing career before I go there, though. 

CB: Go ahead. 

LS: Okay. Well just – so she is also really well-known at this point later in life for a children’s literacy program that she’s promoted where her foundation sends a free book once a month from birth until the age of five to any child who enrolls. And there’s just like, I don’t know, I think almost a million kids that have been in the program. So I really love that piece too. And then she said also at another point that she had struggled with infertility and she never had children of her own, but she said at one point in an interview that she thought that god didn’t want her to have her own children so that all children could be her children. And I really love that for the stellium and Ascendant ruler in the 5th house as well. And it’s — 

CB: Yeah. For this — 

LS: — especially notable because of the malefics opposing it, even though Saturn is ruling the 5th. But Mars and Saturn are opposing it. So she had a constraint on like, her ability to have her own children, but then she still worked within that to like, focus on both performing and children. 

CB: Yeah. It’s one of those classic like, you know, god closes one door and then opens another type scenarios of having that 5th house stellium and influence and emphasis and being into music and stuff and then also caring about children, but with Saturn and Mars opposing that having it being negated basically, especially in a night chart. But then with the benefic Venus there with Jupiter overcoming from Libra in the 2nd house, and even with just Saturn being in the 11th house itself turning the focus towards philanthropy and helping children in general. 

LS: And yeah, speaking of philanthropy – I mean, I do thing it’s Jupiter in the 2nd, but also maybe just the stellium in the 5th, you know, and Ascendant ruler there because of some of the other charts we’ve seen where they’re like, trying to give good things to people or society with the 5th house placements. And yeah, she’s done a bunch of different philanthropic things like, through her foundation. Kind of, yeah, very abundantly so. 

CB: Yeah. Well, that was one of the things that Valens talked about and that I think we mentioned a little bit in the last episode that philanthropy and like, good-doing and things like that are associated with the 5th house. Like, acts of beneficence. And you do see, especially with positive placements there or benefics, people that are big philanthropists. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: So I thought I – at one point, I had like, a section on that, but I think I pulled it out. But yeah, we’ve seen that in a number of these examples so far. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: Let’s see, so what is the… In terms of the summary though, like, Google just says that Dolly Parton is an American singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman and philanthropist who’s had a 60-year career, her music including hits like “Jolene” and albums like Coat of Many Colors and My Tennessee Mountain Home often explore themes of hardship and resilience. Parton’s childhood in Appalachia where music was central to life strongly influenced her songwriting. 

Yeah. All right. So moving on. Another famous musician with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th was Jim Morrison, who was the lead singer of the band The Doors in the 1960s and early 1970s. 

LS: Yeah. So he’s got Saturn ruling the Ascendant there in Gemini in the 5th house in a day chart, along with Mars and Uranus. Yeah. That’s interesting. His musical style was sort of, what is the word? I wanna find a synonym for “edgy,” you know, but something like that with the Mars-Uranus there. 

CB: I’m looking for my — 

LS: Like, rebellious? I know! I’m missing sections too. 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: Maybe — 

CB: I hope we didn’t like, accidentally mess up our document, because we’re missing some notes here, but — 

LS: Can you – is there a “going back to the previous version” thing? 

CB: I mean, not that we can do on the fly right now. So we’ll just — 

LS: Okay. 

CB: — have to wing it, but — 

LS: Okay. 

CB: So with Jim Morrison, one of the things that I thought was really interesting is – so he’s lead singer of The Doors; it was one of the most famous bands, and he was the lead singer in the 1960s and ‘70s. He died early, young, of like, a drug overdose, but there’s been like, some claims about – later on – about paternity claims about whether he… Like, there’s one guy that claims to be his son from a woman, but then the family has never recognized that, and it’s not clear if that’s true or a lot of people have said evidently that it’s maybe not true. But one of his bandmates, the point of this is that one of his bandmates wrote in his autobiography that he thought that Jim Morrison must have been infertile because basically it was like, the 1960s and the ‘70s, and Jim Morrison was like, having sex with so many different people that he said there should be like – the bandmate said there should be lots of like, Jim Morrison’s children running around. And he’s like, the only reason explanation for that, the fact that that doesn’t seem to be the case, is if he was infertile. So I don’t know if that’s true; I don’t know if that’s not true. It’s like, who knows what the actual reality is. But I did think it’s interesting the possibility here if you had somebody whose ruler of the Ascendant is in the 5th house – so Saturn along with Mars and Uranus – and he’s like, you know, part of his life was that he did have sex a lot but with the malefics there if somebody was having a lot of sex but wasn’t fertile and didn’t produce offspring or didn’t produce children. 

LS: Yeah. It is an interesting possibility with both malefics there. I do wonder about the ruler of the 5th in the 12th and there being potential hidden children, but alternatively that could just have pointed to, you know, self-undoing things around over-abundance of pleasure – i.e., the drug use. 

CB: Yeah. Or it’s like, Mercury or the ruler of the 5th house of children is also the ruler of the 8th house of death, and it’s in the 12th house, and that does remind me there is speculation that one of his songs might refer to like, an abortion that might have happened that he might have been involved in one summer, and you know, speculations about whether that’s true or not. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. So that is it for Jim Morrison. Moving on, the next example was Tina Turner. Okay. So Tina Turner has Leo rising and the Sun, Mercury, and Venus in the 5th whole sign house, right? 

LS: Yeah. So and I love that, because the Leo-Sag… I didn’t know a ton of her music, but it was very kind of a similar vibe, I feel like, to Beyonce. Just like, you know, very loud and celebratory of oneself and things like that. And she pretty – I mean, obviously she’s known for her music career. But she pretty famously overcame her – like, it was a bad marriage, right? Like, an abusive marriage? 

CB: Yeah, that was definitely a major thing. 

LS: And like, she’s – I think if I’m remembering the story right, she said she left with like, nothing and the only thing she asked for was to keep her performing name, which is like, the Ascendant ruler in the 5th, which is like — 

CB: Right. 

LS: — what she’s known for. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. That’s really good. 

LS: Names being – yeah, names being part of like, the identity piece of the first house. 

CB: Yeah. And the performance and like, entertainment aspect of that. 

LS: Yeah. Which of course then was really smart, because even though that doesn’t seem like a lot to begin with, like, she did have a major comeback and it was for performing. It was through — 

CB: Right. 

LS: — performing. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. Let’s see, so the Google overview just says that Tina Turner was a singer, songwriter, actress, and author. Dubbed the Queen of Rock and Roll, her vocal prowess, raspy voice, and electrifying stage presence broke the racial barrier in rock music. She’s one of the best selling recording artists of all time with an estimated sales of a hundred million records. 

LS: Wow. 

CB: Yeah. So literally like, one of the best selling recording artists of all time has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. 

LS: Perfect. 

CB: Yeah. I thought that was pretty good. Okay. So moving on. A more recent and contemporary example that came up in my files is The Weeknd, who was born with Cancer rising and the Moon in Scorpio in the 5th house almost exactly conjunct Pluto with both planets at 17 degrees of Scorpio. And like, The Weeknd is like, one of the biggest performers, again, like all-around performers of not just musicians but also somebody who is like, a true entertainer in a broader sense. So the Google version says The Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Makkonen Tesfaye is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and record producer and actor known for his signature alternative R&B sounds and tenor vocal range. He’s credited with pioneering the 2010s R&B wave. The Toronto native first performed publicly at the Mod Club and released a mix tape in 2011. And then he just like, blew up in the mid-2000s with a bunch of hit singles and then, you know, one of the things I thought was really interesting about this example was like, a few years ago, he was involved in the production of this show – I think it was on like, HBO, but it was called The Idol. But it was like, about a singer who was the focal point of the story, but it was like, really highly sexualized and kind of racy show. And he also played a role in it. And it didn’t get like, super good reviews; it was kind of panned at the time for being a little bit too over the top, even in our current day and time, a little too over the top sexually in terms of it, and I don’t think it was renewed past a first season. But it was interesting thinking about that like, Moon conjunct Pluto in Scorpio in that context. 

LS: Yeah, for sure. And it’s interesting to me that the Moon-Pluto conjunction in Scorpio in the 5th, and then that’s ruled by almost exact Mars-Neptune conjunction in Capricorn in the 7th. It’s of course copresent with like, also Uranus and Saturn and Venus, but less closely by degree. And I don’t know, it’s just – and it’s angular, and then the Moon-Pluto has reception then with its ruler, Mars, and yeah. It’s just Mars-Neptune combinations – often one of the best outlets for them are the arts. And so it’s like, but it’s in Capricorn with Saturn in its own sign. So it’s like, a much more grounded, focused, you know, placement for pursuing the arts. 

CB: Yeah. That’s a really interesting point about him having the ruler of the 5th in the 7th of other people and partnership, because he partners with like, a lot of other artists like Ariana Grande, Drake, Travis Scott, and that’s part of how he actually expanded his audience and his sound and blended it with like, pop and R&B and other hip hop artists. 

LS: That makes sense. 

CB: Yeah. So this collaborative element – a collaboration in creating with other people, especially one on one. 

LS: Yeah. I would expect so. I mean, I didn’t know his biography so well, but I would expect so with that huge stellium in the 7th. 

CB: Yeah. All right. And then the last one was Steve Albini, who had Taurus rising and Venus in Virgo in the 5th whole sign house conjunct Pluto and the Lot of Fortune. And the ruler is Mercury, which is in the 3rd house. And Steve Albini was a famous – he was a musician, but he was also really famous as a music producer who produced some of the most famous and some of the most influential albums of the 1990s. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: That’s really good. 

CB: Yeah. So let me read a summary to give an objective standpoint. So it says on Google it just says he was a musician, producer, and recording engineer who played a key role in the development of indie rock in the 1980s. Known as the Dean of Alternative Rock Engineers, Albini recorded thousands of sessions primarily with young bands. He preferred the title Producing Engineer, and viewed his role as documenting a piece of culture in the life’s work of the musicians that he worked with. So he was particularly like, well-known for recording the band In Utero for Nirvana, which was like, their follow-up album after their big breakthrough album, which was Nevermind a few years earlier. 

But anyway, yeah. Legendary producer, and he worked with a bunch of other bands as well. But I thought it was interesting when we’re talking about not just… You know, people that are famous singers or musicians or other thing like that, but sometimes people in a support role that help to sort of act as a midwife to help deliver the creative product of other creatives. 

LS: Nice. Was that like, a deliberate 5th house birth invocation? 

CB: I’m – it’s called alliteration. Well, that, but also it’s in Virgo, which I thought was really interesting, and then the ruler is like, Mercury which is also in Cancer in the 3rd. And there’s just like, this supportive sort of energy there. And like, he did – a few years ago, they were doing a bunch of interviews with him because I think it was like, the 30th anniversary of In Utero, and so he got together with the remaining members of Nirvana and they did interviews about it. But there was some story about how most music producers would take like, a percentage of the sales or something like that, but that he didn’t do that. Like, he set a fixed rate, which was relatively low, and then worked for that. And like, that was it. And it really made the point that he had this whole philosophical thing about it being about the music, I think, and not wanting to like, rip off the creative artists that he was working with or something like that. Like, he seemed very principled about his work with music. 

LS: Yeah. That’s good. I’m sure it doesn’t always go this way, but it’s an interesting thing thinking about the Ascendant ruler being that Venus in Virgo in the 5th and like, wanting to help and maybe being a little more humble about your own role, but then it’s like, conjunct Pluto, which oftentimes can like, you know, I think that was probably an element of the superpowering of his, you know, career working with these other people. But I’ve seen that before sometimes in other people who have personal planets in Virgo but they’re like, the Pluto in Virgo generation; they can become very successful or powerful, but through like, helping other people. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Or playing that sort of support role. 

LS: Yeah. This is also an aside, but like, it’s really notable to see – there were several of these examples we’ve had with Saturn in a night chart, but dignified by sign in the 10th house. And this is like, not a new idea, but it’s just interesting to see, you know, several examples of people being still really successful with their career with that Saturn just getting mitigated by being in its own sign. It’s just like, a helpful note for people who are, you know, worried about their Saturn in a night chart in the 10th, I think, is like, seeing some of these super successful people. 

CB: Right. Yeah, for sure. Well, it’s like, in his case it was that Saturn was ruling the 9th house, and it’s placed in the 10th in a night chart. And I had done a – when I was watching interviews with him a few years ago, I had understand that suddenly where it was something about his personal philosophy. He had a very specific and strong philosophy that informed his career, and there were things where he probably could have been more successful, but he chose not to do certain things or to hold certain things back as a result of his personal philosophy, and like, that’s part of what that placement was about with Saturn in the 10th. But that does speak to your point, though, that sometimes it’s like, a matter of choice and volition or just personal like, philosophy and like, morals. 

LS: Yeah, that’s interesting. 

CB: Let’s see. The last thing – yeah, see, here it is. He refused royalties – this is just from Wikipedia at the end of the introduction. It says, “He refused royalties on albums he worked on, operating fee-only. He founded the Chicago recording studio Electrical Audio in 1997, dedicated to recording a live sound at a cheap price. Noted for his outspoken and blunt opinions, Albini was critical of local punk scenes and the music industry, which he viewed as exploitative of artists. He was an adherent of analog recording and praised the independence in music created by the internet. He was also infamous for authoring transgressive art as a reaction to artistic compromise, which he expressed some regret for in his final years.” 

Yeah, so a lot of that’s speaking to that Saturn ruling the 9th placed in the 10th, but also that Venus-Pluto conjunction there in the 5th house and just his attitude towards creative endeavors. 

LS: Yeah. I can definitely hear those coming out. 

CB: Yeah. All right. So I think that’s good for that section when it comes to musicians and singers and especially entertainers. 

So the final section that I wanted to talk about is for writers and artists and just creatives in general. Like, there’s some overarching category here which really like, most of the last several we’ve been in have essentially fallen in that category – everything after the gaming section have been under the broad archetypal category, I think, of like, creatives or those who create things in the same way that the first section was like, those who create children, and that becomes an expression of them and their body but also their personality and other things like that. There’s been this broader theme of just like, creatives in general. But some specific ones that we wanted to highlight – the first one is Carol Ann Duffy, right? 

LS: Yeah. So she was UK’s Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2019, and she had Virgo rising with Mercury, the Sun, and Venus in the 5th house in Capricorn. And so obviously, just being a Poet Laureate, like, that’s just the creative expression already. But she was also the first woman and the first openly lesbian poet to hold the position. So then there’s an additional 5th house layer on, you know, sort of open sexuality. Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence in accessible language. And I think you noted this about Saturn ruling the 5th in the 3rd, right? 

CB: Yeah. So her 5th house is ruled by Saturn, and that Saturn is placed in the 3rd house of communication. And we see that actually for a number of different writers. Like, our 3rd house section when we get to the ruler of the 5th house in the 3rd house in the next episode is huge. 

LS: We had to actually stop adding people to that house, because there were too many. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and that speaks to something you have noticed and have talked about, which is just there’s some similarities and some overlap between the 3rd and the 5th house. 

LS: There really are. And you know, the astrologer in me wishes there were not, because I would like things to be more clear-cut. But of course there’s always life topics that, you know, can exist in more than one house. But yeah, the 3rd… Yeah, it’s tricky, because it’s like, the 3rd tends to be more like, writers, but it can also be other creative expression because it’s the way you communicate or the medium through which you communicate. So that can turn into like, visual arts or even dance – things like that. But then the 5th seems like, you know, when it’s not one of those other core 5th house topics that we’ve already covered, it’s just like, creative expression more generally. So people who are more drawn to, you know, to the arts in some fashion. Whereas the 3rd isn’t always the arts in terms of how you express yourself. But it sometimes — 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: — can be! 

CB: Yeah. I mean, I think the 3rd house is communication, and the 5th house is creativity or creative expression. And you can see the overlap there where sometimes there can be overlap, but sometimes there can actually be distinctions, even if it’s a subtle one at times. 

LS: Yeah, for sure. But then I think that’s how we end up with like, all these people with the 5th house ruler in the 3rd, and then they’re like, lots of actual creative expression people. 

CB: Yeah. Totally. All right. So yeah, that’s literally the Poet Laureate of the UK for over a decade has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. And then there was – so it’s poetry and creativity in that way, but then also being the first woman and the first openly lesbian poet to hold that position, so that there’s like, a sexuality or sexual orientation component to it as well that’s notable in a historical sense. 

LS: Yeah. And it’s interesting that she wrote about some of those more tough topics with both Mars and Saturn in the 3rd, you know, with Saturn ruling the 5th but Mars in its own sign. 

CB: Yeah. For sure. 

All right, so the next one is Tennessee Williams, who’s a famous playwright that you researched, right? 

LS: I did, and I just need to find him again. 

CB: Yeah. So here’s the chart with Capricorn rising and Saturn is in Taurus in the 5th house conjunct Venus and the North Node and the IC. 

LS: So yeah, his Ascendant ruler is Saturn in Taurus in the 5th. Venus in its own sign of Taurus is applying to conjoin that Saturn within three degrees, which is interesting because it’s, you know, that can be a little bit of a harsh combination. But Venus is actually – since Saturn is the Ascendant ruler, Venus is actually majorly helping out and improving the Ascendant ruler. So I think that’s, you know, with Venus in its own sign and ruling the 5th, that’s part of like, why he was so successful. 

So he was an American playwright and screenwriter. He’s considered to be one of the top three playwrights of the 20th century American drama. So some of his most famous works you probably have heard of – The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Interestingly, a lot of his most acclaimed work has also been adapted for film. So probably some of you have seen it more through the movie versions. And even though he’s really known for being a playwright, he also wrote lots of other things – short stories, poetry, essays, and a volume of memoirs. And I think that’s interesting too because I feel like maybe that’s a little bit of the shade of subtly of the 5th house of like, just a variety of creative output, you know? He wasn’t just like, doing one thing. And he was in 1979, four years before his death, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. So just saying those things, if you’re not as familiar with him, just like, he was a really notable playwright and it’s shown by that combo in the 5th house ruling the Ascendant. And one thing I thought when I was looking at that combo, because I don’t know all of his plays, but I was like, did he have like, a lot of focus on, you know, the search for love but also constraints on that or difficulty in connecting? And it’s like, yes, he did! So a common theme in his plays is desire versus loneliness or desire versus societal constraint, which you can really hear the Venus and Saturn there together. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. 

LS: His IC’s also there in Taurus, so ruled by that Venus and copresent with both. And he also had a lot of focus in at least a fair number of the works on family and the like, conflicts in family or difficulty in connecting with family, and yeah. I think that’s also made evident with the Venus-Saturn with the IC. 

CB: Yeah. I like that – when that IC imports those 4th house significations of family into the 5th house of creativity. 

Okay. Let’s see, so moving onto the next example is one we already mentioned earlier, which is the writer William S. Burroughs, who had Aquarius rising and Saturn in Gemini in the 5th whole sign house, along with the IC, the Moon, the Lot of Fortune, and Pluto in the 5th house. And then it was in a mutual reception with Mercury, which is in Aquarius in the first house along with the Sun, Venus, Jupiter and Uranus. And he was a famous writer. So Wikipedia describes him as “an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced both underground and popular culture and literature. He wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories, and four collections of essays.” Yeah. So he was a major literary figure, especially in the mid-20th century. And we talked previous a little bit about how one of the things that he was known for that was unique at the time was that he was a gay man in the 1950s and 1960s, and that his writing sometimes touched upon this in like, a significant way, where sexuality kind of like, played a central and exceptional role in his life and work, and it stood out for its explicitness and for its transgressiveness and for its influence on his literary output, especially just within contextualized in the context of the conservative norms of the times of like, the 1950s like, timeframe. 

LS: For sure. Yeah. And some of his bio, you can really hear the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in the first jumping out, right? The transgressiveness or the, you know, sort of counterculture vibe. But then it’s like, filtered through creative output in the 5th house. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, some of his works – like, some of his contemporaries would like, allude to homosexuality, but Burroughs placed it front and center with these more explicit and unflinching portrayals. And his most famous work was titled Naked Lunch, which is renowned for its graphic and often surreal depictions of sexual acts, which included same-sex encounters. And you know, more recently, we talked about his book Queer, which was written in the early 1950s, which was even more conservative a time, but it wasn’t published until 1985. But that was actually just recently made into a movie last year that was sort of getting some nominations, I think, right? 

LS: Yeah. I don’t remember the specifics, but Daniel Craig was really critically written about in a positive way for really critical claim for his role in that movie. 

CB: Right. So — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: — it was kind of the theme of the movie was basically this like, really direct and poignant exploration of his own unrequited love for another man. So I thought it was interesting that that’s like, the theme of like, Saturn ruling the Ascendant in the 5th house and like, thinking about like, unrequited love from another man of the same sex that’s like, not reciprocated. 

LS: Right. 

CB: It’s like — 

LS: Sure. 

CB: — when we were talking about those inversion situations of like, other scenarios of like, when something – there’s a positive affirmation through like, a benefic of something, the benefic’s saying yes to something. But then realizing you have to have an inversion scenario sometimes when a malefic might push you in a direction of wanting something but then it’s saying “no” to that or rejecting it for some reason. 

LS: Yeah. We were watching a documentary about his life, and there were some people around him who were saying that he just seemed really lonely, just like, as a person. And I thought – and the way they were describing it really had very clear echoes of both that Aquarius stellium in the first, and the Saturn in the 5th. But especially, you know, I think that Moon-Saturn really close applying conjunction is doing a lot here. 

CB: One of the things that he was known for – I’m trying to remember what it was applied, but I think it was called the cut-up technique? 

LS: Oh yeah. Yeah. Something like that. 

CB: Where it was like, it was a technique where a text is like, written and then you like, cut it up or you cut it in half and then rearrange it. And it creates a new text which then produces something new and unexpected and interesting. And this is one of the techniques that he’s said to have like, kind of partially pioneered in the 1950s. 

LS: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. 

CB: All right, so let’s move onto the next – Yoko Ono has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. So Yoko Ono was born with Libra rising and Venus in Aquarius in the 5th whole sign house, along with Saturn and the Sun in a night chart. And I always thought this was like, really interesting, because Yoko Ono is an artist, and a peace activist, but is especially associated with like, performance art, especially early on. So let me give a – here’s a description just from YouTube summary, which says, 

“Yoko Ono’s a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, filmmaker, and peace activist. A prominent figure in the Fluxus movement and avant garde art scene, Ono’s work blends visual and performing arts to explore themes of feminism, violence, joy, and human resilience. Classically trained in piano and voice, Ono was one of the first women admitted to the Gakushuin University’s philosophy program in Tokyo.” 

LS: Yeah. She’s really like, known as like, a performance artist, sort of avant garde. Interestingly as you were just talking about the last person, it says one of her most famous early pieces is called Cut Piece, where she invited the audience to cut away her clothing, which I think just speaks to that like, Venus-Saturn in Aquarius. It’s just like, offbeat, right? 

CB: Yeah. It’s like, offbeat, but also it’s like, a night chart. And so you get like, the most positive planet in the 5th house of creativity and you get the most challenging or negative planet in the 5th house of creativity. And it’s really interesting, because her work – her art, especially – is sometimes very divisive in terms of its like, some people really vibe with it and some people really don’t. And that’s in some ways that’s like, part of her thing in terms of like, there’s an element there that is similar with Burroughs who had Saturn in the 5th house as well, which is that there can be this off-puttingness to it some ways of doing something discordant that’s beautiful I think is part of like, a Saturn in the 5th house thing that comes up of like, something that other people might think is not pretty or symmetrical, or might think is ugly. But viewing it as beautiful or viewing it as a form of art. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It’s interesting looking at her chart. You know, Venus as the Ascendant ruler is actually moving away from Saturn, even though they’re still close. And then the Moon in particular, though, is like, it’s sextile that Saturn-Venus conjunction, but it’s separating from Saturn and it’s applying to Venus. And I think that must have been part of, you know, the success that she did have, because there was like, a little bit like, pushing more towards the Venus. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely, with that Moon that’s ruling the 10th in the 3rd house of communication and then connecting those two planets that are otherwise separating. And you know, so much of her identity got tied in also with her partner when she got together with John Lennon and married John Lennon. And then that was a piece actually I thought was really interesting is then, you know, they become very much focused on peace activism, which is an interesting additional modification of like, the 5th house that we haven’t seen but that makes sense in terms of Venus being placed there. And like, they famously for like, their honeymoon did this famous staging of bed-ins for peace to protest the Vietnam War. 

LS: Yeah, that’s really funny. It’s a very like, 5th house thing to do. 

CB: Yeah. To like, do a performance art piece in order to promote peace with like, this Venus in Aquarius in the 5th house. 

LS: Right. But it’s like, a performance art piece about like, being in bed after their wedding — 

CB: Right. 

LS: — right? 

CB: Yeah. Totally. Exactly. And inviting all of the, you know, journalists in and photographers and everything. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. Okay, so there’s a bunch of other things in terms of her being a musician and very broadly in a bunch of different areas, but the art piece stands out especially. There was a thing that gets talked about a lot about her having a difficult – she had a son with John Lennon, who grew up to be a musician, but then John Lennon’s other son from his previous marriage she famously for a long time had a difficult relationship with. And he ended up being left out of his father’s will so that the son and Yoko Ono battled in court for years, and there was some story at one point of like, him having to buy back through like, an auction or something some personal letters that John Lennon had written to him as a child that she – instead of giving to him – like, had put up for auction or something like that. And I don’t know all the details, but it’s like, one of those things that’s talked about a lot. And I think they later in life patched up that relationship possibly, but in the 1990s, there was a lot of famous court battles. And I thought it spoke to a little bit that Venus-Saturn conjunction of just like, some very positive things, but also some challenges when it comes to the topic of children. 

LS: Yeah, for sure. It’s not the case this will be true for everyone with Saturn in the 5th, but frequently enough with people with Saturn in the 5th have, you know, like, conflicts or some sort of challenging thing around the topic of children – their children, having children, whatever. 

CB: Right. Or Valens, for example, famously when he goes through the significations of Saturn, he says one of the things it signifies is other people’s children, which I always thought was like, a weird, abstract signification, but sometimes it actually comes up very literally. Like, in her instance, it’s like, she’s having court battles with her dead spouse’s son from like, a former marriage. 

LS: Right. 

CB: All right. Shall we move on? 

LS: Yes. 

CB: Charles Bukowski, who was a famous writer in the 20th century, and he was born with Taurus rising and Venus in Virgo conjunct Saturn along with the Moon in the 5th whole sign house. So I thought it was interesting, because it gives us then somewhat a point of comparison with Yoko Ono, with the same like, Venus-Saturn conjunction but in a different sign. And again, just a summary from Google to get an objective standpoint where it says that he was “a German-American writer known for his gritty, unflinching portrayals of American life. His writing style often called ‘dirty realism’ is characterized by its raw language, bleak humor, and focus on the marginalized and the mundane. His work often explores themes of poverty, alcoholism, and working class struggles. Bukowski’s poems and stories reject traditional forms, instead embracing a conversational style.” So it’s like, you get again with Saturn it has this element of like, rejecting or of negating things. And sometimes there can be like, this rebellious element to that in a way, or that can be like, a form of rebellion, of finding something beautiful in something that other people find ugly or disgusting or negative. 

LS: Yeah. I think that’s a perfect encapsulation of that, that combo. And it’s interesting comparison to both, actually, Yoko Ono and Tennesee Williams; all three of them have Venus-Saturn in the 5th. But Yoko Ono had Venus separating from Saturn, and Tenessee Williams had Venus applying, but Venus really well-dignified in its own sign in a night chart. So this is like, the only one where Venus is applying to Saturn and Venus doesn’t have any particularly positive dignity. And I think that’s why this one has a little bit of a darker coloration in terms of the style of his writing and the content. 

CB: Right. Absolutely. Yeah, that makes sense. 

An astrologer named Clarisse Monahan wrote in a description of him for me and his 5th house placement that I wanted to read. So this is part of what she wrote; this is just a paragraph from it where it says, 

“Bukowski’s notorious lifestyle, alcoholism, womanizing, and crude self-expression further reflects his 5th house influences of pleasure and creativity mixed with Saturn’s energy. His pursuit of indulgence often turned self-destructive, with drinking serving as an escape from deep emotional pain. His unapologetically raw and honest writing style stripped of Venusian charm was a direct result of Venus’s conjunction with Saturn, leaving his art rough-edged and anti-conformist.” 

And one of the things I found interesting – I was reading his Wikipedia biography because I was not super familiar with his life. But it said that his gravestone reads, “Don’t try,” which is a phrase that he used in one of his poems advising aspiring writers and poets about inspiration and creativity. And what I was finding about this is that it said that phrase “don’t try” means that art, whether it’s poetry, a novel, or a painting, should not be forced, and that if you have to try to create it, it’s not ready to come out. So the impulse to create should be so powerful and so natural that it feels less like a deliberate effort and more like an unavoidable act like breathing or sneezing. So there’s this quote from him where he says, 

“Somebody asked me what do you do? How do you write? How do you create? And he responded, ‘You don’t.’ I told them you don’t try. That’s very important – not to try. Either for Cadillacs, creation, or immortality. You wait. And if nothing happens, you wait some more. It’s like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you, and then when it gets close enough, you reach out and slap it and kill it, or if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it.” 

So it’s like, what he’s trying to say is that the work should come from an authentic, organic place, and it’s about waiting for inspiration and the story or the poem to demand to be written. And if you’re straining to come up with an idea or forcing words onto a page simply for the sake of being a writer or for a paycheck, then the result will be contrived and dishonest. So it was like, tied in with this like, rejection of ambition and rejection of writing for external validations like fame, money, or respect, because he believed that if you’re writing with the goal of becoming a great author, then you’ve already lost. And if the focus is on the ambition rather than the art, then it just doesn’t work out, because the only reason to write in his view is because you have something inside you that absolutely must be said. And I thought that was just a beautiful and interesting expression of having the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house and somebody truly speaking about what it’s like to be a creative. And at least in his view, what that felt like, or what the highest form of that was to him. 

LS: Yeah. Definitely. This is more of a rulership thing, but he also had the ruler of the 5th in the 4th, and he apparently often spoke of Los Angeles, his home, as his favorite subject, which is a great like, ruler of the 5th in the 4th. It was similar to Joe Rogan’s connection there. 

CB: Yeah. So I found this interview from 1974 where he said, “You live in a town all your life, and you get to know every person on the street corner, and half of them you have already messed around with. You’ve got the layout of the whole land. You have a picture of where you are. Since I was raised in LA, I’ve always had the geographical and spiritual feeling of being here. I’ve had time to learn this city. I can’t see any other place than LA.” 

So it’s like, for him with the ruler of the 5th house being Mercury in Leo in the 4th whole sign house, like, the city was part of his creativity and it was wrapped up in some of his creative works and yeah, I was surprised that it was an interesting parallel with Joe Rogan who also had the same rising sign and had Virgo on the 5th house and then had Mercury, the ruler of the 5th, in the 4th. And it’s like, on the one hand, earlier in his career as a comedian, Los Angeles and the LA comedy scene was very important to him, and then now he’s like, moved and is attempting to create a new comedy scene in Austin. 

LS: Right. 

CB: Yeah. So archetypal parallels there which are very important when looking at the rulers of the houses. And we will see many, many more of in the next episode when we talk about the rulers of the houses. 

LS: Many. 

CB: Many! Okay. All right. So speaking of rulers of the houses, you have one that is not a ruler of the Ascendant house, but is a good demonstration of the rulers of two houses being connected with the ruler of the Ascendant. 

LS: Yeah. I’m gonna call Frida Kahlo an honorary Ascendant ruler in the 5th even though she does not have that. So what she does have is the Ascendant ruler, which is the Sun, in Cancer in the 12th applying to conjoin the ruler of the 5th, Jupiter exalted in Cancer. So that’s like, an indirect Ascendant ruler in the 5th, I feel like. Anyway, she’ll be an honorary one. She was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self portraits, and works inspired by Mexico. And she has a fairly famous story where she had a major bus accident that left her with terrible injuries and lifelong chronic pain. And she had actually wanted to aspire to go to med school before that, but because she was confined to her bed for three months following the accident, during that recovery she returned to her childhood interest in art and she started to paint. And that’s how she became an artist. So you obviously can hear a very large 12th house component, which isn’t surprising given that there’s a stellium in the 12th there. But why I thought it was an interesting almost, you know, like, honorary Ascendant ruler 5th example is not only was she known for lots of creative output, but she did a lot of self-portraits, which is a very like, Ascendant ruler first house thing, right? It’s like, combining art with like, yourself. Yeah. So anyway, I really like that example. 

CB: Yeah. I mean, having the ruler of the 5th house be Jupiter exalted in a day chart in the 12th house, and how she’s become one of the most eminent and like, famous artists and painters at this point of all time, but that a lot of the focus or the subject of her paintings was her suffering in different ways as a result of the chronic health issues that she struggled with. And so you get that 12th house component where the ruler of the 5th house is expressing itself creatively and artistically in a very high fashion with Jupiter in its exaltation, but it’s expressing itself in talking about very difficult things. 

LS: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, why she still became so prominent compared to I guess say the average person with a 12th house stellium is, you know, it was both the exalted Jupiter ruling the 5th house of creative output, but that’s also actually mitigated. It’s sextile the Midheaven within three degrees. So even though it’s in the 12th house, it’s being brought to greater prominence as well as excellence. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and also the ruler of the 12th is the Moon, which is also exalted itself in the 10th house. So it’s like — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: — she has the ruler of the 12th house of chronic health conditions and suffering to some extent in the 10th house of career, exalted and raised up to the highest position. 

LS: Right. Yeah. But you know, yeah. So Ascendant ruler applying to conjoin 5th house ruler, and she was, you know, known as a great artist. 

CB: Yeah. For sure. Great example. All right, so we have only two examples left to wrap this up, and the first one is – here’s the chart of the first one, which is Audre Lorde. 

LS: So Audre Lorde has Venus ruling the Ascendant placed in the 5th with Saturn and the Sun in a night chart. Yeah, so Libra rising, and then Venus, Saturn, the Sun in Aquarius in the 5th house. And she was a writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet, and civil rights activist, and she was self-described Black lesbian feminist socialist mother warrior poet who dedicated her life and talents to confronting different forms of injustice. She also wrote as an openly queer woman before this was more common. And so a lot of her work was her poetry, even though she did lots of different things. But she expressed her, you know, her philosophical ideals like, through her writing. And one of the things that I love the most – this is only one thing you could say about her work, but one of the things that I love the most about her 5th house stellium here and the Ascendant ruler there, which we’ll see in this and the next example, is sort of conceptualizing a 5th house topic in that those are in air signs. And her conception of “the erotic” like in her work The Uses of the Erotic is really interesting in terms of how she’s taking a 5th house topic that can be a personal thing but really broadening it to like, a societal thing and an idea. So there’s this great quote I found – there’s a couple. The first one says, 

“The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros – the personification of love in all its aspects, born of chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and the use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.” 

And so you can hear those 5th house themes come out, right? 

CB: Yeah, for sure. 

LS: Yeah. So just that she used the sense of the erotic to be not just sexual, but a sort of a creative life force which is like, the 5th house more broadly. And she also wrote, 

“This is one reason why the erotic is so feared and so often relegated to the bedroom alone when it is recognized at all. For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.” 

And I think you can hear, you know, just her focus on the creative power of eros more broadly conceptualized as like, a sense of joy and you know, kind of like we were talking about, but in a different way with some people who are focused on like, something that could be a hobby but they made it into a career because their Ascendant ruler is focused on the 5th house. Kind of what she was saying was like, joy is really important. And this like, creative power within us is really important, and we can broaden that to like, lead our lives via that lens. 

CB: Yeah. Like, literally the word “joy” kept coming up over and over again in a number of different instances. Like, there was some DJ that I found – I don’t know if you remember his name, but I had it at one point in the notes, and I took him out, but it was something like, it was expressing how important the concept of joy is and putting that in your work at this point in time. And he has like, the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. Or that — 

LS: Yeah.

CB: — Jake Gyllenhaal earlier when part of his 5th house-3rd house mutual reception was being inspired at the joy that he saw his sister have in acting and really embracing that, and that that became a major motivation for him – the joy in that. 

LS: Yeah. For sure. And it’s, yeah, so it does keep coming up. And it’s like, for someone else who did not have the Ascendant ruler or stellium in the 5th house, maybe that wouldn’t be like, a major orientation towards their life, you know? But here, she’s saying this can actually be the focus through which we decide anything else in our lives. Like, does it bring joy? Does it express our creative power? And that makes so much sense with her placements there. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

I found a quote; it’s from a DJ named Calvin Harris, and he said – has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th – and it said, 

“Making music that comes from a place of positivity and hope is more important than ever, and I’m just so happy that this is resonating with so many people.” 

I kept seeing things like that, of people speaking to some of those core themes like you’re talking about coming from the 5th house. 

LS: Yeah. So you know, she wrote a whole bunch of different things, but I just – that’s one of the things that she’s known for, and I thought it fit the theme perfectly. 

CB: Yeah, because that was really a core signification of Venus, like, going back very early that Valens mentioned that idea of eros. 

LS: Exactly. 

CB: Yeah. Brilliant. All right. And that takes us to our final example, where there’s some overlaps, which is the birth chart of bell hooks. 

LS: Okay, so bell hooks has kind of a similar chart. She’s got her Ascendant – so she’s Gemini rising, Ascendant ruler is Mercury in Libra in the 5th along with the Sun, Saturn, Neptune, and Venus. Venus in its own sign and ruling that whole stellium in the 5th. So she’s got kind of like, half her chart in the 5th house, which includes the Ascendant ruler. 

So she was an acclaimed intellectual feminist theorist, cultural critic, artist, and writer. And she authored over three dozen books and published works that span several genres, including cultural criticism, personal memoirs, poetry collections, and children’s books. I like that there’s children’s books in there as a 5th house thing. But just the prolificness of, you know, the 5th house placements sometimes just really comes out of like, people who like to create, and they create a number of works. So she had lots of them. And her writings cover the topics of gender, race, class, spirituality, teaching, and the significance of media in contemporary culture. And later in life, she actually had a focus on the topic of love. So she wrote a bunch of sort of like, more academic or critical theory things with Saturn exalted in the 5th and ruling the 9th house and ruling the Midheaven, so she had an academic career. She was teaching, but she was also writing lots. And later on, it seemed like in her life, she wrote it was a trilogy, right, of books about love? 

CB: Yeah. At least three books that were specifically talking about the topic of love. 

LS: Yeah. And so I thought it was similar to, you know, the Uses of the Erotic example with Audre Lorde, because here she also has a stellium in an air sign in the 5th house. And she’s conceptualizing a topic that’s in the 5th house that’s usually thought of as more personal, the idea of love, but she’s broadening it to be like, you know, a way through which to improve society basically. And that love was not just this narrowly confined like, personal, one-on-one relationship thing, but it was actually much broader and could be applied to community and was essential in order to make society better and not domination-based. 

CB: Yeah. I was really impressed by that, because it seems like she went through – she had different stages, and that Saturn spoke loudly where sometimes she was like, earlier in her career, she was doing things like critiquing art as part of contemporary culture and making social commentary and things like that. But then, yeah, she published that book All About Love: New Visions in the late 1990s, and it seemed like that started this like, era towards later in her life or towards the end of her career where she thought that that was something that could change society and that she had a real message with that that she carried across at least three different books, but even into some of the later writings beyond that as well. 

LS: Yeah. So I really like this pairing of charts, because they were like, taking a 5th house topic and making it like, of societal import and like, bigger than we usually think of, which is just perfect with those air placements there. I also really love this Libra stellium and how it was expressed in the 5th house because she was, you know, in congruence, of course, with her ideas about love, she was also like, you know, she’s like, I can talk about this topic; I can talk about this topic. Maybe we don’t have this in common, but we’ll have something else in common. She was like, very about bridging people and things together that could be otherwise seen as disparate. 

CB: Right. Yeah, with having especially like, Venus and Saturn both there and having both sides of that, but also the community element, which I thought was interesting, because Valens in his brief like, five significations of the 5th house, he mentions friends, but then he mentions this other word that means like, partnership or association or possibly something like community, which seems a little weird but then you think about how the 5th house is opposite the 11th house of friends and groups. And that there often is this interplay between two houses that are in opposition where they share something in common. And so when she has this entire like, chapter talking about love and community and the importance of that in her book, I thought it was really interesting and I thought there might be a connection there. 

LS: Right. Yeah, for sure. 

She also – one thing I also love about the Saturn piece in particular in Libra there is it wasn’t just love as like, a “you know, we all just need to love each other.” It was like, systematized. And so she talked about it having like, core specific components – that love wasn’t just a feeling, but it was like, intentional actions and choices, including care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, trust, and open communication. And so I just love that too that it was like, that she was like, trying to systematize like, what exactly love was comprised of. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, and I had done a quote from her that I thought spoke to the 3rd house in the 3rd house episode from her book All About Love, but it was that – to bring in this community theme, which is also connected with the 3rd, but – she said, 

“We are all born into the world of community. Rarely if ever does a child come into the world in isolation with only one or two onlookers. Children are born into a world surrounded by possibility of communities – family, doctors, nurses, midwives, and even admiring strangers compose this field of connections, some more intimate than others.” 

And that theme of community just being tied into love and the idea that the family is just tied to the nuclear family unit she saw as being like, a core issue in society and that instead we needed to return to a broader sense of community and the interconnectedness between individuals and that love is like, part of the thing that connects all of those things. 

LS: Yeah. Definitely. 

CB: Is there anything else that you wanted to mention in connection with this? 

LS: I mean, there are other things we can say about her work, but yeah. I just really like that as like, a particular example of like, her conceptualizing love as a societal force for good, and that that was like, a counterpart to all the things that she was deconstructing earlier in terms of the things that were wrong with society. And then she was like, moving to like, what can make this right. I thought that was like, this 5th house stellium of love. 

CB: Right. Yeah. For sure. And that she believed in like, a transformative approach to love, that it had the power to change society for the better if we could re-look at it and reconceptualize what it is. And then that became I think her most popular book at this point, and it became a New York Times bestseller. And it’s amazing just that it goes back to, yeah, having that in the 5th house and then having that be some of the earlier core significations of the 5th house of love that sounds so abstract and yet sometimes can show up in very literal and important ways in people’s lives. 

LS: Yeah. For sure. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. All right, cool. Well, I think then we’ve learned a lot today, and that’s a nice way of like, bringing things around sort of like, full circle, especially in thinking about Venus as having her joy in the 5th house and informing some of the significations of the 5th house and some of the different things that we’ve seen as a running theme throughout some of the different examples that we’ve used all of today. 

LS: Yeah. I love the breadth of different ways that these people were expressing their 5th houses but that you can still bring them all back to this core sort of shortlist of significations. 

CB: Right. Yeah. So what were our core significations? We had in just our very short list at the very beginning of all of this like, basic significations like children, good fortune, pleasure and enjoyment, sex and sexuality, and creativity. And even though that seems like a very short list of significations that are a little bit abstract, like, when you start looking at it in the charts of people, you realize all of the different possible individual manifestations of that can actually get quite complex and quite detailed once you really get into it. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. No two charts are the same, although sometimes they rhyme, as we saw with a few of the creatives’ charts. But yeah, when you get into all the details of any individual birth chart, you’re gonna just see lots of different specific interesting manifestations. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I love that you can see the archetypal similarity between certain charts where you have the same echo of the same archetype coming through. But you can see it get manifested in sometimes slightly and sometimes like, majorly different ways, depending on other factors in the chart, depending on the person’s like, circumstances or time period or cultural context or other things like that. 

LS: Yeah, I really like those three charts that we had with Venus-Saturn in the 5th, just because you could see that there were major similarities and also some differences in how those were expressed depending on the details. 

CB: Yeah. I started – one thing that was unique is I started doing a whole thing at one point during the research phase of looking at planetary combinations in houses. And when I started doing that, I was getting very distinctive differences between the placements that was like, getting even more specific when you looked at certain combinations recurring in people’s charts, especially extremely different planetary pairings. So you know, we’ll have to see how we feel, but maybe – I know you originally liked the planets section that we did in like the early episodes that we cut in like, the last few episodes where we just started focusing on planets in houses. But we’ll have to see if we wanna revisit that at some point in the future. 

LS: Yeah. I do like the planets in houses section, although then it would be getting on to like, four episodes or more of these things. 

CB: Right. 

LS: Just on one house! 

CB: Of the 5th house. Yeah. Well, we’ll have to see what people think and if they want more after we finish the main three-part series at the end of the next episode. 

So this was the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house, and then in the next episode we have lined up at this point, we’re going to look at the ruler of the Ascendant when it’s in each of the 12 houses and how that can connect topics between different parts of the chart and blend them together or create a strong linkage between two otherwise completely different areas of the life. And we’re already seen a bunch of that, because we’ve given a bunch of examples already where we’ve kind of spoiled some examples. But when we get into the full episode, you’ll see how some of the delineations can get even more detailed when the 5th house is imported into other areas of the life in very interesting and very unique ways. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: All right. 

LS: Yeah. We wanted to also thank people for – especially patrons – for hanging on until we got this out. There were some delays in getting to the 5th house, and then more recently, speaking of the 5th house, someone here has the IC in the 5th house, and when you do that, you import home and family things into the 5th house, and Uranus just stationed there, and our condo just flooded immediately before us recording these. 

CB: Right. 

LS: So yeah. We appreciate people hanging in there. 

CB: Yeah. And you were getting better after recovering from surgery last month and dealing with major, major health issues over the past few months. And — 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. That was a big thing. And then we finally were like, okay, it’s time to do the 5th house episode, but then of course it’s eclipse season this month. So we had told people on our electional astrology podcast is like, you can try to do stuff during eclipse season, but you just have to be prepared to hold on tight, because there’s gonna be all sorts of chaos and other stuff swirling around you that you’ll have to persevere and like, navigate through. And ironically, like we said that, and then we ourselves had our place flooded in the middle of getting ready to record this episode. And nonetheless, we like, so far have gotten through two-thirds of it now as of tonight despite all sorts of equipment and stuff lying around and the floors being pulled up. But it was a good example of like, eclipses. So we recorded this one – what is it? Today is September 13th, 2025, and we started with – what rising sign did we use? 

LS: Sagittarius rising. 

CB: Sag rising, okay, yeah yeah. Because that was just the best, like, only acceptable rising sign like, earlier in the afternoon. 

LS: Yeah. So we’ve got, yeah, all sorts of things strewn about the condo, and that’s fun. And you know, it’s funny, because doing elections during eclipse season, we do always say that thing. But it’s not the case that each and every time you personally will be hit by those eclipses. Sometimes there’ll just be like, more chaos than usual around you, but like, sometimes you’re just like, front and center, and this was one of those. 

CB: Yeah. Totally. But nonetheless, yeah, so this is Uranus stationing in my 5th house and on my IC, and then the Moon was moving through Gemini and through the 5th house today. But we did the 5th house episode; we’re two-thirds of the way through. So good job. Thanks for doing this with me; I appreciate it. I appreciate all your research. 

LS: Yeah. It’s been fun to do and research with you; you’ve been very immersed in 5th house land. Yeah. So I’m excited to share the rest of what we’ve done pretty soon with the third episode. 

CB: Definitely. Awesome. All right. And thanks again to our researchers who helped with this who sent in a lot of research late last year that we only got to and started using now, including Orla, Lindsey Turner, and Camille Michelle Gray. And also thanks to all the patrons who funded this research and made this possible for us to spend as much time as we did researching this episode. We’ll be releasing our show notes, which is our research notes, to patrons exclusively, and I’ll also be doing a bonus episode I think just for patrons as part of The Secret Astrology Podcast, which is available through our page on Patreon.com. 

So otherwise, I think that’s it for this episode. So thanks everyone for watching or listening, and we’ll see you again next time. 

LS: See you next time! 

[END CREDITS]

CB: If you’re a fan of the podcast and you’d like to find a way to help support my research, then consider becoming a patron through my page on Patreon.com. In exchange, you’ll get access to subscriber benefits such as early access to new episodes, the ability to attend live recordings, the monthly electional astrology podcast, an exclusive podcast series called The Secret Astrology Podcast that’s only available to patrons, or you can even get your name listed in the credits. For more information, go to Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.

Special thanks to patrons on my Producers tier, including patrons Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Issa Sabah, Jeanne Marie Kaplan, Melissa DeLano, Sonny Bazbaz, Kwatsi Alibaruho, Annie Newman, Ginger Sadlier, Berlynn West, and Nicki Crawford.

People often ask me if I’m available for consultations, but unfortunately I’m not right now because the podcast takes up so much of my time. However, I did create a consultations page on The Astrology Podcast website that has a list of astrologers that I recommend for astrological consultations. You can find that at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Consultations.

The astrology software we use here on the podcast is called Solar Fire for Windows, which is astrology software for the PC. You can get a 15% discount by using the promo code ‘AP15’ at the website Alabe.com. 

For Mac users, I recommend the software Astro Gold for Mac OS, which is astrology software for the Mac computer made by the creators of Solar Fire for the PC. You can get a 15% discount with the promo code ‘ASTROPODCAST15’ through their website at AstroGold.io.

If you’re really looking to deepen your studies of astrology, then I would recommend signing up for my Hellenistic Astrology course, which is an online course in ancient astrology where I take people from basic concepts up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. There’s over a hundred hours of video lectures, plus monthly webinars and Q&A sessions. And then at the end of the course, you get a certificate of completion saying that you studied with me if you pass the final written test. Find out more information at TheAstrologySchool.com. 

Finally, shoutout to our sponsor for this episode, which is the United Astrology Conference, which is happening September 3rd through the 9th, 2026, in Chicago. Find out more information at UACAstrology.com.