The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 506, titled:

The Fifth House in Astrology: Significations

With Chris Brennan and Leisa Schaim

Episode originally released on September 15, 2025

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2025/10/28/the-fifth-house-in-astrology-significations/

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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. In this episode, Leisa Schaim is joining me, and we’re gonna be talking about the meaning and the significations of the 5th house in astrology. So hey, Leisa; thanks for joining me. 

LEISA SCHAIM: Hey Chris. Happy to be here. 

CB: All right. So we have done a whole research project over the past few weeks and really going back to late last year on the significations of the 5th house. And this is a continuation of my series where I do a deep dive into the meaning of each of the 12 houses, and we’ve done four of these installments so far, and this will be the 5th instalment. So the last one you joined me for was, I think, the 3rd house, right? 

LS: The last main one. And then I did a little like, hour-long section, I think, in the 4th house as a special — 

CB: Right. 

LS: — guest cameo. 

CB: Yeah, you cameoed in the 4th house episode with me and Nick. Nice. All right. Well, this one in order to make things a little bit more digestible, the current plan is to break it up into three parts. So in this first part, we’re gonna do a detailed discussion and overview of the significations of the 5th house from a traditional standpoint, but also talking about and incorporating some of the things that we’ve learned from doing a lot of empirical chart research and looking at hundreds of charts over the past several months. And then in part two of this series, the next episode we’ll be looking at the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house, really getting into a bunch of example charts and starting to demonstrate the technique in practice and an empirical understanding of the 5th house. And then finally in part three, we’re gonna look at the ruler of the 5th house in each of the 12 houses. But I thought it would be good to start off this first part with an extended discussion about the different meanings and significations to get kind of a broad overview of that house to start with. 

LS: So we’ll be talking about the topics today that are contained in the 5th house and are signified by the 5th house, but we’re almost ready to do the other two. We’re just breaking it up for the sake of recording time. 

CB: Yeah, breaking things up to make it – instead of trying to do the last ones we’ve tried to like, do significations really quickly and then jam in like, the ruler of the Ascendant. But I think it makes more sense to let the significations breathe. 

All right, so let’s move on. So other preliminary stuff – there’s gonna be some bonus material for patrons, so this work is funded by patrons so I could do all this research that we did over the past several months looking into this. I’m gonna release this for free, this podcast, obviously, even though it’s like a detailed workshop on the houses. But patrons get early access to each of these episodes, as well as access to an extensive PDF that contains all of our research notes that went into this discussion. 

Finally, I’m also gonna do a bonus episode for some patrons that have access to a series that we do called The Secret Astrology Podcast where I’ll go into some additional chart examples that we didn’t get into in this series. So if you wanna get access to that, just go to Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast. 

All right. So let’s get into it, and let’s talk about the 5th house and the significations of the 5th house, starting with just a basic overview of some of the technical specs of the 5th house. 

So in whole sign houses, the 5th house is the 5th sign relative to the rising sign. So you just establish what the rising sign is or the sign that the Ascendant is located in, and then you count five signs forward, and that brings you to the 5th house. So that’s how we define it within the context of whole sign houses. In quadrant houses, the 5th house is the succedent house that follows after the 4th house. So it’s that sector of the chart that follows after – in quadrant houses – the 4th house, which is the IC and the sector that follows that. And then the 5th house is what comes after that in terms of those quadrants. So that idea of that which follows is gonna become core to a lot of this discussion. 

So in terms of other meanings or significations, the 5th house is said to be the house where Venus has her joy and rejoices. So in terms of the planetary joys scheme which we first really got into in the 3rd house episode when we talked about the Moon rejoicing in the 3rd house, this is the next house where we have another planet – this time a benefic planet – that rejoices in the 5th house. And as a result of that, a lot of the significations that we’re gonna see eventually being associated with the 5th house are also significations that overlap with Venus. So and we’ll talk about that more in a sec. 

The 5th house in ancient Hellenistic astrology in Greek is called “the place of good fortune” – agathe tuche – in ancient astrology. In terms of significations, the primary significations of the 5th house are children, good fortune, pleasure and enjoyment, sex and sexuality, and creativity. So those are the core meanings that we’re gonna be focusing on today for the most part that run throughout much of the astrological tradition. And we’ll be expanding on those areas, because even though that sounds like kind of a limited set of significations, it’s actually quite a bit once you get into it, I think, right? 

LS: Yeah, definitely. And especially as you look across many, many chart examples and see what the difference is in terms of different people’s set up of their 5th houses and house rulerships and the quality and so forth, yeah, there’s quite a breadth. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

All right, so other things – the 5th house is one of the “good” houses because it aspects the rising sign. And in fact, it doesn’t just aspect the rising sign, but the 5th house is configured to the Ascendant and to the rising sign through the most positive aspect, which is the trine aspect. So this is one of the first times that we get to – one of the truly like, really good or really positive houses, because not only does it have the joy of Venus there, the benefic planet, but also because the 5th house has that very positive flowing trine with the rising sign, which is crucial, which means that it shares a lot of qualities in common with the rising sign, such as the same triplicity element. It has the same gender or positive or negative or whatever you wanna call that in terms of that one. So there’s a lot of overlap between the first house and 5th house. 

LS: Right. Yeah. There’s a lot of congruence there with whatever each individual Ascendant is. 

CB: Right. All right, so the other thing that we need to focus on with the 5th house is that it’s a succedent house. So it represents symbolically that which follows after or that which continues from the 4th house, since that’s what succedent houses indicate. So it either represents that which follows or that which supports what the 4th house itself already signifies. 

So one of the ways that this comes up, then, is because, as we already established in the episode on the 4th house, the 4th house represents the home and especially the family and the parents and your ancestral lineage. Then the 5th house, because it comes after that, represents the continuation of your family or the continuation of your sort of ancestral or family lineage. And the way that that manifests the most concretely is in the signification of children, because children especially in the ancient world represented on the one hand the continuation of your own family lineage but also the merging together of the two families of the two like, parents basically that make the child. 

LS: Right. It’s also sometimes the case that children will support, you know, the family as a whole or you as the Ascendant person in older age. Not all the time, of course, but that’s the general archetypal set up in the chart anyway. 

CB: Yeah. That in most cases in old age, like, your children also support you in some capacity. So that represents both of those meanings then of both the succedent house representing a continuation but also supporting the 5th house in some way in the same way that the 2nd house supports the first house. So the first house represents life, and then the 2nd house supports that, because it’s the material things that are necessary to support your physical and biological life. 

LS: Right. 

CB: All right. So we’ve talked about how it’s one of the most positive houses in the chart because of that trine with the Ascendant, because of having the joy of Venus, also being a succedent house. But one of the things about it being one of the most positive houses in the chart is in addition to its general significations, when other planets are placed there or the rulers of other houses especially are placed there, it indicates good fortune and positive circumstances for those things just in general. That it’s a sort of favorable or auspicious placement for planets in the chart and can improve whatever other planets wanna signify in some instances. 

LS: Right. So just like, you know, sometimes people think about 6th house or the 8th or 12th in terms of there being an issue with, oh, some houses can be bad houses, but in fact, some houses can literally be good houses. Can be more inclined to bring positivity to topics that are connected with it. And the 5th house is definitely one of those. 

CB: Right. So that doesn’t mean that we won’t necessarily see some challenging things that can be associated with the 5th house, of course, if there’s difficult placements there. But as a general rule of thumb, this is something that’ll come up very often when we get to the rulers of the houses that sometimes it can indicate very positive things because that’s part of the basic meaning of the house is it’s one of the places in the chart where you look for literally good fortune. And that’s why it’s named that. 

All right. The other thing that I needed to mention here also is that the 5th house is below the horizon. So anything below the horizon is under the earth, and in the basic ancient traditional distinction between the planetary joys scheme and the names of the houses, the area below the earth is associated with the Moon and with the body and with material things, whereas the area in the top half of the chart is above the horizon in the area of the Sun and the diurnal planets and the spirit and the mind and other things like that. So there’s this, in ancient astrology, this major sort of like, mind-body distinction between the top half of the chart and the bottom half of the chart. And that becomes a really crucial thing. I wrote a paper in like, 2012 about the planetary joys scheme and how it was the source for the assignment of the elements to the signs of the zodiac, and it was the source of some of the significations of the houses, and a bunch of other things. And one of the things that I realized and that I outlined in that paper was that there was this conceptual structure where the houses below the horizon tended to relate to material things and to physical or bodily things. 

So that actually is interesting, because it provides us with our core meaning underlying the 5th house, which is that the 5th house is a good house and since it’s under the earth, it relates to the body and material things. So as a result of that, it’s like, the 5th house is the most primarily focused on good things that relate to the body. So that is the reason why you can then, by extension, have it be associated with let’s say pleasures is one of the traditional significations, but also sex and sexuality, as well as like, fun and enjoyment in general. So one of our core recurring themes for the 5th house is gonna be good things that relate to the body. 

LS: Right. And even just the, you know, huge topic of children are like, you know, things that you’re happy about usually that are coming from the body. So that’s part of why that signification comes in there. 

CB: Right. Yeah, exactly, especially to the extent that children are usually viewed more as, you know, something positive that comes from you that’s like a source of good things in your life for the most part. 

All right. So with all that said, so there’s kind of like, a level in which the 5th house has to be understood on its own terms symbolically outside of the joy of Venus, just using those like, three categories of the fact that it has a trine to the Ascendant, it’s a good house or it’s a succedent house. So trine to the Ascendant making it a good house, succedent meaning it follows after the 4th in the 5th and continues and supports the 4th house significations, and then finally the fact that it’s under the earth so that in some ways it relates more to the material or physical or bodily realm. And those are like, three overriding concepts just on their own conceptually that you could generate a lot of fundamental archetypal significations from, and there’s a certain level where you have to understand the 5th house just from that perspective. 

But that being said, there’s also another level where you can also understand it within the context of it also being the house associated with Venus. And there’s a lot of significations that we can actually derive from Venus that give us a lot of insight into what the 5th house means. But it’s important to hold those two things sort of in your mind at different points that you could generate a lot of these independently of associating Venus with it, but then by associating Venus with it, you can also generate some interesting insights as well. 

LS: Yeah, definitely. And it’s I think the most interesting when there’s an overlap between the two. Like, some of the significations you can kind of see from the joy of Venus plus it being the trine from the Ascendant, because both of those are positive things. 

CB: Yeah, exactly. And the overlap between different ones at different points provides different things. But I wanted to outline that just because sometimes it’s important – like, astrologers at different points in history come up with different conceptual structures that they use to generate significations for the houses. And like, later in the tradition, for example, Abu Mushar tried generating some based on assigning Saturn to the first house and then the rest of the planets in descending order. Or later, modern astrologers from the Renaissance and especially early 20th century forward tried generating significations based on assigning zodiac signs to houses and saying that Aries is the first house and Taurus is the second and so on and so forth. So we’re not using either of those two conceptual structures in this series, because I’m trying to go back to the earliest conceptualizations of the houses and really focus on especially the underlying astronomical motivations of like, where is that house in the sky, and what can we understand about that house just based on its underlying astronomical reality that could be interpreted symbolically through astrology, and to strip away some of those later conceptual structures that astrologers have used. But that being said, there is a conceptual structure very early on in assigning Venus to the 5th house that significations, especially as the tradition progressed, astrologers started drawing on that more and more and more. But underlying some of that, I think there is an underlying reality where the house could be interpreted on its own independently. And when you do that, you do come up with significations that are parallel with Venus, even if they are not always exactly one and the same. 

LS: Yeah. It’s interesting looking through all the charts that we’ve been looking through for the next two episodes how you can really get to almost all of the wellknown significations of the 5th house just through these two concepts. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. 

All right, so I think that’s good conceptually for just outlining our basic things that we’re gonna be generating significations from and understanding the 5th house and then expanding on. So one of the things I wanna do right at the start in order to underlie the Venus having her joy connection is I wanna read this passage from the second century astrologer Vettius Valens from his anthology that he wrote sometime around let’s say 160, 175 CE. And this is early in the first book where he’s outlining the significations of the planets, and he gives the significations of Venus. And this is gonna become very important because as you just said, Leisa, many of these significations for Venus also show up in the 5th house. 

All right, so here’s Valens’s significations. So he says, 

“Venus is desire and love, and signifies mother and nurturer. She brings about priesthoods, directorship of the gymnasium, the wearing of golden crowns, merriment, friendships, companionship, the acquisition of possessions, purchase of ornaments, reconciliations for the good, marriages, refined arts, pleasant sounds, music making, sweet singing, beauty of form, painting, mixing of colors, embroidery, purple dyeing, and perfume making. She rules over both the inventors and also the masters of these professions, as well as artistic or commercial works involving emeralds, precious stones, and ivory working. And she signifies those who spin gold thread, decorate with gold, barbers, those who are lovers of cleanliness, and those who are fond of play. She brings these things to pass within her own bounds or degrees of the zodiacal signs. And she grants the office of market overseer, control over measures and weights, trades, shops, giving and receiving, laughter, rejoicing, adornment, and fishing. And she provides benefits from royal women or relatives and secures a remarkable reputation when Venus cooperates in such matters. Of parts of the body, she rules the neck, face, lips, nose, and the front parts of the foot to the head, and the organs of sexual intercourse. Of the internal parts of the body, she rules the lungs. And Venus is also receptive to another’s nourishment and to pleasure. Of substances, she rules precious stones and multi-colored adornments. Of produce, she rules the olive. She’s of the nocturnal sect, the color white, and exceedingly rich in taste.” 

All right, so those are Valens’s significations of the houses, and this is one of the earliest — 

LS: Of Venus. 

CB: — yeah, of Venus. And this is one of the earliest and most extensive discussion of the meanings of Venus in ancient astrology. So it’s really important and it sets a really good foundation for us when we’re talking about the 5th house, because we’ll start seeing a lot of overlap with these significations. 

LS: Yeah, definitely. 

CB: Are there any worth commenting on, or are there any that you thought were curious or wanted to talk about?

LS: Well, yeah, there’s so many 5th house significations in there, just in the joy of Venus. So things like, you know, music making, sweet singing, painting, mixing of colors – so like, beautiful things. So whether that’s, you know, auditory beautiful things, the pleasure of making music or arts like painting. Just pretty things in general, so beauty, I think. And then — 

CB: Like, beauty and symmetry and also like, creativity which is gonna become one of our core significations I think of the 5th house. 

LS: And then right at the beginning, desire and love, which is like, a core 5th house signification, as well as companionship. So yeah, those sort of like, love or dating significations of the 5th house. And I’m trying to think if there was anything else that stood out to me. Yeah, rejoicing, laughter – basically, like, having fun. 

CB: Yeah. 

LS: Enjoying yourself, which is another core 5th house signification. 

CB: Yeah. Laughter and like, having fun and the idea of joy or that which brings you joy or happiness and makes life happier and worth living is gonna become a very core signification for us. 

LS: Right. Like, even those two themselves. Like, merriment – you know, just like, the things you do to have fun is just like, a huge 5th house topic. And then laughter itself is kind of funny, because we found a whole bunch of charts of comedians with 5th house placements, so yeah. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, so I think that’s pretty good, but that gives you some idea when we say that Venus rejoices in the 5th house or that there’s an association there or when an ancient astrologer said that, that gives you some orientation about some of the things, then, by extension that they might start associating with the 5th house and with Venus. 

So in terms of the 5th house itself, Valens just has a brief passage where he gives a handful of significations for each of the houses. And when he gets to the 5th house, he says, 

“The 5th house is the place of children, friendship, partnership, the freeing of emancipated slaves, and any act of good or beneficence.” 

So right away, the primary signification of the 5th house is children, and that’s always the primary signification throughout every traditional text over the past 2,000 years. But Valens is also giving some other significations like friendship and partnership. And one of the things he says at the end of this paragraph is that each house signifies what it signifies, but then the opposing house – the house in opposition to that – also participates in some of those significations. And so that’s why we see some overlap here, for example, in ancient astrology, between the 5th house and the 11th house where even though the 11th house came to be the primary house associated with friends and alliances and things like that, the 5th house was also given some significations that were in that sort of realm as well. 

LS: Right. Yeah. And you can see the pleasure tie-in as well, because usually people have pleasure meeting up with friends, spending time with friends. 

CB: Right. They have a good time or go out and do fun things that they all enjoy together. 

And then there’s also this underlying things in Valens where it’s talking about any act of good or beneficence, and that is, you know, one of the things – like, being, you know, because Valens is living in 2nd century like, Roman world where slavery still existed and was a terrible thing and where people were oppressed by it. But that’s one of the reasons why he mentions like, the freeing of emancipated slaves, because that was one of the most positive things that could happen in that context is to gain one’s freedom, and the adjacent ideas of like, good-doing or any act of beneficence sort of become tied in with that. 

LS: Right. Yeah. We can also think about the 6th house being in aversion to the 5th house, you know, being the next door house. And so those are being very different qualities from each other, and slavery or being sort of subordinate to others is a core 6th house meaning. 

CB: Yeah. So the 5th and the 6th house get contrasted a lot, because the 5th house is called the place of good fortune, but then the 6th place is called the place of bad fortune. And through that, those comparisons become really important, because if the 5th house is like, good things that have to do with the body, then the 6th house is like, bad things that happen to do with the body, and that’s one of the reasons it primarily came to be associated with illness and injuries. 

All right, so let’s move into talking about the significations of the 5th house more broadly. We’re gonna focus on more of a traditional take on the 5th house, sticking to a lot of the more traditional meanings and exploring and expanding on the traditional significations. That doesn’t mean that there’s not other significations, especially in a more modern, psychological context. But one of the things I wanna demonstrate here is that there’s a lot to work with even with just the core traditional significations. And so one of the things that we tried to do is identify and figure out what the core traditional significations were, but then also understand which ones were really coming out and speaking to us based on the hundreds of example charts that we collected and will be presenting as part of this series on the 5th house. And so that ended up informing a lot of our signification discussion that we’re about to have as well. 

LS: Definitely. 

CB: All right. So first major section of the 5th house is children. So children has always been one of the core and most important significations of the 5th house over the past 2,000 years. This has always been the primary signification, and this seems to go back to an early text on the houses that was attributed to Ascelpius. So there were two – in my book, I talk about this when I talk about the origins of Hellenistic astrology that there seem like there were two primary early texts on the houses. And one of them was attributed to Hermes, and Hermes primarily in the just fragments of that text survive primarily said that the 5th house was associated with good fortune. And then sometimes later there was another text on the houses attributed to Ascelpius, and Asclepius was the one who attributed children as the primary meaning of the 5th house. So later astrologers really followed that pretty closely, and the 5th house became ingrained from relatively early on from at least the first century BCE all the way into the 21st century as the primary place where you find the topic of children in the chart as opposed to other family members such as the 4th house, which is parents, the 3rd house, which is your siblings, the 7th house, which is your spouse or your marriage partner, and the 11th house, which is like, your friends. 

So 5th house and children. And as we talked about… Yeah, so I think that’s a pretty common signification, yeah? 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. And as you were saying earlier, you know, part of why children is a signification in terms of it being succedent to the 4th is carrying on the family lineage, something that flows from the 4th house and continues it on. And it also combines, as you said earlier too, the family lineages of both partners, and then that flows from them, and it represents the union of those families and like, the genes of the parents. And something else I was thinking about with regard to the 5th house being succedent to the 4th and the topic of children is that while we often think, especially these days, about the effort involved in raising children because we’re sort of – especially in the western world – sort of much more in nuclear families these days, and so it’s not enough of a group project to raise children. But traditionally, children were supposed to help the family, not just in old age but you think about like, farm families, which was very, very common until recently. And you have a bunch of children because they can help you, you know, do your family project of all existing together and supporting each other. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. It’s part of the support system of the larger like, family unit as a whole, and that really ties us in with this entire angular triad like, is that family unit, which is that sequence of three houses which is like, it’s centered on the 4th house, which is like, the parents, your home, your ancestry. But then adjacent to that, the one before that is like, the 3rd house, which is like, siblings but also extended family and relatives and aunts and uncles and cousins and other things like that, possibly also grandparents. And then finally you get to the 5th house, which is like, the latest additions to the family in terms of the children that you produce and like, how that becomes part of your broader family but also representing a continuation of that family lineage that might start with the 3rd house and then move into the 4th house and then eventually continue into the future with the 5th house. And that’s a really elegant way and very literal way of understanding the difference between cadent, angular, and succedent houses in terms of the succession of things in time. 

Yeah. So I think that’s the reason why the Asclepius text probably originally assigned the 5th house to children was due to that idea of carrying on the family lineage, and the carrying on of the lineage of your own self in particular. But then there’s another element to the 5th house, which is like, with being associated with children, then it automatically is leading to and is implying a broader concept of like, procreation and reproduction. And Demetra George in her write-up on this has a brilliant write-up about the 5th house in volume two of her book, Ancient Astrology, which I’d recommend everyone check out because she does a survey of like, the past 2,000 years of astrologers talking about the significations of the 5th house and then does a really good summary and summation of a lot of it. 

But one of the things that she focuses on and I think is a great thing to emphasize that she draws partially from Firmicus Maternus is the notion of the trine to the Ascendant as extending the life of the native. And I think that’s a really good point that she makes that all life forms seek to propagate their own life, and that’s part of the basic definition of being like, a living entity or living lifeform is that there’s this drive and this urge to propagate and continue your own life in some way or to replicate it. And so I think one of the things I came up with then to summarize that and summarize things that we were seeing in other areas that we’ll talk about later on is that the propagation of one’s life force and spirit is part of the core meaning of the 5th house that makes us understand the signification of children, but also can then lead into other more creative significations and endeavors as well. 

LS: Right. And you can definitely see in the more literal way that extension of your life force further into the world makes sense from the trine from the Ascendant to the 5th house, and I really love that point as well. But of course, not everyone has children. Either not everyone can have children, not everyone wants to have children, and it’s not the only meaning of the 5th house, and I think when we talk about other creative output, creative pursuits, it’s really similar and analogous to that principle of extending your life force further into the world through children or through just other things you create. It’s about the act of creation, I think. 

CB: Yeah. The act of creation and of creativity, and it also goes back to and by extension then makes us reflect on and understand the first house better. And the first house, especially using whole sign houses, it’s the place where the sky and the earth meet, and you get this overlap between the realm below the horizon which has to do with the body and the physical incarnation, and the realm above the horizon, which has to do with the spirit and the mind and the intellect, and the merging of those two in the rising sign in the first house is you. Like, you are the merging of those two things in that you are born at that moment and you have a body and you have a mind, and your life is the merging of those two things. So it makes us understand the first house itself better, because one of the traditional significations of the first house is life. But it’s like, that’s such an abstract concept that it almost seems meaningless until you start comparing it to the other houses, and you understand what that means, for example, when the first house concept of life is negated by like, the 6th house or the 8th house or the 12th house, it can mean like, illness. Like, something that detracts from your physical life. Or it can mean the 8th house, which is like, death and the absolute negation of the concept of life itself. But when we get to the 5th house, we get this interesting concept because it’s the first time we have the trine which is the most positive aspect going to the 5th house, and it’s literally the concept of the native’s life – both their body as well as their spirit – extending itself forward and trying to extend itself into the future in time by propagating itself through creation, through the act of creation either bodily and physically through children, or like, mentally and spiritually and intellectually through other creations basically. 

LS: Definitely. Yeah. And it’s really interesting to compare and contrast different ways that people go about that depending on their different proclivities and skills and whatnot, but also the different ways that their individual birth charts are set up.

CB: Right. Absolutely. 

So you know, that gives us additional understanding of the 5th house and propagating the body but also the 5th house and propagating the spirit, which is more abstract but we’ll see it in very concrete ways when we get to some of the creatives and the artists and other people that become prominent with 5th house placements later on. 

All right. So actually that’s one last point before we move on, and I mentioned this earlier, but so the 5th house – one of the things about the trine aspect is there’s the geometrical element of a trine aspect which is like, a degree-based trine is 120 degrees, and it creates when you draw three of them across a chart it creates a three-sided polygon, which is a triangle. So that’s one element of aspects that tends to get emphasized in modern times. But the other element of aspects that tended to get emphasized more in ancient times still when they did both sign-based as well as degree-based aspects is what the quality of a sign-based trine is, because that ties us in as well. And I mentioned that briefly earlier, but it’s just that a trine has multiple overlapping qualities that are the same between two signs. And when we put it in a houses context, that means that the first house, which is the rising sign that represents you and your life, has a lot of overlapping qualities that are the same with the 5th house and the things associated with it. So like, for example, my chart I have Aquarius rising on the first house, the rising sign. Then my 5th house is Gemini. So two of the commonalities that those share is they’re both air signs, and they’re both masculine signs in terms of the alternation of masculine and feminine or sect. Some people associate like, the day signs versus night signs. So both of those would be day signs. Or in like, modern terms, sometimes people talk about like, extroversion versus introversion or what have you. Yin and yang is another one that other people like to apply to it. Are there others that I’m missing? 

LS: No, I think that’s most of them. 

CB: Okay. So the point is, though, is to the extent that that’s creating a similarity of having two overlapping things that are indicating similar things, then it’s like, you’re creating something that is like yourself. And that’s, I think, the other thing that’s important about the 5th house both in terms of children – because you’re literally creating physical beings that look like you – but then also creatively if you’re doing it in more of an intellectual or artistic expression of the 5th house, you’re creating something that looks like your spirit and sort of replicating something that has a similarity to you or carries a similar essence in some sense. Does that make sense?

LS: Yeah. I actually really love that point. I mean, I know that I was looking at, for instance, some of the charts where there were air signs, just like you were talking about, on the Ascendant and the 5th house, and how they created conceptual work around 5th house topics. And then I was like, oh, it’s because it’s an air sign! And so their creative output is conceptual; it’s in the realm of the mental. And like — 

CB: Right. 

LS: — that’s who they are, too – i.e., the Ascendant – so of course that’s the kind of thing that they would produce. 

CB: Right. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I think this is another really core thing that we have to think about, because it again gives us an access point for understanding not just children but also understanding how it may have broader implications about creating something that looks like you, basically, either physically or intellectually. And, you know, that becomes more clear when you contrast it with the other houses because like, the third house, for example, it only has one of those points of similarity, which is that whatever the rising sign and whatever the 3rd whole sign house is share the same gender; they’re both gonna be either masculine signs or they’re both gonna be feminine signs. But that means they only have one of those points of contact. And in terms of element, they are not the same; they don’t have the same element. And it’s kind of similar with some of the other ones in terms of that overlap where you’ll get like, one similar quality, but then you’ll have, like, for example the 4th house has modality is the thing that it shares in common. Or the 2nd house – adjacent houses share no qualities in common. They don’t have, you know, gender or modality or element. But then the 5th house – it’s like, you don’t just have one, but you have two, so there’s something very similar about those two houses. 

LS: Yeah, definitely. I think that’s a great point. And you know, I wanted to note as a subpoint to that, you were talking about, you know, creating children that literally look like you, which of course is the case when you have biological children. But it doesn’t really completely break down even if one adopts or things like that, because you can still see similarities, for instance, in first and 5th house things such as like, one’s parenting style where you’re still bringing your own essence into 5th house topics. So I just wanted to kind of make that note, because I figured some people would be like, well, what about not-biological children? But you know, there’s still a commonality in how you’re going about 5th house things. 

CB: Right. Absolutely. So I wanted to mention that, because it’s part of why the conceptual structure also with whole sign houses is important, because some of the original significations underlying the houses were drawing on some of these concepts of how the signs of the zodiac relate to each other based on their relationship when you’re using the signs themselves as houses to establish those sectors in the chart. And while there’s some element that carries across with just thinking about it in terms of angularity and succedency, which is also a property of like, the quadrant houses, you’re missing this like, other element about the similarly between the houses as well as the whole sign house aspect between the houses when you take it outside of that whole sign house framework. And so that’s one of the reasons why I think it’s important to take both whole sign houses into account as well as quadrant houses. 

LS: Yeah, absolutely. Because you don’t see that jump out, yeah, without the whole sign house framework. 

CB: Right. All right. So let’s move on. From our primary signification, and so procreation, reproduction – one of the topics then, the subsets that comes up within this context because there’s many different manifestations of this once you start talking about children and how that topic plays out in a person’s life. One of them that comes up is fertility in women versus virility in men. And for example, that comes out specifically in like, the ease in which a person is able to conceive versus if a person has difficulty conceiving, and then all of the adjacent things that can grow out of that in a person’s life. 

LS: Right. You can see that, yeah, some of the planetary combinations or aspects to the 5th house or 5th house ruler, when someone is really prolific as we’ll see in some of our examples when we do the examples, prolific in terms of having children very easily, having lots of children. And then you can see some blockages sometimes with 5th house factors when it comes to people who have trouble having children or they’re either infertile, you know, for their whole life or just for a long time; it takes them a long time to have children compared to average. 

CB: Right. Yeah, exactly. Or you’ll have like, Nick Cannon is one of our examples later who has like, 12 different children, for example. So like having — 

LS: Right. 

CB: — lots of children versus let’s say having just one child or having no children if there’s like, fertility issues that can’t be overcome. 

LS: Or having no desire to have children, which can also show up in the chart.

CB: Yeah. There were some examples we’ll get into about people that are like, childfree who choose to not have children deliberately and where that’s actually like, a major part of their life or a major like, philosophical decision. 

LS: Right. So yeah, it’s interesting what you can see just with the 5th house. Obviously there’s other factors in the chart that go along with one’s biological ability to have children with ease or with difficulty. But the 5th house can show a lot of those. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s the place where we find that. 

Okay. One of the topics then that can come up then sometimes when people can’t have children or in other instances can be adoption. So if a person especially before like, fertility treatments couldn’t conceive, sometimes they would resort to adoption, or there can be other instances where a person adopts even if they’re not having fertility issues for completely different reasons. And one of the points I wanted to make is just while the 5th house does relate primarily to you having children or biological children and things like that, it also more broadly signifies the topic of children in your life in general. And if somebody chooses to adopt, then their adopted children will show up in the person’s 5th house. 

LS: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s your children, however they got to you, your children are in the 5th house. 

CB: Yeah. And that’ll be seen most clearly because the person will start having like, important transits and activations of their 5th house at the time that they decide to adopt or different things like that.

LS: Right. 

CB: Yeah. All right. Other subtopics can be things like pregnancy. And you know, how easy a pregnancy is versus how difficult. It’s like, some people just magically have super easy pregnancies that go by and it’s just like, a breeze, and like, other people run into like, major issues or even in some instances life-threatening issues during pregnancy. 

LS: Right. And while that sometimes shows up some in, you know, the physical health houses like the first or 6th, yeah, 5th itself can show like, what your experience is of having children. And so, you know, that’s not just after you have the children and they’re around, but also the process of getting to that point – i.e., the pregnancy. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. One of our recent examples, I talked to somebody, maybe it was a student in a workshop recently that was like, their sibling or there was somebody related to them or that they knew closely that was having trouble having children and they ended up carrying a child or being a – what’s the term for that? 

LS: Surrogate. 

CB: A surrogate. So when you’re like, a surrogate for somebody else. And there was a separate surrogate instance where it was like, somebody’s – I think it was their 10th house or their 2nd house was tied in with it, and so they did surrogacy partially as like, a work thing that offset like, a difficult financial circumstance. So there can be many different ways that pregnancy can come into play as a topic in different, sometimes like, either complicated or unique ways in a person’s life. But it will often involve the 5th house, and that’s where it will show up in the chart. 

LS: Right. Absolutely. Yeah, it’s interesting to see those when they’re tied into the 2nd or the 10th. I had a friend in college who sold a ton of her eggs – i.e., had half-children around somewhere – just to get to college and be able to afford college. 

CB: Okay. Yeah. There was a story recently about someone whose like, eggs were unfrozen from like, 1993 or something like that, wasn’t there? And it was like, the longest case of having a child that was born from frozen eggs in history or something like that. 

LS: Yeah. Yes. It’s interesting, the developments in the 5th house realm that have come with modern technology, although I have to think that breaks down at some point. Like, you know, how long you can freeze eggs and stuff or embryos. 

CB: I don’t know. Like, maybe it’ll be like, someday the equivalent of like, if people could have like, Plato’s baby or something like that from 2,000 years ago, there would probably be people that would do that. So there’s gonna be somebody from our time period like that where, I don’t know, we’ll see. 

LS: Yeah. There are many new iterations of the 5th house happening! 

CB: Definitely. Yeah, well, and also one of the charts we’ll look at later is with medical advances, there’s sometimes really new things. Like for example, the person that was known in the tabloids as like, Octomom that had, what, was it like, eight different children – that was like, a unique 5th house thing due to new fertility treatments. 

LS: Right. Yeah, that was definitely something that wouldn’t happen often at all without new technology. 

CB: Yeah. All right, so pregnancy, but not just pregnancy but also like, giving birth, the ease of childbirth versus like, if it’s really difficult. There’s also as we said the number of children. Like, lots of children versus just one. While the number of children, there are a lot of different techniques in ancient astrology that attempt to tell this, I feel like it’s a tricky thing to tell with an amount of certainty. Like, I’m a little skeptical about some of those techniques, although certainly we see instances where a couple of our chart examples have like, lots of planets in the 5th house or like, some of them have Jupiter in the 5th house for example; I think we have two examples of that that have like, a lot of children. 

LS: Yeah. I feel like you can see, you know, the abundance of children or the lack of children much more easily with the 5th house or in the chart in general on the outer extremes. I don’t know; it’s harder to be specific when it’s more in the realm of average. 

CB: Right. But like, one of our examples later – because there’s even motivations for like, why a person has lots of children. Like, one of them that we’ll talk about later is like, Elon Musk has Jupiter in the 5th house, and he has at least 12 or something, more than almost a dozen or around a dozen known children. Like, there might be more. And part of his rationale, he has the ruler of the 5th house of children in the 8th house of death and mortality, and one of his stated motivations is he thinks that population decline is gonna lead to disaster or the end of the world or something like that. So it’s like, he has this stated motivation of wanting to have many children as a result of fears about catastrophes or other things like that. 

LS: Right. For sure. And especially nowadays – I mean, before birth control was so reliable, you know, many people had lots of children. And so nowadays, you can see the spectrum or the outer extremes a little bit more clearly because, you know, many people choose how many children they – or try to choose anyway – how many children they have. So usually nowadays when people have lots of children, there’s a specific reason involved with the person’s motivation. 

CB: Yeah. And then that brings up one other thing that sometimes happens is like, right after a person has a child, they will get their tubes tied or a male will get like, snipped so that they can’t have any more children. And that’s probably even though we don’t have examples of that, I’m sure that would be an interesting transit or something that was being activated at that time. 

LS: For sure. Yeah. Probably Saturn things. 

CB: Yeah. Well, that brings up the next one, which is like, wanting to have children versus not wanting children. And especially in the modern age, it’s become more common and there’s like, a category of people that usually refer to themselves as “childfree” where being deliberately childfree is like a deliberate choice. And I’ve seen a few different examples of this. We’ll have one that we’ll show later from a patron that was sent in. But I’ve noticed that usually Saturn is involved oftentimes when this is happening, because Saturn’s basic function is to negate or to say no to things. And sometimes when Saturn is connected with the 5th house – not all times, but sometimes it can say no to the topic of children or it can raise some challenges in the topic of children for some reason. But it’s interesting in these cases that in some instances it can be not something that’s circumstantial, but instead it can be a deliberate choice on the part of the native of saying no, I don’t want to have children for various reasons. 

LS: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve seen Saturn usually involved in that as well, whether it’s completely childfree people who are doing it deliberately, or people who are deliberately choosing to have just one child, which is also like, a specific phenomenon because often people are like, well, why don’t you have more? They can have siblings. And they’re like, no, I just wanna have one. And I’ve seen Saturn sometimes involved in that too. Maybe a little more constructively placed, but yeah. 

CB: Yeah. The patron that sent in hers, Michelle Oberdorf, had important placements in the 5th house like the ruler of the Ascendant, but then there was a square from Saturn in the 2nd house to the 5th, and she sent me like, this entire – I think it was a master’s thesis that she wrote where she interviewed different women about what their motivation was for not having children basically or for being childfree. So we’ll talk about that more and look at that chart later on, but there’s an interesting like, spectrum there for a number of different reasons of why people choose to be childfree as well. 

LS: Right. And how much there is an actual focus on it in the chart, so it’s more of something that someone’s thinking about a lot versus just like, an offhand like, “No, I don’t think I want children,” but it’s not something that’s like a major part of their life identity. 

CB: Right. Or others where it’s like, circumstantial of just like, not meeting the right partner or something like that, or it just not being a major focus which sometimes just comes up if a person’s much more focused on if the chart, especially, has a bunch of planets in other areas of the chart and the 5th house just isn’t emphasized, sometimes it’s just like, not something the person’s interested in or focused on for different reasons. 

LS: Definitely. 

CB: Yeah. All right. So moving on. Another topic that comes up once you’ve had children and you have the whole pregnancy and every other thing is parenting. And one of the significations I think that Demetra pulls out from somewhere was the joys or challenges experienced in parenthood. And I think that was a really good one, because there’s a wide range of different experiences that people have in terms of being parents, in terms of you know, not everybody’s the same and there’s sometimes extremes of people that really enjoy it and it’s just like, a pleasure and it’s like the best part of their life, versus let’s say the opposite extreme where the person like, doesn’t enjoy it or it doesn’t go well or it’s the most challenging part of the person’s life for some reason. 

LS: Right, for sure. There is a huge spectrum, even though I think it is more presented as like, a given that this is gonna be a positive thing, and we did talk about the 5th house as, you know, a generally positive house, which it is. But there’s still all these modifications from, you know, planetary placements and rulerships bringing other house topics tied in with the 5th house and so forth. Yeah, there is such a large spectrum of people’s experiences with raising children. Yeah. And you can see that depicted in the specifics of their chart. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

So there’s also the style of parenting. Like, for example, some parenting can be like, super strict or alternatively there could be people that are like, super, super relaxed about their parenting. And sometimes the nature of a person’s parenting style can show up in the 5th house. There can also be other qualities like in some instance, a person for different reasons might become a single parent versus in other instances they may be parenting with a partner or in some instances they may become a parent as a result of a partner already having a child, which we see some examples of that later on when there’s a connection between the 5th house and the 7th house sometimes. 

LS: Right. Yeah, I think we have multiple examples of that. 

CB: Right. Where it’s like, the topic of children is like, imported into the life through meeting with another or through merging with another. 

LS: Right. 

CB: Elsewhere, another topic that came up in some traditional texts that used to be more relevant in the past but is not as much anymore is like, children born outside of wedlock, which sometimes used to be called like, supposedly like, “illegitimate” children versus those who were born within a marriage or when people get married. I feel like this has become less of a like, major issue. I guess it used to be more of like, a taboo, and we do see – especially when we’re drawing on like, earlier 20th century charts – we see people where the taboo surrounding having a child outside of wedlock or sometimes like, a child born as a result of an affair, for example, creates pressures and challenges in some instances in a person’s life in ways that show up in unique ways in the birth chart. 

LS: Yeah. It’s such an interesting thing how cultural trends, societal trends, or things that are okay or not okay or more major taboos at certain points in time interact with individual birth charts. Because you do see that stand out more when that’s a more important distinction, right, during the person’s lifetime, during the time that they were alive. So I’ve seen that with, yeah, with some of those people born earlier who had kids out of wedlock and sometimes the 12th house is more involved than like, say, it probably would be nowadays or when we get the sexuality point, like, people who were more closeted most of their life. It stands out more sometimes in individual charts depending on like, what are the cultural norms at that time that the person’s alive. 

CB: Right. Yeah. It’s always relative to the person’s like, culture and time period and of course that’s even, you know, in different places around the world today, is gonna be relative to whatever culture a person’s living in. So we’ll be talking a lot about our own and what we’re familiar with, and we can’t really summarize everything. But it is things that we do see, especially when doing the historical research we’ve been doing of like, people that had a full life where we can study their entire biography, especially a celebrity or a public figure, and sometimes those are people that were born in the late 19th, early 20th century where some of that stuff was much more important. 

LS: Or even 18th century sometimes. 

CB: Right. Yeah. 

All right. Other topics that can come up with the 5th house is your relationship with your children. So you know, some people have like, an amazing relationship with their children, and it’s like, the best relationship that they can have in their life. Like, even so far as like, when the child is like a friend or is treated like a friend, versus in other instances, people can have really bad relationships with their children for different reasons where in extreme cases you can have a child who you become estranged from or even a child that becomes like, an enemy for some reason. 

LS: Yeah. And it’s so sad, I mean, when that happens. I guess in one way, it’s not any sadder than like, another area of the chart being very hard and challenging for the person. But I think it’s particularly sad because there’s so much effort put into raising a child that, you know, it’s sad if it becomes a more challenging relationship or even estrangement later in life. But you can definitely see those variations and especially the extremes, again, in the individual birth chart. Sometimes there’ll be literally like, a connection between the 5th and 11th or 5th and 12th respectively with regard to the, you know, relationship or the malefics involved or the benefics involved in the 5th are pretty reliable, I think. 

CB: Yeah, definitely, in indicating at least broadly that there might be tensions there or there might be good things there. And there’s other things that go into that, of course, because then there’s like, what is the child’s birth chart and what is their personality like? What is the synastry like between the two parents, and is it like, flowing synastry or is it really tough, you know, conflicting synastry? There’s gonna be different eras in which the relationship might be better or worse depending on the transits that the two are having and like, periods like a kid is a teenager and if they’re particularly unruly. But then there’s also that relationship can be good or bad for different people’s, you know, it can be one person’s fault or the other person’s fault; it could be like, the parent isn’t a very good parent and is a deadbeat parent, and then their child becomes estranged as an adult because they go no contact and they cut the bad parent out of their life, versus you could have a parent that tried their best, but that there was something with the child where the child chose through no fault of the parents, let’s say, to get involved in crime or to in some really extreme instances like, become like, a mass murderer – like, a shooter or something like that – and it’s like, in some instances that might not be the parent’s fault. It may be just something about the child, for whatever reason, that shows up in their chart. So it’s complicated, because there’s so many different possible variations. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. And with respect to that last point, I mean, you know, I think one of the things that astrology definitely shows is that we sometimes just take for granted at this point if you’re very involved with astrology is that every individual chart is gonna show that individual life. And that may or may not be related to how the parent raised them, you know? Like, they’re gonna have certain traits that are just from the moment of birth; that’s part of their being, that’s part of their chart, that’s part of their life experience. And everything is not dictated by like, the nurture of parents. You know, there used to be more of a nurture-versus-nature debate in parenthood, and I think especially with my involvement with astrology, I’m definitely on the – as well as some other life experiences – I think I’m definitely on the side of it’s more nature. 

CB: I mean, I think it can go either way, and you can’t… I don’t know. In my opinion, there’s like, I’ve seen both scenarios where it is a nature thing, and it can be a nature thing, and I do think there’s a issue where sometimes people don’t realize that – that it can be just something that’s built into a child’s nature. But then obviously, the nurture element of things can be really significant sometimes as well, because there can be in instances where the child was just raised that way or the parent did something either deliberately or indeliberately that had negative repercussions and ramifications for the life. And that was something I was talking about recently, because the issue of like, two people being born in the same hospital around the same time comes up sometimes, so functionally they have the same chart. But what’s interesting is what’s different is immediately when those two children go home, they go to different families where their parents have different birth charts. And the birth charts of the parents do interact in different ways that can be either more positive and flowing or more challenging and problematic. And that will either encourage or inhibit certain tendencies that are already there in the birth chart and are either waiting to be activated in good ways or activated in bad ways. 

LS: Yeah, for sure. And not just the synastry. The synastry is important, but also like, what does the 5th house look like in those respective different parents’ charts, and what does that say about, you know, who you are as the child which is different than the other child born around the same time. Because some things about your life show up in other people’s charts around you. Not everything is – there’s lots of things in your own chart that you can see, and you are symbolized by, you know, the houses in other people’s charts around you, like your parents and spouse and friends and so forth, and so that’s another thing that’s different too even with, you know, so-called “time twins.” 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

So you know, we’re going through this whole list, and there’s so many things that you can see or that do come up or can come up circumstantially through transits at different points in the life, like topics that’ll come up under certain transits. But there’s a lot that you can’t see as well at the same time, I guess, by just looking at the 5th house. And that’s, you know, a relevant component that we can’t obviously fully get into or that creates… Even being able to see a lot of things through a person’s 5th house, there’s some things that you can’t see or there are limitations. 

LS: For sure. 

CB: Yeah. All right, so relationship with the children. The next thing, though, is sometimes the nature of your children and what interests them or what they end up focusing on in life can show up in your 5th house and especially in the ruler of your 5th house. So you know, what are your children like, what are their personalities like, is there something distinctive about the children’s personality? Sometimes that can show up in the parents’ birth chart in their 5th house. 

Other times, what the child grows up to focus on or do can show up. Like, there’s an example I used in my book that you gave me once of somebody who had the ruler of the 5th house of children in the 9th place of religion and travel. And it was like, one of their children from a very early age had an interest in foreign cultures and countries, and as soon as they became an adult, they ended up moving abroad and like, renouncing their citizenship so that the literal manifestation of having the ruler of the 5th house of children in the 9th place of foreign countries was the native’s child moved abroad as an adult and went there permanently. But then there was also a second child that the native had where they grew up in a secular context largely, but then when they grew up, they became very highly religious of a different religion than the parent, and that was another manifestation of having the ruler of the 5th house of children in the 9th house of religion nad belief and philosophy. 

LS: And then the third of the three children is a teacher. It’s not entirely like, you know, it’s more broadly 9th house in terms of teaching, because it’s younger children. But nonetheless, all three of the children – yeah, I remember that chart. All three of the children fit that rulership placement in different ways. 

CB: Yeah, and manifested different aspects of what it symbolically could mean for the ruler of the 5th house to be in the 9th place of like, religion, travel, and education. 

Yeah. So that’s something that we’ll see show up in the 5th house as well, especially when we get to the ruler of the 5th house. 

All right, other topics – grandchildren. The 5th house is like, the continuation of the next generation of your family, but it may also be other subsequent, because it becomes more broadly like, the topic of children in your life in general. And sometimes the way that that comes up at different points in the future is through not just your children, but the children that they have as well. 

LS: For sure. Yeah. I sometimes wonder about, you know, like, the 5th from the 5th in terms of a derived house of the children of your children, but that said, I definitely sometimes see grandchildren come up very specifically in the 5th house because it is – just like you said – it’s like, your experience of young people or children in a broader sense. 

CB: Yeah. And I know a lot of the later astrologers, it’s like, derived houses was also a concept that was introduced in the Asclepius text and that it talked about and some later astrologers really focused on. But one of the things we’ve talked about in this series is there’s always been a tension between doing derived houses and sometimes it getting like, incredibly complicated and convoluted. But other times that you may not need to do derived houses, and the symbolism may already be built into the basic 12 if you sort of like, look at it and focus on it and especially just in terms of how it’ll naturally arise through transits and stuff if the 5th place is where children come up in your life, then it’s like, at one point you might have let’s say a Saturn return, and you have children at your Saturn return in the 5th house. And then at another time, you may have a second Saturn return and there’s something really important happening with like, grandchildren or great-grandchildren, for example.

LS: Yeah, definitely. It doesn’t ever have to be your own children; it is the topic of children in general, so that can go for grandchildren, that can go for other family relationships. Like, I remember recounting to you recently when we were talking about this that during my last 5th house profection year in terms of timing, most of how that showed up for me that time was my sister was pregnant, and she had never been pregnant before, and she was talking about her pregnancy and then the subsequent birth and infancy of her child like, most of the entire year. And that was my – and I have the ruler of the 5th in the 3rd house from the 5th, so it was sibling’s child or sibling’s pregnancy. And you know, I have not had any kids, but that was the topic of children coming up because it was like, some child in the realm of my life. 

CB: Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, I mean, that’s how it happens. And then that brings up the final thing, which is just the 5th house can also indicate younger people in general that are in your life or the role of younger people, which can go – there’s an ambiguity of like, what age that goes up to. We’ve been saying children, but even like, teenagers and sometimes like, young adults can sometimes end up falling in the 5th house, as we’ll see in some example charts. And this may extend to other concepts later on. Like, for example, in the Vedic tradition, they talk about the 5th house also being extended to like, students and apprentices. So there may be a role there where it’s like, you’re teaching younger people or you’re teaching the next generation of people may show up in that house as well. 

LS: Yeah. I think it really does sometimes. I remember when I was starting to first encounter that with people who were like, college professors. And I was like, why is the 5th house showing up so much? They don’t have children. But then, you know, I was like, I think this is like, their students; they’re like, young adults. They’re not children children, but they’re like, young people relatively speaking to the chart holder. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. So it’s relative to the chart holder. And something about the idea of youth or youngness, which can sometimes just show up in a lot of different ways. But keeping in mind that archetype is really important. 

All right. So the final thing I wanted to say here to wrap up this section on children is that while children primarily show up in the 5th house, in the ancient Hellenistic tradition, they were also assigned to other houses in the chart such as, for example, the 10th house, probably partially because the 10th house represents the native’s life’s work and their occupation and like, what they do or the place of action and what you accomplish. And certainly you’ll see charts sometimes, like especially in like, a mother’s chart where that becomes the person’s occupation or primary profession, and sometimes the 10th house really does come up in those instances, especially if they like, leave another career or job in order to focus on raising children. 

LS: Right. It is essentially then their life’s work. 

CB: Right. So it may show up in other houses as well as not just the 5th or 10th, but we should be aware of the possibility of children showing up in other houses, and this is something I’ve been mentioning as part of this series, because even though as the tradition went on, there was a tendency to try to focus on just like, one singular house that signifies a topic, especially once horary became more popular from like, the 8th century forward, that was really necessary in horary questions because you need to know what the single house is that signifies a topic in order to answer a horary question. In the Hellenistic tradition, there is a distinct thing about sometimes multiple houses indicating the same or similar topics. So for example, when Valens talks about the topic of children, he mentions it in the context of the 5th house, the 10th house, the 4th house, and the 11th house. And similarly, when Claudius Ptolemy also in the 2nd century talks about children, he talks about it in the context of the 4th, 5th, 10th, and 11th house. So there’s different reasons for that potentially that we don’t necessarily have to go into, but – and we’re gonna focus for our purposes primarily on the 5th house, which I do think is the primary house of children where that in practice comes up the most – but I wanted to put that out there, because we should be aware that children could show up in different parts of the chart, especially in different contexts. 

LS: Right. 

CB: Yeah. I meant to mention it was the Hermese text, the first text that was written that I mentioned on the houses that it originally outlined an initial set of significations for the houses when this was still like, a new concept or technique – the concept of the 12 houses around the 2nd century BCE. It associated the conception of children with the 10th house, and then it was the Asclepius text that was written sometime later that associated children with the 5th house. So right there early on, part of what we may be seeing is like, disagreement with early authors who are outlining some of the foundational texts of the tradition, and then in some of the early Hellenistic authors, this gets merged so they’re just saying the 10th and the 5th both indicate children. But then later in the tradition, it kind of gets flattened out, so it’s just the 5th house indicating children. So I want people to be aware of that, because it may be worth exploring more. And even though we’re not gonna do that for the most part as part of this episode, it could be an area of further research. 

LS: For sure. And while I definitely prefer topics to be located in one distinct house, just for clarity’s sake, it would not be – it is not – the first topic that can overlap houses. There are other life topics that can, you know, have different manifestations in more than one house sometimes. 

CB: Yeah. Like we have the health axis of like, the 6th and the 12th, for example. Or in the last episode in this series, we talked about one that’s a little bit foreign of a signification to modern ears but was much more important traditionally was the 4th house and its associations with like, death and the end of life. And we saw how that’s actually, through the example charts, still very relevant in very significant ways so that it’s not just the 8th house that can signify death, but other houses like the 4th may as well. And similarly, we’re already running into some overlap with that here when we saw Valens associating the 5th house with like, friends and partnership in addition to the 11th house. 

LS: Right. And then we get to the creativity aspect of the 5th house, I’ve just seen tons of overlap between the 3rd and the 5th houses.

CB: Yeah. And then there’ll be an overlap as well that we’ll talk about a lot between the romantic aspects of the 5th house and the 7th house, which we will get into in the next section. But why don’t we take a little break.

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All right, so the next section that we need to talk about when it comes to the 5th house is the topic of sex and sexuality. So this is a big topic, and one of the issues that’s kind of tricky is that there’s debates amongst astrologers about which house signifies sex in astrology. And the debates largely come down to the 5th house, the 7th house, and the 8th house. So I did an entire episode exploring this, which is episode 157, titled “What House Rules Sex in Western Astrology,” so I’m not gonna go through all of the details of this here and reiterate all of that in this episode. But basically, you know, there’s something to be said for each. But I tend to focus on the 5th house. And for our purposes, we’re gonna talk about that in that context today, and then we’re gonna demonstrate a lot of that in parts two and three when we get to the example charts to show that it can be a really major topic when that’s highlighted in significant ways in the birth chart. But that’s not necessarily to negate the possibility, like we were just talking about, that it may show up in different ways in other sectors of the chart as well. 

LS: Right. 

CB: Yeah. So that’s important, especially because in modern times, just in the past hundred years and especially the past few decades, modern astrologers have tended to focus more on the 8th house when it comes to sex. But prior to that, there was much more emphasis on the 5th house. And it’s a little tricky, because in Valens, he just has one passing remark that seems to imply that he associates sex with the 7th house, and that connection with like, marriage and partnership in some traditional texts may have continued on to some extent into the medieval tradition. But the 5th house also became increasingly important, and there are a few different reasons for that. So one of them that’s really important is that Venus was traditionally the planet of sex in ancient astrology. And Valens, as we saw earlier, right away in his very first signification, says that Venus signifies desire and love. So on the one hand, we already have seen through the previous and through the primary signification of children one of the reasons then sex comes up is sex as part of procreation and as part of the process of making children. So it’s a natural extension then, if the 5th house is the primary house that’s associated with children and all of the different like, myriad ways and things that are associated with that like pregnancy and childbirth, parenting, and all these other things, then it sort of stands to reason by extension that the process of actually like, making children is connected with that same house as well. 

LS: Right. And then as we were talking about earlier in the basic conceptual pieces of the 5th house, it’s the house that is associated with good things having to do with the body, which, you know, usually people think of sex as like, falling into that category. 

CB: Yeah. So those are the two things I wanted to outline is the two arguments for sex being associated with the 5th house is sex is part of procreation and the connection with children, and the secondary one is sex for pleasure. And this is the other side that’s a major side of the 5th house that gets associated and becomes stronger the further you go into the tradition, which is that traditionally the 5th house is said to be the house of pleasures and delight. So in our context, thinking about that technical structure that I outlined earlier that I originally inferred from the early Hermes text – probably the first text on the houses – the 5th house is the house that’s under the earth, signifies the body, but it’s a good house, therefore it’s the house of good things that happen with the body or bodily pleasures. So that’s the other major side of the 5th house that’s relevant, and this will lead to in the next section we’ll talk about this, how pleasures and delights leads to this broader category of topics that the 5th house is associated with, which is just like, things that you enjoy that makes life worth living or that brings joy into your life in some way. And you know, sex is one of those things that does that in people’s lives. 

LS: Yeah. And we’re talking about this very conceptually, but just like, also in practice I’ve seen it come up mostly with the 5th house in terms of people’s charts and timing and stuff. 

CB: Yeah. From your like, empirical observations? 

LS: Yeah, I knew you were gonna say that! I mean, some! Yes! But also talking to people about, you know, what’s going on with them and what their timing is, you know, happening in their chart. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, there are years sometimes like where if through profections, like a 5th house profection year, or through transits if the person has a lot of activity, you know, they may be engaging in sex like, more often. Maybe they’re in a new relationship or maybe they’re dating around after a period of not – of being off the market for a while, whatever the circumstance is. Sometimes when a lot of activity’s happening in the 5th house, this can be an area where sex is like, happening. 

LS: Yeah. And I mean, genuinely if you’re doing client work, which I haven’t been recently, but you know, further back, when people have like, Uranus transits there, they can be like, “Oh, I’m having this sort of more experimental phase going on in my sex life,” or they’re having a Saturn transit through the 5th and they’re like, “I’m having these issues that I haven’t had before with sexuality.” You know, so yeah, just that is what I mean in that I’ve usually seen it show up in the 5th house in my experience. 

CB: Right. Yeah. And there can be even like, extreme cases of that. Like, one of the examples I’ll show later of the famous basketball player whose name I’m blanking out on – who was the — 

LS: Wilt Chamberlain? 

CB: Yeah, Wilt Chamberlain, who in an autobiography claimed to have had sex with over 20,000 women or something like that during the course of his life was his estimate – had I believe it was like, the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. So it’s like, sometimes the chart itself can be telling you that this is a major area of focus for some reason of just the area — 

LS: Right. 

CB: — of sex and sexuality. 

LS: Right. And that particular example was not just the Ascendant ruler in the 5th house, but the Ascendant ruler in the 5th applying to Jupiter, which is like, expanding things. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. 

So it’s funny, you know, the 5th house is the house of good fortune. And in Greek, the word was like, tuche was the word for fortune, and that was also the term for luck. So it’s funny that one of the like, the slang terms for sex that’s used sometimes in English is like, “getting lucky.” And you sort of have that connotation there already a little bit in the Hellenistic text to a certain extent. 

LS: Right. 

CB: So in terms of like, major life events, sometimes you’ll see things in terms of transits, like a person losing their virginity or having like, early sexual experiences can sometimes be relevant in the 5th house as like, a major life sort of turning point in some instances. Which, you know, for some people is like, more important, for other people is less important. There can be a whole range. But sometimes you see it showing up in that way. 

LS: Right. 

CB: So this also brings up the broader topic, though, if sex is associated with the 5th house and if we see it happening in the 5th house, then by extension it brings up this broader topic of sexuality in general and the role that sexuality plays in a person’s life and if that’s like, a major focus or if it’s not a major focus for some reason. 

So we’ll circle back around to that, but one of the major higher level topics in connection with that and significations of the 5th house is the topic of love. And this is a signification that’s already mentioned in the text of Sahl ibn Bishr, who’s a medieval author writing in Arabic in the Islamicate tradition in the 8th and 9th century, I think. And he mentions love and there’s some adjacent topics that become very evident with the 5th house that are connected with that, which is like, love affairs, the concept of making love or having lovers, romantic affairs, romance in general, as well as interestingly one of the things we found in our empirical research was that the broader concept of love can actually come up in significant ways in a person’s life when there’s important placements in the 5th house. 

LS: Right. Yeah. One of those charts was bell hooks – writer and feminist bell hooks – who in her later years wrote a number of books about the topic of love more broadly. So it wasn’t just like, about her personal love life, but it was like, about the topic of love more broadly. And we’ll see that with some other charts as well where they take one of the topics of the 5th house and like, expand it to like, a thesis. 

CB: Yeah. And hers was cool because she had not just the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house, but she had a stellium of four at least planets in the 5th house. So it showing it as a major life focus. And later in her life, it seemed like she had this real era where she wrote a series of books where one of her core thesis was that love as a concept was misunderstood, but when applied correctly could help fix some major problems in society. 

LS: Right. And she’s just like, broadening the concept of love to not just one’s personal individual sphere, but like, to the larger macrocosm. 

CB: Yeah. So that’s really important. Also adjacent concepts of like, romance and like, romantic affairs and things like that, and lovers. This also gets into the topic of dating as a major 5th house topic as opposed to marriage, to contrast the 5th house and the 7th house. I do think that astrologers do in contemporary times tend to attempt to draw a really hard distinction between the 5th house and saying the 5th house is just about dating and the 7th house is about actual relationships and marriage or committed relationships. But I sometimes see a lot of overlap between them, and I’m not sure if the distinction is as strong as people sometimes assume it is, or at least that sometimes there can be more overlap than you think. And what’s interesting about that is there is this passage in Valens where he has different assignments that I think he got from one of the early astrologers like Hermes, and it did associate the 5th house with marriage. And so that’s not the standard assignment in the Hellenistic tradition, and it’s not the one that even Valens himself follows in the rest of the book. But it does mean that some astrologers early on were playing with the idea of associating marriage with the 5th house because of the joy of Venus being there. 

So I do think marriage is primarily and long-term relationships are primarily a 7th house thing, but I think there’s a lot of really important components of the 5th house about love, sex, romantic things, and even love that can show up very prominently in the 5th house. 

LS: Absolutely. I remember I was doing a little study for preparing for a lecture one time on the timing of the beginning of important romantic relationships, and there was so much in both the 5th and the 7th, I mean, in different charts, in terms of the timing that sparked the beginning of an important relationship. So yeah, I definitely agree with that. And while, yeah, there’s an idea that the 5th house is more focused on the maybe perhaps either earlier stages of a relationship or the more lighthearted experiences of love, whereas the 7th has more of the commitment component, in practice there’s a ton of overlap, which as I’m thinking about it right now is kind of interesting in that those two houses are sextile to each other, and some of the overlaps between those topics and like, thinking about the 3rd and 5th house that I’ve often been sort of frustrated by the overlaps between with creative output and that they’re both sextile to each other – there’s probably something going on there. 

CB: Yeah. I think so, for sure. Yeah, so that’s really important. And there’s also, with the 7th house, there is a legalistic framework for marriage where it is like, a binding contract, especially on the part of the state, that merges your assets and all sorts of other things. Whereas the 5th is something else. Like, it’s something that can be based on like, passion or it can be based on desire, or it can be based on love, and it can be something that’s operating outside of that more legalistic framework of the 7th house. So you know, there’s different things worth exploring, and we’ll revisit this for sure when we get to the 7th house in this series. But it’s good for astrologers to think about this and the relationship between the 5th and the 7th and how while there are significant distinctions, there can sometimes be more overlaps than you might think. 

LS: Yeah. Definitely. 

CB: Yeah. All right, so talking about sex and sexuality leads us, of course, especially contemporary times to broader discussions and a broader focus in some instances about sexual orientation being something that can come up in the context of the 5th house. So and this can arise especially in the context of exploring one’s desires and one’s sexuality sometimes for different people one of the topics that comes up is sexual orientation in that context. 

LS: Right. And it’s not so much that you can see in any given chart whether someone is like, queer or straight or what have you. But it’s more that if there’s a more notable focus in that person’s life on the topic of sexuality, which can come about through things like questioning one’s sexuality or feeling at odds with society around sexuality or how much to be open about one’s sexuality. So you know, that’s some of the reasons it can arise if there’s a particular focus there. 

CB: Yeah. So it does show up. And I did a whole episode about this – it was episode 79 of The Astrology Podcast with Christopher Renstrom, which is titled, “Sexual Orientation and Astrology,” and you know, that was one of the things that came up is just that you can’t necessarily tell sexual orientation through the birth chart, and that’s a contemporary discussion that’s discussed. And you know, sometimes people debate that within the queer community, but for the most part, I think that’s where the consensus is tending to go at this point. But you can tell if sex and sexuality is a major topic in the person’s life for some reason; the chart will be pointing you in that direction. And sometimes things that can come up is when a person experiences challenges, for example, as a result of that, as a result of their sexuality. Like, for example, it used to come up especially much more strongly in some of our mid-20th century examples of people that were like, persecuted for their sexual orientation, for example, or who had issues in terms of their family like, disowning them or in terms of like, religious issues and other things like that. You would see a connection sometimes with like, the 5th house and the 4th house of parents or the 5th house and like, the 9th house of religion or what have you. 

LS: Right. Yeah. Or on a more personal level, like, one person may struggle more actively with coming to terms with their particular sexual orientation whereas someone else who might have the same exact identity just doesn’t struggle with it as much, and it’s because there’s not as much emphasis on the 5th house in their chart. 

CB: Sure. Well — 

LS: Or there’s more positive things or what have you. 

CB: Yeah, more positive. Like, if a person has challenging placements, sometimes in some instances we’ve seen people that struggle with it more. Or if there’s easier placements, maybe it’s not an area of struggle; maybe the area of struggle is in some other area of the chart — 

LS: Right. 

CB: — where it’s more problematic. But one of the discussions that came up earlier this year when we did the episode with Elly doing Venus retrogrades in Aries in history and the history of that particular retrograde every eight years coming up in the context of the LGBTQ movement and different adjacent movements was sometimes the concept of like, normative versus non-normative sexualities and like, what the normative things are versus doing something that’s outside of that. And one of the interesting things that came up with that is that it was largely, it was completely relative culturally. Like, what is the norm or what is “normal” versus what is non-normative or not “normal” completely depends on like, the time and the context and the culture that a person’s living in. And so that just takes us back to a point we were talking about before about the birth chart being relative to things culturally. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. 

CB: Yeah. So that was with Elly Higgins earlier this year. I’m just trying to look up the episode number; I can’t find the episode number. But if you search for Elly Higgins who does the podcast Star Gays: The Queer Astrology Archives Podcast, they have a lot of really great discussions about this for more that’s kind of outside of my scope of speciality. So I’m not gonna like, pretend to be an expert on it, but that episode I did – episode 79 with Christopher Renstrom, and then the previous episode I’ve done with Elly Higgins or other ones in the history of the podcast can sort of go more in depth with some of these things. 

LS: Yeah, for sure. And you know, thinking again about the normative versus non-normative, it’s not just culturally specific to your general culture, but it’s even kind of to your world, to your community, right? And what is the larger sphere around you in particular. And that’s sometimes interesting, because for instance when you see like, not to keep going back to Uranus transits, but it’s a useful example. Sometimes when there is, for instance, Uranus transits related to the 5th house, it can be like, you know, in one person’s case – it’s just relative to like, what their life has been like up to that point. So in one person’s case, it might be like, you know, becoming more experimental sexually where they haven’t been before. Another person’s case, it might be like, you know, I’ve seen this in practice where someone was in a sort of very lesbian community for like, several decades, and then they got together with a man. And that was like, the difference, right, in their world because it was compared to like, what their world was. So your – or even, you know, your experimentalness is if they’ve been coming from like, noncommittal relationships becoming monogamous. Like, things like that. So it is very relative to like, everything around you. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. It’s relative to things around you, and then there’s like, broader discussions I think me and Christopher Renstrom and I talked about of like, the Kinsey scale and it being like, a spectrum rather than a, you know, black and white thing in some instances. I found the episode – I think it was 485 – but it was titled “Venus Retrograde in Aries in Queer History,” and that was really great connecting it specifically with Venus retrograde and studying that history relative to our current time period and just all of the terrible things that are happening this year and the broader history of that. But that’s a great episode to check out. 

All right, so I think that’s good there. But it does lead us into an adjacent issue that can come up with the 5th house, which is instances where sexuality creates problems in the native’s life for some reason, either natally or by transit. And one of the ones, of course, can be things like we were just talking about – like, being ostracized from one’s family for being queer or due to sexual orientation or something like that. But there’s a whole host of other sort of adjacent things where sometimes sexuality can create problems in people’s lives. Like, for example, instances of like, cheating or adultery can come up with the 5th house as a really prominent topic. Other issues related to like, sex-related scandals that can come up can be related to the 5th house. Or even in some instances where there’s like, health issues in connection with sex and sexuality, there can be overlaps with like, the 6th house there. But sometimes it can also come up with respect to the 5th house. 

LS: Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Any time there’s like, a major sex scandal, it’s gonna be a 5th house thing I think. I mean, I guess in terms of our overlap, sometimes it’s a 7th house thing, but oftentimes it is a 5th house phenomenon that you can see in the timing. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and it’s like, sometimes you’ll see overlaps. Like, there’ll be some of the celebrity ones where there will be an affair and then there’ll be a child that was born as a result of it, for example. And so it’s like, you get a double bonus of like, issues coming up with the 5th house sometimes in those instances at least for the person or for their reputation or what have you. 

LS: Right, for sure. It’s not that it would always go this way, but it’s pretty common like, with the ruler of the 5th in the 12th to have things like that where there’s like, secret things involving children or sexuality that might come out later. I’m thinking of like, Schwarzenegger having a secret child, for instance, and then that being revealed, or Tiger Woods having some scandals. They both — 

CB: Right. 

LS: — have the ruler of the 5th in the 12th, if I’m remembering right. 

CB: Yeah, for sure. And then those were like, big media circuses at the time when it came out or when it was revealed. Or I think in both instances, it led to the break up of their marriage. So there can be all sorts of repercussions and different things that can come up, but sometimes there can be a core issue tying it back to the 5th house and just like, sex and sexuality. And sometimes you know, just going back to the original topic of people’s desires and what happens sometimes when people’s desires get them into trouble for some reason. 

LS: Right. 

CB: Yeah. So that leads into a whole adjacent topic, which is important but of course, bad experiences involving sex and sexuality. In some instances, we found some charts for example of where there can be medical issues that make sex painful can show up in the 5th house. We have one really famous example of that with… It wasn’t Marie Antoinette, was it? Or was it — 

LS: It was her husband — 

CB: Oh no, it was. Yeah. It was Marie Antoinette and especially Marie Antoinette’s husband where there’s speculation, but he may have had a medical issue that made sex painful, and then that created a whole thing where they couldn’t have children or they didn’t have an heir for a long time that was affecting them and their relationship and their reputations and eventually somehow were able to fix it or get around it. But that was an interesting instance of that that we’ll look at in some of the example charts. 

LS: Right. Or other instances like sexually transmitted infections and how that affects people’s lives can also be like, a negative 5th house thing. 

CB: Right. Yeah. And that can overlap with the 6th house or other things. There’s also, of course, a whole broad category of assault and different things related to that that can come up in terms of the 5th house as well, and that’s a whole huge category that’s really tough as well, but that can have a huge impact on people’s lives if it does come up. 

LS: Right. 

CB: Yeah. And then finally, last point is like, there’s also a counterpoint to that, though, which can be people who help others and things when it comes to things related to sex and sexuality. So we’ll see a bunch of example charts of people that do a lot of work helping to promote like, safe sex or helping people to do things with respect to 5th house topics about having children and things like that, for example. 

LS: Right. Or sex therapists. I don’t think we have a chart example for that one, but I’m sure that would show up in the 5th house. 

CB: Yeah. We have people that like, lecture on that topic. I think we have a couple of examples of that. So there’s a whole category where there can be bad and challenging things that come up in this area, but then sometimes you’ll see a counterpoint of other charts of people who try to help people in that area, and like, offset things in really important ways. 

All right. So that is that major topic, sex and sexuality, and that kind of like, immediately segues into another that we’ve already mentioned but it sort of requires its own umbrella category, which is the category of pleasure and enjoyment. 

So traditionally, it was said to be pleasure and delight for the 5th house, but the broader topic as we’ve gone through all the example charts is it really comes down to pleasure and enjoyment. And one of the ways that I’ve really narrowed this down after looking at like, a hundred example charts or more in this research project was the 5th house is sometimes that which you do for fun that makes life more enjoyable. And that’s a really important, very broad category, and it’s one that sometimes we don’t think about very often or we might not think is as important as like, career or your home or your marriage or what have you. But it actually is a surprisingly important topic, and it’s one that we find in the 5th house, which is those things that you do for fun that make your life worth living and make it enjoyable, because your life is not always just worth living due to traditional topics that you might think of, but it can sometimes be things that we otherwise might consider to be unimportant, which can be things like hobbies, for example. Like, having a hobby that you really love doing that makes you really enjoy life and that you look forward to like, every day after you get done with work or what have you. 

So there’s this broader topic of like, good times, of play, of amusement, hobbies, and recreation that comes up very prominently in the 5th house. 

LS: Yeah. Anything you do for fun, anything you do for enjoyment or pure pleasure can show up in the 5th house. And you know, like any of the other topics, you know, for some people that will show up more prominently than others. For some people, that’s a more important, you know, thing at the forefront of their life than for other people. Some people just like, take fun more seriously, you know? Yeah. But that’s where you find it. And it’s also in terms of timing and things like that, it’s like, one of the things where there’s a lot of topics in the life and in the birth chart where it’s very effortful. Like, things that require effort. And so this is like, something that can kind of be interspersed with that that, you know, makes life easier because you have periods of enjoyment and periods of effort and things like that. 

I remember – just more generally – this conversation I had when I was in grad school where I forget what I was doing, but I just like, had uncharacteristically had like, a whole weekend of just like, doing things for fun. And I was telling one of my classmates on Monday, like, “Well, I was so much more productive after that!” And they just looked at me like, kind of incredulously and were like, “Yes, of course?” Like, some of us have Saturn issues! You know? And some people are more naturally drawn to like, fun and pleasure as like, a core part of their life. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, some people have hobbies and some people don’t. And so sometimes that can be a difference for people that you may not understand on both sides, of people that have hobbies don’t understand people who don’t, and people that don’t have hobbies not understanding people that do. But this is one of my favorite areas of the 5th house because of how literally it shows up in the charts of people where something that otherwise might be considered a hobby becomes part of their life’s work when there’s like, really important placements there like the ruler of the Ascendant or if they have like, a huge stellium in the 5th house, then sometimes things that are just like, hobbies or things that are done for recreation or games can be elevated to this like, much higher level in some people’s lives. So we’ll see, for example, a bunch of charts in the next episode of people – like famous chess players that have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house, famous tennis players, famous golf players like Tiger Woods, for example, has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house – where they’re doing something that is something that people do for fun and enjoyment that’s like, a game, but it’s something that they’ve made a huge part of their life. And it will show up in their birth chart when that happens. 

LS: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah, there are a lot of prominent career ones like that, and then even people who don’t make it into a career but have like, serious hobbies, or there’s just very dedicated to the things they do for pleasure. Like, you know, people who are in community choirs for like, decades, and it’s not something that they get paid for or that they, you know, that’s not primary vocation or career. But it’s still something that they’re dedicated to. Or people who like, play bridge every weekend with the same two other couples, that kind of thing. 

CB: Yeah. And there’s periods sometimes if a person even doesn’t have an emphasis, there can be times in your life where you’re more focused on that due to let’s say an important transit going through and activating your 5th house, and then maybe you go through a period where you’re more focused on having a hobby or doing recreation or other things like that. 

So recreation, games and gaming, sports, entertainment, gambling and games of chance come up in the 5th house. But also more broadly like, joy. The concept of joy. And parties. Parties actually surprisingly come up in the 5th house, sometimes in very literal ways. Like, I have an example of the ruler of the 10th in the 5th where the person is a party planner, and that’s what they’re known for is like, helping people plan elaborate parties. 

Traditionally, there were other significations like merriment, dancing, music, and in the medieval tradition, they even mentioned things like food and drink, which are like, things of enjoyment, which is funny because I actually have some literal examples of that with like, I think Camille Michelle Gray found for us of a competitive eating guy who had some important 5th house placements. So this can bring up, though, some adjacent concepts potentially of like, indulgence – like, what you indulge in – but also potentially in some downsides like self-indulgence or even over-indulgence in some instances. 

LS: Yeah. I’ve seen a fair number of charts in the past where there’s some issue with the 5th house, and people have to deal with addiction issues where addiction issues can certainly show up in other ways, too, in the chart, of course, but yeah. Sometimes it’s like, I’ve actually seen it with a focus on the 5th house; like, their issue is how to moderate pleasure, how to moderate things that feel fun but that they have gone overboard with at a certain point. 

CB: Yeah, for sure. And that’s tricky, because sometimes in a modern context especially, a lot of addictions are being reconceptualized as a form of illness and looking at it more in like, a medical context. And sometimes you do see like, the 6th or the 12th house come into play. But yeah, the 5th house can be relevant as well if there’s something that’s off that’s like, not working well or that the person’s struggling with. 

LS: Right. 

CB: So finally, the last part of this section is places of enjoyment. So a lot of the traditional texts will like, mention all these different places of enjoyment, like taverns and things like that. And there’s many different modern equivalents of places of enjoyment that one might go to have fun and enjoy themself or experience pleasure and fun and joy. But it’s funny that some of the like, traditional ones can show up very literally. Like we had that chart of Ted Danson is one that we found during this research project, and he has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. And he’s a famous actor, and that’s probably the primary thing about having the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house, but we both laughed because he was also became famous for his role on Cheers where he plays like, a bartender, and that’s like, the location in which he became the most famous for and is still very well known for, being a famous bartender on TV. 

LS: Right. Yeah. I love when it shows up in people’s acting roles, because that’s really common that it does. I remember there was another chart where I’m forgetting the name right now, but they had the ruler of the 5th in the 2nd, I think, so the ruler of the 5th in the place of livelihood and making an income, and they were both a midwife but then also at another point like, operated a tavern during prohibition. And I was like, that’s so funny when people just sort of naturally gravitate towards like, two or even three significations of the same house. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And yeah, we have to keep that in mind, that different people may manifest different – if they have an emphasis on that house, they may manifest different parts of those significations. Like, they may end up just focusing on one, but at different points in their life, they may manifest multiple in different ways. 

LS: Right. And that can be a timing stage of life thing; that can also just be like, if they’re more mutable or more fixed and stuff like that. 

CB: Right. All right, so I think that is a good segue into our next section, which I’ve titled “Creativity,” because I think that’s the overarching archetypal concept that ties together a bunch of other significations we were seeing. And this is not as much of a traditional signification in terms of like, the early Hellenistic and early medieval authors. But it does become more prominent the further you get into the tradition, and it does start showing up very strongly empirically when you start looking at chart examples, as we’ll see later. 

So I think the underlying concept here is it’s about artistic creation, but also just it’s the impulse to create in general. And especially to extend your own life force by bringing something new into the world. And so we’ve talked about that before in a physical context with like, children, but also there’s other ways of creating and extending your life force and bringing something new into the world, and oftentimes that can come about through other forms of creativity and especially artistic creation. 

LS: Right. So people who just feel more of an impulse than the average person to, you know, put something of themselves out there in the world. And when it’s not physical children, it can be these creative pursuits, so you see it coming up a lot with the 5th house. And it can be all sorts of different creative pursuits. You know, visual arts or music or playwrights or all sorts of different things. But it is that impulse to make something new that is coming forth from like, your being – something that only you could create and not the next person. 

CB: Right. Definitely. 

So yeah, so this can extend to that which you create, the products of your creation, possibly even the desire to express oneself. William Lilly mentions plays, for example, and we’ll see a lot of actors, and I think that’s an extension of Venus as well as just the 5th house and children, because children have this – there’s this childlike inclination to just want to play. And sometimes that can extend to things like pretending, and in a modern context or in an adult context it’s like, you get actors and people that are essentially doing like, an adult version of play by like, pretending to be somebody else. 

LS: And even, you know, like, creating stories is also a realm of play. It’s something you’re doing that you’re enjoying yourself, or when you’re doing things like – there’s like, playwrights that have 5th house stuff, and it’s like, you are creating the means through which other people take enjoyment. You know, by going to the plays, going to movies. 

CB: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s a great point. It’s like, you’re creating something that other people enjoy and appreciate and brings fun and enjoyment into other people’s lives. Yeah, that’s a great core one. 

So yeah, so producing a work of art and having a creative outlet or whatever creative outlets a person has is something we’re gonna see, and a lot of this comes through with Venus where a lot of those significations of Venus we’re gonna see in very concrete ways in different professions. And one of the things that I saw come up was it shows up not just in like, the charts of musicians and singers, but especially people that are like, Performers with a capital P. It seemed to show up in prominently. Like, one of my favorite examples and one of the most notable ones in contemporary times is Beyonce, who has Aries rising and Mars in Leo in the 5th house. And it’s like, in a concrete sense, like, she had children and that was a really big deal when she had children and first announced that she was pregnant was a big like, moment in pop culture. But more broadly, it’s like, there’s something about Beyonce that is not just a musician or a singer, but she is a performer in the realest sense of the word as well. 

LS: Yeah. Sometimes it really does come up that way, because it’s just like, the impulse to put yourself out there, I think, is kind of like what we’ve been talking about with your life force. And the people who are not performers, like writers, for instance, I’ve noticed some writers with like, stelliums there or an important placement there or the rulership is important – and they’re like, very prolific. At least a lot of them are. And it’s very interesting to think about that. I’ve found it interesting to think about that in terms of like, why it was showing up in the 5th house; it’s like, they have this impulse to create and to, you know, put creative output into the world. And it’s not just only about the writing itself. 

CB: Yeah. The impulse to create and… So you’ll get writers, we’ll see singers, musicians, actors, but we’ll also see other creative types, even directors. Like Steven Spielberg is one of our major directors that has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th house. And we watched a movie in preparation for this, The Fabelmans, and it was just about him having this like, drive and this urge to create things in that way, and like, the creative aspect of directing seemed to be one of his main motivations. 

LS: Definitely. And you know, it was very autobiographical. And one of the things we kept looking at each other when it came up during the movie was, you know, when his father would be occasionally like, was not as excited about him doing that compared to his mom, or supportive of it, was like, you know, when are you gonna stop focusing on this hobby of yours? Like, hobbies! 5th house! Because he has his Ascendant ruler in the 5th, as well as both benefics, and I was like, no, he was drawn to make a career out of something that he just genuinely found enjoyment around. 

CB: Yeah. Totally. And it was like, the implication was like, when are you gonna get a real job, basically. And then that’s interesting, because then that comes up in some adjacent ones of where remember Valens says that Venus signifies laughter. And one of the funny ones we saw is like, comedians who have major 5th house placements or emphasis whose literal job is to make people laugh. But it’s interesting that some comedians kind of like, get into that, because they have that drive to do it and different motivations for doing it, but yeah, it’s like, doing something that normally maybe growing up people wouldn’t consider to be like, a job. Like, a job that you go to school and like, learn how to do or something like that. Like, learning how to make people laugh or being tied in with that world. 

LS: Right. Because it is supposed to be just like, oh, this is what you do for pleasure for an hour or two after work, and then you get back to your real life, you know? But for some people, based on their chart setup, their life force is supposed to be directed towards those things which are otherwise hobbies to other people. 

CB: Yeah. And some people have that drive where it’s like, they couldn’t not do that, where they have to like, do that thing and they have to find a way to make it, and sometimes they do. So yeah. So that really ties together a lot of those different things here, which is just like, things that people do for fun and enjoyment and pleasure and creativity. And sometimes people are able to make that their life’s work. 

All right. So that’s good for that topic. So moving on, we got two more. One of them I have a hard time – this is kind of like, my miscellaneous section, but one of the things that comes up that’s important to understand is the concept of good fortune, which is the name of this house in ancient astrology and Hellenistic astrology. And it means good fortune or good luck. So the concept of like, having good luck or having good fortune in general is important, because sometimes this house can just indicate fortunate outcomes and circumstances for the planets or the rulers of houses that are placed in the 5th house. Like if you have let’s say the ruler of the 7th house in the 5th house, maybe you have good fortune or good luck finding a relationship or something like that. Or the ruler of the 10th house in the 5th house, maybe you have good luck or good fortune like, falling into the right job or the right career. And there is some overlap there and some trickiness, because that’s also part of what the Lot of Fortune is about as well, which is that mathematical point and I did a whole episode talking about this with Kira Ryberg a year or two ago where we go into that concept of fortune or luck in more depth. And the Lot of Fortune is very useful in that context. But it also shows up a little bit here in the 5th house as well. 

LS: Yeah. I mean, sometimes you can see it most literally in people who are lottery winners. It’s like, I feel like that’s the biggest specific manifestation where people obviously see it these days is like, you know, because it’s clearly about luck. There’s really nothing else going on with lotteries besides luck. And so yeah, you’ll see 5th house placements – like, usually positive ones – with lottery winners. But yeah, like you were saying, you can have good luck or good fortune with many other topics, depending on what’s tied in with your particular 5th house. And yeah, some people have better luck with some topics and worse luck with others, and that does tend to tie in with the good and bad houses. 

CB: Yeah. And that’s part of a whole paradigm in Hellenistic astrology when looking at the rulers of the houses, which is just determining the outcome of different parts of the life and what the circumstances are surrounding it in a very attempting to be like, kind of straightforward or like, black-and-white manner where sometimes like, if you have the ruler of a house that signifies a topic or if you have a planet that signifies a topic in one of the good houses or one of the best houses like the 5th house, then the circumstances surrounding that topic will tend to be more favorable and more fortunate in that area. Whereas if you have the ruler of a house or a planet that signifies a topic in one of the difficult houses, then there may just by default be more challenges or maybe instances of difficult circumstances or even bad fortune in that area of the life in some way. 

So there’s a lot of nuances and like, caveats and different things that we’ll see come up when we get to the example charts, but it’s important to be aware of that paradigm because it can be useful sometimes just for making general statements about the chart and like, which areas tend to go better or worse. 

LS: Right. And it’s something that we can really appreciate being involved with astrology that’s not as, I don’t know, I don’t think as respected as a phenomenon in the modern secular world. You know, like, you have people who always have back luck with relationships. And there can be a connotation of like, well, you’re just doing something to screw this up, right? Like, you’re attracting the wrong people. But like, no, some people genuinely have worse luck in certain areas of life than someone else. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and it goes back to that topic also we were talking about about children where sometimes there is things that happen deliberately, but sometimes there’s things that happen as a result of circumstances or that are outside of your control that make things go awry or in other instances that just make things work out in your favor. And that is that element of like, luck or chance or fortune. And what’s interesting is that this topic can also come up in the context of like, gambling, for example, which in modern times is the area which we most clearly already associate with the concept of luck or fortune or chance. But in modern times, especially over the past century, the concept of like, gambling and speculation became one of the major topics with the 5th house. And I don’t fully – I was trying to track this back, and I was not clear how far especially the speculation bit goes back traditionally. But I thought it was interesting that it kind of ties back in with a very early concept associated with the 5th house, which is the concept of fortune or chance or luck. And I do have some charts of some eminent poker players, for example, that have very good 5th houses. And I think part of the reason for that may be partially because it’s a game; they’re playing games like, professionally. But there may be some element there that has to do with like, having good luck sometimes and some element that’s outside of your control, but that still happens to fall in your favor. 

LS: Right. And noticing that you for whatever reason have good luck, you know, doing this activity. But also potentially being just drawn to the topic of things that involve chance. 

CB: Right. 

LS: I’ve seen gamblers as well with some 5th house placements, and also I remember one instance of someone who was really focused on stock market trading, but in a very actively hands-on way that was very much like gambling. And it was interesting to notice that it was 5th house things going on in that person’s chart. So there are like, modern iterations of that as well. 

CB: Right. Yeah. Because there’s this element of like, skill and training and ability, but then there’s this other element of like, the things that are outside of your control still having a huge impact on things. So and that’ll be important, you know, because we’re talking about the 5th house as the place of good fortune or good luck. But then adjacent to that is also the 6th house, which is traditionally called “the place of bad fortune” or the place of bad luck. And so we’ll be able to see more clearly like, the contrast sometimes when we compare those two houses. 

LS: Definitely. They’re pretty much opposite of each other. 

CB: Yeah. 

Okay, so let’s see. Rhetorius says that planets bring about their own significations in a positive way when they’re here, so that kind of ties into the previous topic. The last miscellaneous one I meant to mention that comes up throughout the tradition is associating the 5th house with what they call legates or emissaries or messengers or ambassadors, basically, which is like, one of those topics that doesn’t sound like it should still be relevant in modern times, but we’ve actually seen in come up where it comes up, for example, in the chart of Shirley Temple who was important 5th house placements, including the ruler of the Ascendant. And obviously, that comes up because she was a famous child actor as the primary way. But then weirdly, later in life she also became like, the US ambassador to two different countries. 

LS: Yeah. I was so excited when I found that example when I was using her chart as an example for a zodiacal releasing workshop this past year. And I was like, oh, that’s why she did those two seemingly completely disparate careers; they both actually go in the 5th house! One’s just kind of like, a more obscure and less common, you know, signification these days. But it’s really funny to see both of those show up in her chart. 

CB: Yeah, totally. 

All right, so that brings us to our last section I think for today, which is just professions, where there’s a bunch of different professions that can be associated with the 5th house or that we’ve seen come up in different contexts when the 5th house is prominent. And we’ll see many more of these in our example charts. But when the 5th house is tied in with important placements related to career or work or life direction or finances, for example, sometimes there’s specific professions that we’ve seen come up at different points. And the one that’s most common is just in general people who work with children in some capacity tend to have like, a prominent 5th house placement for some reason. So this can be like, we have some really good examples of like, children’s book authors, for example. Who was our primary one for that again? 

LS: Judy Blume is one of the big ones. She has like —

CB: Okay, yeah. 

LS: — a big stellium in the 5th house. 

CB: Yeah. So Judy Blume, for example, is an example of a famous children’s book author that has a bunch of planets in the 5th house, including the ruler of the Ascendant. It can also come up sometimes with like, teachers, although there can be some overlap with the 3rd and 9th houses there. Pediatricians, midwives – like, literally people that help people have children. So anything involving children as a profession or work or career can really show up prominently with the 5th house. 

LS: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah – oh, go ahead. 

CB: Are there any others related to children profession that I’m forgetting at the moment? 

LS: I think that covered a lot. Like, bringing children into the world and then taking care of children, like, childcare workers, maybe. You know, and early education teachers and so forth. 

CB: Right. 

LS: Yeah. 

CB: Okay. So other 5th house things – there could be people that do work related to sex and sexuality can come up within the context of the 5th house. So different forms of like, sex work for example can come up. There’s other people that do things related to helping people with like, sex. Like, we have one example of somebody that was helping to spread safe sex methods during the AIDS epidemic, for example, and played a major role in the government in helping to promote sexual education, for example, was a really great example. 

LS: Right. Yeah. So anything involving sexuality in any respect, if they have a focus on that with their career, generally there’s usually a connection between either the 5th and the 10th of career or the 5th and the 2nd of livelihood. 

CB: Right. Yeah. And then finally, creatives, as we’ve talked about, but also entertainers seem to be like, a core thing that comes up when there’s career things tied in with the 5th house. So those who entertain others and bring fun and joy into the world in some way tend to have prominent 5th house placements and we’ll see a bunch of those in the next episode. 

LS: Basically the entire world of entertainment and, you know, movie-making and music-making. There’s just lots of 5th house going on there. 

CB: Yeah. So this isn’t a comprehensive list, but it’s just to give you some ideas of when you start tying in like, career significations to the 5th house, like, some of the literal things that can come up. 

So I think that’s it, though, in talking about the significations and giving this broad overview of some of the broad archetypal and traditional and concrete significations that can come up in this house. Yeah? 

LS: Yeah. I think this is pretty comprehensive. And you know, this was more conceptual, more abstract, but it has been very much based in all of our chart research of many, many charts that we will be presenting shortly in the other two episodes. 

CB: Yeah. And I wanted to do it like this this time to let this discussion breathe rather than just like, run through these really quickly and then jump straight into chart examples in terms of give people more of an overview tying in a lot of the things that we learned from doing the chart research, but also from studying the different traditional significations throughout history. 

So for further reading, there’s three books that I’ve mentioned in this series. So there’s my book, Chris Brennan, Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, where I go into the early significations of the houses and a lot of the different basic concepts that we’ve mentioned here and how that system came about and tied together and what some of the earliest authors say about the different houses. 

Demetra George – I would recommend checking out her book, Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice, especially volume two, where Demetra does an even more comprehensive treatment of starting from the beginning of the tradition and giving the significations that different authors give for the 5th house as well as the rest of the houses. And she does that for the entire like, 2,000 year history of astrologers using the 12 houses in general so that you can see the growth and development and how the significations changed in some ways over time. And she also does a good job summarizing things. So I definitely recommend checking that book out. 

And then finally, I also drew on some of the translations of Levente Laszlo from the HOROI Project at HOROIProject.com, especially for his translation of Rhetorius on the significations of the houses. And he’s done a whole section translating that text and other texts on the earlier Hellenistic significations of the houses. So I’d recommend checking that out as well. 

Cool. All right. Well, I think that’s it for this episode. So to conclude things, this was our conceptual discussion of the significations of the 5th house, and then in the next episode, we’re gonna look at the ruler of the Ascendant when it’s in the 5th house and use those examples to show what happens sometimes when the 5th house takes on a major part of the person’s life focus and when the native’s life is directed more towards the 5th house compared to other people what that actually looks like in a concrete sense. And we’ve mentioned some of those charts in passing during the course of this discussion, but in the next episode we’re gonna get into like, a lot more. 

LS: We have so many charts! And I’m really excited to get into those, because I’m really oriented towards, you know, going from the concrete to the abstract, and so we definitely have many concrete examples to ground this in. And you know, it’s really when the Ascendant ruler is placed in the 5th or there’s a 5th house stellium, either or, that you can really see the significations of the 5th house come most fully to the forefront. 

CB: Absolutely. So we will do the ruler of the Ascendant next. And then the episode after that – part three – we’re gonna do the ruler of the 5th house when it’s in each of the other 12 houses, because that’s when you start seeing a lot of overlap when there’s connections between different houses. And it bridges different parts of the chart and brings them together in really unique and interesting ways so that the topic of, for example, children can be imported into other areas of the life, whether it’s career or whether it’s friends or travel or what have you. 

LS: Right. Or even the legal system, or finances, or basically any of them. 

CB: Yeah. Definitely. All right, well, I think that’s it then for this episode. Thanks so much for joining me, Leisa. I really appreciate it. I’m glad you could join me for this, because we were doing a lot of this research together last year and then I had to take a break, and then a lot of life stuff came up. But yeah, I’m glad to have you back and be collaborating with you on this again. 

LS: Yeah. I’m glad to be here to do this again. It’s been a… Yes! I was very much diverted by many parent things for a while, and it’s nice to have at least this little window before anything else comes up to focus on this again. 

CB: Yeah. Cool. All right! Well, I think that’s it then for this episode. So thanks everyone, for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we’ll see you again next time! 

LS: See you next time! 

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