Chapter XIV. The SEVENTH House.—Marriage, PARTNERSHIPS, ENEMIES, ETC

THe SEVENTH House.—MArRIAGE, PARTNERSHIPS, ENEMIES, ETC.

MarriaGE is the chief influence of the seventh house. The seventh house in every horoscope is the complement of the first, and represents the unifying of all that is separated or isolated in the ascendant; it indicates the subjective side of the nature as distinguished from the objective side indicated by the first house: * and successfully to unify all that is denoted by the first and seventh means an enlarged experience which can be gained in no other way. In the abstract, it means the blending of Mars and Venus, Mercury and Jupiter, or the luminaries and Saturn. In other words it signifies the transmutation of the passions into pure love, the exchange of intellect for wisdom and the perfect individualisation of the conscious Self.

Just as there is to be a divine marriage of the Personality with the Individuality when man attains to the perfection he is destined to reach; so on a minor scale, on the physical plane, the union of the sexes is a commencement of that unification which is eventually to unite the self to all other selves. The triangle that has its apex in the ascendant, when interlaced with the opposite triangle that has its apex in the seventh, symbolises the formation of the divine tetractys, or the union of opposites. |

We have been considering hitherto the first half of the circle in the six houses that are under the earth, these being chiefly concerned with the Personality, starting full of life and force from the ascendant, and culminating in the sixth, where the life is either expended through sickness or work, or transmuted through the psyche or Soul into the human stage where the true individual begins. The chord from the first to the seventh houses divides the dark from the light half of the circle, the animal from the human, the latent from the active, the objective from the subjective. It is true that the one is but the reflection

* See remarks in early part of Chapter XI.

of the other, but from the seventh house the dividing line leads onward to the ‘ascending arc’ ef human progress, and to the broad daylight of the solar half of the circle, which is not only less limited and restricted in its expression but more potent and real than that which is foreshadowed by the dark and lower half.

Each house directly or indirectly affects the native in a definite manner according to a fixed law; but the house alone is not wholly responsible for the event. In the order of the signs Venus governs the seventh and the second, love and money; but although Venus is the planet most active in the majority of cases when marriage takes place no hard and fast rule can be applied in every case of marriage, and it is therefore advisable that the student should carefully study what is meant by the term marriage. In our own country, forinstance, marriages take place at any time, and at any age. In India, on the other hand, marriages are arranged from birth, and in the majority of cases the native has no voice m the matter. In all parts of the world marriage laws differ, and the work of the astrologer is by no means an easy task when marriage is the subject for consideration.