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Planetary joys
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What they are
The joys of the planets are a scheme from the oldest layer of Western astrology. Each of the seven classical planets is given one house where it is said to rejoice — a place whose meaning matches its nature so well that the planet is at home there, whatever sign the house happens to hold:
- Mercury rejoices in the 1st house;
- the Moon in the 3rd;
- Venus in the 5th;
- Mars in the 6th;
- the Sun in the 9th;
- Jupiter in the 11th;
- Saturn in the 12th.
Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, discovered much later, have no joys.
The logic behind them
The scheme looks arbitrary at first, but it is carefully built, and much of the traditional meaning of the houses grew out of it.
- Day and night. The planets of the day sect — the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn — all rejoice in houses above the horizon (the 9th, 11th and 12th). The planets of the night — the Moon, Venus and Mars — rejoice in houses below it (the 3rd, 5th and 6th). Mercury, which belongs to both, rejoices on the horizon itself, in the 1st.
- Opposite pairs. The joys face each other across the chart. The Sun's 9th, the place of the God, faces the Moon's 3rd, the place of the Goddess. Jupiter's 11th, the Good Spirit, faces Venus's 5th, Good Fortune. Saturn's 12th, the Bad Spirit, faces Mars's 6th, Bad Fortune. The two benefics rejoice in good places, and the two malefics in the difficult places that do not see the rising sign.
- Mercury on the helm. The 1st house — the hour-marker, which Greek astrologers also called the helm — stands for the body, the life and the mind steering it; Mercury, the planet of reason and speech, is fittingly placed there.
Greek and Latin astrologers such as Firmicus Maternus and Paulus Alexandrinus gave these names alongside the house numbers, and several later house meanings come straight from them: the 9th as the house of religion and higher understanding, the 11th as friends and good hopes, the 12th as sorrow and confinement.
How they are read
A planet in its joy is read as comfortable and effective in that part of life: its nature and the house's matters work together. Many traditional astrologers count a planet in its joy as somewhat strengthened, even when its sign is weak.
The joys are also used to explain the houses: when a traditional astrologer reads the 6th house as a place of toil and illness, part of the reason is that Mars, a malefic, rejoices there.
Joys by sign
Later astrologers added a second meaning of the word. A planet was also said to joy in one of its own domicile signs: in Lilly's list, Saturn in Aquarius, Jupiter in Sagittarius, Mars in Scorpio, Venus in Taurus and Mercury in Virgo. As deVore notes, the term has been used loosely over the centuries, so when you meet "joy" in an older book it is worth checking which sense the author means.
Which system they assume
The joys come from a time when houses were counted by whole signs, and many traditional astrologers apply them with whole sign houses. They can be used with any house system, but a planet near a cusp may then be in its joy in one system and not in another.