Fifth House

The fifth house is the house of delight. Traditionally it governs children and pregnancy, pleasure, feasts, taverns and plays, and messengers or envoys. Modern astrologers keep children and pleasure and add creativity in every form: art, play, hobbies, romance and love affairs, games of chance and risk-taking, and the wish to leave a personal mark on the world. Howard Sasportas called it the creator, the house where a person finds the courage to put their heart on the line through what they make and love.

Angular, succedent or cadent

The fifth house is succedent: it follows the angle of the fourth. Succedent houses carry a middle strength, steadier than the cadent houses and less forceful than the angles. Lilly ranked the fifth sixth of the twelve, just after the eleventh, and it beholds the Ascendant by trine, an easy line of sight. Planets here tend to show themselves through what a person enjoys and produces.

Natural sign and ruler

The fifth house corresponds to the fifth sign, Leo, and to its ruler the Sun: warmth, generosity, the urge to shine. Venus has her joy here, because, as Lilly says, it is the house of pleasure, delight and merriment.

Lilly's significations

Lilly judges by this house children, ambassadors, the state of a woman with child and whether she will bear a son or a daughter, banquets, ale-houses, taverns and plays, messengers or agents for a commonwealth, the wealth of the father, and the health or sickness of the querent's son or daughter. It rules the stomach, liver, heart, sides and back. Its colours are black and white, or honey colour. It is masculine, and its cosignificators are Leo and Venus. He thought it wholly unfortunate when afflicted by Mars or Saturn, which in his view showed wayward and disobedient children.

Planets here, and the ruler elsewhere

A planet in the fifth house tends to colour how a person plays, loves and creates, and their experience of children: the Moon here may incline towards a tender, nurturing creativity, Uranus towards unconventional loves or sudden enthusiasms. The ruler of the fifth placed elsewhere suggests where joy and creative energy tend to flow, a ruler in the tenth hinting that creative work may become a calling. All of this inclines; it does not decide who a person will love or whether they will have children.

Related

• Eleventh House, the opposite house: friends and shared hopes
• Leo and the Sun
• Venus, whose joy is here
• House system