Seventh House

The seventh house faces the first across the chart, and it is the house of the other person. Traditionally it governs marriage and the spouse, lovers and sweethearts, partners in any undertaking, contracts, and open enemies: the opponent in a dispute, the other side in a lawsuit or a war. Modern astrologers read it as committed relationship of every kind, business partnership and the meeting of equals, and as the qualities a person looks for in others, sometimes the very qualities they have not yet owned in themselves. Howard Sasportas called it the house of the other, and saw its task as owning what we attribute to others and meeting them as equals.

Angular, succedent or cadent

The seventh house is angular. Its cusp is the Descendant, the degree setting on the western horizon, which Lilly called the angle of the west. He ranked it third of the twelve, after the first and tenth. A planet here acts strongly and tends to arrive through other people: partners, rivals, clients.

Natural sign and ruler

The seventh house corresponds to the seventh sign, Libra, and to its ruler Venus: balance, fairness, the art of relating. No planet has its joy in the seventh house.

Lilly's significations

Lilly judges by the seventh house marriage, and describes the person asked about, man or woman; all love questions; public enemies; the defendant in a lawsuit and the opposing party in war; quarrels, duels and lawsuits; thieves and thefts; wives and sweethearts, their shape, condition and birth. In a horary question it signifies the astrologer, and in medicine the physician. In an annual ingress it shows whether war or peace may be expected. It rules the haunches, from the navel to the buttocks; its colour is dark black. It is masculine, and its cosignificators are Libra and the Moon. Saturn or Mars unfortunate here he took to show trouble in marriage.

Planets here, and the ruler elsewhere

A planet in the seventh house tends to describe the people a person is drawn to and what they meet in partnership: Jupiter here may incline towards generous, expansive partners, Saturn towards serious, lasting commitments that take time to form. The ruler of the seventh shows where partners are often met or what they bring, a ruler in the ninth suggesting someone from afar or met through study. None of this chooses a partner or seals a marriage; it describes a pattern a person can recognise and work with.

Related

• First House, the opposite house: the self
• Descendant
• Libra and Venus
• House system