Ninth House

The ninth house carries the mind beyond the familiar. Traditionally it governs long journeys and voyages overseas, foreign countries, religion and the clergy, dreams and visions, books and learning, and the relatives of one's spouse. Modern astrologers read it as the search for meaning: philosophy and belief, higher education and the university, law, publishing and teaching, travel that changes a person's outlook, and the broad principles a life is steered by. Howard Sasportas called it the seeker, the house where a person expands beyond familiar territory to find their guiding principles.

Angular, succedent or cadent

The ninth house is cadent, falling away from the angle of the Midheaven. Even so, Lilly ranked it seventh of the twelve, the strongest of the cadent houses, ahead of the third, second and eighth. It beholds the Ascendant by trine, and it is the house where the Sun rejoices.

Natural sign and ruler

The ninth house corresponds to the ninth sign, Sagittarius, and to its ruler Jupiter: faith, growth, wide horizons and the wish to understand. The Sun has his joy here, the house of God in some older traditions, where the light of understanding shines.

Lilly's significations

Lilly judges by the ninth house voyages and long journeys beyond the seas; religious people and clergy of every kind; dreams and visions; foreign countries; books and learning; church livings and benefices; and the kindred of one's wife or husband. It rules the hips, thighs and fundament. Its colours are green and white. It is masculine, and its cosignificators are Sagittarius and Jupiter: Jupiter placed here, he wrote, naturally signifies someone devout in religion or modestly given. He also found Mars, Saturn or the South Node badly placed here in the charts of people at odds with the faith of their day.

Planets here, and the ruler elsewhere

A planet in the ninth house tends to describe how a person seeks meaning and meets the wider world: Mercury here may incline towards study, languages and writing, Uranus towards unorthodox beliefs or sudden changes of outlook. The ruler of the ninth elsewhere shows where questions of belief and learning tend to be lived, in the tenth perhaps through a career in teaching, law or travel. These are leanings of the mind and spirit, never a prescribed faith.

Related

• Third House, the opposite house: short journeys and the everyday mind
• Sagittarius and Jupiter
• Sun, whose joy is here
• House system