Love and Marriage- Some Considerations

                                              by Clélia  Romano, DMA  March 2017

                       Astrological analysis of love, marriage and companionship is not difficult to delineate in a chart and frequently the astrologer is asked about these kinds of questions.

It

is easier also to analyze this topic in a horary chart, since it is enough to look at the 7th house, its dispositor and the ascendant ruler, and see if there is any aspect between them. If both are in aspect  we have an important testimony in favour or against the question, depending on the type of aspect and if benefics or malefics give their testimony. If Venus and Moon appear in the configuration, especially in a male question, we can judge that the marriage will happen or will have a good evolution. If a maleficent planet appears in the configuration the matter tends to be hindred. In case of a female client, we accept a relation between the ascendant´s dispositor and the Sun to signify a possible marriage.

As Robert Zoller said, following medieval astrology,  the woman always goes in search of the Sun.

In a horary chart the Moon is co-ruler of the  chart and contributes sometimes very clearly, even replacing the ruler of the ascendant  or the ruler of the  7th house if she aspects one of the significators or a benefic strong by position .

However, the aim of this article is to present the most difficult questions, those which have not a simple answer, but that which takes into account the whole chart settings.

Venus and its position, angularity, sign and aspects, counts a lot in favor of happiness in love ( and even in life as a whole) and in an opposite way the aspects with Mars cause the end of things, ruptures and pain. The more I study individual charts the more I pay attention to the position of Venus by sign and by house, as well as its aspects, when the matter concerns marriage and love.

But even with this testimony the difficulties in delineation come from qualitative rather than quantitative aspects. A simple “yes” or “no” is easier than to describe  the kind of marriage or love the client will live.

When we get to the 7th house the  first thing is to be aware that we reach the West angle, one of the four hinges where important things in the chart will revolve, especially if there are planets in there.

Moreover, it should not be forgotten that  the 7th house makes an opposition to the ascendant. It is where the Sun sets on the West horizon. So, in the past, the 7th house was  considered the house of death.

In the human trajectory on earth we start from the known, from the mother’s womb, from the cradle, the ascendant, and  go towards what is unknown. What is awaiting or us after this journey is to reach the seventh house, the house of the Moon in Chaldean order. In this case the Moon is not  representing  women, but night, unknown and the obscure.

When Plato spoke about  primordial forms, one of them is the Same versus the Other. And the 7th House is the furthest house from the Ascendant (the Same), and it is attached to that which is unfamiliar, the Other.

The daily movement that carries the whole celestial vault toward the East, called by Plato the Circle of the Same, and by the astrologers the  Primary Movement  is faced by the opposite circle, which moves in an opposite direction, the zodiacal circle, i.e. the ecliptic ,the Circle of the Other. It was said that the Platonic Demiurge linked both.

A so disparate union gives some food for thought. The Ascendant and the 7th house are opposite in every sense and they were linked for some reason. We can not get to the ultimate reasons but we can speculate about the opposition link between the ascendant and the 7th house.

 

Traditional astrology has always given great importance to the topics of marriage, love and sex .

Of the planets, especially Venus has a lot of relation in the prediction and happiness of the marriage.

In any delineation one must look for a configuration, that is the relation between two, three or four planets in their signs and houses. A single planet does not say much.

The institution of marriage, though it has relations with Christianity, does not necessarily have to do with love, and it deals also  with hate and destruction.

When we study medieval techniques to predict marriage, some things seem outdated, but I do not think that anything has essentially changed.

We must remember that in medieval times Europe was pagan, and in it lived the Celts, Anglo-Saxons, French and Germanic tribes. Civil marriage did not exist for people. Rarely did anyone know their grandparents and sometimes even their parents . The family as we know nowadays only existed among the aristocrats and the incipient bourgeoisie, which, in order to pass on their power and lands, made marriage an arrangement and a mutual partnership in which the children are generated to continue and expand the family business. Marriages were arranged long before the bride and groom were old enough to formalize a carnal union. The woman had a inferior role to that of the man, but if we were to study the society of the time there was very little place for individualism, even for man.

The Catholic Church tried to institute marriage as a sacrament, but the people did not have even an economic condition to pay for civil marriage.

Uses and customs were worth more than any contract, and in a certain culture of medieval times a woman was considered married to a man if he took his keys customarily in his own belt. Returning a woman to the family imposed a certain payment on the man, such as a compensation.

Who consulted the astrologer was not the common people  but the aristocracy and bourgeoisie that was formed from the thirteenth century. They wanted to know if they would find a bearable partner , whether the woman would be fertile or spoiled, whether she would accept the sexual act with the appropriate pleasure, whether she will be straight or gay, whether the future partners would be able or not to control their sexual appetites or if they would fornicate with the servants, etc.

When one reads the observations and conditions for the prediction of marriage in medieval authors we, as an individualistic society , tend to put them aside and say that they do not serve in our culture. Sometimes they even seem laughable.

However, I urge you to analyze your study charts to see how timely the old assertions are: behind ideals bathed in romantic civility, human beings and marriage have not changed much and behind the scenes lies the same medieval needs, for they are human and marriage is nothing less than a contract aimed to carrying forward some form of partnership capable of increasing or at least managing better the patrimony of the couple or the family, generating children and allowing them a minimum of development, besides guarantee a group of people belonging to a clan capable of protect against malicious strangers.

All this can happen with love, but most fall with ruled and compromises.

The 7th house relates to both love and hate, the spouse, boyfriend or lover, partners but also enemies. It  means the forces that opposes us, people who openly face us, to whom we end up going to war: it representes the Circle of the Other.

To talk about love we have to look at almost all houses, meanwhile marriage is a question intrinsic to the 7th.

Whe can see love, looking to the ascendant, when Venus appears there, making the native someone prone to harmony. In the fourth house, making the family atmosphere clean, beautiful and harmonious, and we know how important this foundation is to foster love, in the fifth house, fostering the pleasure of carnal union and of the children. In the 7th house, if you learned how to deal with compromises, in the 9th house as the love for God, in the 11th house, the love to our friends and even in the 12th house, the compassion and pity to the excluded and unfornunate.

Everything depends on the relations of Venus with other planets because, depending of this the love can change in hate, self-complacency, laziness, perversion.

The ancient authors describe marriage and the type of sexual intercourse, but not love, because love is virtual, can be in every house or in none.

Poets say that love is an emotion which do not want compensation, simply gives and do not expect  receiving, since the pleasure of love stays in the very sensation that love brings.

I finish with a quote from  Mortimer Adler: “love consists in giving without getting in return; in giving what is not owed, what is not due the other. That’s why true love is never based, as associations for utility or pleasure are, on a fair exchange.”