Version en Español aqui. Gracias, Señor Shaman!
I chose the term mirroring because selfless would've been cheesy, with respect to the title I gave to the article on the first house. There are several reasons why I chose this term and I hope they will transpire from the rest of the article.
One of these reasons bares a more pronounced psychological (microcosmic) component for the sole reason the seventh house is the area of life in which the self (first house) is reflected back onto itself through its interactions with the world. From a seventh house perspective, the first is a microcosm while the seventh is a macrocosm from the perspective of the first. However, the seventh house is also part of one's microcosm because when a person interacts with the other his or her macrocosmic interaction generates reactions inside their microcosm. The same applies for the other person. Those reactions represent various states of consciousness and in most cases they reflect back into the macrocosm, but they do so based on each person's unique microcosmic particularities.
For example, when two people interact and one of them tells a joke that would generally be considered extremely funny, the other merely smiles instead of bursting out into laughter. Likewise, if someone were to tell another certain bad news that would generally make people very sad, the other starts laughing hysterically instead of crying. Or they say nothing, or maybe act in a different way than what most people would in that situation. This is because people have formed their own way of dealing with the world based on conditioning from early on and on life experiences that shape that conditioning. I know I should have said this in the article on the first house, but I have talked about it somewhat in the one about the eighth house and it is likely I will talk write more on that when I get to the fourth house (and Imum Coeli).Regardless of each person's reaction to others, or whether others approve or disapprove of those reactions, like or dislike them, it is something their Ascendant has manifested into the world. I have spoke in the article on the first house how the use of one's personal power can lead to competition and even fighting and I will talk about this further on in the article. But in general, besides agreeing with each other more or less, people also disagree a lot of times during their interactions and this is because each of them has their own subjective view on things. Being an angular house, the energies of the seventh house are strong and so whatever happens inside it can have a great impact on both the individual and the environment.
The seventh house thus becomes an arena in which the uniqueness of each individual is blended with those of others and in the best case scenario those individuals will come to terms with each other. They will do so through the use of some form of diplomacy, something that is a seventh house theme. Worst case scenario, they will end up fighting and this is another seventh house theme. Fighting can take place with the use of words alone and the trine between the seventh and the third house facilitates this, or it can become physical, in which case each person's first house (and Ascendant) take the stage. Fighting can also escalate on a larger scale between more than a few people, all the way to wars which also fall in the seventh house.
Since wars are large scale fighting they imply the involvement of more houses. Wars are usually started by various forms of government (tenth house) that rule countries (fourth house). A lot of times when diplomacy has ran out of options or ways to settle various disputes, one then resorts to "negotiations with a lightsaber" as in Star Wars Episode II. The seventh house is square to the tenth and fourth, the latter being opposite each other, and the tension generated by this aspect can become explosive in a literal sense. And of course, many people (many first houses) will take part in the fighting.
Also, whereas in single combat one's Ascendant (and first house) counts mostly, battles and wars require a country's (fourth house) economy (second house) to be able to produce (sixth house) military equipment and supplies on a constant basis in order to keep the troops fighting, as well as good leadership (tenth house) in both planning large scale operations as well as executing them in real-life on the field of battle. Not to mention armies need good logistics (third house) in order to function as close to optimal capacity as possible. Nevertheless, wars require courage from the troops and I have spoken about personal power in the article on the first house, of which courage is a part in my opinion.
I have briefly mentioned in the article on the sixth house about duty in the form of additional editing at the end. Although it would've been more appropriate to speak about this concept there, I see no reason not to talk about it here either because in wars each person (first house) has the job (sixth house) of helping out in the fight in some form of another, whether some do it under fire and others from behind desks. Regardless of that, it is each soldier's duty to fight for their side just as it is each employee's duty to work for the company that has given them the job. Linking this article with the sixth house again, it is easy to see yet again how the ancient considerations regarding the houses apply when you analyze them with respect to war: soldiers (sixth house, joy of Mars) fight (seventh house, house of fighting and dying) and many of them end up dead (eighth house).
With war out of the way, let us turn our focus towards other seventh house themes. There are other means of battling besides those of a violent nature, although they can also affect individuals a great deal. Lawsuits is one such method and no day passes by without someone suing someone else somewhere for various reasons. These reasons can be more or less serious yet if the two parties ended up being engaged in a lawsuit then it is safe to say diplomacy between them failed, or it was never an option for one or both parties.
In many cases lawsuits are the result of someone breaking an agreement and while some times only verbal agreements are broken in which case the lawsuit can be very shaky from a legal perspective, a lot of times those agreements are written, in the form of a contract. Both verbal and written communication is a third house theme, yet the trine between it and the seventh greatly encourages agreements between parties. But if the agreement was legalized (tenth house), it becomes official and anyone who breaks it can be held accountable by the law. I for one assign the law to the ninth house because it requires great judgement to create solid but fair rules and regulations, while law-enforcement obviously belongs to the tenth house.
So contracts might be third house in terms of being paperwork, but they fall in the seventh house because they mark an agreement between parties - partners. Contracts can be broken and they often are, but someone has more chances in winning a lawsuit as a result of the contract in which they represent the party that has suffered damages because of the contract being broken, if the contract was made in specific ways. In theory, any idiot can write a contract (third house). But writing a contract without loopholes the other party can take advantage of, and using specific legal terminology that would legally enforce whatever terms and conditions are stipulated in the contract falls in the domain of the ninth house.
The sextile between the seventh and the ninth houses makes it easier for partners to make contracts, but that contract will be carefully revised by the magistrates (tenth house) in the event the breaking of the contract results in one side filing a lawsuit against the other. The square aspect between the seventh house and the tenth (magistrates) implies that judges are supposed to be unscrupulous and to judge the case impartially, based on evidence alone. In this example, the contract would be analyzed thoroughly along with the claim of the accuser and the statements of the other party, further evidence and witnesses and so on, and a sentence would be passed based on actual objective facts and not on each side's subjective desires.
There are several forms of contracts, one of them being what is called a gentleman's agreement. In this case both parties "sign a contract" with a simple handshake based on trust (eight house). This implies both parties are honorable and will fulfill whatever was discussed and in the manner it which it was agreed upon. Unfortunately, this kind of agreement gives way to swindlers and charlatans (third house) who take advantage of genuine honest people.
Another form of unwritten contract is a marriage, albeit legalizing the bond can be considered as being somewhat equivalent to signing an actual contract. Marriage is something many people think of when they hear about the seventh house. Marriage is also supposed to be based on trust besides, in theory, being based on love, or at least mutual affection. I have talked about love in the article on the fifth house. Besides what I have written there, I will add that marriage is supposed to be a committed relationship, despite the fact many people who are married are more or less committed to their spouse. As such, besides the fact they are supposed to be faithful to their partner from more than a sexual standpoint, a person also has to help them fulfill their needs.
Besides all those romantic views that the two become one and all that, something which although corny, reflects some of the essence of the seventh house, the spouses become a team (eleventh house). Each one of them is then supposed to be a team player and support their teammate for better or worse, in sickness and in health... until death (eighth house) do them apart. This fairy tale view of marriage happens quite rarely in reality and we can see many married couples being miserable in their marriage because of a multitude of things. I will not go over these reasons because they are too many, but I will say that in many cases their partner does not turn out to be the way they wanted. Instead they turned out the way they needed. This also happens in many committed relationships other than marriage as well.
I am saying this because, returning to the title of this article, the seventh house reflects the individual (first house). I am sure many will disagree with me for what I am about to say, or maybe some will say I am speaking based on some sort of shallow New-Agey mindset, but whatever. Señor Shaman and I talked in Asteria how people usually meet others that reflect some of their own traits, often traits that people suppress (eighth house). I have also talked in the article on the eighth house how people suppress different things of theirs upon interacting with other people. This might not come across as being that important for anyone or it might sound as being something many people were aware of except for me, in which case I apologize for making it sound so special in terms of personal discovery, something I am sure is not the case:
I have found that, in many cases, the people we like more upon meeting and interacting with will trigger us to suppress certain traits in order to make ourselves liked back. On the other hand, the people we dislike more will trigger us by manifesting those traits we had suppressed in ourselves. It is not necessarily we dislike those people at first sight or even for a certain time during which we interact with them more or less, but we end up disliking them the more they trigger us. While the triggering process can be felt as annoying, it is nothing more than one of life's mechanisms that allows us to recognize the stuff we had suppressed as a result of one-on-one interactions in the seventh house, stuff that ended up in the eighth house. As such, other seventh house interactions are needed in order to help us become aware of our past doings and start undoing them.
This process is possible because the people who we can very well end up disliking because they trigger us in certain ways, mirror us. More precisely, they mirror those things we had previously suppressed. So while we might want to be with someone of a certain type, life (used here as a general term - Higher Self, if you want) has its ways of bringing us together with people we need, because of the need we have to "recover" whatever we had suppressed and become more "whole" as a self (first house) again. And this is why I used that title for this article.
The seventh house is in opposition with the first and this aspect between areas of life that basically cover me and us compels the native to find alternative solutions to the issues generated by the other party. They cannot go on operationg on their previous conditioning that has had them suppress certain things, otherwise they risk losing their partner, something which in many cases happens.
The way I see it, this take place at the level of the Descendant which in physical terms refers to the point on the western horizon over which (in proximity to which) the heavens set. In the natal chart it is the point that represents how someone interacts during one-on-one engagements, usually in private. Thus the Descendant interacts with others past the initial contact the Ascendant has made yet it keeps feeding back energy from the interaction into the Ascendant (and first house). One is to remember both the Descendant and Ascendant represent energies within an individual's personal sphere of consciousness and not just physical points in space.
There can be cases when a person come across as menacing at first sight (their Ascendant), but they can be very cool and pleasant after you get to know them better. This happens after a certain amount of time during which you have had at least one talk of a more complex nature with them (their Descendant). This is because the Ascendant is usually more predominant in situations where the native engages strangers, while their Descendant takes over the more those strangers become acquaintances. For example, if you go to the supermarket your Ascendant is the one that interacts with the cashier, someone whom you've possibly seen for the first time or who you see every once in a while but do not engage beyond a simple "hi" and "thank you", for example.
If for instance you go to the local bar you've visited quite often, it is possible the bartender will have become more familiar at some point, in which case you can open up more to them, especially if you've had a few drinks (fifth house). The Descendant thus starts taking over from the Ascendant in this case. Many modern astrologers refer to the Ascendant as a person's "mask" and although it does make sense to see it that way, I find it but a shallow approach and that is why I haven't talked about it in that article. But I found it fitting for this example because you can very well want to come off as being in a certain way to strangers, possibly as a means of protection, whereas you usually lay down your guard more when dealing with people you are more familiar.
So basically, in human interactions you wear a mask when dealing with strangers and you remove that mask gradually, the more you get to know them and you start opening up to them. You thus "move" from your Ascendant into your Descendant and that usually takes place as a result of you trusting (eighth house) them more. This does not mean you will open up completely towards people you know in general, but that you are more amiable (eleventh house) towards them in your interaction and those individuals see more of you than what they had observed when they first met you.
However, the more you open yourself to another and the more they do that towards you, the more likely it is you will come across both things that you like and things you dislike in one another. I have previously talked about the mirroring effect of the seventh house and all that. And this is where things can go wrong and disagreements can occur which can escalate into fights and then some. I have already mentioned diplomacy as a seventh house theme and this is where diplomacy comes in handy because it can help the two parties settle their differences peacefully - peace is another seventh house theme, although I would also give it strong eleventh house connotations (and ninth house as well).
More than often one or both parties have to give in so that any escalation between them will settle down. On many occasions people have to be well mannered towards each other in order not to upset the other person and trigger some kind of conflict. I see manners as part diplomacy, part education (third house) and part conditioning (fourth house and Imum Coeli) and they often contradict the innate nature of an individual (first house and Ascendant). The seventh and fourth houses are square the first and thus the tensed aspects can enforce that contradiction, while the third house sextiles the first so the native would have it somewhat easier to make use of their education during human interactions, if they so choose to. Manners are always mandatory when experiencing something that is public and formal in nature, as well as when dealing with the authorities in general. The square between the tenth house and the seventh and first houses imposes that, but it also leaves little room for error when it comes to mannerism.
Another component of diplomacy, at least in my opinion, is compromise. Compromise requires the native to make concessions to another and in doing so, they often put the wants and needs of that other person before their own. This is something more or less problematic for people because some have a stronger sense of self than others, and often a greater innate power that prevents them from succumbing to other people in any field. In this case the information their Ascendant receives from their Descendant can trigger responses that are greatly disproportionate in power and intensity to what they had received, the person swiftly shifting from their Descendant into their Ascendant. Yet the Ascendant-Descendant axis manifests its energies as a tug of war within one's personal sphere of consciousness so every person usually leans more towards one side than the other.
As we have seen so far, diplomacy and compromise are ingredients for a longer lasting committed relationship, along with trust. Marriage is by far the greatest exponent of a committed relationship because, traditionally, it involves a spiritual bond (ninth house) and a legal one (tenth house), besides a physical (first house) one that manifests as the two living in close proximity to each other. I will briefly say that certain cultures allow a man to marry more than once in a sense he can have at least two wives at the same time because his state's (tenth house) laws (ninth house) and his religious laws (ninth house) allow for it, while in many other countries bigamy is illegal. In general though, one is more susceptible to be punished is some way by breaking the state's laws with respect to marriage than the religious laws, even if that punishment consists in them losing something material (second house with eighth house implications) after the divorce. This is because the sextile aspect between the ninth house and the seventh is a pleasant and somewhat weaker one, while the square between the tenth and the seventh is a hard aspect and quite volatile.
But marriages also have certain other particularities of a legal nature and many people sign a contract called a prenuptial agreement before getting married. This is usually the case when people who are wealthier or very rich marry and they want to protect their belongings (second house) in the event the marriage will not last for life. There are also cases where people marry for money instead of love or at least caring feelings, in which case they make use of the seventh house to access the eighth house, that of their spouse's personal wealth. The stereotypical image known to many is that of a good looking young bimbo who marries a wealthy old man in hope she will inherit (eighth house) at least some of his fortune after his death (something I believe she prays for to come sooner than later). Not only that, but until the old man dies, she is likely to spoil herself (fifth house) by making use of his money, something she has "earned" (sixth house) simply because of the fact she married him and she offers sexual (fifth house) services (sixth house) to him - getting back to the appropriate articles, sex workers are a sixth house theme.
In these situations a prenuptial agreement would be the case, especially if the old guy has children from previous marriages or other relationships and he cares for them. A carefully written will is also the case in most of these situations. One such agreement would also be the case when the spouses are not wealthy in the first place yet one of them has "pretty ideas" with respect to money management inside a marriage, this concept applying to committed romantic couples as well.
The eighth house is also considered to be the house of shared resources by many modern astrologers, besides that of the partner's personal possessions. Some people have this notion of "what is mine is mine and what is yours is ours" when it comes to joint finances in a couple and this extends to other material possessions besides money. Not only are they showing off an increased selfish nature (first house), but they are also expecting their partner to be selfless (seventh house) and in quite a few situations they also demand that. So you can see people can be very first house even when they experience the seventh, which is something that adds even more layers of complexity in human interactions in general and in relationships in particular.
Lastly, I hope I have made it clear at least to some degree that some people we interact with will remain strangers to us while others will become friends (eleventh house). Others will become our partners whether in business affairs or those of a romantic nature. And out of all these categories people can also become our enemies, something which includes other houses as well. Our romantic partner can become our enemy after a breakup occurs and so do our business partners because of various complications that arise between us, often with respect to the business. Members of our family can also become our enemies in some cases (fourth, third, fifth houses) and so do our friends.
The seventh house thus cover enemies one is aware of, or open enemies as they are usually called in astrology. The reasons people can become enemies are many, ranging from friendly rivalry (seventh house with eleventh house implications) that gets blown out of proportion to the simple fact people constantly disagree with each other, or from wanting others to submit to your will (first house) to wanting to become more in control of their possessions (second house with eighth house implications), and more.
You can find out more about this house and the Descendant with the help of angel Yahel, who can also help you with respect to areas of life covered by them:
The Great Gazoo
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