Where do you find mom and dad on a chart? the parent axis

I have studied astrology for a long time. Like everything else human, there are a lot of personal opinions, conflicting information, and conflicting authors. Some of them can give you a whiplash as your mind struggles to comprehend the contradiction, argument, or paradox created. One of those areas of variation is where do you find mom and dad on the graph and which parent is represented in the houses on the parent axis, 4 and 10? This particular conflict has existed for many decades and even centuries. If teachers disagree, how can we as students draw conclusions for our own work? I decided to use logic to see if it would prove itself in experience.

My favorite way to reason about something like this is to start with our “insights,” those areas that make sense, don’t have as much contradiction, and seem to work consistently. In this case, we will first look at the houses themselves. In the Tropical Placidus system I’m using, the house numbering starts with the ascendant and moves counterclockwise (widdershins) through the wheel sequentially. The ascendant is the 1st house cusp, moving down the wheel of houses to the Immum Coeli (IC), which is the 4th house cusp, and then moving up the wheel to the descendant (opposite ascendant, 7th house), still moving up to midheaven (MC) as the 10th house cusp, then moving down to complete the circle of houses on the ascendant. Twelve houses equally divided into quadrants (4).

The ascendant is where we come into the picture, so houses 1, 2, 3 on the left side of the chart are intensely personal: I am (1), I need (2), I communicate (3). We branched out at the 4th cusp from “self” to “others” on the right side of the chart and what we are becoming now has to take into account the “others” and our interaction with those others. That’s true for all six houses (4-9) on the right side of the chart. The remaining three houses (10-12) are again on the left side of the chart and join the first three houses in “I-ness”. Left side “me”, right side “others”. The six lower houses are internal. and introspective. The six main houses are external and objective. (I just defined the hemispheres for you for free.) Back to the houses: each of those angles are important points of change of experience, from the pure “me” (1) to the encounter with the “other” (4), to the purely “you” or “we” (7 ), to achievement and eventual return to pure “me” (10). I hope that at this point you can see that there is a natural progression here and that we gradually develop through the arenas of physical and psychological experience. The 4/10 axis and its houses represent our parents. Which is which?

The 4th house itself represents home, home, family, where we delve (IC) into subjectivity, the womb (this should be a good clue), the warm dark cave, our first sense of security (4/ 10 is also the axis security), our roots, genetic, intensely personal, part of the subjective-developer houses (1-6).

The 10th house itself represents achievement, goals, stature, mission, where we reach the most (MC) in objectivity, the mountain we climb to achieve, success or failure for some, where we know how to “make it” or not. ‘t. It is the other half of the security axis, outsourced, objectivity developer houses (7-12).

Just looking at what the house traditionally represents gives us a clue as to which parent belongs there. In a general sense, that would indicate that the IC and his house are more the mother, the cocoon, the family value, the nurturing father, the center around which families are built. The MC and his house is more like the father who expects more from us and who prepares us for the outside world and its demands. This parent must teach us how to achieve potential success (if they know how to achieve it themselves). The concept or role is that one provides internal security while the other prepares you for external security.

But life doesn’t always flow ideally, does it? Role reversal is possible. Not all moms are caring, not all dads know how to be successful in business. Not all parents cooperate in their roles, have the skills, motivation, care and individual or team support. Some parents can do it all, some are totally negligent, some are just plain bad, and some are overachievers. Parenting is truly a complete mix of tradition, non-tradition, ability, motivation, and application. Logic may take us this far, but parental roles are not always clearly defined in traditional terms. What I came up with in my own readings was a verbal description to my client of how he saw each parent individually in his chart and asking my client to place each parent correctly, because it’s not a description of a person, it’s a description. of a role I am not an astrologer to ask the client questions and then return the answers as a reading. I have no problem clearly defining the two roles and letting the client place them. Work for me!

Can we set a somewhat flexible rule as to what traditional roles parents play, allowing for uniqueness and individuality in non-traditional applications? I think that’s fine too. This is a ‘normally it acts this way, but occasionally we find the exception’ thinking. All life contains exceptions, paradoxes, contradictions and anomalies, and we are admitting that from the beginning.

Who is the first parent you meet as a newborn child? Personal and subjective, passing from the self to the other. Is it your mother or your father? There will always be exceptions, choose normal.

I have an excellent personal example of the complexity of reading parental roles. My dad played both roles when my mom died quite young and he became a father and a mother. My dad was a good man, a farmer and a construction worker with no idea how to be successful in any other way and therefore he taught me to work hard, make a living, be loyal to my boss, etc. That’s what he understood about success, that’s what he taught his children. His whole life was his family, his children and his personal circle: mom, sisters, brothers, etc. He would do anything for any of us. He “looked after” all of us instinctively. My mom died early, but while she was alive, she was a typical Broadway theater mom, she wanted me to be a little Judy Garland or some other Hollywood kid success story. She fought for our success and did everything in her power to get us into the late 40’s limelight.

Astrologically I have Pisces in the MC with Neptune in the 4th, and Jupiter co-ruling in the 9th conjunct the Moon, Virgo in the IC, Mercury ruling in the 6th. What is the translation?

• My mother was the dreamy Pis/MC, ruling Nep at 4 and Jup at 9 joining the Moon.
• My father was the practical person Vir/IC, ruler in the 6th.
• My father became both father and mother: Pis/MC, ruler Nep/4th (4th/10th association)
• This is a very good example of an astrological puzzle piece fitting into a chart.

Note that the 4/10 axis is just one piece of the parent reading on a graph. Aside from my one example of a parent occupying both houses, no mention has been made of planets in the 4th or 10th house. This discussion has been about the axis itself and how parents can be read from that axis. Any planet in the 4th or 10th should be added to the material developed for the parent described by that house. It adds to the flavor of the description, expands or enhances it, and gives it more detail.

The two lights, the Sun and the Moon, also traditionally receive the designation of the parents, the Moon for the mother, the Sun for the father. And, just to confuse the issue, Saturn is frequently used for the father. While this may help your reading of each parent, it doesn’t help us determine the 4/10 parent, so that’s a topic for another day.

And as if that weren’t enough for parental axis choice, what might change as we go from a newborn baby breathing for the first time with one pair of parents to a fully grown adult with the same but different parents? ? Life changes through experience, all of us, including our parents. His role has the possibility of changing as does all life. The identification process we use for our concept of our parents is also constantly changing. Ask any teenager; I’m reasonably sure you were one of them yourself at some point. We grow through life, hopefully in a progressive and evolutionary way, but not always, like an onion that grows from the inside out. Our core is our birth pattern, at our very core, and experience is added as layers on the outside as we grow. and it comes to be. We will all see life differently when this happens, including our parents.

Comments are welcome.