#7: Katya Zamolodchikova and understanding house rulers.
wrapping up some astrology theory i wanted to start with :]
Upcoming Astrology:
There are plenty of week ahead resources out there (the CHANI podcast is a good one), so I thought it might be more fun to read a focused interpretation of one dynamic in the sky.
Venus in Gemini Square Saturn in Pisces: On April 14, 2023 around 10AM CT, Venus will move into the 4° point of Gemini and make a Square with Saturn. This is a tense arrangement, especially because Saturn is bearing down on Venus from the superior position.
Saturn holds boundaries, hardness, cold objectivity, and authority which is not comfortable for Venus, the planet responsible for bonding, connection, softness, and love. This dynamic might suggest you take stock of your relationships and see where you’re giving more than you have to give. It’s also possible that this arrangement is an expression of anxious energy in your relationships (Saturn can suffocate) and you’re best served to take a pause, breathe through it, and don’t listen too hard to the voices of doubt.
Either way, as the square between Venus and Saturn is taking place in Pisces and Gemini, arguably the two most changeable, fickle signs in the zodiac, you would want to be careful about making any sweeping judgements about relationships while this aspect is at play.
Katya Zamolodchikova and looking at the planets’ homes.
Part III. Where planets live and how they’re resourced matters.
I’ve been talking a lot about the “space” of the birth chart. In the last newsletter I sent out, I discussed how the different houses in your chart align with different signs. That alignment creates the basic color of your life in your birth chart, and you can consider the ways different planets show up in your chart through this lens.
An example: An Aries Rising with Saturn in Aquarius saw their Saturn return take place in their 11th House of community, friends, and groups and might have experienced a maturing and realignment with respect to how they understand their social life. A Libra Rising with Saturn in Aquarius would have had theirs in their 5th House of children, creativity, creation, and pleasure. This might have looked like a maturing experience with regard to those themes.
One more element to consider when looking at how the space of your birth chart manifests would be to consider house rulership. Reflecting the emphasis that ancient Mediterranean culture put on hospitality, land ownership, and exchange, ancient astrologers saw a scheme of “rulership” where planets had responsibility for various signs and difficulty in various signs. Using these alignments, you can get a sense for how an area of life is playing out by looking at how the “ruler” of that area of life is situated.
The Moon rules Cancer
The Sun rules Leo
Mercury rules Virgo and Gemini
Venus rules Libra and Taurus
Mars rules Scorpio and Aries
Jupiter rules Sagittarius and Pisces
Saturn rules Capricorn and Aquarius
You can see how you’d apply this to your own chart (instructions to find your chart are here) by looking at the chart of my favorite Drag Race contestant Brian McCook, i.e. Katya Zamolodchikova.
The first thing you’d want to look at with almost any chart is the ruler of the 1st House, the Ascendant Ruler. The 1st House, your rising sign, is meant to say a lot about your vital force, your physical experience in life, and who you are in the world.
Katya’s first house is Gemini which means that her Ascendant Ruler is Mercury. Mercury is in the Twelfth House of Taurus. We’d expect there to be Taurus elements of the sensual, physical, and stubborn for Katya, as well as 12th House topics brought into her life. The 12th House indicates many difficult areas of life, dark nights of the soul, isolation. At several points in her life, Katya has dealt with addiction and spirals, at points retreating from life to isolate and recenter herself. She discusses many of these and her thoughts on them in this video.
Next, we can look at the ruler of the MC, which is the point that represents your career, your work in the world, how you are known in society. This point can float around, most often placed in the 10th House, but, depending on location and time of birth, can be anywhere from the 12th to the 8th House.
For Katya, the MC is located right on the edge of the 9th House of Aquarius. We’d look to where Saturn is located to gain a better understanding of her career journey. With Saturn in the 5th House, we’d expect creativity, art, and pleasure to potentially manifest in her career. We can also see in Saturn’s place in Libra, a sign he does well in, a pull toward aesthetics and relationships—a nice touch, considering Katya’s global success as the creative and performance partner of Trixie Mattel. Most of the videos in their YouTube series UNHhhh have well over 1 million views and they’ve released a bestselling book together.
I outlined the houses and their meanings here. You can consider these dynamics with any house, but doing this exercise with your 1st House and the house that has your MC point is a good place to start. The planets that rule these areas are primary players in your life. When the planets today move through these houses or interact with the planets that rule them, you’d pay closer attention to those topics. You can consider how those themes resonate or don’t resonate with your experience.
Inevitably, if you play with and learn about astrology you end up asking yourself about free will and fate. I always think about this when I see a trendy, well-designed book about astrology in a book store display. That person, maybe a New York Times bestseller or a speaker at any number of self-development conferences, has some answer to the question, “Do you believe in astrology?” The tension between this question and the rapid monetization/commercialization of the tradition is palpable.
Of course, you can suspend your disbelief and “act as if” while you’re looking at your natal chart and you can learn techniques without committing to any kind of certainty. You can also decide you don’t care, evade the question with flippancy, though that’s not something that comes very easily to me. Anything remotely spiritual demands questioning.
I don’t have a very neatly tied-up ending for this week. I’m sending this newsletter out days later than I wanted. I don’t think even with a few more days I’d have firmed up a resonant thesis on belief and doubt and the value of entertaining the absurd. I’ve been reading This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom and it’s got me thinking about these topics in a big, society way. How does doubt serve a group and how does it challenge a group? How does certainty do the same? I’m excited to fold in some of these thoughts in future weeks.
Thanks for reading :)
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.
P.S. Send me your Enneagram and astrology and random questions why not?