Ask Ada: What Is the Descendent?

Deck Credit: Tarot of the Silicon Dawn

Question: I don’t know much about the sunset of my chart. It is the 7th house, in Taurus. My natal south node is there. When it comes to relationships, as a Libra sun and moon I am familiar with the other. I think there is more there that I haven’t discovered… besides the relationship piece. How can I get to know this area of my chart better? Venus is the ruler of Taurus and Libra. My natal Venus is in Scorpio.

You are onto something beautiful when you talk about the “sunset” of your chart.

One of the values that modern astrology inherited from the ancient Egyptians is the importance of following the sun’s journey over the course of a day. For the Egyptians, worshippers of the sun, the passage of solar time was a sacred thing. Just as the king reenacted the death and rebirth of Osiris at the beginning and end of life, the sun rose from the underworld in the morning and returned to the underworld at night. Egyptian priests watched the movement of the sun and stars through this journey very carefully.

Every birth chart is a map of a particular moment in time, but that moment doesn’t exist in isolation. The sun is always somewhere on its journey: between sunrise and sunset or sunset and sunrise.

We see the major turnings of the sun in the angles in a natal chart. The sun rises at the ascendant, reaches the height of its brightness at the midheaven, sets at the descendent, and reaches the nadir before rising again.

You were born just after sunrise, which is why the sun is near (but above) the ascendant in your chart. The 12th house is called one of the hidden houses, but because of its relationship with the sunrise, it is actually only half hidden. The sun touches the horizon at the ascendant, but its disc becomes actually visible in the 12th house. Planets in the 12th house are like the cookie crumbs clinging to the corners of a toddler’s mouth: they are visible to everyone except the toddler (or the owner of the chart).

This puts people with 12th house suns in an interesting position. You shine, but you don’t know how much you shine… unless you have the benefit of being able to see yourself in the mirror.

The descendant is the mirror of the ascendant. It is where, as you say, we meet the other. We learn who we are by saying “I am not that.”

Except… If you have the sun in Libra, it’s slightly more complicated. Libra is the sign of the autumn equinox. It is the hinge between summer and winter, the sunset of the year, just like the descendant is the sunset of the day.

Libra is the part of us that knows at our core that “I am you.”

This sense of recognition of the self in the other would be doubly strong for you since your south node is there. You have been on the other side of the looking glass. Like Alice, you know that there is a whole world on the other side of the glass that isn’t (just) a reflection of you.

With one foot in the light and one foot in the darkness, Libra also knows that the line between the known self and the unknown other isn’t as clear as it seems. We don’t know ourselves nearly as much as we want to believe we do. We need to give weight to both sides of the mirror to achieve balance within ourselves.

And yet, while we aim for acceptance and balance, the answer is not to smash the mirror and allow the divided worlds to flow into each other. Equality is not sameness. We need boundaries for the same reason we need skin. Without our skin, we collapse into a puddle of bones.

This is the lesson of Aries (the world on the other side of Libra’s mirror): individuality is difference, and every living thing has the right to fight to exist.

Just like it is essential to keep balance between night and dark, self and other, it is essential to keep balance between Libra and Aries.

We need our mirrors. We need our others. We need our skin.

To the Egyptians, sunset was the death of the sun. Today, we also call that place in the chart the House of Marriage and the House of Open Enemies. This is not a paradox.

A relationship is a dance with the other side of the mirror. We take turns being strangers in each others’ countries. Sometimes, this cross-cultural experience looks like a fencing match. Other times, it looks like a waltz.

Neither is right. Neither is wrong. As long as they stay in balance.

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