#5 - Showing Up

In this episode we look at the way we encounter life outside the home and how that modifies our understanding of ourselves. The 5th house is related to creativity and legacies, including children, but what is its deeper purpose? Join Craig in this continuing conversation about the houses and how the development of our personality is explained in astrology so clearly. Want to learn more: www.sageofstars.com  

Transcript

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Hello, this is the Sage of Stars podcast. It's episode number five, showing up. So, in our exploration of the houses of astrology, we are up to house five, and it's a super important house because it becomes the second encounter with fire. Right? The first house was an Aries expression, the second house was a Taurus expression, the third house was a Gemini expression, the fourth house is a Cancerian expression, and the fifth house is Leo. It's the second time we encounter fire. So we have to say, okay, this is going to have something to do with identity because that's what fire is when we trace it back to the first. But identity in what way? You know, traditionally, when you would go to an astrologer, if you were to go to one right now, where most astrologers have a basic understanding that the fifth house is about creativity and children. You know, it's the house of children. People always ask, oh my God, if I don't have anything in the fifth house, does that mean I'm not going to have any children? The answer is quite clearly no. It means that if you don't have anything in the fifth house, you can have children if you want to, because the choices that you have in life are yours. They're not dictated by your chart. But if you have something in the fifth house, you are definitely likely to have some kind of creative legacy, something that you put a lot of work into, something that you put a lot of your identity into, in order to be able to take that thing that you've created and have it become an extension of yourself, right? That's the part that goes back to the element of fire and back to your identity. But let's roll it back a little bit. We were talking last time about the fourth house and how there's a formation of your identity at a very unconscious level, right? Reactions in the environment, your parents, especially, but brothers and sisters and other relatives that form you in an unconscious way. The fifth house becomes conscious again. While house one through four have been a very strong formation of the self, house five is where we go out into the world and experience ourselves, basically, like outside of the home environment, which is of course a big moment, right? The fifth house is where we start showing up, showing up outside of the familiar environment that we know since we were an infant, the home. Now there are other people. It's not exactly like, of course, along the way that your parents haven't been bringing you to a grocery store or that you haven't been going to grandma's house and things like that. That's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about an independent moment where you go into the world. So our first real encounters with the fifth house are things like school, you know, like even like kindergarten peers that we meet there, and the way in which we are seen and the way in which we are responded to by that outside the home environment. There's like a clear distinction where the third house is a learning environment where we like learn and then we also express what it is that we've learned about who we are. I love like walking in the park or whatever, and you'll hear like a little kid talking. In fact, it was funny, just the other day I was walking along, and a little kid was with the mother, and they were watching a squirrel searching through the grass, and the child called it a numnum, like you know, yummy or something like that. And the mother was like, Yes, she found a numnum. That was the third house, right? Learning about the environment and how to define it and how to create a word that goes along with what your experience of the environment is. But the fifth house is taking that to really like a whole new level because you start experiencing yourself back inside of the environment. It's no longer just what's happening around me, it's what happens when I walk into the room. So the fifth house is powerful because it's a reflection back on ourselves. Now, the reason that it's ruled by Leo is at its purest um, you know, sort of expression, its purest Leo expression, when you walk into the room, everybody notices, right? Because that's Leo. But there's lots of other ways for us to walk into a room in a fifth house way. And depending upon what sign is in your fifth house is going to determine the way that you approach this experience of going out into the world and the way in which you're receiving feedback. As a child, you expressed something natural and the world responded back to you, right? Your creativity, your language, your fashion sense, your attitude, your uh moodiness, your emotional responses, your intellectual you know, savvy or whatever. And and then the world responded back to you. It either was encouraging or it was indifferent or it was critical, right? Now, when that happened inside the home, the fourth house, we had an emotionally conditioned response because we so much want for our parental approval. And it's not like we don't want social approval, but it's somewhat different the way in which we navigate it because we don't have the same kind of bond with the people in the outside world that we do with people in the home. So you go out, you act in a certain way, you present yourself with a certain kind of creative uh presence, and the world says, This is how we see you. You show up with a version of yourself, and then you say, Well, what happens when I do show up with that version of myself, right? So it's not about being perfect, it's about the way in which you register yourself inside the environment. Did that land? Did it not land? Did that feel like it was me? Was I performing, right? This is also something that's very um fifth house, right? Very Leo, right? How much of you is authentic and how much of you is put on, either to be able to get attention, seek positive attention, etc. So the core principle here is that the fill fifth house is about creativity, yes, but it's about discovering yourself through what you bring into the world, seeing how people respond to it, and then seeing how you respond to what it is that you've actually brought. There it's there are interesting layers. I'm gonna jump right to a very specific parenting example. Since we all know that the fifth house is about children because it's like a common thing. Oh, the fifth house is about children, and you're like, oh, wow, okay, the fifth house is about children. It's not just about having children, though. It's about children as now a reflection of your identity and your actual parenting. You parent the child and you have an opportunity to see who you are inside of that parenting. And all of that is the fifth house. All of that. Every parent wants for, you know, the grandparents, your mother and father, to tell you what a great parent you are, right? But they're not gonna say that just because you sit there and you like deliver a baby and sit it on their lap. They're going to be observing the actions fire again. It's a firehouse, it's a fire sign, your actions and the way in which you actually parent the baby, right? You're not just gonna get a response on your amazing Thanksgiving dinner unless you actually cook it, right? So it's not, we can't just like present something, nothing is presented in a static way to the world. Everything is in motion, everything is moving. The amazing thing about the fifth house, truly, is that it represents every creative act that you take into the world. So the fifth house is not about things that you might do in your own home, like you know, like you clean your bedroom or you clean your living room or something like that. That's not the fifth house because maybe no one's gonna see it. Maybe it is the fifth house if you're gonna have friends over for dinner that night, though, right? But every action that you're taking into the world, it could just be a gesture, it could be an attitude, it could be a handshake, or it could be something bigger. It could be a creative project, an art project, a piece of music that you wrote, a baby that you had, a garden that you redesigned, right? A business that you started, everything from the simplest gesture of saying to somebody like, hey, how are you today? the way in which you bring yourself to that experience, the way in which the world responds back to you, your observation of that upon the self, it's not about the other. That's going to be in the seventh house, but the fifth house, how is the world responding to me? And then in what way do I feel good about who I am, bad about who I am, indifferent about who I am? How do I modify? Have I created something that made an impact on others? Was it a value? So the fifth house is really about discovering yourself at a whole new level, not just Aries. Oh, I have two hands and two feet, right? And um I cry when I'm cold, and you know, very simple, right? That's the baby version. Obviously, there's an adult version of Aries, right? Which is I wake up and I'm in a good mood every morning, or I wake up and I'm in a bad mood every morning. That's who I am, that's my identity. I'm a hard worker, I'm a very sensitive person. I'm not a very sensitive person, I'm an intellectual. These are all labels that we put on ourselves in Aries, in the child, as a child and as an adult. The fifth house is about how you take that personal identity, who you think you are, and present it to others, get their reaction, and then see again who you are at a newly modified level through the way in which they respond. So, creativity as a function of self-discovery, really, really fascinating. So, yes, you could walk into a room, people will respond, you just feel it. You could shake someone's hand. There's a tone in return if you're sensitive to it. Did you shake their hand too softly? Did you shake it too hard? Were you abrupt? Did you not shake their hand at all? How do they react to that? Or it could be bringing effort, care, humor, just a sense of who you are. There's tons of things that you can bring into the room because every action that you take is an expression of self. And every response shows you something about who you are in that world. Wow. You express yourself, the world responds to it, you discover who you are in the moment, and you discover who you are through your reaction, right? You don't just express yourself, you discover yourself through what comes back. Thanksgiving is an amazing example, right? You spend all day cooking and you, of course, want it to land, right? You want people to say, like, this is really great. This is really like you're right. You don't want anybody to be like, oh my God, the turkey was so dry. You want them to say, that was great. You did a lot of work. This was an unforgettable experience. But truly, whether it lands or not is not the point of the fifth house. We all want the fifth house to be grandiosity, right? The place where we're going to be put on a pedestal for how amazing we are, because that's what Leo really wants. But the the deeper side of it is that it, whether it lands or not is not the point of the fifth. The point of the fifth is that you meet yourself in that moment of whether it landed or not. So do you shrink away from the experience? Do you laugh it off? Do you get better next time? Even when what comes back from the outside world is not a positive response, it's still a response, and that's a part of the fifth. So, yes, expression. Expression can be small, moments, gestures, etc., those things, you know, that we were talking about. Or it can be large, a creative work, hosting something meaningful, having a child, starting a business, right? Even something like having a child. It's not just about what you create, it's about who you discover in response to it. You when you see how patient, how loving, how accepting, how tolerant that you can be towards your child, that re-modifies your sense of identity, and those reactions become a part of your legacy because your patience, your acceptance, and your tolerance become a part of that child. It's creativity in motion, it's creativity in form, it's creativity in moment to moment. It's not just about expression, right? It's about expression and response. It's about what's the exchange in the discovery of yourself. Right? It's not theoretical because it's not isolation, it's in real time. The way that you show up and who you are when life responds to you and the way in which you respond back. I um I I'm a parent, and that's why parenting is an interesting um thing to talk about here. But it's always interesting when you say be more generous or or be more patient here, or see what what the child's going through in order to create an appropriate response, a more accepting response. And I'm certainly not saying that I'm perfect, but there's an amazing thing that you learn back from the experience of your interaction with your creativity. You write a book, you write a piece of music, or you cook Thanksgiving dinner. You may modify the creation while you're in the process of it. You edit a book, you edit a piece of music, you even edit Thanksgiving dinner year over year. What worked? What worked, what didn't work. I think next year I'll try and cook the turkey at a lower temperature for a long uh a longer amount of time. Maybe that will make it more juicy, right? Like you learn how to modify your own identity through the experience, through the creative experience. That's why it's happening in real time. So showing up is essential for the development of who you are. It's like a feedback loop. It's like a feedback loop insight. Something that you regain over and over, over and over, simply by showing up, simply by being present, simply by saying yes to creative process simply by being there. I'm Craig Martin, you've been listening to the Sage of Stars podcast. Always glad to have you here. I look forward to seeing you next week. Have a great day.