The fifth house of the abstract horoscope is the second point for both the fixed-sign square and the fire-sign. The release of its potentials provides a very great channeling for spiritual on-going.

   The fifth house is below the horizon — in the northern hemisphere — and to the right of the vertical of the wheel: west. It is the middle house of the quadrant initiated by the fourth house; this quadrant is called — or can be thought of as — the family sector. Being below the horizon, the fifth house is in the hemisphere which pertains to the consciousness of the separate self. Being west, it is in the "fated" hemisphere — those chapters of experience which Life brings to us to deal with as best we can; we do not exercise self-determination as much in these patterns as we do — or can do — with those in the eastern hemisphere.

   The four fixed signs — Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius — and their corresponding houses — the second, fifth, eighth, and eleventh — are the signs and houses of resource and sustenance, by which the quadrants initiated by the cardinals are "fed." The first house initiates the consciousness of "I am an individual;" the fourth house says: "I am an individual factor in a pattern of family, heritage, and race." The resources made possible by the fifth house enable Humanity to realize: "I have the power to contribute to the stream of life through the exercise of my love-consciousness and to sustain my creations by my own resource of love-power." The Sun, which abstractly rules the fifth house through the sign Leo, is the essential symbol of Power of any kind just as, literally, the Sun is the radiant source of life for our solar system, its creation. From this resource we are urged to release life-giving energies through the exercise of parental love and we give incarnation to other Egos who come in as our children. We also give life to impersonal expressions in the creativity in Art. Biological or impersonal, in loving our children or in loving our creativity and the work we are devoted to, these releasements are all expressions of the creative aspect of love-power.

   Because of the resources of intense potential implied by the four fixed signs and houses, the unregenerate patterns which are involved with them imply a corresponding intensity of karma. The essential keyword implied by unregenerate Leo is misuse of power through the exercise of egotism. (By "unregenerate Leo" is meant frictional patterns concerning planets in Leo or the Sun itself, wherever it is in the chart.) The symbol which we use for the "square aspect" — a square with horizontal base — when applied to the wheel falls in such a way that the angles coincide with the midpoints of the fixed houses; the second of these — the midpoint of Leo — provides the upward turning point as we travel around the wheel counter-clockwise from the Ascendant. In this picture we are alerted to the importance of regeneracy of the fifth house: until that potential is regenerated the consciousness remains fixated in levels of possession and egotism — the second and fifth houses, both below the horizon. If we can imagine the fixed square being "stopped" at the sixth cusp and the currents "cut off," the energies which — symbolically — would seek to rise upward into the relationship quadrant above the horizon are frustrated and boil and churn back and forth within the first five houses, and the I am of the first house remains fixated in a limiting expression of possession desire and power desire; possessions become objects of love consciousness and people who should be loved and sustained by love become the objects of the power consciousness, to be dominated and utilized as are inanimate possessions. A great symbol is shown in this frustrated pattern: the story of Man's inhumanity to mankind; Man's imprisonment of himself by himself.

   When humanity identifies its possessions as symbols of power, and children as objects of power rather than of love, we see the consciousness of egotism trampling through human experience. This consciousness, activated by the first four houses and sustained — if such can be called sustainment — by unregenerate levels of the fifth house depicts, in symbolic form, the concept of dynasty: groups of individuals vibratorily united through a family pattern or a national pattern who are held in a mold of family as an expression of power and egotism The individual and his essential rights are considered a cipher — at best,a pawn — in the maintenance of this fixated, rigidly organized plan. Marriage is based on position, heritage, and possessions; religion is a conformance to ritual and dogma by which the power and supremacy of the pattern is continually emphasized; education is a tool for the molding of minds according to the expediency of the plan. In fact, the third house, in this symbol, is impaled between the first and fifth houses. Having no releasement beyond the fifth house, education remains purely a thing of rote, tradition, and repetition of a limited intellectual organization. History tells this story over and over again; we have all gone through phases in which we functioned as — and felt like — ciphers in a family or nationalistic pattern; it is really an expression of the tribe consciousness of humanity. As such it fulfills an evolutionary need and, as such, it is good. However, in due course of time it must be transcended if the race is to evolve. Those who have recognized, to a degree, their inherent powers but who remain unregenerate are those who act as the tyrants, despots, and autocrats of families, groups, and nations; they are the "givers of commands" and the "wielders of whips." Those who remain in the first four houses, not as yet having come into an awareness of their powers, are the victims of the others; they are the superstitious and the credulous, the minions and the slaves. They live in their surface awareness, their desires and physical needs, their subservience to anything they fear or do not understand. They have, in short, not yet become aware that they are resources of power and self-determination. They are scarcely aware of individual potential. They exist as factors in an over-all pattern which exists as a molding for their experiences.

   When people come to a point of feeling unsatisfied, restless and bored with the crystallized patterns they have been living with and desire to find a more satisfying and more extensive release for their energies, then study the chart with an eye to analyzing the fifth house potentials. This analysis must of course include a study of the Sun because the Sun is the abstract symbol of the ability for self-determination. Many people crystallize because they have put their lives into channels that they themselves do not really want; in other words they have side-tracked themselves into artificiality of pattern and, being "fed up" with their own mistake are eager to get back to their real selves and begin to live constructively and happily in accordance with the best potentials in their charts. Some of these people have side-tracked themselves because of a reaction of fear of, or subservience to, a stronger will which has sought to force them out of line due to ignorance or to a lack of sympathetic awareness of their needs. Self-determination, let it be said, is an aspect of courage — the fifth house is a self-expression backed up by the regenerated qualities of the first house. However, when purpose is electrified in the consciousness, releasements of hope, courage, and renewed enthusiasm are made and the person feels that he truly has been "born again." He must know what he wants to do with his life and if he continues to fulfill his responsibility patterns he has every right to re-determine his upward progress. In dealing with such a chart, create mandalas of every Sun-aspect; determine to what degree the person can re-direct a new course of living and help him to understand why he was impelled to move off from his rightful path so that he can meet the challenges of his aspects of consciousness more successfully in the future.

   In regard to the frictional patterns involving the fifth house, one in particular can be dealt with here: the assistance that the astrologer, as philosopher-friend, can render to parents who are stricken by what is perhaps the most pathetic form of human suffering — their reaction of grief to the transition of a beloved young child or baby. All human beings incarnate through their parents, specifically, by the Law of Vibratory Sympathy. Those persons who, as husband and wife, lovingly extend an invitation to incarnation to another Ego may have in back of them a history of possessiveness and parental domination over their children in the past. The conscious mind may not recognize it — and usually doesn't — but if a new incarnation is "cut off" the parents, from a philosophic standpoint, need not feel that their parental experience has been frustrated. That transition was made by Law, just as the incarnation was.

   Esoteric explanation tells us that many Egos incarnate for a short time in order to re-establish contact with this dimension in order that their on-going may be more completely made. Such children come in to parents who, for some inner reason, must learn to let go. Somewhere in the past there was too much holding on as an expression of parental authority or power and perhaps the progress of the child in the past was inhibited or frustrated. Also, when an Ego makes transition through some sudden or violent agency and the physical body is destroyed the person may come back very soon to establish its links, and then, not being intended to remain for a full span of incarnation-experience, it goes on in its progress. Encourage, if you can, an elasticization of viewpoint in the minds of such parents; encourage them to renew, if possible, the expression of their love power in some way. Encourage them, above all, to neutralize tendencies to prolonged grief, brooding and disintegrative sorrow, and point out to them that as long as they themselves are in incarnation they need not cut off all expressions of their love-potential. Try to help them, in other words, to keep their fifth house consciousness alive and expressive. To keep the fifth house alive is to keep the heart alive.

   In the fire-sign mandala we connect the cusps of the first, fifth, and ninth houses, forming an equilateral triangle, the "upward" of which is the vertical from the fifth to the ninth.

   When the power-aspect of the fifth house is amplified by the love-consciousness the symbolic insignia is drawn of the potential for joyousness. The suggestion is made at this point that we consider joyousness as being much more significant than just a feeling — usually temporary — of well-being or of satisfaction. Joyousness is a spiritual state in which — or by which — the Higher Self of Humanity is able to express its constructive releasement regardless of outward conditions and affairs, because joy is one of the attributes of the love-consciousness. It enables the releasement of power for the best good of all concerned because love clarifies the perceptions to an awareness of the inherent good in all people and of the best potentials and meanings of any experience.

   The best of Leo — and the fifth house — is the "smiling heart," the radiating enthusiasm and overflowing of high spirits that charge human life — and relationships — with loveliness, buoyancy, and charm. It is the insignia of pleasure and luxury by which the consciousness of Man expresses its awareness of amplitude — both inner and outer. It is the "house of hobbies" since a hobby, in the true sense of the word, is the creative releasement of an intense interest, a beloved pass-time, a re-creative and harmonizing activity. A psychological re-directive can be presented to people who have become stagnated through too much preoccupation with routine, responsibility-fulfillment and practicality. Everyone can find a channeling for release of creative and recreative impulses if he wants strongly enough to organize his life accordingly. Psychology has proved over and over again the power of a vibrationally synchronized hobby to infuse into human life a new awareness of joy, enthusiasm, and well-being on all planes.

   The first house is self-awareness; the fifth is creative self-expression; the ninth is the creative aspect of wisdom, distilled from experience. The first is being — I Am; the fifth is joyful being — I Love; the ninth is wise being — I Understand.

   The fifth house is love in its most one-pointed expression. It is a radiation from the individual consciousness which is a releasement of powers for the person from whom they emanate and a warmth and stimulation to those who receive it. The fifth house is traditionally called the "house of children." That interpretation, however, is a derivative. In the chart of a specific individual the fifth house is the insignia of his creative love potential: it paints the picture of his awareness of children as a factor in his relationship consciousness — it is his potential as a loving giver of life. The Love by which we parent other Egos is our level of that Divine Love expression by which a solar system is incarnated. Herein can be seen why egotism on the part of parents or teachers can be a death-dealing agency to the lives of children and pupils. Egotism is retroactive; it boils back into the levels of self-glorification and self-interest. Love is interested in the true welfare and up-going of those to whom it gives life. Kahlil Gibran refers to parents who love truly as "bows from which arrows spring forth" — to go on in their development and to fulfill their own purposes and destinies.

   Let us appreciate, more than ever before, that expression of Love which made possible our incarnation. Let us learn of parental love from those who have gone before us and recognize that our on-going was made possible because they responded to the opportunity to release life in their releasing of love. And we must recognize that as we too, whether parents or not, do create a greater beauty for all when we tap our resources of joyous-heartedness; in doing so we, by the processes of sympathetic vibration, actually parent the joyousness in the consciousness of all people who come in contact with us. We want to live life in joyous terms, courageously, generously, and beautifully. In order to do so, we must express the heart center and live lovingly.