The Fifth House expresses personal destiny in free biological, artistic and in-tellectual creativity. It’s the game of life.

Italian version

The 5th House expresses the self in free manifestation; it is the process that follows the birth in the form of the 4th House. In this sense, the act of the play, one of the expressions in charge of the House, is the possibility of engaging in the unconstrained manifestation of oneself when, in childhood, one is not subject to the codified rules of the 6th House. Some could object that without limitations, we cannot express a game; this is true, but the game aims to demonstrate individual creativity given a set of rules that are not part of the social habitus dedicated to acquiring resources or creating group structures. The playful rules are at the service of expressiveness and not the other way round.

In adulthood, the play turns into the concept of creativity; here, the meaning of “game rule” is clarified. We have said that free playful expression still requires a rule: a set of references that allows the game to manifest itself within a space-time structure. But at the same time, we try to pursue risk, and uncertain destiny, almost as if the rule were a container from which anything could potentially emerge. The rule is not a constraint but the tool through which the boundless creative possibilities take shape and where we express the creative side in the uncertainty of the result. Let’s not forget that the original meaning of the Latin term iocus is “joke, prank”, or the entrance of the unexpected into a sequence of otherwise ordered experiences. It seems, therefore, that play and chaos are closely related, the two sides of a coin revealing the shapeless creative potential of the individual beyond social conditioning, according to the specific model of personal destiny: play is perfect self-creation.

The sense of uniqueness that transpires from these attributions refers to the sign of Leo, which makes the egoic experience its cornerstone. That does not mean that the 5th House must express overly selfish values. However, in some cases, the possibility remains that the uncontrolled creative charge leads to an individuality without its foundation (4th House) and an unbalanced everyday life (6th House).

But let’s get to the other meanings. Unlike the codified couple relationship, passion and pleasure reveal the dichotomy between sacred and profane love, expressing free sexuality as a vital process. Children are the outcome of this process, the continuation of individuality through an organic expansion, the game of life.

The association with teaching values is a sort of epiphenomenon of biological creativity, transposed on oral and cultural transmission levels. It is the fertilisation through the word so that one’s ideas take on new guises, up to the ethical, moral or spiritual birth.

According to judicial astrology, in addition to children, which remains the classic meaning, there are: gifts as an element of ‘surprise’ but also of recognition and gratification of one’s peculiarities; clothing and ornaments as distinctive features; speculation, not as aimed at possession, but as an affirmation of one’s freedom of action. Regiomontanus lists the praises after death, an exaltation of the unique characters of the deceased, and the emissaries, who are like an exteriorisation of the bearers of a message. Fludd names the missions, which transmit the teaching to distant places, and the return to the homeland, understood as filial reunification.

The Fifth House in Fire Signs exalts individualism, not necessarily out of egoic excess but out of an abundance of vitality. In the Earth signs, there will be manual and practical creativity. Air signs foster mental and communicative ingenuity, while Water signs will be biologically creative or express themselves in rich love life.

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