For the past couple of months, I have been fixated on the seventh house for a variety of reasons, and I couldn’t understand why until now. It’s popped up in my personal life, the shows and books I’ve found myself consuming, and even in my research materials. In astrology, the seventh house rules over relationships, partnerships, sharing, equality, marriage, interpersonal style, The Other, contracts, and even open enemies. The subjects I’ve been contemplating are the ideas of universal agreements, social contracts, and how people relate. I don’t necessarily have any seventh house issues that are currently plaguing me, but the concepts have been on my mind for a while now, so I found it fitting to discuss this eclipse midpoint. I don’t usually enjoy being open about myself, preferring to allude to things and talk around them, so in a way I’m working on the seventh house by being a bit more candid here than I ordinarily am.
I recently read that whenever you have an issue surrounding a house, the solution lies seven houses away. My recent issues have been surrounding the fourth house of home, emotions, self care, femininity, roots, family, etc. The house that lies seven away from this (you include the starting house in your count) is the tenth house of structure, long-term goals, career, masculinity, status, etc. This has proven to be true for me during these past two eclipse cycles.
Eclipses come every six months in pairs, and often the previous cycle informs the next. We’re at the midway point between the two, and at this same point last October I remember how miserable I felt. I was in pain everyday due to a new unknown diagnosis, I couldn’t keep any food down, sometimes not even water, I was anxious and staking my desires for stability and self-worth on the hopes of landing a job that seemed like a dream at the time (which I ended up not getting, to my benefit though). Through it all I pushed forward, and did my best to find little things to be grateful for; doing my best to look after my health and try new things.
Some of those little things include joining a local writing organization as a volunteer, taking writing classes and sharing what I created, getting back into baking after years away from it, and dressing up and finding cute nature themed jewelry. After the eclipse came clarity on my condition which threatened to sour my mood permanently, but I was able to work through that with support from my family and by keeping busy with my writing, my spiritual practices, and other hobbies. When I realized eclipse season had come back around I was shocked at how time seems to have sped up. The second half of last year felt like an eternity full of seemingly failed goals, setbacks, and pain, but in the blink of an eye from one eclipse to the next its been almost a 180.
I still don’t have employment, but I’ve ceased staking my worth on it (I’m still searching as it’s hard to live without a source of income, but knowing I’m not alone and that there’s a great deal of capable people in the same boat as me has been helpful), and I still have some health issues, but I’ve found ways to cope and my treatments have settled the majority of my pain and digestive issues. I’ve found communities that have made space for me and my creativity and are helping me grow and connect with more like minded people (11th house supporting the 5th and vice versa).
Something else that’s matured over the last six months is my first little folk recipe, as I’ve taken to calling them. I wrote this last October in a writing class and it was one of the first I felt comfortable sharing out loud. It was kind of a turning point or rather an opening. The prompt was to write a Hermit Crab essay, an essay that - like a hermit crab - takes on the shell of something else. I chose a recipe format as I had been doing a lot of baking at the time. I was tested for food sensitivities and almost everything I normally ate pinged as inflammatory for my system so I had to do a lot of experimenting to replace my usual flavors and textures. Baking helped with that. Eventually I decided to write more; compiling more stories and concepts I’ve learnt from family and research on Igbo culture to flesh out into full fledged folktales, and also creating or pulling recipes from my vault of food ideas to pair with each tale. It’s been a fun journey that I’ve yet to disembark.
This cycle is rounding out with a solar eclipse in Aries, meaning a new pair of houses to focus on and heal. I’m looking forward to doing just that, as well as creating new habits to add on to the ones I’ve worked on these past six months. A lot of it will center on my relationship (7H) with the concepts of femininity (4H) and masculinity (10H), so while there will be new houses in play, the old will still be expanded upon. I hope to return in another six months to discuss those updates, but until then I’ll leave y’all with a bite of the revision of my first little baby.