Sex

Venus and Mars are the tradition's pair for sexual union, and the pairing is older than astrology's use of it. Aphrodite and Ares are lovers in Greek myth, and the two planets keep that relation as the benefic and the malefic of the night sect. One supplies attraction, agreement and pleasure. The other supplies drive, heat and the will to close a distance.

Astrologically the pairing does more than name a couple. Venus and Mars in combination are read as desire proper, distinguishable from affection, which is Venus with the Moon or with Jupiter, and from mere appetite, which is Mars on its own. Their aspect in a nativity, and its condition, is where a traditional reading of a person's erotic life begins.

Scorpio carries the same material by sign. It is the fixed water sign, ruled by Mars in the traditional scheme, and the tradition gives it what is intense, withheld and not easily released. The eighth house, natural to Scorpio, holds death, the dowry, legacies and other people's resources: what is shared, merged and no longer separable into two portions.

That is the point the eighth makes and the fifth does not. The fifth holds the pleasure of the thing. The eighth holds the entanglement, the loss of a boundary, and what cannot be taken back afterwards. A tradition that put both in one house would have said less than this one does.

Classical astrology writes about sex in the register in which it writes about property and health, which is to say practically and without embarrassment, and it writes about it mostly under other headings. Marriage has a chapter. The quality of the soul has a chapter that covers appetite and excess. The electional books cover the timing of a union. There is no chapter called sex, and the material has to be assembled.

The assembly produces two distinct threads, and they should not be run together. One concerns union with a named other person, and it lives in the seventh house, in Venus, and in the aspects between the lights. The other concerns desire as a disposition of the native, and it lives in Mars, in the condition of the Moon, and in Ptolemy's treatment of the irrational part of the soul. A chart can say a good deal about the second and much less about the first than practitioners have often claimed.

Modern astrology adds Pluto, discovered in 1930 and given rulership of Scorpio in the twentieth century scheme, and reads it for compulsion, taboo and transformation. Traditional practice rejects the outer planet rulerships outright and keeps Mars as Scorpio's only lord. That is a live disagreement with practitioners on both sides, and the atlas records it as one rather than settling it.

Living traditions are described here, not instructed. Nothing in this entry is guidance.