We know that the ascendant is the beginning of the chart, as the doorway of the first house. It's the springtime of the chart, the moment of rebirth, being associated with the Aries cusp since Aries is the first sign. (There will be a future lesson on the differences and similarities between signs and their corresponding houses.)

Yet the astrological chart is a circular system, and something comes before the beginning. That something is the 12th house. The 1st house is directly below the eastern horizon, where the sun would be in the two hours before sunrise. The 12th is where it would be in the two hours after sunrise (it's really about 90 minutes to two hours, depending on the sign, for complicated astronomical and geographic reasons -- but as a general rule, remember that each degree takes 3-5 minutes to pass over the exact ascendant as the world turns).

In traditional astrology, the first house represents the self and the sense of self, the physical appearance, and some of the primary identification factors that we call our own in life. These are often told in the sign that is rising, which gives many of the surface-level personality traits. But planets in the 1st house will also strongly influence this. A person with Venus in the the first and especially with the planet approaching the ascendant would have a strong identification with Venus, for better or for worse, depending on the aspects to Venus.

Note that the ascendant is a single degree. The rising sign is a whole sign and this extends into the 12th house somewhat. The first house often has another sign that begins in the middle of the house, which is sometimes the sign on the second house cusp.

The ascendant functions at least two major ways. One is that it's what people tend to perceive about us and project onto us as kids. The rising sign is often more influential than the Sun or Moon sign for this reason. We can pick up these projections and begin to act like them, in order to meet other peoples' expectations of who we are. This shapes our personality.

But the second way the the ascendant and often the sign rising function is as a soul-level quest for being, for existence. We hopefully will strive to be the deepest and most meaningful attributes of the ascendant sign and the rising degree, because this tells the story of the person we came here to be. So while other people are busy projecting their stuff onto our ascendant, there is deeper story going on, a much more critical quest for existence. The information contained here and the experiences this points to can take years to come out and unfold -- a lifetime.

So, note that with the ascendant we have the Soul vs. Personality dichotomy show up. It's not enough to say that it represents one, the other or both, but rather there is a story in the ascendant about the nature of the question of what is real -- of whether the soul or the personality represents the person in the world. We will see this quality of dichotomy in other attributes of the ascendant and its relationship to the 12th house.

In traditional astrology, the 12th house is not given an especially good reputation. In descriptions by Western astrologers, you will read about prisons, hospitals, and hidden enemies being associated with this house. It is Piscean in nature, being the 12th house, but the issues are much more mundane, immediate and down-to-earth -- that is the relationship between any house and its corresponding sign. The sign is a quality of energy. The house is a group of worldly experiences, qualities, and physical manifestations. So, in the 12th we have information about the things we are afraid of, the things we can't see clearly and are deluded by. The 12th house functions as a blind spot. And we often have fears in our blind spots, and these fears can magnify.

In reality, the 12th is the unknown and uncertain primordial cosmic world: the astral realms and beyond, the subconscious, the "House of Dreams" (borrowing from the title of the excellent erotic video by Andrew Weber). Notice that the Sun is transiting the 12th house when we have most of the dreams that we remember -- the hours just past dawn. When the Sun is here, it's a quiet, mystical time of day. The 12th does represent illusions such as film; when you are in a movie theatre, tune into to how real the experience of the film is -- so real that it becomes invisible; here you see the 12th working. Notice that the 1st house is below the horizon and the 12th is above the horizon. We can see the Sun when it's in the 12th but not when it's in the first; yet the 12th house Sun picks up many of the illusory in intangible qualities of its house, while the 1st house Sun is more clear and identified. There is a message here, which is that just because you can see it does not mean that it's real. The real person is below the surface of who you see -- moving from the 12th through the door of the ascendant, into the first.

The first house is about action, and we know people through their actions more than through their appearances.

In Vedic (Indian oriental) astrology the 12th is the house of "pleasures of the bed." Barbara Hand Clow sums it up in her teaching as "bliss out." Yet humans are far more attenuated to fear than they are to pleasure. Fear corrupts 12th house consciousness perhaps more than any other house, because illusions tend to be magnified there. We have no real or tangible concept of bliss except through drugs which is one reason why drugs are so popular in this part of the world, and this is more distorting than fear (however both come together -- drugs and paranoia share adjoining brain cells).

The ascendant is the doorway between the manifest and the unmanifest worlds. It is the border between who we are personally, and who we are when we merge with the collective consciousness -- and part of who we are always resides in this realm. We can view the ascendant as representing the membrane between our physical and energetic forms and, on the energy level, the membrane between our personal energy bodies and the rest of the cosmos. The integrity of this membrane helps us focus our identity, our awareness and maintain integrity. If people have boundy issues, this is the first place you'll find them (in the chart).

As you study the lives of people with planets placed in or close to the ascendant, watch how this manifests. I have a very high number of clients with Neptune rising -- very close to the ascendant. These natives often have great psychic talent, and at the same time, they have difficulty discerning where they begin and where the rest of the world ends. They need doors and boundaries around them. Almost all of them are drawn to continually experiment with drugs, and drugs are very detrimental to them because they wear down specifically that integrity and energetic boundary that the ascendant is designed to create.

People with Chiron rising will typically be in crisis over whether they have a right to exist. Their plight may manifest many ways, but you can be fairly sure that they are struggling over this issue, and most will take great solace in viewing their life from this perspective. Pluto in the ascendant will create a "do or die" crisis of individuation: these natives must be themselves and impact others as themselves at all costs.

I am born with the North Node rising. This means that I take the North Node very personally, that I must clearly define this boundary between myself and the unseen worlds -- and, because the South Node is in the 7th, learn to define myself outside of one-on-one relationship and the kinds of highly cooperative activities characterized by the 7th house. It is important that I forge my own sense of identity and individuality, and that I do so as a conscious process of incarnation (this is a Cancerian theme, as reported by Alice A. Bailey in Esoteric Astrology). Yet it also means that around the year of my birth, there were eclipses on my ascendant. These are events that make a life-long impression.

In assessing the ascendant, it's important to look at the condition of the planet that rules the rising sign. Check first by house and sign, and this will tell you where the person finds their identity most readily. This is where a great deal of work of the ascendant is done. The aspects to this planet will tell you part of the story, and the transits will tell you much of the rest. Remember, for example, that if a person is Taurus rising, that Venus has a heightened sensitivity in their chart.

Check life events when Chiron, Pluto and Saturn crossed the ascendant. This will tell you a lot about how they use the ascendant as a tool for interfacing with their own sense of personal destiny (though often subconsciously). What words to they use to describe those times in their life? Did they make choices, or did life force circumstances on them?

Check the relationship between the ruler of the Ascendant and that of the 7th house and you'll learn a little about how their relationships tend to shape up, at least enough to ask reasonable questions.