Descendant
The degree of the zodiac setting on the western horizon at birth, read as partners and what someone seeks or meets in others.
Meaning
The Descendant is the degree of the zodiac setting on the western horizon at the moment and place of birth, always exactly opposite the Ascendant. In most house systems it is the cusp of the 7th house, the house of partners, and like the other angles it needs an accurate birth time.
Where the Ascendant describes how someone meets the world, the Descendant describes whom they meet face to face: partners in love and in work, close associates, and open rivals. It shows the qualities a person looks for in others, or keeps running into, often ones they have not yet claimed as their own.
Psychological astrologers often read it as the place of projection: what someone does not live out themselves, they tend to find in the people they choose.
In practice
- The setting sign describes the partners someone is drawn to: with Aries rising, the Descendant falls in Libra, and a quick, direct person may seek calm, diplomatic partners and learn from them to weigh another view.
- Planets near the Descendant are often lived through others: with Venus there, a gift for partnership; with Mars, lively and sometimes combative relationships.
- The ruler of the setting sign, by its sign and house, shows where relationships tend to begin.
- Between two charts, one person’s planets on the other’s Descendant are classically read as a strong pull towards partnership, which synastry looks for.
Origin and history
Hellenistic astrologers called it the setting, dysis in Greek, one of the four pivots of the chart, and read the seventh place, where it falls, for marriage and partners. Medieval astrology kept that frame: for William Lilly, the seventh house showed marriage, contracts and open enemies. Twentieth-century psychological astrology, as in Howard Sasportas’s book of 1985 on the houses, added the reading of the Descendant as what is seen first in others.
How Ulune calculates it
Ulune places the Descendant exactly opposite the Ascendant, which it takes from the Swiss Ephemeris’s house calculation for the birth moment and place; no aspect is listed between the two. Aspects to it use 8° for the conjunction, square and opposition, but 6° for the trine and 4° for the sextile.
Without a birth time it is only a noon stand-in, marked approximate. In the calendar, a transit to the Descendant is listed once, as the matching transit to the Ascendant, since any aspect to one is also an aspect to the other.
Related
- AscendantThe degree of the zodiac rising on the eastern horizon at birth, read as manner, body and the way someone meets the world.
- Seventh houseThe angular house that begins at the Descendant, read as partners of every kind, marriage, close collaboration and open rivals.
- SynastryTwo charts compared, through the aspects between one person’s planets and the other’s and the houses where each one’s planets fall.
- VertexThe western point where the prime vertical meets the zodiac, read as encounters and turning points that seem to arrive by chance.
- MidheavenThe degree of the zodiac culminating on the meridian at birth, read as vocation, reputation and public direction.
- Imum CoeliThe degree of the zodiac on the meridian below the birthplace, read as roots, home, family and private ground.
Sources
- Vettius Valens, Anthology, 2nd century
- William Lilly, Christian Astrology, 1647
- Howard Sasportas, The Twelve Houses, 1985
- Dieter Koch and Alois Treindl, Swiss Ephemeris, 1997