If you were born in Kiruna, in the north of Sweden, and Cancer or Capricorn were rising, your cross of matter looks like it has been rolled over by a truck.

As you know, Ascendant, Descendant, MC and IC are the four angles. Together they form the Cross of Matter.

However, in many charts, it doesn’t look like a proper cross, with all the right angles at the right places, unless you were born when 0 degree Aries or Libra were rising.

Let’s call the Ascendant “East”, the Descendant “West", the MC “South” (in the Northern Hemisphere) and the IC “North”.

This flattened cross of matter looks very wrong. East and North, West and South never collide like that!

The MC is not exactly South actually. The MC is where the Sun peaks in its daily course. It’s in the sky. When you’re looking South, you’re not looking upwards but towards the horizon.

When the Sun peaks, it shows South anyway, even in Kiruna.

If we wanted a chart aligned with the horizon of our daily lives, we should grab the MC-IC axis and force it, with energy and determination, to square the Ascendant Descendant axis. (Imagine your chart is a disc made of rubber and the axis are rods of metal)

If we did that, we would have North, South, East and West properly placed, but the zodiac would have become distorted. Some signs would appear very elongated, and others compressed, poor things.

That’s a question of perspective.

Diagrams often represent the plane of the ecliptic horizontal (even though horizontal should be for the horizon) and the earth, turning around the Sun in the ecliptic, tilted on its axis.

Wherever you are, your horizon is tangent to the earth and turning with you as the earth rotates on its axis… Try to visualise this if you can, and flatten the picture to get a chart!

Forgive my geometry in the air.

All this to say: to deepen our understanding of the angles, we can reflect on the symbolic meanings of the cardinal directions.

If you were a prince of this world, you would want the front of your palace facing South.

On days of celebrations, you would appear on a balcony, facing the crowd. The Sun would shine on you, enhancing your glory, from behind the crowd.

If your balcony was facing North, it wouldn’t work that well. The Sun would dazzle the crowd and you would look insignificant.

The MC is a place of power, of honours and achievements, or simply the place where we are seen by many. If you are the drunk of the village, that’s the role you’re playing, as a member of society. Being drunk is what you’re showing to the crowd, from your own little South facing balcony.

When you’re facing South, North has your back. You remember your first appearance on this balcony. You felt proud and intimidated. Your father, behind you, laid his hands on your shoulders. Or maybe it was your mother. And maybe you were a princess. Anyway, you didn’t happen out of the blue. You felt you were a product of the land, the heir of a family.

If you are the drunk of the village, it may have been a different story indeed, but who knows about that?

Bear with me, I’ll tell you about East and West soon, but I feel like inflicting a bit more air geometry on you first. If you can’t bear it, just skip the next paragraphs!

The plane of the ecliptic is where the Sun seems to go round, as seen from Earth. The ecliptic is flat like a very thin pancake.

However, we always talk about the zodiacal belt. Imagine a belt surrounding the pancake.

Now, imagine standing on earth and extending an arm eastward at Sunrise. You have the power to extend your arm horizontally so far that the tip of your finger reaches the zodiacal belt.

If you do that on the day of the Equinox at sunrise, the tip of your finger touches the heart of the Sun. It is exactly East.

But if you extend your magical arm eastward at the summer solstice, the Sun rises further North on the horizon.

The tip of your finger touches one side of the zodiacal belt. You’ll touch the other side in Capricorn.

Now imagine that this belt is so wide that it’s actually a cylinder. In the middle of it, the pancake. The zodiac signs are like vertical stripes on the cylinder.

That’s what happens in far Northern or Southern latitude. The Earth is round, so the closer you get to the poles, the more your horizon makes a wide angle with the ecliptic.

As the earth is turning, your East pointing finger is going to go through some signs obliquely, almost vertically. It will take a very long time before reaching the next sign. But a bit later, your finger will move more horizontally, and move very quickly from one sign to the next.

There would be more to visualise, but we have enough to understand why charts like the ones in Kiruna look the way they do:they respect the proportions of the Heavens, but the view of our own horizon gets distorted.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that we live, day in day out, at the centre of this cross of matter, and that it is, indeed, a proper cross. It’s our orientation. The meaning of the angles is tied to what the four cardinal directions mean.

East is the most fundamental of the four directions. East shows the difference between being there or not being there at all.

The Sun appears on the Eastern horizon, and like a new Sun we appear for the first time when we are born, naked.

There is no costume for the ceremony on the South facing balcony yet. The only clothing we’re wearing is this naked body.

If you were a princess of this world, you would want your bedroom’s window facing East. You would rise from your bed and open the curtains to salute the rising Sun. You would not try to impress the Sun, being just who you are in your pyjamas. Then you would turn to your wardrobe and decide on how you will appear today, to your loved ones and to whoever else.

East in the chart is you. The rest is interactions.

West is beautiful. You would want a reception room there, to hold parties starting at the end of some days, or to sit with only one significant other and watch the sunsets, until death do us part. The Western horizon means death as well, not only other people. Opposed to East, it’s where we disappear. And opposed to who we are, it’s where others come into play. Not any others, the room is not big enough for the whole world to come. Those we invite, consciously or not, those who are attracted by our vibe, mirrors, opponents, partners…

Because it’s annoying to get death inviting itself along with other people in the reception room, we pushed it away, to the eighth house, originally “the beginning of death”. The Sun is in the eighth house in mid afternoon, a time when shadows start becoming longer.

There are many house systems but there is only one cross of matter. The four directions are powerful places. Whatever is found near the angles of a chart plays an essential role in our life story.

Jean-Marc Pierson , storyteller, astrologer.

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