The 4 Angles
of the Chart – the Top, the Bottom, the Left and the Right – are our 4 main
points of connection to the world. The MC, the IC, the Ascendant and the
Descendant respectively. If someone has major transits to all 4 them, you often
see their whole life change.
And I think
the IC particularly can get overlooked compared to its more glamorous
counterpart, the MC: career, vocation, how the world sees us, our place in the
world.
The IC is
hidden, it is the sign directly below our feet at the moment we are born, and
is therefore invisible. (Imum Coeli means 'Bottom of the Sky'.) If any point can lay claim to the personal unconscious,
it is surely the IC (Just as the Moon, the natural ruler of the IC, is the
planet associated with the personal unconscious).
Planets and
Angles are different things: the emphasis with planets is on what is within,
whereas the emphasis with Angles and the other house cusps is that which is
without, our connection to the world. The distinction, though, is not rigid. So
the IC becomes those aspects of our behaviour which are invisible to us –
unconscious - but often visible to others.
We’re on
shadow territory here. The things your friends think about you but tell you at
their peril. The way it comes out of course also involves the Asc/Desc axis, but I'm proposing it starts here, in the hidden recesses of the personality.
With Aries on the IC, are
you a pushover, underneath your reasonable front? With Taurus, do you put your
own comfort before emotional commitments (as Mr Obama is alleged to do)? Gemini:
do you see the world in black and white terms and polarise around that? Cancer:
are you, like Tony Blair, secretly narrow and partisan in your outlook? And
Leo, do other people feel life has to revolve around you and your needs? Virgo:
are you secretly judgemental of others? Libra: do you, like George W Bush,
present a decisive front to compensate for an inner uncertainty? With Scorpio, are
you quick to take offence, and less reasonable than you like to
think? Sagittarius: Do you wander from teacher to teacher, unable to find your own sense of meaning within? With Capricorn on the IC, do your friends find you
rigidly attached to the ‘proper’ way of doing things? Aquarius: have you really
thought about those groups you’re involved in and whether they’re doing more harm
than good? Pisces: do you put up a sign saying 'do not disturb' and project your aggression onto those who break your rules?
There are
any number of ways the shadows of these signs could be put, this what I have ‘divined’
for now, maybe you’ll find they apply!
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But the IC
isn’t just the personal shadow, it is much more than that. It is the foundation
out of which a healthy MC can grow. It is childhood, it is family. It is where
we are private and personal. It is the place where we regroup, 'downtime'. (It is not
the solitude of the 12th House, which has a more collective and imaginative emphasis.)
The MC-IC
axis is like a tree, with the IC as the roots and the MC (Medium Coeli: the Middle of the Sky) the branches. If you
like, it is the World Tree of Norse tradition, Ygdrassil, on which we each have
our place; or rather, among whose 9 worlds we are spread. At the top is the eagle, with
his broad vision of the world. And underneath, among the roots, is a dragon, a
symbol of the hidden power of strong foundations.
At the base
of the tree are the Norns, the Fates who water Ygdrassil from the Well of Wyrd
and who allot each child his or her future. The Norns are therefore associated
more with the roots of the tree, with the foundations and the beginning of
life, than they are with the branches.
 |
| Norns |
So maybe in
that hard-to-know place within, the Fates are at work, the pattern of our life
is woven, and the MC is the expression of that pre-existing weave. The IC is in
one sense our Fate in a psychological sense: often that which seems to ‘happen’
to us is a consequence of that which is within, but unexamined. As Jung said,
Character is Fate. But the roots of Ygdrassil are very deep, they are not just ‘personal’.
The IC takes us way back to a place we can only think about mythologically:
past lives, timeless patterns, the Mind of the Creator – powerful
archetypal images that we can connect with more consciously through the
solitude of the 12th House. And the idea of Fate has these sort of
resonances. Who knows what the gods have dreamed up for us? For Fate is also a
dream, with all its multi layers and fluidity, and always with a mystery at its
heart.
So encountering
the IC is a matter of how deep do you want to go?
 |
| Moirai: the Greek Fates |
I don’t want
to get into a discussion of Fate and Free Will here. But I think Fate is best considered
as an image rather than as an idea on its own. Those Norns are a very powerful
image, and they suggest Fate as something living and human rather than dry and deterministic,
which is something most of us reject. They suggest some bigger pattern that we
are all part of. It is outside of time, and therefore in a sense ongoing, rather than set in stone at birth. Free Will doesn’t seem to have the same powerful imagery
around it (try googling an image of it!), maybe because it is a more recent idea, and maybe because it suggests an autonomous humanity, freed from the ‘deterministic’ shackles of
the gods who we imagine we have become, and who are the source of such powerful,
archetypal imagery.
A transit to
the MC is also a transit to the IC. In a way, the transit to the IC needs to be
considered first, for any growth in the MC will emerge from the heightened
self-knowledge that the transit to the IC will bring.
And a starting
point with the IC is, like the Moon, an awareness of what it is that nourishes us,
and the gaps we have that tend not to get nourished. This can be looked at not
just through the sign on the IC, but through the condition of its ruler, the natal
planets aspecting the IC and any planets in the 4th House.
But with the
IC there is more emphasis on connection to the world than there is with the
Moon: so it is not just about exploring feelings, it is about looking at home
and family and the way that is an expression of what is most personal and close
within ourselves.
The IC is
much harder to ‘get hold of’ than the MC, but in a way it is more important, in
that the MC flows naturally out of the foundation of the IC. The MC as career
is one thing, and it is usually tied in with the necessity of earning a living.
But the MC as vocation is another, and I think the MC in this sense is not something
to worry about, to scratch your head over its absence and feel somehow
inadequate for not knowing what it is.
That fretting itself is a sign of gaps and
holes in the IC, along with modern notions that we need to be able to define
our life and have a direction to it. That is the shadow side of Saturn, the
natural ruler of the MC. Why not just live? say the IC and the Moon. Who says
we need a ‘vocation’?
Who are we to judge that our lives are inadequate if ‘all’
we do is muddle along reasonably happily?
On the Norse World Tree a squirrel scurries between the Eagle and the Dragon, carrying malicious messages. Maybe there is an inherent tension in human beings between the MC and the IC, between the things we can imagine doing and what, if we consult ourselves, is the right thing to do. Through the MC we can do amazing things, but we forget the foundations. For the Greeks, this was hubris, and nemesis was the gods' way of restoring the balance.
In a way the
MC and IC are not separable. The source of the IC is ultimately timeless, and
the MC reaches to that same place, but in a way that has been lived. If we pay
attention to that hard-to-know IC place with a wide, mythological perspective, what
to do with our lives will tend to present itself to us.
