Question: Can my husband and I adopt this baby? We have a five year old daughter. How will this affect her?
Timing: March 20, 1998, 10:03am, +5W West Hartford, CT
When dealing with an adoption and the mother of the child cannot be tied to the querent through family ties then the blood mother is ruled by the seventh house of strangers and her baby would be ruled by the 11th house (the fifth from the seventh).
For this two part question there are quite a few rulers involved. Of course the Ascendant is the ruler of the Querent, the woman asking the question. The 11th house and all the planets that are situated in that house would rule the adopted baby. The fifth house of children rules the five-year-old daughter of the querent. And the seventh house would rule the birth mother.
The Querent’s ruler, Mercury, is situated in the 11th house of the chart and sextiles the Ascendant. This strongly indicates that the woman’s main focus of interest is to adopt a baby. The planet Mercury is in the sign of Aries and had just passed a conjunction to Mars. That means that she has a ‘one-track mind’ and is quite impulsive and aggressive about this situation. With Mars ruling the 11th house of the adopted baby and Mercury, ruling the Querent, two things can be indicated by this separating conjunction. Either the querent is positive about this adoption taking place or that everything pertaining to the adoption has already been put in prepared prior to her asking the question.
Let’s look at the five-year-old daughter of the querent. She is ruled by the planet Venus in Aquarius in the same house as Uranus and sextiles the planet Saturn in the adopted baby’s house. Venus and Uranus are in a separating aspect and, in what I term, a conjunction by house. In my horary work I pay close attention to planets that are in the same house in question even when they are separating and not considered to be conjunct according to horary rules. When this occurs in a horary chart they are very important because they play on one another. In this instance the house conjunction of Venus and Uranus tells us that the five year old daughter is quite an independent and confident little girl. And with Venus just past a sextile to Mars, the ruler of the adopted baby, she looks at this situation to be very happy one.
Sagittarius is on the cusp of the seventh house, the house of the surrogate birth mother. Now we need to analyze Jupiter. It is in the tenth house and intercepted. The tenth house is the fourth from the seventh house. The fourth house from any house is the end of the matter. In this instance it will give us the perspective of how the surrogate mother will view the way things end up. This strongly indicates that she is not totally certain about giving up her baby, especially because Jupiter is Void of Course, which means it is not making any aspect to any of the planets in the chart. This doesn’t give her a strong will to make a choice one way or another or perhaps it means that she has already made up her mind and did not tell anyone yet. When the ruler of a person is intercepted it indicates that the person is hemmed in and being forced by a situation or someone to do something that she does not want to do. This could also indicate that the decision she has already made is not what she really wanted to do and now she is hiding to protect herself from being forced to go through with her plan. We could look in this in many ways. With Jupiter intercepted in her fourth house it could be that her family is totally against giving the baby up for adoption and they are putting pressure on her to keep the baby. The fourth house rules the father but if you look at both parents or the family in general the fourth house will also rule this them. This fourth house is not only intercepted but tenants two planets. This strongly suggests that there are at least three people against this adoption. You could play around with this a little. The Sun is intercepted in her fourth and rules the ninth house pointing to her in-laws, and Uranus on the cusp of the fourth house is situated in her third house of brothers and sisters. And Neptune, ruling be intercepted fourth, is in her second house! What is the relationship to the birth mother and her second house? Of course you can speculate. Being the fourth from her 11th makes a relationship to a friend’s parents, the six from the ninth indicates an in-law’s aunt, the 12th from the third could represent her sisters or brothers therapist, the ninth from the six could be a co-worker’s in-laws and if her mother was not married to the father it would be her mother’s lover (the fifth from her tenth.) Of course this is all speculation. However, when we get this far away from the ruler and we have to use derived houses then I’ll know how accurate the chart is. But it is fun! We know that the Sun in the fourth, ruling the parent, and Uranus in the third of brothers and sisters are strong because these are not derived houses.
There’s one person who we did not yet mention who is very important in his adoption. That’s the father of the baby. To find his ruler we would look to the fourth from the 11th house placing his ruler as the second house. Having the sign Cancer on its cusp the Moon would describe his position in this adoption. The Moon in this chart is Void of Course. At first glance it appears that the last Moon’s aspect would be a square to the Sun but by the time the Moon moves to square the Sun the Sun would have moved into the sign of Aries making the Moon Void of Course. This would indicate that the father of the baby does not have any reservations about the adoption. But with the Moon Void of Course the indication is that nothing much will happen around this question. Now if the Querent already had signed the papers for the adoption everything is the way it is and will remain the same so there would be no further complications about it. Seeing that at the time when the question was asked she had not affirmed the adoption this Void of Course Moon is a strong indicator that the adoption would not go through. This is also strongly indicated by Mercury, ruling the Querent, is conjunct the planet Saturn of delays, restrictions and basically killing the situation.
My answer to this question is that the baby’s mother had a change of mind, (the planet Uranus in her third) and she will not go through with the adoption and that the Querent would have to look somewhere else to adopt a baby.