9th house profection year (ages 8, 20, 32, 56, 68, 80, and 92)

I am 20 years old and nearing the end of my 9th house year. While I have had a 9th house year before, as we all do at age 8, and while I will have quite a few more 9th house years to come (ages 32, 44, 56, 68, and so on), this is the first time I have been so aware of it.

My 9th house is in Cancer containing the North Node and ruled by a 6th house Aries Moon. Cancer is the sign of care, sensitivity, it demonstrates a mastery of emotion, it carries all the wisdom of the Moon as its ruler. This is what I am supposed to grow into with the North Node and therefore, my own “true north” here in the sign of Cancer. The 9th house year is incredibly humbling because it fundamentally breaks down everything you thought you knew about the world. It requires compromise with the 3rd house– our hub for primary perception, learning, development, and communication– forcing a shift in perspective, broadening it. This is so contradicting because while this year is largely pulling me closer to gentle consideration– it has done this by waving it in my face from a distance.

In a 9th house year everything is at a distance from you. You reach out for the things that you want and you take a journey. You journey to what you want, thinking you’re going from Point A to Point B, but of course you aren’t. You are instead taken down many winding roads, and detours, and nothing looks like you thought it would– like you pictured– opposite of the 3rd house where we conjure our ideas and thoughts. Oppositions require compromise. So the 9th house (your destination) requires compromise with the 3rd house (your initial thoughts). Once you get to Point B, the destination is so unrecognizable that you’re completely unsatisfied and you want to start all over. The 9th house will teach you that your initial thoughts about your destination are usually wrong. It's entirely about the journey and the experiences and the people you meet along the way.

During a 9th house year, you might go on a journey that leads to an unfulfilling destination or you might meet beautiful people who have beautiful bodies and beautiful souls who are constantly dreaming about something bigger than you and better than you. They are incapable of taking the time to be still with you. Not because you aren’t enough but because they are off to the next thing that they think will make them happy. They might leave you, opening up old wounds, thinking there is something better out there. They might travel far, far away only to discover that true joy was right there in front of them, before they had the foresight to come out from behind their gigantic map. No shame in this, because you’ll do the exact same thing to them.

My Moon ruled 9th house year has taught me that home is a mindset. It isn’t four walls and furniture, it isn’t found in a GPS, it isn’t something you can physically find. It is found unexpectedly and it is usually found (ugh) within. It might feel like it’s at a distance from you, but it’s always inside. Waiting for you to tap into it. Waiting for you to become still enough, quiet enough to hear it. That being said, you’ll meet a variety of people. People who downright disagree with your personal vision for yourself. People who might act like they’re on board with your personal vision, just to completely jump ship. Or if they aren’t abandoning, they might instead take a bath in the mud and run their dirty footprints all over your painting. Your vision. Ruining the canvas? Maybe. Or maybe they are only showing you that your vision is meant to be protected.

They might leave marks because maybe you needed to expand this in some way. Maybe your vision wouldn’t have been complete without the footprints of others, the insight of others. You spend your time crying over how it would’ve been better if they hadn’t mucked it up, but it wouldn’t have. Though it will teach you who is supposed to be at a distance. Leaving their mark and sharing their piece once is good enough. You don’t need their mud caking the entire canvas because then… whose canvas is it? It wouldn’t be your vision anymore. It would blend and mold with theirs. Protecting your personal vision is important, upholding this and refusing to compromise your flame and inspiration for others. Deep down, you know you deserve to have this vision. For me, in a Moon ruled year, this is about home, family, and consideration in partnership. The physical and nonphysical version of these things. The universe might teach you a few things about what it is that you don’t want first and this is ultimately to preserve the vision. Think about the canvases. You don’t create a masterpiece the first time, you practice.

You learn about what kind of paint you like and what brushes to use and– oops! Maybe I should have sketched this out better... and I added too much there and, fuck, I didn’t mean to do that. You emerge with an imperfect painting and before you know it, you’re begging to try again. You know more now. You’re so much older and wiser than when you started sketching the last painting. So you scrap it and try again, you know what you want now. Maybe there were parts of the last painting that you can never imitate again. No two paintings are alike and while you may have hated big parts of your practice painting, you also really loved parts of it. You can’t get those things back or if you can, they might look very different. This is okay. It is a part of the fleetingness of life, of art, of experience.

The 9th house will teach you about fleeting moments. You won’t appreciate them for what they are until they’re gone. Though after the first few times, you get the memo. Life is about being whole heartedly present. This is the opposition and compromise between the 3rd house (memory) and the 9th house (moments, experiences). You experience the moment, you let it go, you don’t forget it though. We take these little moments, stringing them together like macaroni until they create a little necklace. Cherished only by those who made them because let’s be real, no one really wants a macaroni necklace as a gift. These little noodles are constructed with the grains you planted. Your personal collection of insight and memory. They won’t mean anything to anyone else, but each one is a memory, each one is a truth that you have discovered.

The 9th house is the realm of discovery. You’ll discover loads of information. Tangible and intangible. Information you would have rather stayed hidden, truths that you wish you didn’t know, prophecies you wish you could unsee. It is about turning knowledge into wisdom. I have been living with two other people in their 9th house year over the last 6 months. The same person who told me “ignorance is bliss” is the same person who told me “knowledge is power”. From the outside this might show a transformation between two ideals, the maturation of an ideal, but I know this particular person better than that. The 9th house year can reveal how fickle we all are in the land of philosophy, how often we say things simply as a means to an end. 

During a 9th house year, others might try to hold their knowledge and wisdom over you as if it were a power play like this. This is the realm of college. We say it’s “higher learning” because not everyone goes to college of course, many of the house themes are metaphorical. While I wasn’t in school, this year has been reminiscent of a college experience. You go to school with an ego the size of the university, thinking that you know what life is like. You sit through classes with professors who supposedly know more than you. They wave their fancy degrees in your face and use them as an excuse to be a pompous asshat. You complete the course or the degree thinking that you’ll be different and changed and that you’ll know so much more. Though as we already know, it isn’t anything like you thought it’d be. You might know more, but maybe you realize that people gatekeep knowledge. Holding it over your head, exploiting you and taking your thousands and thousands of dollars to teach you things you are actually teaching yourself. You might even come to find out that your professors? They’re just human beings. Having a degree doesn’t make you any more insightful than you have strived to be. A piece of paper cannot measure the knowledge that you do or don’t possess. You may even find that the mentor you thought was so great is actually? A sad alcoholic. Or they might be a “do as I say, not as I do” kind of person. In a 9th house year, people are like that. They claim to know more and be more than they actually are. And of course you’ll believe them, you’ll learn about discernment this way.

It has been a year full of contradictions and it isn’t even over yet. Still, I know that I needed this first canvas to make mistakes. To learn from them, to add on to them, to laugh at them. Now, I’ll have fun building an even better work of art. Maybe I’ll slow down and enjoy the process a bit more this time. Maybe this time I won’t rush to achieve a final product and instead bask in the sunlight, turn on the music, smoke a little weed, and actually enjoy the painting process. This is what I will strive for in the last four months before the 10th house year.