New Delhi, Aug. 16 -- The ninth house is where astrology argues with itself. By the oldest rules of placement it is a weak position, one of the four houses that fall away from the pivots of a chart and lose force. By the oldest rules of meaning it is the House of God, the place the Sun was said to rejoice above every other. Two thousand years of practice never resolved that, and the contradiction is the most interesting thing about the house.

distance in miles, distance in learning, distance from the assumptions a person was raised inside. Anything that requires leaving the familiar in order to reach it tends to land here.

What the ninth house governs

Long journeys and foreign countries. Higher education, meaning the kind that changes ...