The Descendant: The Ascendant and Descendent lie at two opposite ends of your Natal Chart, beginning the First and Seventh Houses, respectively. The Ascendant, or AC, or Rising Sign, lies on the left, on the eastern horizon, where the Sun ascended into the sky at dawn. The Descendant, or DC, sits on the right, on the western horizon where the sun descended under the horizon at dusk. These two angles may rule opposing Houses, but they connect, rather than divide, a chart’s separate halves.

The AC begins the First House of Self, the domain of everything you are and see yourself as. These are the qualities you see and accept in yourself, which you wear proudly for all the world to see. Your Sun may be who are in the centre of your planetary personality – your ego, your conscious, your identity – but your AC is the constructed image you decorate yourself with. It is how you dress, how you do your hair, your make-up, your nails, your shoes. It’s the way you hold your body, the expression on your face, and the way you look out at the world. It’s the personality quirks you tell people you have, what you know you are like, what you want to see yourself as. Your AC is a mask you climb into that you’ve made for yourself; the identity you’ve made out of qualities you like and admire most.

The DC, begins the Seventh House of Relationships. Sometimes referred to as your “Shadow Side,” as the opposite of your AC, this Sign is everything that you aren’t. These are the qualities you disassociate from, deny, repress, ignore, or refuse to acknowledge exist within your personality. It is the opposite of everything you identify as, so it stands to irritate or even infuriate you to be around it. Yet – curiously enough – you are drawn to the qualities of this Sign over, and over, and over again in the people you meet and form relationships with. Why? It’s an “opposites attract” sort of magnetism.

Whether or not you want to believe it, your DC is still very much a part of who you are. You might not see it, but it’s there. Your lovers and spouses and everybody else in your Seventh House will tell you it’s there, because that’s how they see you. You see yourself through your AC, and partners see you through your DC. You might initially deny it. But take a step outside of yourself and look at your actions through the eyes of someone else, and you may realize how unlike yourself you are when you are around someone you love.

The ultimate task is to bring these two halves together, incorporating your DC into your identity, and loving and accepting the parts of yourself you don’t want to own up to. You do this by attracting people who embody these qualities into your life, forming outward relationships to unite the inner forces of your own personality. When you battle and resolve issues with them, you bring these two ends of your chart closer together. And when you can finally own up to the DC aspects of your personality, you will no longer need to cycle through partnerships in order to become enlightened to your true self.