Composite Sun in the fifth house is, in Robert Hand's judgement, one of the best positions for a sexual relationship, because the fifth is the house of love affairs. It is also the house of creativity, children, self-expression, amusement and good times generally, along with speculation and gambling, and the Sun there gives strong emphasis to any of them.
What the placement really describes is a relationship that exists so the two people can be themselves and enjoy it.
What This Placement Describes
Hand's general account of the composite fifth house is more demanding than the traditional list of topics suggests. The fifth shows the extent to which a relationship provides a setting for two people to be themselves in the most genuine and honest way available.
He puts the stakes plainly. Many relationships survive only because each person keeps up a false front, trying to be what the other seems to want rather than what they actually are, and when the truth surfaces and disillusionment arrives, that kind of relationship collapses. The fifth house signifies the ability of two people to be real in each other's presence, which he notes is not always easy. And being real should not take effort. When the fifth house works smoothly, enjoying each other is simply easy, with no sense that something unnatural is expected.
A strong fifth house means a relationship very much concerned with the issue of self-expression. The two are not together to form a team. They are together because they enjoy being themselves in each other's company and because they enjoy each other.
How It Tends To Play Out
With the Sun there, the relationship offers good opportunities for self-expression, for being yourself and liking it. The two will like each other and enjoy being together. Hand describes this as a position of being yourself with others rather than a position of partnership.
For friendship it is very good, because it produces a light-hearted connection in which the two genuinely enjoy each other's company. He adds that a pair under this Sun learns to be themselves around other people and discovers more about the effect they have on others.
There is also a strong concern for children, which he says can offset the placement's weaknesses in a marriage.
The Opposite House
Because the farther midpoint retains some effect, growing as the two natal Suns approach opposition, this placement should also be read through the eleventh house. Where the natal positions are near opposition, Hand treats that second reading as essential.
The eleventh is the house of friendship, and also of hopes, wishes and shared ideals. It does not restrict a relationship to friendship, but it makes two people friendly in whatever they are doing together, and it asks whether they are looking for the same things in life. Read as an axis, the fifth and eleventh houses cover much of the same warm ground from two directions: the fifth is enjoyment of each other as you are, the eleventh is a common future. That is precisely the ingredient a fifth-house Sun most needs and least supplies on its own.
Hand offers no threshold for when the eleventh reading should take over and no method for combining the two. Both are held at once.
Where It Gets Difficult
The limitation is structural rather than moral. This is not truly a position of partnership. Hand says the fifth-house Sun is not good for marriage or for any partnership that requires a stronger feeling of oneness. He is careful to add that it does no harm to a marriage. It simply does not, by itself, produce staying power for the long haul, and other positions have to supply that. His general treatment of the house says the same thing: the very nature of the fifth is that two people are together and still individuals.
The second difficulty is about room. A relationship under this Sun has to let each person be what they are, and fortunately the placement usually carries that capacity. Where it is not given, both will feel that clamps are being put on their self-expression. Hand's advice is direct. Neither person can remake the other, so do not try, and the work is to let each other be and still stay together.
House position sets the issue the pair has to deal with. How well they deal with it is described by the aspects to the Sun, which is a separate question entirely.
Recommended Reading
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- Robert Hand, Planets in Composite: Analyzing Human Relationships (1975), chapter five.
- Robert Hand, Planets in Composite: Analyzing Human Relationships (1975), chapter four, on the composite fifth house and the paired house rule.
Continue Learning
Next: Composite Chart Placements and How to Read a Composite Chart.