When working astrologically with derived houses, we gain the ability to understand to what extent another person’s destiny infiltrates our own. This was precisely the case of a querent who came to me recently, concerned about a recurring pattern she observed within her circle of friends: men and women who, almost chronically, face turbulence in their romantic relationships. And, inevitably, she herself ends up becoming a sort of emotional provider, the one who supports, advises, and holds the world together when the other collapses.
When analysing her chart through the traditional lens, I observed that the 11th house (that of friends) lies in Sagittarius with Saturn there, having triplicity through the element of Fire. From there, deriving seven houses, we reach the house of her friends’ relationships: the 7th. Counting from Sagittarius, the seventh is Gemini, here a sign without planets, which immediately directs us to Mercury as the natural ruler of the partners of the querent’s friends.
On the surface, Gemini describes people whose primary motivation is communication, movement, and the relentless pursuit of mental stimulation. It is mutable Air, a masculine sign that favours exchange and multiplicity. However, the true nature of a house only reveals itself when one follows the ruler to its actual position in the chart. And it is precisely there that the symbolic abyss opens.
Mercury is stationary (almost retrograde) in the 12th house, in Scorpio. It is applying to a conjunction with Venus, also exiled in the same sign, and forms an exact square with the Moon in Leo in the 9th house. We have an extremely dense configuration, a true psychological and spiritual knot that explains with striking precision the pattern experienced by the querent.
The partners of her friends, signified by this Mercury, display clear and profound emotional needs. Scorpio, a Water sign, feminine, is a territory of intensity and fixation: it seeks emotional fusion but tends to express it through control, possessiveness, and obsession. It is ruled by Mars, the lesser malefic, which already speaks of conflicting passions and of desire that easily turns into wounding. When a stationary Mercury inhabits this sign, thought becomes circular, ruminative, often suspicious. It is a mind that investigates, probes, and dissects, forever incapable of rest.
The conjunction with Venus deepens the tension further. Stationed at 13 degrees of Scorpio and about to begin its retrograde motion, Mercury applies to Venus at 7 degrees of the same sign, a critical moment in which the planet of mind and analysis turns back upon itself. This application is a destabilising pull, as Mercury prepares to reverse course and re-enter the very terrain it crossed before.
Venus, already exiled in Scorpio, suffers from this contact. Her natural ability to love, to reconcile, and to bring ease is gravely wounded. The applying conjunction from a soon-to-be retrograde Mercury intensifies the wound, with thought and speech eroding the fragile structure of a martial love. It gives shape to an archetype of relationships marked by words that reopen old scars, by communication that probes what should remain private, and by emotions that verge on compulsion.
And, because both planets reside in the 12th house, the domain of hidden enemies, self-undoing, and invisible confinements, the partners of the querent’s friends often appear as unseen forces that draw these relationships into the underworld of Scorpio, with secrecy, guilt, entanglement, and the inescapable gravity of obsession. And, the so-called hidden enemies of the 12th, can very well be… their partners.
The square between Mercury and the Moon in Leo, placed in the 9th house, adds an even more complex layer. The 9th house is the dwelling of meaning, faith, philosophy, and higher vision, the domus dei where the Sun has its joy. The Moon, the feminine and changeable luminary, finds herself there far from her own “joy”, which is the 3rd house, the other end of the 3-9 axis. Above the horizon, in the fixed fire of Leo, the Moon stands exposed, theatrical, often wounded in her pride. It is the Moon that wishes to be seen, recognised, adored and suffers when the eyes of the other fails to return that solar reflection. The tension between Mercury in Scorpio and the Moon in Leo translates, in the lives of the querent’s friends, into relationships where drama, the need for affirmation, and the narcissistic wound intertwine with patterns of control, mistrust, and secrecy. The square, being exact, indicates that the wound is acute, recurrent, and difficult to resolve.
There is yet another structural link worth attention: Mercury also rules the 10th house in Virgo. This means that the partners (7th derived from the 11th) and the career or public destiny of the friends (10th derived from the 11th) are ruled by the same planet. Relationships interfere directly with the professional direction, reputation, and spiritual orientation of the querent’s friends. These relationships shape destiny, affecting work, vocation, and public visibility. The 10th, after all, is the house of the zenith, the second most powerful place of the entire chart. And, when it shares a ruler with the 7th, there is an inevitable chain between relationships and destiny.
In sum, the chart explains with remarkable precision the phenomenon described by the querent. Her friends attract partners who are emotionally complex, wounded, intense, and she, in turn, feels the weight of those external storms. Everything becomes even more intriguing when we consider that Scorpio is the 10th house of the querent herself, and that stationary Mercury is her professional significator.
In other words, the emotional issues connected to her friends’ partners activate precisely the same planet that rules her vocation and the way she operates in the world. There is a direct resonance between the professional axis and the sphere of others’ relationships: as if, when faced with the romantic crises of those around her, she were compelled to adopt a professional, functional, almost therapeutic stance. The chart suggests that what appears as emotional disorder for her friends becomes, for her, a field of work and expression of destiny, a kind of symbolic craft in which service and understanding are her way of working upon the world.