Gate 59: The Gate of Sexuality

Dealing early with obstacles to a connection takes determination. This line wavers between acting and hesitating over how and when. In its exalted expression, the obstacles to a connection can be cleared with strength and a clear sense of direction before they become insurmountable. This takes your full creative power. In its weakened expression, you see the hurdles but falter over how and when. That kind of uncertainty can also dampen your creative potential.

You put up barriers where others meet you, and you set them yourself. In its exalted expression, the urge for closeness gives way to a chosen distance that spares you the unrest of close bonds. In its weakened expression, shyness becomes a calculated stance that comes from deep psychological blocks and often limits encounters, even in people who are otherwise lively by nature.

Being open to closeness can give you stability and a sense of identity. This line sits between strength drawn from connection and frequently changing contacts. In its exalted expression, stability and your own identity only take shape once you let your barriers down, and closeness to others becomes a source of strength. In its weakened expression, the wish to grow strong through closeness can tip openness over into frequently changing contacts, with all the difficulties that follow.

Closeness doesn't have to be erotic. Here, a lived, all-embracing sense of connection stands against an ideal that does nothing to rein in your own drive. In its exalted expression, barriers fall away in favor of an all-embracing connection that draws its strength from closeness without an erotic element. In its weakened expression, the ideal of such closeness stays mostly in your head and does little to counter your own drive.

Intimacy gives off a pull. It ranges from love that overcomes barriers to power over others. In its exalted expression, this radiance draws others in without a bitter aftertaste and uses love to overcome many barriers. In its weakened expression, it is tempting to use this magnetism as a means of power over others.

Depending on your personality or your situation, you form only temporary connections, ones that could not be sustained otherwise or would be risky. In its exalted expression, closeness works under all kinds of circumstances and can be complete, whether it lasts only a moment or endures for a long time. In its weakened expression, it is not circumstances that force this impermanence. You seek it out yourself, driven by the urge to move on and by a wish for ever-changing encounters.

Read spiritually, this cross is in upheaval in all of its variants: the teaching expects a mutation that is meant to change sexuality and the way the emotional system works.

When the Sun is in Gate 59, intimacy itself forms the core, and this variant is especially powerful. The crosses with the Sun in Gate 59 bring the whole range of sexual themes into the world and so influence how others experience sexuality. The crosses of this Quarter are essential to the continuation of human life.

According to the teaching, as long as you don't know your own mechanics, bonds are easily formed and just as easily dissolved.

As a Right Angle Cross, it stands for a purpose that concerns your own path. Other people enrich it, but they don't fundamentally redirect it. You grow into it by following your Strategy and Authority; it is not fate.

For Line 4, Gate 59 is a particularly favorable position, because here opportunities grow out of friendship and relationship.

People who carry this cross are often strategists, and their thoughts circle around the question of how friendship can be turned into physical closeness; when they are young, this can lead to frustration. Their theme is bringing the right people together, which is why it is known as the great cross of matchmaking, in the sense of a dating agency.

The gate of the Personality Sun gives the cross its name and colors the other three gates, whose themes show up through it.

The Juxtaposition Cross is rare, and it is a fixed path of its own, like a train running on its tracks. Someone who spends a long time with you can be drawn into this path along with you. You grow into it; it is neither fate nor a demand.

This second variant is the mirror image of the first, in which the Sun is in Gate 55. Read spiritually, the spirit in this variant expresses itself through Gate 59, that is, through intimacy. At the center is the change in how sexuality and love relate to each other, with Gate 55 embodying the emotional longing for romance and deep love. Read spiritually, a mutation is on its way from the emotional system and the sixth lines that will change intimacy, and people on this cross are especially receptive to it.

The fifth line stands for seduction and romance, and even more for projection: with this line, others quickly read your behavior as an advance, whether or not you mean it that way. Because it stands in a field of projections, the theme is how far apart expectations and reality lie in connections.

In the teaching, the sixth line moves through three phases of life. Until roughly the Saturn return, bonds change; after that, you pull back to observe and look for your soulmate; and around the Chiron return, you come back to closeness and the world. Hope and trust sit at the core; early disappointments can easily tip into pessimism, and from a distance this line watches what works out in other people’s relationships. Read spiritually, you carry your soulmate within you: the invitation is to accept your Personality and Design as one and to discover self-love along with an inner sense of who fits you.

As a Left Angle Cross, it is fulfilled through being with others, whose influence can noticeably change your path. You grow into it; it is not a prediction.