I think most would agree there are all kinds of intelligence out there. There are deep thinkers, broad thinkers, the emotionally intelligent and so forth.
I think I have inherited intelligence to an extent but it has been honed by the fact I have spent pretty much my entire life under intense stress and pressure which have forces me to develop.
You just don’t know what you can do until you are pushed and stressed and forced to figure things out in order to survive. I have 8th house brains, not 11th house brains, see?
9th house brains have a broad education. Contrast to my kind of brains which you can only get by going to hell and staying there for the better part of a lifetime… never mind the trips back down for refresher courses.
I don’t think one is better than the other but if you’re running around getting opinions on something you’d probably be well advised to access people with various kinds of brains and also note is because of these differences that NO ONE KNOWS IT ALL.
Tell us about your brain, hmm?
Where are your brains? Is it where your Mercury is? In which case I have 7th house brains. What does that mean … I’m smart relationship-wise? I did know that.
Piya, I don’t think so. Mercury is how you think and communicate and that doesn’t quite cover it as far as intelligence goes.
I express myself (my intelligence) on this blog (Mercury) but what I am communicating may have been gleaned via a feeling method.
I don’t know what type of brain I have,lol. It seems that it is or can be all over the map. Sometimes I obsessively worry and that can trigger strong emotions. Sometimes when I am drifting off to sleep I realize that my brain is going places that are foreign to me,hmmmm. Weird. I have a 12th house gem sun 1st house gem merc. I also have two yods 9th aquarius moon, 2nd house cancer venus, 4th virgo pluto conjunct 4th virgo uranus. This may be the crux of the problem.
Hi Elsa, maybe I am misunderstanding this but is the emphasized placement (ie, say you have an emphasis on a particular house) … is that where your brains come from? Like if you have a strong Saturn … is the house your Saturn is in, where your brains are?
… I am still pretty new to astrology and I am trying to figure our where my emphasis is, bit I do know I have three planets in my 7th (Sun, Mercuery, Venus). Does that mean my brains are there?
Piya, I guess I wrote this without thinking it through because no one is commenting so my guess is, no one knows what I am talking about, le sigh. I’m sorry.
Maybe I will try again?
::Saturn in Virgo groan::
I think you mean book-smarts vs street-smarts, kind of. Having the ability to adapt learn from your circumstances, vs having to cram for your college-entrance exam (?)
Also some people just have that strong Inner-knowing (intuition), and some sort of bang up against other people clueless.
I am only on my first cup of coffee – sorry 🙂
I guess I understand the idea of a school of hard knocks, 8th house brain and a 9th house broad education in and of itself. However, as a beginner astrology person, it doesn’t automatically click in as to how that would be indicated in one’s chart. In other words, is there a chart indicator of how someone will learn, what they need to learn or if they even really need higher education to succeed in life? As a beginner, things don’t automatically click in when I hear terms about the planets or the houses or the aspects. I think I need to take a longer time to really study each thing for example and really understand what it represents. This could take a while.
I think I would have to define “intelligence” as I understand it to make this post make sense but right now I am working on a Fish Tale.. 🙂
Among a blog full of good questions, this one stands out. Maybe no one is responding cause it takes some time to think about.. Ontological and all that. What do I think about how I think? Deep. And we’re all hoping you can point us in the right direction – like, which placement will give me the answer to this question?
There is a saying, “As the question, so the answer.” Deep questions don’t have easy answers, if at all. It’s not so easy as looking at where my Mercury is placed (although it’s a helpful start), or looking at aspects to Saturn in my life, the lessons I’ve had to learn, etc etc.
And so this is maybe a good example of how our chart is like a flower blossoming, an ever-evolving work in progress. We have a road map, a blue print, an outline of the energies at our disposal, but how we use these things and actively shape our own minds, our intelligence and, hence, our world and our experience of it, is something that we can’t glean from looking at the aspects in our chart alone. We can only know this through self-knowledge. And the self-knowledge will help us see it reflected in the chart, or, conversely, the chart may trigger our understanding, like “AH yes, I forgot that part of myself…so glad to have been reminded of it.” Chart is 2D, self-knowledge is the third dimension that gives our personality depth, brings our chart to life as we walk this earth, with the heavenly spheres moving all around us.
A chart is never static. Neither is our brain or mind. Stasis is death.
(Could you guess, I’m kinda philosophical, Sag smarts? Sag is my 5th house, so I have lots of fun with it. Love these questions on this blog!)
I will try to work on this. I am on to something but I just missed communicating it.
While what I do may seem easy, actually a lot of what you see on this blog has boiled down over decades.
I am trying to marry concepts I have encountered in 3 books here and one of the books, I’ve not even read (yet?) so I just have nothing more to offer until I can get my thoughts together.
What this is, is a cake I took out of the oven before it was fully baked. 😉
I get it but not sure I could prove or explain that I understand it.
Some things you know in your head and some things you know in all of your cells. Intelligence isn’t just about what you have stuffed into your head but includes how savvy you are at processing emotions – yours and other people’s. It also involves how good you are at interpreting those funny feelings in your gut or the hair standing up on the back of your neck and a million other more subtle cues your body gives you that your brain doesn’t have a thing to do with.
This is a super complex topic. I wonder if there might be a certain type/amount of intelligence (or lack thereof) associated with each house, for example, the 5th house, creative intelligence, the 12th house, intuitive intelligence, etc.
Good job to tackle such a big subject. I have also heard (read) about intelligence linked to mercury, the moon, the 4th and 5th house.
Elsa – please bake the cake. It smells really good and we’d all like to eat a piece, without the koolaid though. 😉
mud, LMAO. I am going to but it’s going to be slow. I have several thousand things to do first, it reminds me of swatting flies in the desert of pulling all the weeds in the desert… these things take time!
Right now, tomorrow someone is coming over to do work here and I have to get rid of everything incriminating… I hope!!
He’s going to be in every room in the house and he’s an old man – he’s not stupid, yanno?
::laughs::
Oh yeah. First I have to bake the cookies… literally, for Vid and the soldier.
I mean he says, “Don’t bake me any cookies (soldier) but if he gets home and there are no cookies he looks like he’s been shot through the heart!
Damned Taurus!!!
Yeah, there is nothing like having to defend your half=baked cake. It’s like taking Dora to the dog show… entering her when she won’t even BEGIN to walk on a leash. Can this be explained? Hellll no, it cannot be explained.
It seemed like a motherfucking good idea at them mmm’ kay?
Wow! Now this is an answer. When I sat down late last night and wrote you, the question that showed up was sorta like the way you let the story tell ITSELF. I started with my observations of the way people seek out new and more evolved solutions and ways of being on the planet. You and your astrology and real life intelligence create cakes, cookies, appetizers, main dishes. I come to Elsa P. and my inventory of solutions and my Venus in Sag appetite for adventure is … STOKED. There’s SOMETHING HERE.
My brain and my life experiences thrive on broad thinking, deep insight and a place for mercy. That cake you’re baking for the Pisces … that is just one more reason I asked the question of you. Intelligence lives and comes alive through that gift of the cantadora in you (the keeper and dispenser of the old stories). “Old” meaning a truly confident storyteller calls on the Gallery of Muses to open up all portals to you.
Good, long stories can’t be shortened. When the listeners stick around or come around again … there’s an answer.
Thanks for the cake.
Take your time Elsa, I’ll just sit here with my fork at the ready! LOL
Tam ::snort::
My saturn is in the ninth house and I can be very methodical and logical but actually all my answers come to me intuitively which I put down to mercury conjunct uranus in the 12th house.
I can think that the saturn is more socially acceptable or that logic is somehow what everyone else is doing and force myself to think things through til I feel like screaming. When I give up, time passes and then suddenly the answer just pops up – a dream, a line in a book, something random someone says. Then I just laugh myself stupid for forgetting how easy it is when I stop trying so hard.
I think my brains are pretty 4th house. My Mercury/Pluto and Sun are all there and I think this is where I get the thinking done. When I was little I was pretty sharp at “getting” other people’s emotional motivations, 12th house moon probably helped. All the air in my chart has made me spend a lot of energy on book smarts and language and science, but when I let that get out of the way, I think the emotional intelligence is a bigger asset.
Now I want cake. Or cookies.
I definately ” get ” the 8th house intuitive Brain thing—–I`m in that camp as well—-it is maddening,tho, to try to explain to a non-8th brained peeps why you think the way you do——I`ve tried to stop explaining my every decision and just shrug.
Hi Elsa,
I’m going to try to make sense here=-)
Here it goes:
My Mercury is in Scorpio in my 5th house and my moon is in virgo in my 3rd house. My rising sign is Gemini.
The ruler of my 3rd house is in leo and my sun is in the 5th house.
It makes me romantic and a creative thinker.
Having mercury in scorpio I guess I have a detail oriented/research oriented/intuitive mind.
With Mercury being in my 5th house I like to be creative with words and writing, I also like brain games, I guess that would be creative intelligence.
Gemini Rising causes detail oriented/language oriented/ kind of multi-faceted intelligence.
With my Moon in Virgo research oriented/analytical/possibly intuitive intelligence.
Moon in 3rd house gives an emotional/intuitive intelligence.Whatever effects the person,me, emotionally will usually be remembered also it causes day dreaming.Also, I can’t think when I’m nervous.
Leo on 3rd house cusp: They often pursue education as one of their great pleasures in life. There is often considerable mental activity which leads to an abundance of intellectual outpouring.
I don’t know if I did this right, I have know idea on exactly how to break it down. =-)
It was fun and interesting though.=D
Thank you Elsa=D
Did what I type sound reasonable?=-)
My grand mutable cross made me a slow learner, late bloomer. Still learning. Still blooming. Took me a while to learn how to read and write and tie my own shoes. I have Mercury in Pisces in the seventh opposing Virgo moon and ascendant squaring Saturn in Gemini Neptune in Sagittarius. I can write books in my sleep but I struggle academically and lack social skills and common sense.
The brain looks like intestines- which shows our brain is connected to our literal gut and the gut is called a second brain. Intestines are ruled by virgo, an intelligent sign in astrology. From head= aries sign I see it more connected to impulse and coordination but from head to toes- logic and thought applies through the signs on the circle- we get to pisces, wisdom.
ok, I will give this a go.I have a (mainly) 9th house stellium so I would term it deep brain. Interested in many subjects that are far reaching and require depth of study and long study. Especially ancient civilisations versus corruption of the timeline stuff…are they as ancient as we are led to believe. In the 9th is sun, mercury, neptune, lilith and venus. So, yes, the is it true is it not. plenty of suspicion of lies in the narrative, an attempt to pull together world histories in a very broad sense ’cause I love it to bits where there are correlations, The sun mercury (conjunct), yes I talk about it too, to the consternation of my partner and family, and convincingly sometimes. Now… all that is in scorpio…so a bit obsessive and tenaciously picked apart and beheld…..and its oppositte moon in taurus, so I Feel my way through it all and hold all the conflicting views I study together, till the more rubbishy stuff peels away. And that moon is in the 3rd so I can pick up flotsam and jetsam locally to embellish and further illuminate the deep stuff, watching the present for evidence of the past and tingles of the future. No, its not mad….its a way of thinking, theres probs more in my chart that informs this pondery ebb and flow, but thats all I have so far.