Prenatal Astrology:
What can astrology tell us about our life in the womb?

April 2022

Copyright © by Judith, 2022

Every now and again, a class participant throws me a ‘curve ball’ question. Answering post-lecture questions feels like a rousing game of ping pong - it’s challenging to anticipate from what angle a question might arrive! I enjoy this process, finding it sharpening to the insight. Sometimes an attendee stumps me though, as occurred during last week’s subscriber Q&A. In my entire career, I’d never heard this question asked before, not once. She asked: “What in the chart might indicate your mother’s womb?” (Presumably, when you were inside it).

Natal charts are typically seen as representing the current life, moving forward…but not necessarily conceived in reverse, as in what occurred in the gestational months before birth. This ‘prenatal’ period would include your watery home at the time, inside your mother’s uterus. Would, or even could, this experience, be shown in your natal chart? What a thought-provoking query!

First, what do we know about wombs and pre-birth influences in astrology? Tradition generally allots the prominent influences immediately prior to birth to the Ascendant degree, and the area just above it, by, let’s say 7-15 degrees. The Ascendant represents parturition, birth.

In my practice, this has worked out tolerably well. Clients with significant stresses within a few degrees of their Ascendant degree may have experienced difficult births, or perhaps, a chilly birth reception… “they wanted a girl”.

In reincarnation theory, the natal 12th house, as well as planets found there, theoretically indicate recent, hovering past life “hangovers”. Planets placed positionally in the natal 12th house from the natal Moon; or too, the natal planet that the natal Moon has last separated from, are also qualified candidates for theoretic “past life” description.

The 12th house is the arena of fears, sorrow, mental health, spiritual work, sleep, charity, empathy, involuntary karma, and all things that go bump in the night. Its position on the cycle is directly before and above the Ascendant degree. The Ascendant degree is that essential horoscopic point on the eastern horizon that is visibly rising up at the precise time of birth. Theoretically, it makes sense that the 12th house might suggest recent, prenatal influences (as well as still fresh past life memory).

But what represents the mother’s womb? Or, is this a mere chimera? I believe that the mother’s womb (or rather, our experience of it) would be represented somewhere in the horoscope. Why? Because our natal charts reflect our relatives in so many ways, and the horoscope has been known to “signify” mother, father, siblings, and even our cousins and aunts (in general, symbolic, and also surprisingly apt descriptive terms). Secondly, we all have a navel. Through the navel, we were attached to our mother, and she to hers, and she to hers, back to the very first female in the chain who possessed a navel in the first place. Thus, what in the horoscope indicates this direct bodily link to mother, to female ancestors?

Dr. H. L. Cornell gives Virgo as the sign ruling over the navel, which is located definitively within Virgo’s Body Zone. However, the womb “when pregnant” comes much under the sign Cancer, as do mothers in general (as both an archetype and concept). The fact that Cancer makes a lot more sense to me as the navel’s governor was corroborated by the client that grew a substantial, non-malignant navel lipoma. She was born as Jupiter (the growth principle), was nearly exactly rising upon the Ascendant in Cancer! Although in medical astrology, the whole chart is the bodily field, few horoscopic points represent the body as much as does the Ascendant degree.

The Nadir (IC), and the sign Cancer are my favorite candidates for rulership the navel.

This lowest point of the chart has a long history of association with mother, ancestors, earth, and heritage. We might look to the IC for clues as to our prenatal time. Mars and Saturn conjunct on the Nadir/IC might indicate an uncomfortable or fearful experience in the womb. Perhaps the mother was in an abusive situation or self-medicating, etc. Conversely, Venus and the Moon in Taurus conjunct the Nadir/IC might suggest an indulged, well-nourished, and pleasant fetal experience. Perhaps the womb-time is experienced as so commodious that the baby is reluctant to leave and must be induced!

Certainly, the 12th house would also include all matters just antecedent to birth, including one’s long, sleepy womb experience. The 12th house rules sleep, latency, waiting, unemployment, and imprisonment (amongst many other things). This seems apt for our nine months spent leisurely awaiting birth as we quietly suck our thumbs and grow.

A great deal more research is needed. My candidates for horoscopic descriptors of our prenatal experience in our mother’s womb are the following:

1. The zodiacal sign Cancer and the house it inhabits on the Whole Sign Wheel. This house might be seen as slightly reflective of our experience in the womb. Just how one might interpret that is another story! Perhaps, the sign Cancer, if located in the dangerous 8th house of the natal chart, wouldn’t be as pleasant an in-utero experience, as would Cancer in the pleasurable 5th house.

2.  The Nadir, aka “IC” (bottom - connection with ancestors, and thus the navel (?)) is my favorite contender for the ruler of the in-utero experience. Sign and planets conjunct the Nadir/IC.

The 12th house to the Ascendant (the sign just antecedent to the Ascendant sign, clockwise). One might consider the nature of the sign on cusp, plus any planets tenanting. For example, if one has natal Saturn in Aquarius positioned in the 12th house to the Ascendant, one might experience oxygen deprivation, or feel lonely and cold in the month just prior to birth. Naturally, any planet’s position in the 12th house can indicate a wide range of possibilities. We must study the whole chart and its ‘owner’, to arrive at the true interpretation!

We have no way of knowing if any of these theories are true without testing. This is difficult without actual knowledge of our actual fetal experience, and how are we to ever know this? We can only grill our mothers, often decades later, about what they were experiencing during our gestation period. And still, that’s their experience, not ours! Most of us have scant memory of that time and place.