Ketu in the 5th House and Rahu in the 11th House

In this post, I would like to explain what happens when you have Ketu in your fifth house and Rahu in your eleventh house. These series are dealing specifically with Rahu and Ketu (the North Node and the South Node, respectively) house placements. If you are curious where your Rahu and Ketu are placed, please click HERE to calculate your chart. I also offer past life readings on my ETSY STORE, in which I go much more deeply into interpreting your Rahu and Ketu. The following is just a basic overview that will help you get some general ideas about Ketu in the 5th house and Rahu in the 11th house.

In Vedic astrology, Ketu shows the focus of our recent past lives, what we perfected in previous incarnations. This is, however, the area where we feel stuck or uptight by not allowing variety and flexibility. Ketu is our safe and familiar castle. The purpose of Rahu is to reveal limitations we impose upon ourselves because we are overly attached to the false sense of security represented by Ketu. Rahu is depicted as a jungle where we feel unsafe and vulnerable. Essentially, it is a field of our inexperience that we need to explore in this life.

In essence, having Ketu in the fifth house and Rahu in the eleventh house indicates that you are coming from a karmic background of greater self-development and self-growth. In this lifetime, you will need to focus more on social development, which is the area of your inexperience.

The location of Ketu in your fifth house shows that your past life was dedicated to finding security through creativity, learning, intelligence, children, and education (matters signified by the fifth house). For instance, you could have been an artist who painted or wrote books just for the sake of sheer joy that comes from creativity. You were not overly concerned with being socially or materially validated for your creative pursuits. Alternatively, you could have been a type of scholar whose whole life was centred around obtaining knowledge or research activities (an archivist, for instance), but not so much about sharing this wisdom with the world and being validated for it. In more modern terms, this placement can show a mathematician or a computer programmer who is interested in implementing his theories just because this is his passion and not because he wants to use them to change the world or society. If you had children, you were content with the joy of being a parent — what you could gain from your children in practical terms (e.g. social status or personal validation) was less important. In other words, your past life was focused on all types of self-development, while your social development was minimal.

With this placement of Ketu, you can be overly rigid and narrow in your self-expression. You can be into certain activities and hobbies very strongly, while being indifferent to other things. This is great if you want to master a certain discipline, but ultimately such attitude does not allow long-term happiness and contentment with your life. It also prevents you from meeting new people and forming meaningful friendships, because it is difficult for you to find common threads and interests. As a result, you might feel empty and not fulfilled about what you are doing in life.

The location of Rahu in your eleventh house indicates that in this lifetime you will experience a growing discontent with creating just for yourself. You will need to find a practical way to reap the fruit of your creative pursuits and be socially validated for your actions. This does not necessarily mean that you will need to commercialise this area of your life (although Rahu will definitely help you improve your financial status). Rather, using your creativity for the well-being of others will be your utmost priority in this lifetime. You will need to feel secure with your creativity in your social environment. As long as you are not allowing more external stimulation to your creativity (in the form of social groups and peers), you will feel stagnant and stuck in your rigid ideas about life.

If you decide to paint or to write, you will have to consider how your art can make a positive impact on the world or what you can gain from this activity. Social and political concerns might be incorporated into your creative self-expression. If you have children, for instance, you might wonder how your parenthood will fit into the grand scheme of things (e.g. what traditions and customs can you pass on to your children). I hope that these examples will help you understand what I mean. As soon as you use your creativity for the benefit of others, you will also see more clarity when it comes to your career path.

As the placement of Rahu is your area of inexperience, at first you will find it difficult to form long-lasting and meaningful friendships. You might feel insecure or vulnerable when confronted by your peers, because the originality of the fifth house clashes with the commonness of the eleventh house. You can also feel like you are not appreciated by people around you. Perhaps when you were a teenager, you felt more like an outcast and didn’t have many friends to whom you could relate. Doubting your skills and creative talents is another possibility. Relationships with other people (especially foreigners) and lessons learnt from them are the catalyst that will help you grow. In order to interact with others in a healthy and productive manner, you will need to find common threads to relate to them.

As you learn the art of networking, you will attract more and more right and diverse people into your life, who will additionally increase your earnings. Rahu will definitely help you achieve success in material and financial terms. You are more likely to gain financially in foreign lands or through association with foreigners. Networking is your main talent of attracting money to your life.

Another interesting thing about this placement is that you tend to attract false and morally dubious people or individuals who are not compatible with who you truly are. In extreme cases, these could be drug dealers or criminals. In more typical cases, people you surround yourself with might not be honest with you. Gossip and backstabbing are possible if you are not careful enough. As the eleventh house grows better with time, you will be able to recognise these false people as you gain more experience with networking.