In the house, the fifth line is the upstairs window with the curtain drawn. People gather on the street below, certain that someone behind that curtain can help them, and the fifth line looks out at them and, very often, hides. The projection does not require the Heretic to do anything. It is simply what the aura does to strangers.
The Role
Fifth lines carry the most transpersonal karma of the six, and they are most effective exactly where the other lines are weakest: with strangers, in a crisis, when the standard answers have failed. The general steps in, offers something practical and unorthodox, and either saves the day or does not. Success builds a reputation that travels ahead of them. Failure, or a solution that did not meet the projection, gets them figuratively burned at the stake, and the reputation travels just as far.
In Your Profile
A conscious fifth line, the first number of a 5/1 or 5/2 Profile, feels the projections and is often suspicious of them, aware that people are seeing something that may not be there. An unconscious fifth line, the second number of a 2/5 or 3/5, attracts the same projections through the body without knowing it, and can be baffled by how much people expect. Either way the field is real and cannot be switched off.
Living It Well
The whole art of the fifth line is choosing which crises to step into, and only Strategy and Authority can make that choice reliably. Everything a Heretic does needs a practical application, because practicality is what the reputation is built on. Once the crisis passes the fifth line is generally ignored, and that is not rejection; it is the natural time to withdraw and recover before the next call. The not-self Heretic believes the flattering projections and initiates in order to feel valuable. The correct Heretic knows exactly what it can deliver, waits to be asked, and delivers it.