The most common thing I hear from people interested in astrology, but not schooled in the techniques is they don’t get houses. My goal here is to break this down into basic and concise bite-sized morsels.
Let’s start with some short definitions:
Planets. These are the messengers and administrators symbolically communicating our relationship to the ebbs and flows of fortune, each doing so through their own discreet nature. Venus does fortune through harmony. Mars through conflict. Planets are affiliated with certain signs as their domiciles, often referred to as their rulerships.
Moon - Cancer
Sun - Leo
Mercury - Virgo and Gemini
Venus - Taurus and Libra
Mars - Aries and Scorpio
Jupiter - Sagittarius and Pisces
Saturn - Capricorn and Aquarius
What about Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto - what signs do they rule. They don’t. 20th century astrologers assigned them rulerships based on overly fresh empirical ideas of what the planets mean, which messes with an incredibly deeply thought out several thousand year old doctrine on how the planets behave with signs using just the traditional visible planets. The “outers” are extremely important. I call them “The Free Agents.” But they operate differently than the traditional seven, and in many ways, we’re still figuring out how. After all Pluto was only discovered in 1930. I plan to write more about The Free Agents in a later post.
A word on Fortune. Here in late Capitalism, “fortune” is too often thought of as a win!, as if it is simply represented by someone jumping up and down clapping and yelling “Big Money, Big Money!” on a game show. No. Fortune is just the ebb and flow of experiences. It waxes and wanes like the Moon. Fortune can be minor: Yesterday, I found a dollar in the street = good fortune.
So I bought a lottery ticket. I lost = bad fortune. But this was minor fortune, passing quickly in my life. Fortune can be more dramatic or something we experience over large chunks of our life. Good relationship with parents = good fortune. A lifelong chronic illness = bad fortune.
Signs. These are the twelve divisions of the zodiac. Think of a circle as 360 degrees with each sign taking 30 degrees of that. The signs last about a month and so their divisions are symbolized by cycles of the Moon. This circle of signs is not static. It’s a constantly turning wheel of time.
Time is the moving image of eternity. - Plato
Of upmost importance for astrologers is to know your rising sign. This is the sign that is rising over the eastern horizon at the time of birth. The exact time gives us the degree in that sign. I was born with the sign of Virgo rising in the east. The exact moment placed it at the 22nd degree of Virgo. Astrologers can work with just a rising sign, but knowing the degree brings much more into focus.
Below is an example chart simplified. If a baby is being born right now as I type this, they will be a Leo rising. As-Ds is the horizon line axis. As (Ascendent) represents the eastern horizon. Ds (Descendent) represents the western horizon. This wheel of zodiac signs is in perpetual motion moving in a clockwise movement. This baby is born when the exact degree of Leo was at 5 degrees and 52 arc minutes. In the amount of time it took me to finesse and upload this wheel and type those last few sentences, the Ascendent has already moved to 7 degrees and 31 minutes. In about two hours, this wheel will have turned so that Virgo 0 degrees will be rising over the eastern horizon. The key take away here is that when you see an astrology chart, it’s like a snapshot of something that is moving. The zodiac wheel is in constant motion around us, following the path of the Sun up in the east to the Mc (Midheaven at midday), then setting in the west at the Descendent, and heading to the underworld of the Ic (Imum Coeli), and then rising back up to the eastern horizon. The zodiac is Plato’s never-ending wheel of time.
Houses. Knowing that the signs are constantly moving, we can differentiate them from the Houses which are static and never move. The first house is always the house where the rising sign lives. The 10th house is always at the top of the chart. The 4th house is always at the bottom of the chart.
This is the chart for later today at around 6:41 PM San Francisco. Leo has moved on to occupy the 9th house, and now Sagittarius is rising in the east defining the first house for this baby to be born. When we know the time of someone’s birth, we know what sign occupies that first house. We know that Virgo occupies the 10th in this chart, Pisces is in the 4th, and so forth.
If the signs are the homes of the planets and take on the flavor of their rulerships, then what are the houses for? The houses bring all that meaning of planets in signs down to our earthly everyday experiences. The houses are where the rubber hits the road in what parts of life the planets and signs are affecting us. The general meanings of the houses:
1st - this house represents the person of the chart most personally. In the above chart. Sagittarius is rising, so Jupiter as the ruler of Sag, will have a lot to say about this person’s character, constitution, body, outlook, and how they generally operate.
2nd - Our personal resources. This house represents our relationship to the things that allow us to thrive. Often considered the bank account of the chart, but that is a narrow read of how we are resourced, money lives here, but so does anything that keeps us afloat in mind and body.
3rd - Siblings, people you think of as kin, local environment, your inbox, local travel, rituals, daily communications, the guy at the post office. Metakosmios.*
4th - Parents, family life, home, property, ancestry, legacies.
5th - Children, pleasure, creative projects, sex.
6th - Accidents, illnesses, subordination, servitude, the daily grind, hard labor, sacrifice, pets. Metakosmios.*
7th - Marriage, one-on-one partnerships of all kinds, adversaries, endings.
8th - Death, debts, reliance on others and vice versa, shared resources, anxieties, inheritances.
9th - The expansion of the mind, the place of study and learning, religion, philosophy, beliefs, foreign travel. Metakosmios.*
10th - Our vocations, public self, achievement, status in the world.
11th - Friends, allies, patrons, fans, like-minded communities, luck, honors.
12th - Confinement, strife, enemies, scandals, our blindspots, loss, tragedies, self-undoing, institutions like hospitals and prisons. Metakosmios.*
What’s with this word “metakosmios?” Houses 3, 6, 9, and 12 are the cadent houses. 3 and 9 are good cadent. 6 and 12 are bad cadent. Metakosmios has to do with the topics of life where we have the least control, where we are taken away from ourselves. In the 6th and 12th its usually how we lose control of our life by our own doing or external factors. We drink too much and ruin our lives. The class ladder is longer for some than others. You were born with hemophilia. I think of the 3rd as you don’t pick your siblings and your neighbors are a crap-shoot. Topics of the 9th typically take us out of the material everyday to the land of our minds. Think of long hours of deep study in a library, or going to a meditation center for a few days or weeks, or simply walking foreign streets. These are experiences that expand our life, yet take us out of it as well.
The four most important houses, known as the angles are 1, 4, 7, 10. 1-Our self, 4-where we’re from, 7-who we’re with, and 10-who we are in the world. The rest of the houses are like the details that frame those four pillars of life.
So the big take away here is that the houses don’t move. They are the static circle while the constantly moving zodiac spins through it incessantly. When I started this, a baby was born as a Leo rising and so Leo defined the 1st house, The Sun is the ruler of Leo, so where the Sun is in the chart will have a lot to say about this baby’s self, body, circumstances. Later today around 6:41, a Sagittarius baby will be born and Jupiter will speak for them.
What makes each chart so different and how astrologers can talk about those house topics in your life is why you can’t learn astrology over a weekend. What signs are in those houses, who rules those signs and where they are, what other planets are in those houses, how the planets are or are not talking to each other, and other considerations symbolize the dynamic nuances of each of us as individuals. People all have the same concerns in life, but how they navigate all that is highly personal and individualized.
I hope this adds some clarity to the houses. Feel free to post any questions. Houses are such a huge part of astrology readings and why the time of birth is so essential. People want to know about relationships, work, money, parents, health, etc - that’s the stuff of houses.
“You don’t pick your siblings and your neighbors are a crapshoot.” You’re gonna make an excellent astrology writer or teacher.
Thank you for breaking this down!