The Astrological Houses
The houses in astrology are one of the foundational pieces of this practice and one that I refer to all the time.
If you’re a client or have followed along with me on socials for awhile, you know that the first thing I suggest for any significant astrological event, like a Full Moon, New Moon, planetary retrograde, etc. is to find the house where that event is happening in your natal chart.
This is important because it tells us what area of life is being turned on or activated by this astrological event.
Each house represents a different part of our inner psyche and our life experience. Let’s explore what each house represents.
First House Themes
The Body: The first house represents the physical body and our awareness of our body. This includes appearance, health ramifications, body image, and how connected to, or grounded you feel within your body.
Personality: The first house will describe how we approach life. It’s the lens through which we view the world. It describes the part of our character that we readily show others, our mannerisms and how comfortable (or not) we are engaging with the immediate world.
How Others View Us: The impressions that we make on other people will be described here. It’s the image that we cultivate and present to other people.
Second House Themes
Money & Possessions: The second house represents our attitude toward money. It describes how we earn and spend, what we spend our money on, as well as our moveable property. Activations to this house can speak to times of financial fluctuation, or changes within how we view our relationship with money.
Values & Worth: The second house will describe what we value in the world as well as within ourselves. This house is directly connected to our sense of self-worth and what gives us a sense of worth and stability.
Personal Resources: This house will show us what resources we have at our disposal that will help support us in becoming fully resourced. This would include how we make money as well as how we satisfy our psychological, physical and spiritual needs.
Third House Themes
Immediate Environment: The third house represents our immediate environment and the people located there (siblings, cousins, nephews, nieces, neighbors and other daily acquaintances). This is how we deal with every day circumstances, our awareness and curiosity about our environment.
Knowledge Gathering: The third house is concerned with networking, meeting people, making connections and the information that we gather from those connections. It can describe our early education as well as our educational interests and the practical skills we develop.
Communication: Also held in this house is how we learn. It describes our innate power of perception as well as the general reporting of the information we’ve gathered (letters, emails, phone calls, books etc.).
Fourth House Themes
Our Past: The fourth house represents our roots, where we’ve come from and the foundation that our life is built upon. It speaks to our fundamental need to belong within a clan or group. The fourth speaks to our ancestry as well as our descendants, our racial or ethnic origins and our relationship to the traditions that we come from.
Home & Family: The fourth house will describe what kind of home environment you need in order for your home to feel like a sanctuary. It can indicate who you live with and is particularly linked with either the mother or the father figure, (whichever one was the more “hidden” caretaker).
Assimilation of the Ego: This house is where we go when we come back home to ourselves. It’s who we are and what we’re like deep down where no one can see us. The psychic functions of the fourth, connect us to the rest of life. It’s here where we develop an innate sense of belonging, being at home in the world and connected to others.
Fifth House Themes
Creative Expression: The fifth house is all about our desire to express ourselves creatively and how we go about it. It’s what we do for pleasure, amusement and all around fun.
Recreation/Play: The fifth house represents how we play, what our hobbies are as well as our need for leisure or play time and how we go about getting it. It can also represent dating, romance, love affairs and the kind of romantic relationships we seek.
Children: This is the house of our inner child, where we can look to connect with our inner child through play. This house also will represent how you relate to children, this could be your own children, other people’s children and/or the role children play in your life.
Sixth House Themes
Work: The sixth house describes our attitude toward work, what we’re like to work with, and our ability to relate to or our relationship with colleagues. It can describe our employer or our employees if we’re in a position of management and our work ethic.
Health: This house can give us a glimpse into our mind/body relationship and requirements. What we need for our physical health, diet, hygiene and our attitude toward health and wellness. When this house is activated, it might require us to view or approach our health in a new way.
Daily Life: This is the house of objective reality - the things in life we cannot change. It represents the rules that we have to follow in life (example: we live in a body that needs food, water and sleep, these are non-negotiables that we cannot ignore). This house speaks to the daily ritual of living life. What we actually do all day and our attitude toward it.
Also, for my pet lovers, this is the house of small pets and animals.
Seventh House Themes
Partnerships: The seventh house describes our personal and professional partnerships. This could be a marriage partner, significant other, anyone you’ve committed to, or anyone you’ve signed a contract with. This house describes how we act when we’re with another 1:1 and how we relate to that person. How we balance our needs with another person’s needs. It can describe the kind of partner we seek, what qualities we look for, or the kind of people we attract.
Projection: This is the house of projection. It will describe the process of how we mirror with another person and the qualities within us that we want other people to express. This house will describe what we give to a partner either consciously or unconsciously.
Eighth House Themes
Intimate Relationships: The eighth house represents where we unite fully (or attempt to) with another person. It’s here where we combine our lives with someone else and where our attitudes about life and intimacy have to be faced and worked through. This is where we get real with another person and allow ourselves (and them) to show our vulnerability.
Shared Resources: When we combine our lives with another person, we have to share. The eighth house describes the resources we can gain from other people, shared finances, inheritances, legacies, the possessions of other people and how we feel about them or what we do with them. It describes other people’s money that is connected to you in some way: insurance, taxes, alimony, stocks/bonds, mortgages, investments etc.
Psychological Union & Regeneration: Speaking of investments, the eighth house can also speak to our emotional investments in things and people. What amount of energy are we putting toward these unions? Along with the fifth, it talks to our attitude about sex and how we value the role of sex in our life. This house speaks to our attitude toward death, crisis and any transformative life experience.
Ninth House Themes
Travel: The ninth house represents travel of all kinds. This could be physical, mental, spiritual or metaphorical travel. Our desire or need for travel, how we prefer to go about traveling and our connections with distant lands, people and experiences.
Higher Education: This house describes our experiences with higher education, what, where and how we study. It also relates to external communications, such as publishing.
Life Philosophy: Here we get into the topic of religion, politics, society, life philosophy and belief systems. It represents our moral code, our innate sense of right/wrong and the inner motivations that fuel our actions. In the ninth house, we travel into the world and gain new experiences that we learn from. It’s through these experiences that we shape our beliefs and our philosophy about life.
Tenth House Themes
The Public World: The tenth house describes how the public world views us. It’s our reputation, our professional interests, our contribution to the world and how we act or engage with the public. This is where we go to carve our path in the world. It can be linked with people in roles of authority and also with either the mother or the father figure, (whichever one was the more “public” caretaker).
Career/Life Vocation: The tenth describes our vocation or our life’s calling. It can also reflect what career we pursue. It’s a reflection of our aims or ambitions in terms of career and how we go about getting where we want to be in society. This house is connected to prestige, rank, status, and our public image in general.
Eleventh House Themes
Social Circles: The eleventh house represents our social circles and the people in them. This is going to be our more superficial friends, acquaintances, people that we know but are not intimate with. This house is a reflection of what we can expect to experience when we go out into the community and engage with groups of people. Its the type of group we’re drawn to, how we participate within that group, our role and identity within the group.
Twelfth House Themes
The Hidden Realms: The twelfth house represents a “behind the scenes” type of energy. This is the house of activities that we do that are either secret, or hidden from public view. It can be what we hide from others, but also what we hide from ourselves. It’s the house of our unconscious, our shadow, as well as the collective unconscious. Here we are psychologically and psychically sensitive. It’s our connection to the Unseen Realms (dream space, mediation space, spirit, etc.)
Confinement & Surrender: This house can represent places where we don’t have a voice and are rendered powerless such as hospitals, prisons, or psychiatric institutions. This is the house of things that happen which are outside of our control which we must surrender to. It can reflect a period of isolation or an innate need for solitude in order to recharge our inner batteries. When the twelfth house is activated, we set aside our ego and move from a place of selflessness.
Thanks for reading.
With love and rumination,
Kai