The Twelve Houses
Twelve areas of life, from identity and money to friendships and the subconscious.
The Twelve Rooms of a Life
If planets are the actors and signs are the costumes, the houses are the stage sets. Each of the twelve houses is an area of life, such as money, home, work, partnership or friendship. A planet in a house tells you where its energy is most likely to show up.
The houses run counterclockwise around the chart starting from the ascendant, the point on the eastern horizon at your birth. The first house covers identity, the second money, the third communication, and so on through to the twelfth, which covers solitude and the subconscious.
Angular, Succedent and Cadent
Houses are also grouped by strength of action. Angular houses (first, fourth, seventh and tenth) sit on the four main points of the chart and are the most visible. Succedent houses (second, fifth, eighth and eleventh) follow them and deal with resources and consolidation. Cadent houses (third, sixth, ninth and twelfth) precede the angles and deal with learning, adjusting and preparing.
There Is More Than One House System
Astrologers divide the sky into houses in several ways. Whole sign houses, the oldest, simply make each sign one house. Placidus, the most widely used in modern Western practice, divides the sky by time. Others, such as equal houses and Koch, have their own logic. The systems agree on a great deal and differ on details, particularly for planets near a boundary. The Birth Chart Studio uses Placidus, and falls back to equal houses near the poles where Placidus cannot be calculated.
An empty house is nothing to worry about. Most charts have several. You read an empty house through the sign on its edge and the planet that rules that sign.
How to Read a House in Practice
For each house, note the sign on its starting edge, called the cusp, and any planets inside it. The sign tells you the style in which that area of life works for you, and the planets add specific characters. If the house is empty, look at where the ruler of the cusp sign sits in your chart. It sounds complicated and becomes quick after a few tries, and the house pages in this section walk through each one.