The First House and Your Rising Sign
The first house of a chart has the sign that was ascending over the horizon at the moment you were born on its cusp. This sign is known as the Rising Sign, or Ascendant. The first house has to do with how we appear or the way we come across, thus our appearance and personality. This is the essential stuff that bubbles up in us spontaneously and that is obvious to others as our trademark or activity. It is what makes us each so personally different. This house rules our personal self and everything about us that draws a reaction from our surroundings or others.
The Second House
The second house is concerned with how we respond to or field whatever impulses or unique and personal qualities we manifest via our first house. This is how we hold or "have" things (possessions, material goods, money, and the like). The second house always refers to how we secure ourselves, the kind of response we get from life and those around us.
The Third House
The third house is concerned with explorations, investigations, and inquiry and research of all kinds. It also rules connections, communications, wires, tubes -- anything that we can get through with our body, mind, voice, letters, what-have-you. It is here that we explore and search for the limits of our life, whatever we are working with at the moment. A very mental house, concerned with finding, furthering, peering, and all manner of questioning. Traditionally rules short journeys, siblings.
The Fourth House
The fourth house is where we send down roots, find our limits, and generally secure ourselves. It is the end of any searching we might have done in the third house. Here we find or end our search, settle down, and manage to get in possession of the whole situation. This is our home and the base from which we can work, feel, and experience. This is the root of our experience, the core or thick of it.
The Fifth House
The fifth house has to do with awareness, emotion (to move out), and expression (to press out). Here there is always a growing sense of self-confidence and even a pride of ownership, since we begin to recognize and own our experience. We know that we have had or are having an experience. All forms of expression and offspring are connected to this house -- children, animals, creative expression, and so on. A sense of direction and ownership takes hold at this point in our experience.
The Sixth House
The sixth house has to do with salvaging and preserving what is good and healthy in our experience. Here we separate the wheat from the chaff. We begin to care for ourselves and our experience and thus health, nutrition. The idea here is that we are able to analyze our experience and have thoughts about what is pure and what is not. The sixth house is an attempt to save the heart of an experience, one that already by that attempt is beginning to pass or not cohere.
The Seventh House
The seventh house is the house of partnerships, relationships, social life, and all that carries us beyond our personal self into an awareness of other people, community, and the like. This includes spiritual awakening and the discovery that we are more than just our personality. Here we begin to respond to our personal needs (and those of others) for the first time. We can see what is going on and are committed to it; thus, marriage and yoga, or union, is indicated in this house.
The Eighth House
The eighth house, traditionally the house of death, is concerned with getting rid of excess parts of ourselves that we see we no longer need. Thus this house also covers initiation and any activities where we are transforming toward a more integral position, getting to the heart of things. The no-nonsense quality of the eighth house makes it good for business ventures since here we are stripping away the dross to reveal the truth or essence of the subject.
The Ninth House
The ninth house covers long journeys and religion (the longest journey of all). Here is what remains of the purification that takes place in the eighth house -- the seed, or essence, of an entire cycle of experience. Religion comes from a Latin word that means to bind back, and thus refers to all things that last or endure, such as the truth. Essential ideas, philosophy, and all that is the very heart of things belong here.
The Tenth House
The 10th house is a house of practical vision and clairvoyance, for here we can see clearly what is. Reputation and career are often connected to this house, since the areas where we can see with greatest clarity are those we most often can put to use to make a living. In summary, this house is where we have real vision and can see to do and work. Planets transiting this house may provide moments of insight and clear-seeing as well.
The Eleventh House
The 11th house has to do with putting our visions and dreams to work. We have been on the mountain and had a vision (10th house). Here we take our vows never to forget what we have seen and to work hard to make these dreams into reality. Thus this house has always been connected with altruistic and humanitarian goals and trying to set them in motion. It is the house of friends and community, because when we are powered by a real insight or vision we share with all -- irrespective of differences.
The Twelfth House
The 12th house is about all that we go through in order to make our dreams into reality and manifest them in the world around us. It covers what we are willing to put up with, the sacrifices we will make in order to bring across what is really important. This is connected to prisons, institutions, betrayal, self-undoing, and the like, because it is here that we must choose to take some possible abuse for the sake of the message we are carrying, or blow it all away with a negative reaction.
