Houses

What the houses are

The signs divide the Sun's yearly path and are the same for everyone born at a given moment. The houses divide the sky as it looked from one place at that moment. They begin at the eastern horizon, the Ascendant, and run round the chart in twelve sections, so that a planet's house depends on the time and place of birth — two people born minutes apart in the same town can have planets in different houses.

Lilly describes the scheme simply: the horizon and the meridian cut the heavens into four quadrants, each quadrant is divided again into three, and "so the whole Heaven is divided into twelve … parts, which the Astrologers call Houses or Mansions, taking their beginning from the East." The houses are numbered anticlockwise from the Ascendant, through the part of the sky just below the eastern horizon, down to the lowest point, up through the west and over the top.

If the planet is what acts and the sign how, the house is where in life it tends to act.

The twelve and what they cover

Each house has a traditional set of significations, gathered over two thousand years; modern astrology has added psychological readings to the older, concrete ones.

Each house has its own entry. An empty house is not an empty part of life: it is read through the planet that rules the sign on its cusp (its "lord"), wherever that planet stands — see rulership.

Three kinds of house

The houses also fall into three families of four, by their place relative to the four angles:

• Angular houses — the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th, which begin at the angles. Traditionally the strongest places: a planet here acts visibly.
• Succedent houses — the 2nd, 5th, 8th and 11th, which "succeed" or follow the angles. Middling in strength, often read as consolidating.
• Cadent houses — the 3rd, 6th, 9th and 12th, which "fall away" from the angles. Weakest for outward action in the tradition, often read today as places of thought, adjustment and preparation.

Lilly scored a planet's house among its accidental strengths: most in the 1st and 10th, then the 7th, 4th and 11th, and least in the cadent houses (see accidental dignity). The Hellenistic tradition also gave each of seven houses a planet that "rejoices" there — the planetary joys.

Cusps and systems

The line where a house begins is its cusp. How the cusps are worked out depends on the house system, and the systems disagree: in Whole Sign houses each house is one whole sign; in Equal houses each is exactly 30° from the Ascendant; in quadrant systems such as Placidus the four angles are the cusps of the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th and the houses vary in size. A planet near a cusp can change house from one system to another; its sign and aspects never do.

How the houses are shown here

The Houses table lists, for each house, the sign and degree on its cusp. The charts here use Placidus unless another system is chosen, and the Planets table gives each planet's house. Below the houses, the Ascendant and Midheaven are listed separately, with the Vertex; the Descendant and IC are simply the points opposite them. Because houses depend on the birth time, a chart cast without a reliable time has houses that should be read with caution, or not at all.

Related

• House system
• Angles
• Angular houses
• Succedent houses
• Cadent houses
• Planetary joys
• Rulership
• First house