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First House

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The first house is where the chart begins. Its cusp is the Ascendant, the degree rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth, and everything it holds concerns the person the chart belongs to. Traditionally it describes the life itself, the body, stature, complexion and temperament, and the vitality a person draws on. Modern astrologers add the persona: the first impression, the instinctive way of stepping into a room or a new situation, and the self-image that sits between inner life and the outer world. Howard Sasportas called it the house of the persona, where the work is learning to present oneself authentically rather than reactively.

Angular, succedent or cadent

The first house is angular, one of the four houses that begin at the angles of the chart. William Lilly ranked the angles as the most powerful houses and the first as the strongest of all: of two planets equally dignified, the one in the Ascendant has more power to bring about what it signifies. A planet here tends to be visible in the personality and quick to show itself.

Natural sign and ruler

The first house corresponds to the first sign, Aries, and so to its ruler Mars: the impulse to begin, to be separate and distinct. Mercury has its joy here, because, as Lilly put it, this house represents the head and Mercury the tongue, fancy and memory; well placed in the first, he was said to make good speakers.

Lilly's significations

Lilly gives the first house the life of the person, their stature, colour, complexion, form and shape, and, in a chart for a country, the common people. It rules the head and face, and he noted that a difficult planet here often accompanied a mark on the part of the body belonging to the rising sign. Its colour is white, it is a masculine house, and its cosignificators are Aries and Saturn, the first sign and the first planet in the old order.

Planets here, and the ruler elsewhere

A planet in the first house colours the whole chart: it tends to show in the face a person turns to the world, and its themes arrive early and often. Mars here may incline towards directness, the Moon towards visible feeling. The ruler of the first house is the chart ruler, and the house it stands in is often a place where a life seeks to express itself. Read both as inclinations of temperament, never as a fixed portrait: how a person uses them is theirs to shape.

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