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Second House

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The second house follows the first as possessions follow the person. Traditionally it is the house of the native's estate: money, movable goods, earnings, profit and loss, money lent, and the means of a livelihood. Modern astrologers widen it to everything a person has to draw on, including talents and the body's own resources, and to self-worth: what they value, and how secure they feel. Howard Sasportas called it the ground, the house where spirit takes material form, and where the task is telling what is genuinely valuable from what is merely acquired.

Angular, succedent or cadent

The second house is succedent: it follows the angle of the first house. Succedent houses stand between the strong angles and the weak cadent houses, and they are associated with consolidation, holding on to and building up what the angles begin. In Lilly's own order of strength the second sits fairly low, below the ninth and third, so a planet here works steadily rather than conspicuously.

Natural sign and ruler

The second house corresponds to the second sign, Taurus, and to its ruler Venus: enjoyment of the senses, patience, the slow accumulation of what lasts. No planet has its joy in the second house.

Lilly's significations

Lilly asks the second house about the estate or fortune of the person, their wealth or poverty, all movable goods, money lent, profit, gain, loss or damage. In a lawsuit it shows the querent's friends and helpers, in a duel their second, and in a chart for a nation its allies, supplies and stores. It rules the neck and the back of the neck towards the shoulders; its colour is green. It is a feminine house, and its cosignificators are Taurus and Jupiter: Jupiter placed here, or ruling it, he took as an argument of means. The Sun and Mars he thought never well placed here, inclining to a scattering of substance.

Planets here, and the ruler elsewhere

A planet in the second house describes how a person tends to earn, spend and value: Venus here may favour income through beauty or pleasure, Saturn a careful, effortful building up. Its ruler, wherever it falls, often shows where money comes from or flows to, a ruler in the tenth linking income to career, in the seventh to partners. These incline a person's relationship with resources; they do not fix a bank balance.

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