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What are houses in astrology?

The twelve areas of life in your birth chart

The short version

Houses are the twelve areas of life in your birth chart. Each one covers a different part of living: who you are, money, home, love, work, friends and so on. Planets sit in them, and the house a planet sits in tells you where in life its energy tends to show up. If your sign tells you what you are like, your houses tell you where that plays out.

An easy way to picture them

Think of your chart as a street of twelve houses, each with a different job: a front door, a home, a workplace, a place to rest. The planets are the people who live in them. Where someone lives changes how you meet them. Mars in your 10th house is ambitious energy in your working life. Mars in your 4th is the same energy at home.

How they are worked out

Picture a snapshot of the whole sky at the moment you were born, as seen from where you were born, including the half below the horizon. Two points matter most: the sign rising on the eastern horizon, called the Ascendant or rising sign, and the point highest overhead, called the Midheaven. Draw a line through each of them, through the centre of the wheel to the other side, and you get a cross. The four ends of that cross are the Ascendant, the Descendant opposite it, the Midheaven and the Imum Coeli (IC) opposite that. They start your 1st, 7th, 10th and 4th houses. Each of the four quarters between them is then split into three, which gives twelve houses.

The horizon and the line overhead cross to make the four angles.

Why they are not based on the stars

Signs and planets come from where things are in the sky. Houses come from the Earth spinning once a day. As it turns, a new sign rises roughly every two hours, and the whole set of houses turns with it. That is why your birth time and place matter so much, and why two people born on the same day can have very different houses.

Why house lines don't match sign lines

Houses and signs are two separate twelve-part circles laid on top of each other. They rarely line up. If you were born with the rising sign 2 degrees into Sagittarius, almost all of your 1st house is in Sagittarius. At 28 degrees, most of it is in Capricorn. In the system Houses uses, called Placidus, each quarter is split by time rather than into equal slices, so houses come in different sizes. One house can cover parts of two signs, and some houses hold no planets at all. An empty house is normal.

Twelve houses, numbered anticlockwise from the Ascendant. The houses (inside) and the signs (outside) rarely line up.

Houses, signs and planets

The three work together. A planet is the what, a sign is the how, and a house is the where. Mars in Leo in the 10th reads as energy (Mars), shown boldly (Leo), in your work and public life (the 10th). Signs and planets are the same for everyone born on a given day. Houses are what make a chart personal, because they change with your time and place of birth.

The twelve houses

The houses run from the 1st to the 12th, going anticlockwise round the wheel from your rising sign. Here is what each one covers, with the name we use in Houses. Tap a house for the full page.

1. 1st house · Self →Identity, body, how you come acrossThe 1st house is your front door: the first impression, the way you walk into a room and the body you do it in. It's how you meet the world before anyone's had a proper conversation with you.
2. 2nd house · Worth →Money, values, securityThe 2nd house covers what you own, what you earn and what you value, including how much you value yourself. It's your sense of security, in the bank and in the gut.
3. 3rd house · Voice →Communication, siblings, learning, neighbourhoodThe 3rd house is your everyday mind and mouth: chats, texts, short trips, siblings and the streets you walk every day. It's how you learn, and who you gossip with while you do.
4. 4th house · Roots →Home, family, private lifeThe 4th house is home in every sense: where you live, where you come from and the private self behind the closed door. It's the foundation everything else is built on.
5. 5th house · Desire →Romance, creativity, pleasure, childrenThe 5th house is joy on purpose: flirting, playing, making things and doing what you love just because. It also covers children and anything you bring to life with your heart.
6. 6th house · Ritual →Work, routines, health, habitsThe 6th house is the daily stuff: your job, your to-do list, your body's needs and the habits that hold a life together. Less glamorous than the 10th, more useful most days.
7. 7th house · Bonds →Relationships, partners, marriageThe 7th house is about the people you pair up with: partners, spouses, best friends and business allies, plus the occasional worthy rival. It shows what you look for in another person and what they mirror back.
8. 8th house · Shadow →Intimacy, transformation, shared moneyThe 8th house is where things get deep: real intimacy, shared money, what you inherit and how you change after a big ending. It's the house you don't show guests, and the one with the best conversations.
9. 9th house · Distance →Travel, beliefs, higher learningThe 9th house is the big picture: long journeys, big ideas, study, faith and whatever makes life feel meaningful. It's the part of you that wants to go further, on a map or in your head.
10. 10th house · Calling →Career, public image, ambitionThe 10th house is your public life: career, reputation and what you want to be known for. It sits at the top of the chart, so it's what people see from a distance.
11. 11th house · Circle →Friends, community, future goalsThe 11th house is your people: friends, groups, online communities and the causes you join. It's also your hopes for the future and who you want to get there with.
12. 12th house · Depth →Dreams, hidden patterns, solitudeThe 12th house is the backstage of your life: dreams, secrets, rest and the patterns you don't notice until they repeat. It's where you recharge alone and where your intuition does its quiet work.

Reading a house through its sign

Every house begins in a sign, and that sign describes how you go about that part of life. Think of the house as the where and the sign as the how. Say Scorpio is on your 12th house, Depth. The 12th is your private inner world, and Scorpio is intense and probing, so you tend to go deep into your own feelings, dreams and secrets rather than skating over them. Do the same for each house and you have a first reading of your chart, even before you look at the planets.

Opposite houses

Houses that sit across the wheel from each other work as pairs. Each pair is about a balance, usually between your private self and the self you show to other people. If a lot is going on in one house of a pair, the opposite house often holds the answer.

1. 1st and 7th · Self and Bonds →Me and youHow you show up on your own, set against how you show up with a partner. The balance is between independence and give-and-take.
2. 2nd and 8th · Worth and Shadow →Mine and oursWhat you own and earn yourself, set against what you share, inherit or can't control. The balance is between security and trust.
3. 3rd and 9th · Voice and Distance →Near and farEveryday talk, learning and the streets you know, set against big ideas, belief and the wider world.
4. 4th and 10th · Roots and Calling →Home and the worldYour private life and where you come from, set against your public life and where you're headed.
5. 5th and 11th · Desire and Circle →Me and usWhat you make and enjoy for yourself, set against what you share with friends and groups.
6. 6th and 12th · Ritual and Depth →Doing and letting goDaily routines, work and looking after yourself, set against rest, retreat and the parts of life you can't schedule.

Other names for the houses

Other sites use other labels, such as the House of Value for the 2nd or the House of Partnerships for the 7th. Older traditions use names like Goods, Brethren and Marriage. They describe the same twelve areas of life, worded differently. Each house page here lists the other names it goes by.

The big ones to know first

The 1st house starts at your rising sign and is how you come across. The 4th, 7th and 10th mark the other three corners of the chart. Together the four are called the angular houses. If you only learn four houses, learn these, then add the one your Sun is in and the one your Moon is in.

How to read your own

Start with the house your Sun is in, since it shows where you are most yourself. Then look at your Moon, then any house with a planet in it. A planet in a house is read as: this part of you, in this area of life. If a house is empty, read the sign on it instead.

Find yours

You need your date, time and place of birth. Put them into the calculator on the home page and it shows each of your houses, the sign on it and any planets inside.

Find your houses →