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Why a planet's sign can differ from its house's sign

Houses can be wider than one sign

The puzzle

You might see a house that begins in Gemini, holding a planet that is in Cancer. It looks like a mistake. It is not.

Signs and houses are different slicers

Signs are twelve equal slices of the zodiac, 30 degrees each, the same for everyone. Houses are twelve slices of your own sky, cut to the exact time and place you were born. The two sets of lines do not line up.

Houses are not always 30 degrees

Depending on where you were born, some houses are wider than 30 degrees and some are narrower. A wide house can start late in one sign and run well into the next, so it holds two signs.

A worked example

Say your 2nd house begins in Gemini but is wide enough to take in Cancer too. A planet in the later part of that house is in Cancer, even though the house itself began in Gemini. Both facts are true at once.

How to read it

The house sign tells you the style of that area of life at its start. The planet's own sign tells you how that planet behaves. Read both, and let the planet's sign win when you are talking about the planet itself.