The twelve houses

What the houses are

If the signs describe how and the planets describe what, the houses describe where. They divide the sky around your birthplace into twelve sections, starting from the eastern horizon (your Rising sign) and running counter-clockwise around the chart. Because they depend on the turning of the Earth, they need your birth time.

The twelve houses

House	Area of life
1st	You: your body, style and first impressions
2nd	Money, possessions, self-worth
3rd	Communication, learning, siblings, local life
4th	Home, family, roots, your private self
5th	Creativity, romance, play, children
6th	Daily routine, work, health, service
7th	Partnerships, marriage, close one-to-one bonds
8th	Shared resources, intimacy, change, endings
9th	Travel, study, beliefs, the big picture
10th	Career, reputation, public life
11th	Friends, groups, hopes for the future
12th	Rest, the unconscious, solitude, spirituality

The four angles

Four house lines are especially important:

• Ascendant (start of the 1st): your Rising sign, your doorway to the world.
• IC (start of the 4th): your roots and home.
• Descendant (start of the 7th): what you seek in partners.
• Midheaven or MC (start of the 10th): your public path and calling.

Empty houses

Most charts have some empty houses. That doesn’t mean nothing happens in that area of life; it just isn’t a major focus. The sign on the house’s cusp still describes it.

Where traditions differ

There are many ways of dividing the houses. Placidus is the most widely used in modern Western astrology; Whole Sign houses, the oldest system, make each house exactly one sign; Equal houses make each house exactly 30 degrees. Placidus can’t be calculated very close to the North and South Poles, so charts for those places use another system. Starlight’s chart will always say which house system it uses.