Houses in the natal chart

Imagine the sky over the birthplace at the moment a person was born. It is divided into twelve sectors, and each sector is called a house. The first house begins at the Ascendant — the point where the zodiac crosses the eastern horizon — and the others follow in order, anticlockwise on the chart. So the start of the first house always coincides with the Ascendant. More on it in the article the Sun, Moon and Ascendant.

In a reading the house answers the question “where”: in which area of life the planet’s theme is expressed. The planet itself answers the question “what”, the sign the question “how”. For example, Mercury speaks of thinking and speech; if it stands in the sixth house, this theme is, by tradition, more noticeable in everyday affairs and work than, say, in travel or close relationships.

Astrology is an interpretive tradition, not an exact science, so the meanings of the houses are best taken as hypotheses for self-observation, not as facts about your life.

Below are the brief traditional meanings. They are common to astrological practice as a whole; in a particular chart they are refined by the planets that fall in the house and the signs of those planets. We do not interpret the sign on a house boundary separately — except for the Ascendant (the start of the first house) and the Midheaven (the start of the tenth).

Four houses begin at the angles of the chart: the first at the Ascendant, the fourth at the IC, the seventh at the Descendant, the tenth at the Midheaven (MC). These points are covered in detail in the article the angles of the natal chart.

The example is fictional: the positions were invented for explanation and are not calculated from anyone’s data.

Suppose that on a hypothetical chart Venus is in the seventh house, Mars in the tenth, and the fourth house has no planets.

• Venus in the seventh house. Venus is responsible for attachment and taste, the seventh house for partnership. So the theme of closeness and harmony may be especially noticeable for this person precisely in one-to-one relationships.
• Mars in the tenth house. Mars is action and drive, the tenth house is goals and public role. The energy of action may be directed at achievements and professional tasks; exactly how will be refined by the sign of Mars and its aspects.
• An empty fourth house. This does not mean the person has “nothing” in the theme of home and family. This area of life does not disappear: it is simply not singled out by planets, and other factors of the chart speak about it.

This is how houses turn abstract planets into more concrete “scenes”. You can see what this looks like in a finished reading in the open sample.

A chart has ten planets and twelve houses, so some houses always stay without planets. This is normal and happens in every chart. An empty house does not mean this area is absent from life and does not mean a “problem”: every person has every area of life.

That is why we do not write about empty houses as a shortcoming. In a house with planets the theme stands out more, because the themes of the planets are concentrated there. In an empty house it is not singled out by individual planets, but it does not disappear or become a shortcoming for that reason. We also do not interpret the signs at the starts of houses, apart from the Ascendant and the Midheaven: the reading is limited to what we can explain and check.

Houses depend on the time and place of birth. The Earth rotates, and in a day all twelve signs pass through the eastern horizon, so the Ascendant changes roughly once every two hours, and all the houses shift with it. Houses depend still more on the latitude of the place: at different latitudes the signs rise at different speeds.

That is why our rules for houses are stricter than for the signs of planets:

• Exact time. The time is checked within plus or minus two minutes. Anything that changes within that span is treated as unknown.
• Approximate time. You give a window, from plus or minus 15 minutes to plus or minus two hours. The chart is calculated at both ends of the window, and whatever differs at them is treated as unknown. Houses are shown only if the window is no longer than six hours.
• Unknown time. There is no Ascendant, no angles and no houses in the chart — we do not guess them. What remains and how to read such a chart is described in the article a chart without a birth time.

We never turn the unknown into a negative conclusion. If the house of a planet cannot be determined, the reading is silent about it rather than pretending the theme is absent.

Houses and angles are calculated only between 66° north and 66° south latitude. Nearer the poles the Placidus system becomes unreliable, so for such places we do not build houses.

There are several ways of dividing the sky into houses, and this is one of the main reasons two services show different charts. We use the Placidus system: its houses come out of different sizes, and the difference grows nearer the poles. There are other systems too. For example, Koch, where the houses are also unequal but calculated differently, equal houses, where each takes exactly 30° from the Ascendant, and whole-sign houses, where a whole sign counts as a house.

No system is the only “right” one: they are different conventions within one tradition. A planet on a house boundary in one system may fall in the neighbouring house in another. We chose one system for all charts so that readings can be compared with each other. Other causes of differences are covered in the article why natal charts differ between services.

To see your own houses, build a chart and give the birth time as exactly as you can. If you are only getting acquainted with the chart, start with the article how to read a natal chart: houses there are one of the steps of the overall reading.