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The First House

Second House

1. Planets : the actual energies, the What: go to the 10 planets in 12 planetary houses.

Third House

Fourth House

2. Signs: type of energy a planet has at its disposal, or needs, for proper functioning.  Signs
    qualify or color the energy of planet(s) in them: go to the 12 signs here.

Fifth House

Sixth  House

Seventh House

3. Houses: where a planetary energy operates or is released in your life; the particular arenas
    and circumstances each planet operates in: go to the 12 planetary houses to the left.

Ninth House

Tenth House

This page and website have been excerpted from You and the Universe, a personalized,
       individually hand bound fine art book on astrology, mythology and astronomy through
       which is woven each recipient's complete astrological reading. Use the links to the left to
       visit your houses one-by-one. Below, you will be introduced to your houses as a group.
       Houses are more individually significant to each person than are the signs.

Eleventh House

Twelfth House

The model above is an astrological chart in three dimensions. The celestial sphere with the stars and the zodiac on it is the sky. The more familiar 2D chart is actually a cross section of this model sliced along the zodiac (ecliptic). The houses (numbered 1–12 above) begin at their clockwise border or cusp, and extend counter-clockwise to the next house cusp. The 12 houses come from first quartering the local sky with the horizon (orange-turquoise line) and the meridian planes (the vertical brown-blue line). If each quarter is then trisected, 12 houses are produced.

There are over 9 different ways of trisecting those quarters of the sky, and each is known as a "house system." Named after medieval monks and others who developed them, they are the Ptolemy (equal), Porphyry, Regiomontanus (rational), Koch (birthplace), Campanus, Placidus, Alcabitius, Morinus, and Zariel house systems. Placidus is the most popular due to an historic serendipity in its publishing. This book uses the Campanus house system that trisects the quarters of the local sky on a spatial basis as shown above, as opposed to trisecting the time for an ecliptic point to "culminate" (see glossary).

In the Campanus system the sky quarters are trisected by planes (whose edges are colored rays on page 150) perpendicular to the prime vertical, itself a plane perpendicular to the horizon and passing through its east and west points. Each house begins at an intersection of the ecliptic and one of those trisecting planes. The 1st (ascendant), 10th (midheaven), 7th (descendant), and 4th (nadir) house cusps (beginnings) are labeled in both pictures on pages 150 and 151.

The planets move through the signs under their own steam at differing rates, but due to the Earth’s rotation they move through all 12 house every day. This is why one’s birth time is so important. Every four minutes each house cusp moves to the next degree of the zodiac. After two hours all 12 house cusps will be in the next sign, causing each planet to be in the preceding house (the houses are numbered in a counter-clockwise direction). The time and place of birth individuates, or distinguishes, one human being from another by this unique, continually rotating 12-fold framework known as the houses.

Please refer to the models on pages 150 and 151 for the following discussion. Houses represent the Earth in a horoscope. House numbers increase in a counter-clockwise direction in an astrological chart. The influence of a house is much stronger at its beginning (the clockwise side of its sector known as its "cusp") than at its end (its counter-clockwise border). In fact, a house’s influence extends backwards into the preceding house. This extended domain of influence just preceding a house is called its "dark side," and is most pronounced just before the first, fourth, seventh and tenth house cusps where the zodiac intersects the horizon and local meridian. Please see your glossary for "dark side" and "angles."

Imagine the Earth oriented in space with you on top. An infinite flat surface balanced on top of the Earth right where you are is your horizon plane. As it extends out into space, some planets and stars are above it, and some are below. Since your distance to the planets is millions (and to the stars trillions) of times greater than your distance to the center of the Earth, your horizon plane would intersect essentially the same planets and stars if it passed through the Earth’s center instead of through you on the surface. This relocated horizon plane intersects the path of the planets (ecliptic) to your east at your first house cusp, or Ascendant. It intersects the ecliptic to your west at your seventh house cusp, or Descendant.

The plane passing through your zenith and the North Pole perpendicular to your horizon is your meridian plane. It intersects the ecliptic directly above you at your 10th house cusp, or midheaven, and directly beneath you at your 4th house cusp, or nadir. The horizon and meridian planes intersect in your horizon’s north-south line and quarter the sky. The intersection of the ecliptic with your horizon and meridian planes and 4 more planes through that N-S line trisecting those quarters are your 12 house cusps.

An important difference between signs and houses is that, precession (pages 90 to 92) aside, the signs are relatively fixed to the stars. The houses, however, are a framework fixed to each person’s particular location on Earth. The scaffolding of the 12 houses constructed on each locality’s horizon intersects the sky in a unique manner for every location on Earth. And as the Earth rotates, everyone’s eastern horizon or Ascendant sweeps through one sign every two hours, and through the entire zodiac every day. And the whole framework of the Houses sweeps through the entire zodiac once a day as well!

Check your chart to see how close your planets are to the end of the house they’re in. If they’re close enough to the end of a house, they should be interpreted as belonging to, or at least blended with, the next house. For this purpose your birth time must be accurate to within five minutes, as house cusps change 1° to 2° every five minutes of time (the 2° maximum occurs only near the ascendant-descendant axis with Aries rising). If your birth time is expressed as an even hour or half hour, it may be only a guess or approximation and not reliable for these purposes. The same holds true for any aspect of a planet to an angle, and for the degree of a sign on a house cusp. Suppose, for example, you believe that you have 1° of Leo or 28° of Scorpio rising. If your actual time of birth were 5 minutes earlier in the first case or 10 minutes later in the second, you’d have Virgo or Sagittarius respectively rising instead!

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