With ten planets and twelve houses there are 120 total combinations of different planets in different houses. The interpretation of every one of those 120 combinations is on a link in the above table. With respect to the signs, the further a planet is from the Sun, the longer it remains in a sign. The outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto for instance stay about seven, 14 and 21 years in a sign respectively. This is why the outer planets are also called generational planets, because their effect by sign affects entire generations similarly.

This is not true of the planets in the houses. Every planet stays about two hours per day in each of the twelve houses. The scaffolding of the twelve houses is framed on the local horizon and meridian planes, the thick, labeled, horizontal and vertical planes in the model above. Because the Earth rotates once a day on its axis, this framework makes a 360° rotation through the sky every 24 hours, carrying the houses through the relatively unmoving stars, signs and planets. And because every location on Earth has it own specific and unique horizon, every location on Earth has its own specific and different framework of houses constructed on its horizon plane. This is why every one born at a different location—even at the same moment in time—has a different ascendant and different houses.

In the geocentric or Earth-centered model above, the Earth globe in the center—and the clear planes perpendicular to the plane of this page that divide the sky into twelve houses—do not move, while the celestial sphere with the zodiac band, planets and stars on it rotates once every 24 hours. This is the way it appears to us on Earth. In fact, from the more correct heliocentric or Sun-centered perspective, the celestial sphere does not move. Rather the clear house planes rotate as a rigid unit around the celestial sphere once every 24 hours due to the daily rotation of the Earth on its axis.