A play needs more than actors and costumes. It needs a set. The same line sounds one way when it is spoken in a kitchen at midnight and another way in a courtroom. By now you know the actors of your chart and the costumes they wear. This lesson builds the set.
Go back to the sentence from lesson three. The planet is the what, the sign is the how and the house is the where. Until now the sentence always came out half finished. With the houses you now have three of its four slots. The aspects come in block five.
What a house is
The houses are twelve sectors of the wheel. They start at the Ascendant and are counted counterclockwise. Each one stands for an area of ordinary life. In lesson two you saw that the signs divide up the sky while the houses divide up everyday life. Because they are counted from the Ascendant, the houses depend on the time and place of birth just like the angles in the last lesson.
The edge where each house begins is called its cusp. Most wheels print a small number next to each cusp to show which house starts there. In Placidus, the system this course uses, the houses come in different sizes, so one sign can sit on two cusps in a row while another sits on none. That is normal.
Why the first six face inward
Look at where they fall. House 1 begins at the Ascendant and the count runs down through the lower half to the IC, where house 4 begins. From there it climbs back up to the Descendant, which opens house 7. The first six houses fill the half of the wheel that lay below the horizon when you were born, the part of the sky nobody could see.
That hidden half tends to describe what gets built in private. Your body and your resources live here, along with your close surroundings. So do home and pleasure and the work of an ordinary day. The upper half, which comes in the next lesson, turns toward other people and the wider world.
Angular, succedent and cadent houses
Houses also come in three kinds. The pattern will look familiar. The houses that begin on an angle are 1, 4, 7 and 10. They are called angular. They are the strongest houses and whatever falls in them tends to show a great deal.
Each angular house is followed by a succedent one. Houses 2, 5, 8 and 11 tend to consolidate what the angles have set in motion. The last house of each quarter is cadent. That group is 3, 6, 9 and 12. It usually has to do with adjusting what is happening and preparing what comes next. The likeness to the cardinal, fixed and mutable signs is easy to see.
The six, one at a time
House 1 starts at the Ascendant. Everything you learned about the Ascendant carries into it. It is the body and physical energy and the way you present yourself. A planet here usually shows at first glance, in someone's looks or in how they enter a conversation.
House 2 is about resources. It covers the money you earn and how you spend it, what you own and whatever keeps you going in material terms. Modern readings add something that fits well, the worth you give yourself. How someone handles money and how they value themselves often look surprisingly alike.
House 3 is your close surroundings. The tradition put siblings here if you have them, along with neighbors and short trips. Modern readings add everyday talk and what you learned as a child.
House 4 holds the roots. It begins at the IC and speaks about home, the family you come from and the physical place where you live. The tradition gave it an odd extra meaning as well, the end of things and the way matters finally close. The IC is the lowest point of the whole wheel.
Pleasure lives in house 5. The tradition put children here if they come, together with the good things that arrive without being sought. Modern readings add romance and play and whatever you create for the fun of it. The Greeks called it Good Fortune, a name that suits everything enjoyed without having to be earned.
House 6 has a worse reputation. The Greeks called it Bad Fortune and linked it with illness and hard labor. Modern readings treat it more as daily life. Routines and the work you do because you have to are here, together with the body as something to look after and maintain. What happens in house 6 rarely shines. It holds up everything else.
Reading a planet in a house
Now you can say the sentence with its where. Picture Mars in Virgo in house 6. Mars is your drive, the way you go after things. Virgo is mutable earth, the urge to adjust something until it works properly. House 6 is daily work. Put together, it tends to describe someone who throws a lot of energy into getting the everyday job exactly right.
The same placement can be lived another way. In a different chart that Mars turns into constant irritation at every small thing that goes wrong at work. Both grow out of the same placement.
Empty houses
Almost every chart has houses with no planets in them. An empty house only means that no planet fell there when you were born. That part of your life exists all the same and you read it through the sign on its cusp. For instance, a house 4 that begins in Capricorn tends to turn home into a place of responsibility and structure. Later in the course you will see that it is also read through the position of that sign's ruler.
Now your own
Take your wheel and go through houses 1 to 6. Write down the sign on each cusp and any planets inside. For each planet write the sentence with the what, the how and the where. For empty houses write only the sign on the cusp and what it suggests to you. The other six houses wait for the next lesson, which climbs above the horizon toward life with other people.