The Twelve Houses in Astrology
The twelve houses divide a birth chart into areas of life: self, money, communication, home, pleasure, work, partnership, shared resources, meaning, career, community and the hidden. Signs say how a planet acts; houses say where in your life it acts. Houses depend on your exact birth time and place.
The twelve houses at a glance
Each page covers what the house means, what planets there tend to mean and how to read it when it is empty.
The four angles
The cusps of the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th houses are the angles: the Ascendant (rising sign), the IC, the Descendant and the Midheaven. They are the most sensitive points in a chart, and planets close to them are strong.
Angular, succedent and cadent
Angular houses (1, 4, 7, 10) are about action and visible results. Succedent houses (2, 5, 8, 11) consolidate what the angular houses start: money, pleasure, shared resources, community. Cadent houses (3, 6, 9, 12) are about learning, adapting and letting go.
House systems
Astrologers divide the houses in different ways. Placidus, the most common in modern Western astrology, divides by time and is what this site's birth chart uses. Whole-sign houses give each house one full sign, starting with the rising sign, and are used here for daily readings and the placement tables. Near a cusp, the two systems can place a planet in neighbouring houses.
Empty houses
Ten planets cannot fill twelve houses, so every chart has empty ones. An empty house is not a missing part of life. Read the sign on its cusp and where that sign's ruling planet sits.
Find yours
See your house cusps and which planets sit in each house. Birth chart calculator
Read today's sky against your own chart
Everything on this page applies to your chart in a particular way. A Precision Horoscope casts your chart, finds today's transits to it and writes the reading for you. The first one is free. Get my free personal reading