Planets in the houses

Every planet has a “function” and every house indicates the area of your life where that planet chiefly operates. Please keep in mind that the interpretations given in the next section work best and most clearly when the planet is the only one in the house.

In many cases, a beginning student looks at a horoscope and notices that many of the various pieces seem to have contradictory meanings.

How does it all fit together? 

Right after I introduce the planets in the houses, I’m going to show you how to identify the most important planet in the chart, the planet that gives you an immediate key to telling what the person who’s horoscope you are looking at is all about.

General rules: the following interpretations work best and most clearly when the planet is the only one in the house. This is similar to listening to someone talking. If there is one person in the room with you, there should be no trouble listening to them. If there are several people all talking at once, well, you get the idea. In that case, the influence of the planet closest to the beginning (the cusp) of the house usually predominates.

In addition, and this cannot be emphasized too often, a horoscope is a whole unit, not a bunch of disconnected pieces, just as a person is a whole and not simply a collection arms, legs, and internal organs. But just as there is no way to describe a whole person all at once, so no one can describe a chart at one shot.

We have to put those little bits and pieces together one at a time. If you happen to notice Mars, planet of action in one particular house of a horoscope, don’t simply assume that the person is very active, aggressive, and impulsive in that area of their life.

Saturn, planet of restriction, may be in that same house and slam the brakes on that Mars. Don’t worry about it at this point. First let’s learn about the bricks, then we can study the whole building.

The 12 Houses

First House
Second House
Third House
Fourth House
Fifth House
Sixth House
Seventh House
Eighth House
Ninth House
Tenth House
Eleventh House
Twelvth House