The first house describes your personality, how you present yourself to the world. Along with the Rising Sign on the 1st House cusp, this is how others see you, which may or may not mesh well with your true identity as described by your Sun Sign. This house describes your potential, as well as your uniqueness among humanity. How you meet new situations and new experiences is described here, so this house also describes your personal actions and affairs, and your basic attitudes toward life. This is also the area of life that your financial fears impact the most.
The second house describes the best way for you to use your personal energies to attain your purpose in life. This is the house of resources, and so often describes the money in your life and how you handle your finances. Material possessions are represented here as well. None of the houses in Astrology are by their nature good or bad, nor are they selfish or altruistic. The purpose of possessions and resources is to test how well you give and receive - so this house also describes how you give of yourself - material possessions as well as personal energies. This house also describes the negative side of your attitudes and opinions and can provide clues on how not to express yourself.
The third house takes you into your neighborhood, and reveals how well you operate in your immediate environment and how easy it is for you to learn and adapt. So this house pictures your mental energies - your intelligence, your ideas, how you communicate with others. For children, this house describes school experiences. The nature of any domestic troubles can also be found here.
The fourth house pictures your personal base of operations, which most often involves your home and family. This is the foundation your personality is built on and describes all those things that you inherit, like family and cultural traditions. This is where you look for stability in times of crisis.
The fifth house pictures the beginnings of the social process and so here we find how you express your creativity - from art to emotions to biological reproduction. This is how you first reach out to beyond yourself to make contact, whether through social intercourse, romantic involvements and love affairs, or recreation. What you do for fun and relaxation is found here.
Once the fun of the 5th house is over, we move into the 6th house where we find out how you pay for all of it. This is where you contribute to the community - through service to others and through your job. This is also the house that shows your patience and endurance qualities, where we find out how you respond to setbacks and disappointments. As such, this is the house of readjustment, the house where you can discover how best to make mid-course corrections, how to compromise and make room for further growth.
The seventh house is opposite the first house of personal individuality and so by inference reveals your intimate relationships with others. Here is where can look to see the nature of your long-term unions with others, whether they be of a personal, business, or legal nature. From this house we can get a clear picture of the nature of the people you are likely to form relationships with. This is how you participate with others.
This is a difficult house to describe, but essentially it speaks to the nature of the resources possessed by the relationships you participate in. Responsibilities that arise from your relationship involvements are found here, and so the eighth house describes business finances (social relationships) as well as sexuality (intimate relationships). When you're involved in relationships with others you find you have to compromise and make changes in your personal behavior. This house provides clues as to the nature of those changes and shows how you trust and depend on others.
The ninth house is your perceptions and understanding of your social environment, the environment that surrounds your relationships. Here we find your social values, attitudes, morals and ethics. Your spirituality and religious beliefs are here, as is your basic philosophy and approach to life. This house is what you believe in and how you express that belief.
The top of the chart, the tenth house is where we find a social picture of you, where your social status is best described. So, this is the house of career, of profession, of social reputation. It is also the house of obligations, responsibilities and discipline. Here is how you respond to authority. The tenth house is also how the world see you - the social image you project in the outer world.
The eleventh house is how you express and make use of your 10th house social status. Thus it is here that we find the nature of your goals and objectives, your hopes and dreams, your answers to "What do you want to do with your life?" Here is where we can find out how you will respond to social success, the friendships you make with like-minded people.
The 12th is another difficult house to describe, but here goes. After the successes/failures in your life, what then? What comes next? Is that all there is? What have I missed? This is what the 12th house speaks to - the desire to understand your vulnerabilities and weaknesses. You want to reach out to something greater than yourself for answers. So here is where we find introspection, your drive to uncover secrets and hidden parts of yourself. Planets here describe energies that you fail to notice at first or make use of initially, but that nonetheless operate from a subconscious level. With ignorance, these energies are unfocused and work against you - so they describe your weaknesses. Oftentimes you project these qualities onto the people around you and react negatively when you see them. With conscious identification and understanding these energies become your greatest strengths - which those around you could clearly see all the time. The 12th house is like looking in two mirrors to see the back of your head - something you rarely see, but that others see all the time!
