Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I’m your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I’m an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I’m going to give you your weekly horoscope and no bullshit, mystical advice for living your very best life.

My Darlings, welcome back to another Astrology Hot Take—a little mid-week love to help you through, and also, hopefully, teach you some damn astrology. So this week I want to talk about houses. And I’m going to in a separate episode talk about house systems, which is a question I get a lot of, and I really want to help you to understand what house systems are and how to choose the best one for you, maybe even talk about my favy which is Campanus. But that’s not what I’m doing at all today, so let’s just put that on a different shelf, shall we? And, instead, I want to talk to you about the houses themselves, what each house means. Now, before I get into this, I want to just speak to something that I’m getting a lot of questions about from you guys and kind of in different ways. 

When you first start hearing about astrology, and you’re like, I’m a Virgo; I’m a Libra or whatever, what you’re saying, as you now know probably—hopefully, is that when you were born, the Sun was in the zodiac sign of Libra or Virgo. But when you start to really unpack astrology you find that you have all these planets, and they are all in your birth chart located in a specific zodiac sign and at a specific degree, and those are all layers of meaning. 

You also come to find that the planets themselves fall into houses, and the house has its own layer of meaning. And, then, the zodiac sign on the house cups and within the house, both separately and together, have their own layers of meaning. And, then, the planet in a sign in a house is an additional layer of meaning. That’s right. These are lots of layers of data. It takes time. You have to really understand each layer to be able to eventually synthesize all the pieces of data to make use of them, so be patient with how you learn astrology. Astrology is in many ways the study of time. So you can’t rush time, says the triple Capricorn unto you. But real talks; you can’t rush time. Take the time it takes to learn astrology in whatever way you want to use it for yourself. And if the way you really just are interested in it is as a tool for self-understanding and, essentially, self-healing, then you have got nothing but time because you cannot rush your own development and progress. And, if you try, that is probably in your damn chart—that’s right.

So that’s the preamble. It’s come and gone. Now we’re going to get into the houses. Let’s start with the first house. Now when you’re looking at a wheel or a birth chart, you will see that most wheels are drawn with numbers on the inside of each house or pizza slice. So look for the one. The sign on the first house cusp is called your Ascendant or Rising Sign. And if you’re not using Whole or Equal house system, then you are likely to have more than one sign in your first house. Personally, me, I have three. You want to look at the zodiac sign on the first house cusp to understand what your Rising Sign is. And if you don’t really know what a house cusp is, I actually have saved an image of this in the highlights on my Instagram account under Learn Astrology, so you can kind of go there, and in one picture I will clarify it for you; it’s really simple. 

In any case, the first house in astrology is a really important one because it’s right on the surface. Planets there or whatever zodiac sign you have there is whatever is on the surface. The first house is related to your body—not as much what’s happening in your deep internal health, but in terms of what’s on the surface and what you see. The first house is related to your personality. 

So in early years of my astrology practice when people would be like, can you guess my Sun sign? Which, by the way, don’t ever ask an astrologer to guess the Sun sign, for a couple of reasons including, astrology isn’t a guessing game, says, again, the Capricorn. But what I used to do when I’d actually answer that question before I had better boundaries is, I would end up guessing their Rising Sign because that’s what’s on the surface, right. The first house is related to kind of like your tendencies, how you hold yourself, how you assert yourself or not. And this is kind of more of a personality marker than it is a deep internal world marker. So, in other words, your Sun is your sense of self—the planet the Sun. But however you feel about who and what you are, it is your Rising Sign and your first house that is more of what is going to show, what people are going to see. And, depending on what your chart looks like, that might be really kind of a lovely symphony, or it might be a cacophony of sound. It might not make a lot of sense is what I’m trying to say. 

So as much as Venus is related to how you dress and your relationship to clothes, your first house is very much about how you look and how you come across. And that brings us, actually, next to the seventh house. You thought I was going to go one, two, three, four—that makes sense. That makes sense that you would think I would do that, but here’s something really valuable to know. Oppositions are a really big part of astrology. Understanding mathematical relationship between the houses, between the planets, the signs; it’s all very important. 

But I want to go from the first house to the seventh house for you to understand how they are directly linked; they exist in a continuum of each other. Because while the first house is the identity, the seventh house is relationship. It’s us. Whatever is in the first house, its opposite signs are in the seventh house; that is true for each house. 

So the sign on the seventh house cusp is called the Descendant, or you’ll see it referred to as the DEC. The Descendent—it’s always the opposite of the Ascendant, and it is your partnership line. So the sign you have on the house cusp of your seventh house indicates so much of what you are drawn to in partnership. So when we look at the seventh house in your birth chart, what we are seeing is partners. And I know the term partner is used for like, I’ve been dating this person for three months; they’re my partner—not necessarily. A partner is your best friend. It is your committed relationship. It’s your business partner. In other words, it’s a relationship where there is investment based on already being relational. It's not the getting to know you stage; it’s the now we’re in a relationship stage. The seventh house is where we have intimacies. And, so, we’re going to find our enemies as much as our best friends in the seventh house. 

So you don’t want to like scramble to look at a birth chart for enemies; it’s just any kind of close relationship. And that’s not just a positive relationship. A close relationship is a close relationship. If you’re obsessively thinking about your enemy, it’s your seventh house; they’re in partnership with you, or you’re in partnership with them. The seventh house is also related to your values and your kind of attitude and approach towards partnership. And, again, that’s all forms of partnership. 

Now we go to the second house. I love the second house. The second house is where we find our values and what we value. And, in regards to what we value, we’re looking at your personal possessions and your finances. And, so, one’s relationship to status, in as much as it’s based on what you own and what you have in the bank, or what you have access to—that’s second house stuff, okay. 

The second house can be related to your earning power. It can be related to your sense of fulfillment from things, from owning stuff or the cash you have in pocket. And, in general, when you have planets in the second house, they are related to your relationship to money and stuff. 

Now, conversely, or in contrast, we look at its opposing house—the eighth house. The eighth house is where we find other people’s money. It’s where we find taxes and inheritances. If you’re somebody who gets into relationships with people who have hella money or who require you to pay their way, those are eighth house issues—both of them. 

The eighth house is where we find resources from others, for better or worse. And that’s why it’s not just related to taxes; it’s also related to inherited issues. So that can be part of why the eighth house is also where we find psychic content. Ancestral stuff is deep in the eighth house. Those water houses—the water houses are the fourth, eighth, and twelfth—are all kind of where we find more ancestral stuff and inherited stuff. 

The eighth house is associated with secrets and things that we like to keep private. It’s also associated with taboo shit—oh, wait, did I say shit? That too because the eighth house is the house that deals with all kinds of taboos from poop to sex to inheritances to money owed. They are these taboo things. 

Now, in terms of sex, the eighth house is kind of a kinky house. It’s kind of like a fucking for fucking’s sake house. It can be deep and transformational. It can be spiritual sexual connection. It’s not, per se, sex for procreation, and it’s not especially a making love house, if you know what I mean. So the eighth house is where we’re going to find lots of really intense information about a person. 

And that brings us to the third house. So the third house in astrology is related to a much lighter topic than the eighth house. The third house is related to your earlier education, so like grammar school or grade school, whatever you call it. The third house is how you think. It’s your attitudes. It’s your neighborhood—it’s the people that you meet when you’re walking down the street styles kind of neighborhood. The third house we find siblings, aunts, and uncles, we find your bicycle. I know it’s so random, but quickie, short term travel is the third house, okay. 

And when we look at the third house, we can see kind of like the busyness of your life in your immediate world, how you process ideas and all that kind of stuff. 

Now, for those of you who have been studying astrology, you are noticing, hopefully, that a lot of these themes sound similar to the planets, and that is because each house is related to a zodiac sign and a planet, right. But I’m not getting into that right now; I’m doing overview styles. So the third house is where we have conscious attitudes, verbal communication, all that kind of good stuff; it’s just your mind. 

So the ninth house by contrast is all about big trips. What we find in the ninth house is international trips or longer distances travelled. And this isn’t just in the material sense; it’s also in more of a spiritual and psychological sense. So the ninth house is related to big ideas, philosophies, spiritual concepts, religion—and more of the spiritual side of religion and less the kind of like obligation side of religion. 

The ninth house is associated with the higher mind in general, with high mindedness, morality, those kinds of concepts. And when we see planets in the ninth house, we can often see a person’s attitude towards or experience with higher education. So much like the third house describes kind of grammar school or grade school, the ninth house describes university or college or studying abroad, right. The ninth house is related to being abroad. Not a broad—abroad. You understand.

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That brings us, My Friends, to the fourth house. Now the house cusp of your fourth house is called the IC. It is the lowest point in any chart. So if you’re looking at a chart that has the IC drawn in, the fourth house drawn in, it will often say IC on that fourth house cusp. So the lowest point of the chart—the way I think of it is if this wheel, your birth chart, was a tree, then the roots of the tree that grow deep beneath the ground, that would come out of your IC, out of your fourth house cusp. These roots are related to your home. Now that’s your home at any point in your life. It’s how your birth chart functions, but it’s also related to your childhood home. It’s related to your parents, and it’s related to your early developmental experiences in the context of your home life. And when I say early developmental experiences, I’m talking before you’re a teen, before you’re a pre-teen. 

The fourth house is related to family, home, and your roots in general. It’s your relationship to your ancestry or your feeling about the generations before you, and your place in the family line. 

When we’re looking at planets in the fourth house, we’re basically seeing planets indicating how we relate to our own home life—the value and kind of importance we place on it, and often the conditions that exist in our home life. Not just in our family of origin or in the chosen family that we create with a partner or partners, but also just like your roommate situation—that’s going to be in your fourth house. 

The opposite house is the tenth house. And the tenth house cusp is called your Midheaven. And the Midheaven in astrology is incredibly important. What it speaks to is your conscious life objectives. It’s what you’re known for. It’s your reputation, and it’s also what you want to be or how you want to be known—professionally, reputation wise—not intimately. This has nothing to do with your intimate life. This is to do with your career and your profession. 

Now, planets in the tenth house and also whatever sign you have in the tenth house—it all relates to your career. And it is possible that you are a musician—that is your career; that is your conscious life objective—but your day job is that you work at a grocery store, and that’s how you make your bills. The reality is your calling, your career may or may not be something that is financially profitable for you. And, because we live in capitalism, we want those two things to be all one, but they’re not necessarily one thing. And, for some people, their calling is to be a parent. That’s generally not something that makes a lot of money—I don’t know if you heard? It tends to cost. 

So we will get into work life stuff in a different house. But when we look to the tenth house, we are looking at the pressure we place on ourselves to achieve in material ways. And, also, how others perceive us in terms of what we achieve, in terms of the reputation we hold in the world. The tenth house and the Midheaven are incredibly important points in the chart because they’re related to career. 

But I want to just point out one other thing. In speaking about the first, seventh house axis and the fourth and tenth house axis, these are the angles of the birth chart, okay. So the first, fourth, seventh, tenth house—those are the angles, and they are really important to pay mind to. And there’s a lot more I could say about it, but if you guys are interested, send me questions, and I’ll be happy to unpack this further. But the angular houses always give us really important information, in part, because there is this way that they are so pivotal. They literally are the houses where we have this directional pivot. 

Now the next house we’re going to look at is the fifth house. The fifth house in astrology is where we see fertility and virility. It’s where we find fucking, if I may say, fornicating. It’s where we find playful sex, pro-creative sex. It’s where we find children and arts. I don’t mean aesthetic appreciation; I mean like creation, making stuff, having fun with it. 

When we look to planets in the fifth house, or when we look to what is happening in your fifth house, we are seeing your relationship to what you create, how it feels and how much energy you get from it. And that’s on these different levels of play, of pro-creation. When we’re looking at fertility issues, in particular around your capacity to incubate a human, if that’s the kind of thing you’re trying to do, or to make a human on some level through your body, that is something that we’re going to find through the fifth house. It’s a common place to look. So the fifth house is very much related to play and creation in regards to sex and art and your body. 

And, conversely, when we look at its opposite house, the eleventh house, we are looking at your friends. So your love affairs are in the fifth house—hooking up, sex, pro-creation. The eleventh house is your groups of friends. It’s your capacity for friendships. So when we find planets in the eleventh house, we’re finding planets that are kind of indicating your relationship to friendship or the issues that tend to play out in your friendships. 

This is a house where we can see your goals, but not goals in that tenth house way where it’s you’re your conscious life objectives; it’s how am I going to participate? How am I going to get in the game? What am I going to do? It’s a little bit more of a dynamic interplay in the eleventh house. 

The eleventh house is associated with humanitarian interests and social interests. So I want to kind of hold a distinction between the third house socializing, which is really about your neighborhood and the people who are immediately around you; seventh house socializing, which is your partnership—it’s your frenemies, your besties, your partner; Fifth house socializing, which is not exactly social—it’s more like who you’re hooking up with and how you’re having chemistry with; and then the eleventh house socializing, which is groups of friends. It’s kind of like the clique of people that you like to hang out with or the people that you kind of identify with as a general demographic, right—that’s the eleventh house. 

If you are a person who hangs out in clubs, if you are part of organizations—this is all eleventh house stuff. Whether you feel like you’re a part of things or not and then how you participate when you are kind of engaged with others in groups—that’s all found in the eleventh house. 

And, finally, we get to some very exciting houses to talk about. The sixth house is where we find work, as I alluded to with the tenth house. With the sixth house we find the things you do day to day. So it’s your job, which for some people our job and our calling is the same thing. And for many people, your job is not your damn calling; it’s the thing you do for cash. 

And, so, when we look to the sixth house, we see your day to day habits. It’s what you’re doing with your time. It’s associated with health because it has to do with maintenance. It’s how to maintain your body. It’s how you maintain your material world, whether or not you’re super tidy—planets in the sixth house can really describe that. Your physical health is described by your sixth house. Now, it’s not the only house that describes your physical health. The major health houses are the fifth, the sixth, the eighth, the twelfth, and the first. But the sixth house is overall your physical health and your physical life. 

When we find planets in the sixth house, it’s your attitudes towards your body and your health. It’s the actions you take to promote and maintain your body and your health, but, also, your just daily life and your relationship to work and toil and labor. 

When we look at the opposite house, we see mental health. It’s the twelfth house. So the twelfth house is a very misunderstood house for lots of reasons. When we look at planets in the twelfth house, what we are seeing is early developmental conditions. I’m talking seven years old or younger. So if you have planets in the twelfth house in your birth chart, the conditions that were at play around you from your guardians or parents, that will be articulated in your twelfth house, okay. And a lot of times, what you’re seeing is energies that were repressed by one or more of the parents or guardians that raised you. That shit will end up stacking up your twelfth house, and it will be in your twelfth house and kind of be something that you are needing to work out how to give yourself permission to step out into the light and embody those planets on your own. 

The twelfth house is not just your mental health; it’s your spiritual health. The twelfth house in the place of the subconscious or the unconscious. It is kind of like the hidden house in astrology. And because of that, it’s historically been associated with secrets and madness and institutions. But there’s a lot of support that exists now that didn’t exist twenty years ago, let alone a century ago when a lot of this old school astrology texts came from. And so we have mental health support in the way we didn’t. We also have more varied ways that we are able to live and exist. 

So the twelfth house represents our subconscious. It’s often a place where we can find data about our sleep life because it’s our inner most, most private life. 

If you’re reading somewhere that the twelfth house is the place of sorrow, is the place of being undone or, I don’t know—there’s all these terrible, terrible interpretations of the twelfth house. I just don’t buy it. When people have planets in the twelfth house, they tend to be quite sensitive to the pain of the world. And that sensitivity may compel you to do self-destructive things. But that action of doing something self-destructive, it is your attempt to remediate or medicate something that is yearning or in pain within you. And that can be changed with effort and time and care.

So, My Loves, this is the most general overview of all 12 of the houses. Each of the houses has some vibes that are quite similar to signs, and that is because each house is directly related to a zodiac sign and a planet. And each of the 12 houses—and, again, this was an overview, and it was quite simple, but each of the houses, what they do is they have a simple implication—they always mean the things I named. 

And, then, when we look at the sign, the zodiac sign on the house cusp and the signs inside of that house, that adds another layer of data. And, then, when we add planets in your birth chart in an individual house, that adds yet another layer of data. And as you learn astrology, what you get to do is synthesize this data to understand metaphorically—you may put on a pair of bell bottoms, right. You may put on a pair of bell bottoms and make them look fashion and make them look fierce, and I may put on a pair of bell bottoms and make them look stupid and dumpy. What I’m saying is different things fit in different ways on different people at different times. We have to be able to consider the whole picture to understand what each of the parts means in context of who you are overall.

So I hope this piqued your interest in making use of the houses more. As always, hit me up with questions for the Astrology Hot Takes and for my regular Sunday episodes where I answer your questions to help you help yourself. 

I thank you so much for joining me. If you haven’t already become a supporter at Patreon, please do because as of May first, I am dropping a new tier, and in this new tier—it’s the kittens tier just because it’s cute for my puppies and kittens—from May first, I am adding a bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast where I am breaking down the month ahead astrologically. I’m looking at all of May, and then in the second half of that podcast episode what I’m doing is I’m going through each of the Sun signs and giving you your horoscope meditation for the month ahead. So join me there. Learn Tarot with me. Get your horoscope for the month ahead and continue to be kind to yourself and others. Bye.