1 · Self and appearance
How you come across and how you begin things. The cusp of this house is the ascendant.
The twelve houses
Where in life a placement plays out, as opposed to what it is.
2 · Money and values
What you own, what you earn and what you consider worth having.
3 · Communication and siblings
How you speak and learn, short journeys, and the people you grew up beside.
4 · Home and roots
Family, the home you came from and the one you make. The private base.
5 · Creativity and pleasure
Play, romance, children and anything you make for the joy of it.
6 · Work and health
Daily routine, service, the body and the habits that maintain it.
7 · Partnership
Marriage, business partners and open enemies — everyone you meet as an equal.
8 · Shared resources and transformation
Inheritance, debt, intimacy, death and what changes you permanently.
9 · Belief and distance
Philosophy, higher education, long journeys and how you make sense of things.
10 · Career and reputation
Public standing, vocation and what you are known for. The cusp is the midheaven.
11 · Community and hopes
Friends, groups, causes and what you want for the future.
12 · The hidden
What is unconscious, undone or deliberately withdrawn from. Endings before beginnings.
Signs, planets, houses
The three parts answer different questions. A planet is what — a function, like communication or drive. A sign is how — the style that function takes. A house is where — the area of life it shows up in.
Mercury in Gemini in the tenth house: communication, quick and versatile, playing out in career and public reputation. Change any one of the three and the reading changes with it.
Houses depend entirely on birth time, which is why a chart without one is missing a third of its information.