Learn the Houses in the Natal Chart: Houses 1 - 4

If you’ve wanted to learn your own natal birth chart without hunting down all the right little bits of information, and avoid trying to cross-reference over and over again, then you can learn a clear and simple method in this post that will help tie everything together.

There are three layers to reading the western natal birth chart: houses, planets, and aspects. In this series, we’ll be starting with the houses, and in this article specifically, we will start with the houses one through four. Learning the descriptions of the houses will be key when later moving on to how the planets act within them, and further on into how these planets will interact with each other through their aspects.

Back to the houses. The breakdown is simple: your Ascendant is where your first house starts, to the left, and the houses go counter-clockwise. This is also known as your rising. The first house is how you approach situations, the way other people may get to know and percieve you, and usually describes your physical characteristics. It is often believed that the Sun, or your Sun sign, encompasses all of your personality, but in reality your Ascendant plays a large part as well. Think of how you perceive someone from a distance (seeing their Sun sign) before you really get to know them up close and personal (their Ascendant).

Here’s the method: each house represents a number, obviously, but also an age. In this case, your first house represents your birth into the world, upon your own particular horizon. So now that you have been born (happy birthday btw), we can move onto the second house, where you turn age two. We are now going underneath the horizon, subterranean, you could say, below the earth. This represents our personal houses in a sense, the places we explore on a more internal level.

At this age, you now learn what is yours and what you’ve been given. Think of this toddler saying “mine” when reaching for their orange juice. A two-year-old is seeing exactly what is in front of them, holding up their toys. This house represents what you own, what you have, and what you value. This is how we can come to the next significance of this house: money, possessions, income, and innate skills and talents (since you’ve been given this in a sense as well). So if you’re looking for information on income and what you bring to the table, you’d look here.

Three is the age usually recognized as when we begin to really talk. Surprise - the third house rules communication and early schooling. You’ve just started preschool, and now you’re learning to toddle around, talk to people, and walk with mom down the street to school. The third house is where we can find short-distance travel, like running an errand, or where we find our local and immediate environment, like our neighborhood block. You can also find your siblings and neighbors here. And, since this is the house of communication, news and media can be found here as well. People who have a lot of third house placements (meaning, planets in this house) will likely find themselves constantly out and about running errands or filled with busy schedules, or they may be in continuous communication. This can be an author or writer, someone in a public relations position, or those working in media  or music, especially if the third house is in the mercurial signs of Gemini and Virgo.

Typically, by age four, you’re ready to sleep in your own bed, perhaps even in your own room. A great keyword for this fourth house is privacy. Since we are going below-ground, underneath our horizon, you can see that the fourth house is the deepest and most “hidden” in a sense. It rules home and foundation, your roots, and ancestry. One can visualize this as going into your own room and closing the door for privacy, but you can still see yourself and what you do in your own room. This is a house that you may know well, but others have not a clue. This is where you can see childhood, learn the dynamics of someone’s home life, or how one prefers to create their version of home. Someone who moves often may have a mutable sign in the fourth house, or even Saturn here can mean a strict household or strong foundation depending on how well-aspected it is. Pluto here can also mean themes of power and control within the home and family dynamic. Someone with a fourth house in the sign of Cancer may prefer to host within the home or create a nurturing environment, perhaps staying within the home more often than others or preferring to cook.

Now that you know the first four houses, you’ll be better able to understand and interpret how we are shaped by these key themes, or the first four years of our lives. The goal, eventually, is to see the chart in its entirety and understand how everything impacts each other, which enables us to create accurate interpretations. Later, you’ll be able to see how all twelve houses reflect each other and create a cycle we can learn from.