Of course, it’s not a game, unless we have two teams – let’s call them the Day Team and Night Team. (The traditional word for team is “sect.”) House themes: work (vs. career, a 10th House matter), service, slavery, servitude, the daily grind, day-to-day tasks, menial or mundane work, errands, and tasks, accidents, illness, abuses of power, injuries, health regimens, health/healing, the health industry, infirmity, employees, domestic help, those who work underneath you or whom you manage, physicians and doctors, animals and pets, housework and chores. The 7th House - House of the Descendant The fifth House refers to children, creativity, and the pursuit of pleasure. This includes personal interests, love affairs, sports, hobbies, speculation, risk-taking, teaching, drama, creative self-expression, love given, gambling. The 5th house is all about you being yourself and enjoying it. Here again, the importance of the Sun to the ancient Astrologers cannot be underestimated: as the Sun rises in the 1st house, it reaches maximum height and brightness at the 10th House, which represents the midday Sun's blinding power at high noon.

House of the Moon is the Third House. It contains everything familiar to you. Brothers and sisters of course, but also the people you see around the neighborhood, or the coworkers you see every day. It’s also your habits and routines, and the places you visit on a regular basis – short trips to school or work or the grocery store. Basically it’s your comfort zone. The Moon was also associated with writing, and bringing the messages of the other planets down to earth, so the Third House contained those things too. Even at its best, the 8th House is still a challenging part of the chart. Covering everything from our deepest fears to the harshest abuses of power, our connection to the 8th House and the planets within it describe our relationship to loss. The House of Saturn has been called the “house of hidden things”—aka the Twelfth House. Saturn sets limits and boundaries, all those things which set apart us apart. The hospitals, jails, and monasteries. But also going on retreat or sabbatical. You could even call it the house of taking a break from social media, too. Astrologers since classical times have pondered the relationship between the 12 Zodiac Signs and the 12 Houses.The 8th house is a house that rules over both life and death, sex, change, mystery and the occult The eighth house likewise rules other individuals' property and holdings, such as inheritance. The difference between the love affairs of the 5th House and love relationships of the 7th is that the 7th House refers to more permanently binding relationships, whereas the 5th House refers to affairs that may be temporary. When the 5th House affair progresses into a serious relationship, we can say that the relationship has "moved into the 7th House."

Lastly, the last 100 years of Astrological study has conflated the zodiacal signs with the houses, whereby Aries rules the 1st House, Taurus the 2nd House, Gemini the 3rd, and so on. There is much evidence to suggest the contrary, and while it's certainly a topic worthy of discussion, it's one I won't be entering into here. For more on this topic, I recommend a thorough reading of Deborah Houlding's must-have work 'Temples of the Sky.' Will you be working for the government or large corporations? Are you suited to work in an institutional setting like laboratory, hospitals, detective work, espionage, prison or a convent? What major illnesses should you watch out for? Who are your secret enemies? Do you tend to isolate yourself? What are your secret inhibitions? The zodiac wheel is based on the sun’s apparent yearly rotation about our Earth, along the ecliptic. Significantly, this house holds the Ascendant, the point representing the Sun's daily rebirth. On a spiritual level, the Ascendant, or ‘horoskopos’ (hour-marker), is the moment a new soul starts out on its life journey. In ancient Astrology, the Ascendant was sometimes called the ‘helm’ and the Ascendant ruler ‘the steersman’; these points act as guides or help one navigate through life, successfully or unsuccessfully.

The 7th House of Astrology: The House of Relationships

On a positive note, this House is about transformation and healing. But transformation and healing require some type of death, loss, or injury first. This House rules those processes and things by which we transform and become more powerful. Yes, this includes the act of sex. In the fifth house, you realized your gifts. Here’s where you come to negotiate their worth, and protect what you’ve got. This is the final domain of the personal half of the chart, where we set the terms for engagement with the public role. The sixth house can be thought of as the arena of the body and boundaries. How many hours do you put in at your job, and for what kind of compensation? What do you put your body through on a daily basis, and how is it supported and sustained? The sixth house opposes the twelfth house of mental health and unprocessed history; nearly any “sudden” or “strange” physical malady you experience will have a likely explanation on this axis. THE SEVENTH HOUSE As with the 4th House, astrologers are divided over whether the 10th House rules one's mother or father. Those that say the 4th House rules the mother, say the 10th House rules the father, and vice versa. What is clear is that the 4th House rules the nurturing, home-body parent, while the 10th House rules the public, success-focused parent (the parent who "wears the pants"). The ascendant is usually taken as the first house cusp, but there are some methods in which the first house cusp is calculated separately from the ascendant. However, it is rec­ommended that the ascendant point (crossing of the ecliptic and the eastern horizon), even if not taken as the actual first house cusp, be at least marked on the horoscope as an important point. If you are interested in astrology, you may have already looked into your natal chart – your astrological blueprint at birth. Your natal chart, which represents a snapshot of the sky, shows the position of the planets at the moment of your birth relative to where you were born. It illuminates your specific symbiotic relationship with the cosmos, your disposition and proclivities, and, ultimately, your strengths as well as the challenges that ripple through your life. Knowing this, you can make behaviour choices that affect your mind, body, and spirit in positive ways. When you run your chart, your personal astrology is presented as a circle, or ‘pie’, so to speak. That pie is divided into twelve slices, or houses. What follows is a general description of each house. Like the signs and planets, this list is by no means exhaustive. Consider it a jumping off point. There are numerous house systems; the one referred to in this article is Placidus, one of the most popular house systems.