Houses
Astrological houses
Houses connect a chart symbol with an area of life, such as home, relationships or work. An exact birth time is needed to calculate them.
Brief explanations help you read without specialist knowledge. Astrological terms describe a symbolic method, not scientifically established personality traits.
Where the twelve zodiac signs divide the ecliptic itself, the twelve houses divide the chart around a different axis: your local horizon and meridian at the moment and place of birth. The Ascendant — the ecliptic degree rising on the eastern horizon — marks the start of the first house, and the Midheaven — where the ecliptic crosses the local meridian — anchors the tenth. Because both depend on the exact time of day (the sky rotates roughly one degree every four minutes) and on geographic location, house cusps are the part of a chart most sensitive to birth-time accuracy — far more sensitive than a planet's sign, which only shifts over days. Several house-division methods exist (Placidus, Whole Sign, Equal, and others); they agree on the Ascendant and Midheaven themselves but can place the intermediate cusps differently, which is a real methodological choice this project documents rather than hides.
Traditionally, each house is associated with an area of life — the first with self-presentation, the seventh with partnerships, the tenth with career and public standing, and so on. As with sign meanings, this house-to-life-area mapping is an interpretive convention built up over a long history, not a physical consequence of where a planet sits relative to the horizon.
Because house cusps are the most time-sensitive part of a chart, see "Exact vs. unknown birth time" for what changes, and what cannot be shown, when the birth time is not known precisely.
Traditionally, each house is associated with an area of life — the first with self-presentation, the seventh with partnerships, the tenth with career and public standing, and so on. As with sign meanings, this house-to-life-area mapping is an interpretive convention built up over a long history, not a physical consequence of where a planet sits relative to the horizon.
Because house cusps are the most time-sensitive part of a chart, see "Exact vs. unknown birth time" for what changes, and what cannot be shown, when the birth time is not known precisely.