I like to describe it as you sitting at your desk at Google, functioning as one cog in a giant machine. This is the house of everything that is not you it represents the unconscious, the void and exile. Located just above the first house on the zodiac wheel, this is the house that was sitting on the horizon just before your birth or while your mother was in labor. Known as the house of Bad Spirit by the ancients, this is the place of self-undoing. Like the eighth house, the twelfth house is also severely misunderstood. RELATED: 30 Astrology Gifts (All Under $100) for the Mystic in Your Life Here’s a deep dive on what each house really means. The houses’ individual meaning derives from their relationship with the other houses, each building upon each other.
![house rulers in houses house rulers in houses](https://www.cuckoosnest.nl/img/houserules%20eng2.jpg)
Those on the eastern side of the chart (10, 11, 12, 1, 2, 3) are about personal development ,while houses on the western side of the chart (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are about interpersonal development. The houses found below the horizon (1 through 6) deal with private matters in our life, while the houses found above the horizon (7 through 12) deal with more public matters in our life. Now the question is which topics does each house represent? The houses cover all areas of life, from personal growth (self, pleasure, travel), to survival methods (money, labor, career), to relationships (siblings, partnership, friends), to the existential (ancestry, loss and self-undoing). You now understand that the 12 houses divide the birth chart into sections and speak to different topics in your life. The houses ground the planets and signs into a lived experience, allowing for interpretation. The time of your birth-and therefore which planets and signs fall within each house-provides the content. The houses-like the position of the cards-provide the form. It might be helpful to think of a birth chart like a tarot spread. The houses are then identified moving counterclockwise on the wheel from the second house all the way to the twelfth house. No matter what house system you’re using, the rising sign always falls in the first house (or, the house of the self). It represents the eastern horizon, or quite literally where the sun rises each morning. Your rising sign is always found on the left-hand side of the zodiac wheel. In modern times, house systems were developed to divide the zodiac from east to west on the horizon line, symbolically depicting the sun’s journey through the sky each day. Houses are determined based on the exact time and location of your birth. Those 12 sections of the chart are the 12 astrological houses, each representing different topics in your life. But the zodiac wheel is the actual birth chart! It’s where you find all the juiciest information. Because all the glyphs and aspect lines are confusing, you probably just scrolled down to a list version of your placements. If you’ve ever looked up your birth chart, you’ve likely been met with the image of a zodiac wheel divided into twelve sections. It’s one thing to know your rising sign, but do you know what it means that your sun is in the first house? Or that Venus is in the fifth house? Let’s take a look at what the 12 houses of astrology are and what each of them actually means.
![house rulers in houses house rulers in houses](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HOIUa8jwjS0/TZrj7BFAXlI/AAAAAAAAAL0/Xzyctlp4L60/s1600/House+Rules+01.png)
Along with planets, signs and aspects, the houses are foundational to astrology, providing an underpinning for the whole chart. If the birth chart is a portrait of the sky at the moment you were born, then the 12 houses of astrology is the canvas.