The Second House

Think of what makes you feel secure. Money in the bank, a skill you can always rely on, a home full of things you love, or simply knowing what you are worth. That is the 2nd house: the part of the chart that is about what you have, and what you value.

The 2nd house follows the 1st. Once the self has arrived, it needs resources to sustain it: food, shelter, money, talents, and the sense that it deserves them. The 2nd house describes all of these.

What the 2nd house covers

• Money, income and possessions.
• Talents and skills you can rely on.
• Values: what you think is worth having.
• Self-worth and the sense of being enough.

Every chart has all twelve houses. Yours may have several planets in the 2nd house or none at all. Either way, this area of life is part of your story.

Where it sits

The 2nd house is a succedent house, below the horizon, on the eastern side. Succedent houses (2nd, 5th, 8th, 11th) follow the angles. They build on what the angles start, and are about resources, stability and what we accumulate.

The old name: the Gate of Hades

Here is a surprise. In Hellenistic astrology the 2nd house was sometimes called the Gate of Hades, the underworld. It sits just below the eastern horizon, the first part of the sky to be pulled down out of sight after it has risen. The house of what we own was, to the ancients, a place of things hidden beneath the surface.

What fills this house in your chart?

See the sign on its cusp, the planets inside and the ruler that runs it.

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