Astrology basics · The twelve houses
What the 2nd house means: money, possessions and what is kept
The 2nd house is the second slice of sky counted up from the east horizon, the part that rises a few hours after a person is born. It governs what that person keeps, earns and counts: money, possessions, the things they own and the things that own them. Taurus is its natural sign and Venus its planet; it is the first succedent house.
- Area of life
- What is kept, earned and counted; what a person owns and what owns them.
- Chart quadrant
- First
- House type
- Succedent
- Sky at birth
- Below the eastern horizon, rising a few hours later
- Natural sign
- Taurus
- Natural planet
- Venus
- Birth time
- Needed, to the hour
Two hours below the horizon
Every house is one twelfth of the sky over the place of birth, measured from the point where the zodiac crosses the eastern horizon, which is why the place and the hour both matter. The 2nd house lies under that horizon, further down than the 1st: the Sun is here in the small hours, between about four and two hours before sunrise. A planet in the 2nd at birth is below ground and comes up a few hours later.
Because the Earth spins, the twelve houses go round once a day, so a birth hour is needed to find them. The quadrant systems differ in how the sky between the eastern horizon and the chart's floor is cut, and the 2nd cusp moves with the choice; the house systems compared sets out the seven this site offers. Without an hour no house can be trusted, and the page on charts without a birth time says what a chart can still show.
What is kept, earned and counted
The 2nd house covers what a person keeps, earns and counts: income, savings, the objects in the house, what they own and what owns them. It is also the house of value in a plainer sense, the things a person refuses to part with, whatever they cost. If the 1st is the body, the 2nd is what the body is paid and what it holds on to.
Venus and Saturn in the 2nd
Fast planets in the 2nd show in spending and holding. Venus in the 2nd: a person buys the good chair once and sits in it for thirty years, and knows the price of everything in their kitchen. A slow one shows in the long habit of money. Saturn in the 2nd: a person checks the account before the coffee, keeps the receipts in a folder by month, and gives generously only once the number is known.
The 8th house across the wheel
Opposite the 2nd is the 8th, in the afternoon's western sky. What a person keeps gets its answer in what is pooled and owed: the joint account, the inheritance, the debt, the intimacy that costs something. The two cusps are opposite degrees of the zodiac, so the sign on the 2nd fixes the sign on the 8th, Taurus answered by Scorpio in the natural chart.
See The 2nd house in your own chartA free birth chart, with the reading, from your date, time and place.
Questions
- What does the 2nd house rule in astrology?
- Money, possessions and what a person keeps, earns and counts. It includes the things they own and, in the old phrase, the things that own them: the habits of spending and holding that are hard to put down.
- Is the 2nd house about money or about values?
- Both, and in astrology they are the same question. The 2nd shows what a person counts, in cash and in the objects they refuse to part with. Possessions here are a record of what was found worth keeping.
- Which sign and planet go with the 2nd house?
- Taurus and Venus. In the natural chart, with Aries on the 1st, Taurus falls on the 2nd, and Venus, which rules Taurus, is the planet whose domain overlaps most with this house: what draws a person and what they find worth having.